Entourage begins its eighth and final season Sunday at 10:30pm on HBO, and the characters are coming back with a new lease on life. The final season puts most of the characters on new trajectories, whether professionally or romantically. The show was incredibly hip and popular in its youth, but as the years have gone on, Entourage has become increasingly boring, with the characters doing the same things over and over again.

Sadly, that trend seems to be continuing for the last year. Vince is trying to relaunch his career (for about the 300th time), Turtle and Eric have relationship problems, and Drama is still a desperate actor trying so hard to keep his career afloat. You'd think since the series premiere more than seven years ago these characters might have grown up just a little bit, but they haven't.

The final season picks up three months after Vince was arrested for drug possession as he gets out of his 90-day stint in rehab. Eric is still dealing with the break-up with Sloan (again), Turtle has fears that his smoking hot girlfriend, now the spokesmodel for the tequila company he invested in, is leaving him behind for greener pastures, and Drama is working hard on his new animated series Johnny's Bananas, with co-star Andrew Dice Clay.

The only character who is treading new ground is Ari, who is separated from his wife and struggling to figure out whether there's any chance of reconciliation. However, even Jeremy Piven and Rex Lee (who plays Ari's whipping boy Lloyd) seem bored with rehashing the exact same scenes over and over again. Lloyd wants something, Ari makes a vicious comment about Lloyd's homosexuality and/or weight, then he agrees to help him anyway.

That sense of "haven't we seen this before" permeates the final season. Celebrities make quick cameos as themselves (The Big Bang Theory's Johnny Galecki stops by in the premiere), Turtle smokes weeds, Drama is uptight and Vince is laid back.

The only interesting thing about Entourage's final season comes in the show's third episode where Vince considers working with producer Carl Ertz (Kim Coates from Sons of Anarchy), who screwed Vince over once before. The meeting takes a very surprising twist, and the fallout could lead to some new and fresh things for the show.

Hopefully Entourage has a big move for the series finale, because after eight seasons, the viewers who have stuck with it through thick and thin deserve some type of closure.





Entourage airs Sundays at 10:30pm on HBO.


(Image courtesy of HBO)