Mark submitted a link saying, "Here is the Sport's Guy's take on Entourage after season 1. I think it's especially relevant considering all of our posting about the show." And I agree...Dave and I have looked at this before, but I thought it'd be interesting to compare the impressions from just a few episodes of Season 1 to what has happened since.

Quotes from the article are indented, with my response following.

This isn't an unrealistic depiction of life for the young and famous in Hollywood; maybe they exaggerated some elements, but the essentials are here. Like the impeccable weather. A bottomless supply of hot chicks, party scenes and discernable locations. Sleazy agents. Insane characters. Random cameos. Sweeping self-importance mixed with a healthy dose of inanity. And so "Entourage" is like a poor man's version of the Manny Ramirez Era in Boston: The plusses outweigh the minuses, you're going to laugh a number of times, cringe a few other times, but overall, it's good to have around.

Definitely still holds true for this show in general.

E was the crucial role, the one part you couldn't screw up. Unless E evolves, the show can't evolve with him beyond the "eye candy with some laughs" stage. I'm sensing they want to progress beyond that, as evidenced by the final show, when E tested his friendship with Vince by demanding to become his manager. But without a good actor playing E, they're handcuffed. None of the other characters can go anywhere.

It turned out that E was believable enough, and his character was able to do some evolving, eventually becoming a producer!

Vince can't be anything beyond a supporting role, since he only cares about getting laid, getting high and becoming famous. But Grenier doesn't have any idea where to take him. In some scenes, he's manipulating the people around him; in other scenes, he's acting like a 13 year-old kid with ADD. With another actor, maybe he would have been a little more complex -- they could have explored the self-parody angle (like John C. Reilly in "Boogie Nights," or even Anna Faris with her Cameron Diaz parody in "Lost in Translation"). Grenier isn't talented enough to make Vince anything more than "likable and flighty." He's a dead end.

Half-true, though he's also managed to become more believeable. But there are still times where you wonder why he's suddenly acting like an idiot/small child. Or how cheesy he acts in Medellin. And yet he can be serious at times. So "likable and flighty" is still pretty true, though it's less flighty now.

Ari the Agent can't change ... nor would we want him to change. He's the highlight of every show, just a wicked amalgam of every fast-talking, insecure agent out here (supposedly modeled after Wahlberg's real-life agent, Ari Emanuel, to everyone's delight out here). The scene when he disrupts a rival agent's beach party was probably the single best moment of the season, not counting Vince's yoga girlfriend skinny-dipping in front of E. But Ari is much more effective in short doses, almost like a third-down sack specialist. You don't want them diluting his character; you want to keep looking forward to him every time he pops up on the screen. Let's hug it out, b---h.

(Note: I have the sinking feeling they're going to screw up a good thing here, much like when "90210" ruined a good thing and added Joe E. Tata to the opening credits. When you know Nat is contractually obligated to pop up once an episode and ask if someone wants a mega-burger, it just doesn't have the same impact. Same with revolving entire episodes around Ari. Let's hope they do the right thing next season.)

They did do the right thing, though it wasn't until the end of the season. Here's one place where the Sports Guy was wrong. You can't get enough Ari, and him driving the last few episodes of Season 2 made those more enjoyable than any other episode to date.

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Vince's other sidekicks -- Turtle and Johnny Drama, the other best parts of the show -- are straightforward "comic relief" parts. You couldn't change them at this point, and you wouldn't want to change them. Turtle (played by That Guy Who Will Always Be Known As Turtle) became my favorite character around Episode Four, a sarcastic Guy's Guy who never takes his Yankees hat off, the kind of guy who would end up brawling at Fenway with someone wearing a "Jeter Swallows" T-shirt. In real life, Turtle would be angling for E's spot with Vince and stealing money from him left and right. On the show, he's harmless and gets off at least one laugh-out-loud line per episode. You could almost picture him playing video games with Sue and Double Down Trent.

Yes, dead-on. The infamous "Turtle/Drama storylines" we're always discussing here.

As for Drama, Vince's older brother on the show -- the Don Swayze to his Patrick Swayze -- that's another one-note character, only Kevin Dillon does a pretty good job with him. (Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd type.) The scene when he crashes the Kimmel show was another classic scene -- just an unexpected, goofy moment that actually worked. And they've been able to use Drama to poke fun at Hollywood, like his audition for "CSI: Minnesota" last week ("Don Johnson's in it!"). There are moments when he edges towards "SNL skit" territory, but not enough that it's a problem. At the same time, too much has happened -- we can't accept him as anything other than Vince's loser brother.

