It's hard to think of a show better suited to summer viewing than HBO's "Entourage," which wrapped up its sixth season Sunday night with Vince and his brother heading off to Italy.
I've been hearing griping from some long-time "Entourage" fans that not much happened this season. But slowly, over the dozen episodes, we've been seeing the boys growing apart and maybe, just maybe, growing up a tiny bit.
"Entourage" has always seemed like the male version of HBO's "Sex and the City." That show looked at the world through the eyes of young professional women, and always seemed to have a serious undertone.
Not "Entourage." It's strictly a male fantasy about a bunch of boys who never grow up led by a movie star who gets pretty much whatever he wants. There were few major challenges this season, and plenty of the reflected glow of Hollywood. The oddest subplot involved Turtle (Jerry Ferrara) and an unlikely romance for the pudgy member of movie star Vince (Adrian Grenier) Chase's crew with Jamie-Lynn Sigler playing her post-"Sopranos" self. In the end, Turtle was left a free agent.
One of the members of Vince's "Entourage," Eric Murphy (Kevin Connolly) spent the season pursuing his old girlfriend, Sloan, and appears to have finally got her.
But at the end of it all, the plot developments aren't as important as the show's vibe. Sunday's episode featured cameos by Matt Damon, Bono and Lebron James, to give the whole thing a feel of unreal Hollywood reality.
Yes, there will be a seventh season. And it should be a nice, cool refresher when we need it next summer.
KEEPING HIS WORD: Steve Cochran, who does the afternoon shift on Chicago's WGN-AM (720) was so convinced that the 2016 Summer Olympics were coming that he vowed he'd synchronize swim with himself to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" outside the Michigan Avenue studio if some other city got the games.
His wacky radio stunt is planned for today's show, which starts at 4 p.m.
ON TV: "Reality" TV star Kate Gosselin started her media counter-offensive on NBC's "Today" this morning, charging estranged hubby Jon Gosselin with cleaning out a joint bank account. "I didn't want to discuss this stuff," she told Meredith Vieira as she went on to discuss this stuff. You can watch the interview below.
- The season premiere of "Ugly Betty" was supposed to air this Friday night. But ABC has pushed it back to Oct. 16.
- Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello says it looks like Rachel Bilson could be the answer to the big question behind CBS' "How I Met Your Mother." Bilson, best known for "The O.C.," has been booked for the sitcom's 100th, when the mom is finally supposed to be unveiled.
- The simulcast of Don Imus' radio show launched today on Fox Business Network, available on satellite and digital cable. It'll air from 5 to 8 a.m. weekdays.
THE STARS DANCE MUCH LATER: Channel 12's pickup of ESPN's "Monday Night Football" for the Packers-Vikings means that ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" has been displaced. It's scheduled to air at 2:06 a.m. Monday night/Tuesday morning. But if you're recording it, extend the time just in case.
Monday's other prime-time ABC show, "Castle," is scheduled to air at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
