Curb Your Entourage, a Tale of Two Finales

Entourage & Curb, a Tale of Two Finales
By Tom Ruff
September 12, 2011

This weekend HBO aired two finales, the 8th season conclusion of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", and the series finale of "Entourage".

For "Curb", a lackluster season filled with ups and downs, concluded with a brilliant 30 minutes of Larry at his finest... at war with Michael J. Fox over what shaking is and isn't Parkinson's related, getting basically tossed out of NYC by Mayor Bloomberg, and teaching a potentially gay 7 year old about Hitler and swastikas. This season has differed from most of the series is that it had no through-line to a big resolution (i.e the restaurant, the Producers, the Seinfeld finale) Instead, it featured Larry getting himself driven from two cities, first LA, and then NYC, in almost exactly the same manner, and a slew of references that carried from city to city. In many ways, ending the series with Larry calling a Parisian driver a "pig parker" made the whole season end on a high note. For the first time years there didn't seem to be any reason to think this will be the last "Curb" season, and for that reason alone, I almost feel like it could have been. If it was, the series definitely ended on an appropriate high note, even if the season overall wasn't one of its best.


"Entourage" on the other hand, came to an end with a mediocre episode that resolved the characters' story in a rushed and lackluster way. If you simply read a paragraph recap of the episode, you might be fine with the predictable comedy series ending... Ari quits his job to be with his wife "Melissa", E and a pregnant Sloan get back together with the aide of the rest of the group, and Vinnie does something impulsive - running off to get married, in typical all-or-nothing Vinny fashion. I'm sure the marriage won't last, but the fact that he did it was right up his alley. While I had no issue with the episode's major plot points, I still found it to be a terrible conclusion to the series. Guest appearances were thrown together, and seemed completely disjointed and low budget (Mike Ditka?). Backup characters were forced into other scenes (Lloyd and Ari's goodbye, Scott Caan at the airport, Terrence's phone calls with E and Vinnie, and Ari's post credits job offer).

The way I see it there were two major faults with this finale. The first is that they simply waited too long in this final season to really begin to wrap things up, and as a result, had to cram everything together at the very last minute. This show could have benefited from having been an hour, doing one, not two, episodes about how the guys all stick together, and worked Turtle and Drama's resolutions into the finale. The other is allowing a potential film keep them from really doing a great resolution episode. "24" made the same mistake last year, effectively ruining the series by leaving it open to a film that will probably never be made. The movie that may never happen, but by assuming it will they simply produced a typical season finale that didn't really feel like the end of a series. At the end of the day it's just a TV show, and one that has never been all that well written to begin with, but a little more planning and it could have been great. It's a shame, because overall the season was pretty good, and the characters and fans deserved more.

What did you think?