While I tend to agree about Drama's characterization here, the show's writers don't entirely seem to. Somehow they've let Drama take some roles, but decided not to talk about them. So they don't want him to be a loser forever, but he obviously can't go to the other extreme either. He's kind of in bad-roles-limbo.

So for "Entourage" to remain interesting for 40 episodes instead of 10, everything rides on E's character. We need to see him evolve. We need to see him adjust from Queens to Hollywood, get burned by the business a few times, question his one-sided relationship with Vince, fight off his controlling ex-girlfriend, slowly become jaded by the Hollywood experience, and eventually grow apart from the other sidekicks as they start to resent him. We need to see him drink the Hollywood kool-aid, become polluted by every hideous character-changer out here (and believe me, it's an extensive list).

True, and most of that ended up happening. The only ones that haven't happened are the growing apart and becoming polluted/ruthless. I think the writer's have hinted, particularly in the dealings with Harvey, that E can't and won't ever do it. He can't be ruthless and is pretty easily eaten alive by anyone that doesn't like what he's doing (Billy, Ari, Harvey). And there's no way the boys are resenting him for that very reason. He's evolved in the amount of work he's taking on, but hasn't changed because of it. At least not yet.

That's the difference between an entertaining show and a great show -- how E handles this stuff, how the actor takes a meaty part and does something with it. After two episodes, we were looking at an F-triple-minus from Connelly. By Episode Four, as he became more comfortable, he was a solid D-minus. Near the end of the season, he moved up to a C-minus. Still a handicap. During the final episode of the season, when E started spreading his wings, his inevitable confrontation with Vince was painful -- just two guys who can't act very well -- and I wouldn't be surprised if they take great pains to make sure something like that never happens again.

They've since had arguments over things like Medellin, and their confrontations have been more believable. I think they just took some time to settle into their roles.

Hence, the biggest problem with "Entourage": Because of the casting mistakes, it's an entertaining show with a built-in ceiling. It can be good, never great. Once the creators (begrudgingly) accept E's limitations, I worry that the show will evolve like "Sex and the City" did, with the characters becoming more and more one-dimensional, the dialogue more and more forced, the situations more and more ludicrous. Eventually it could become a parody of itself, like the way "Sex and the City" ended up -- four spent characters racing to beat each other to the next overwritten punchline.

I'd argue that it's a combination of the writing and casting, as well as the fact that the premise is pretty limiting. The show has managed to keep things fresh for longer than I would have expected though, so hopefully there's plenty more to come before it stagnates as suggested.

Of course, these posse members need the celeb -- he's the one who supports them, employs them, opens doors that would never open on their own. It's almost like a form of addiction. They owe EVERYTHING to the celeb. So they act accordingly. And the constant butt-kissing and posturing ends up giving the celeb a mutant form of ominpotence. If everyone keeps telling me I'm great, well, I must be great. It's like a little cocoon. If you ever wondered why some of these celebrities go crazy ... well, that's why. They don't know who to trust, and the people they do trust only tell them things they want to hear.

Now that's a show.

"Entourage" decided to go another way. An easier way. On the bright side, it's funny and likable, even clever at times, and it definitely passes the VCR Clock Test. With the amount of crap on TV right now, we've reached the point where an unassuming cable comedy with some flaws -- a show that just about everyone agrees could be better -- practically reached Water Cooler status over these past few weeks.

Yep, I liked Vince and his friends. They won't be winning a round of Emmys some day, but they managed to hold my interest every Sunday night for the past 10 weeks ... and maybe that's all that matters anymore.

Completely true. The show is likeable/enjoyable, and possibly for the reason that despite not being great it still beats most television shows right now. Unfortunately that's not saying much for TV. But I don't know if it'd be that great if it got into all the issues mentioned. It would certainly be a very different kind of show, but I don't know if I'd be as eager to watch that. Almost definitely not with this cast.

Overall the impression from the first 10 episodes mostly were surprisingly dead-on, and I think the only major shift in things is that the characters evolved more than expected. They settled into their roles and made it good, and the writing has managed to keep things fresh and interesting. We get all kinds of storylines and most of them span at least a few episodes, so there's always some kind of over-arching purpose. And that's all you really need to set the framework for all the other stuff that goes on. In terms of accuracy I'd say about 70% of the Sports Guy article holds true today, 36 episodes later. Not too shabby.