David Frum, if I'm not mistaken, once had a brilliant line about The Economist. He was on his treadmill, as he typically was, reading The Economist, as he typically did, when suddenly it occurred to him: I hate this magazine, he thought. I hate everything about this magazine. Dumbfounded, and slightly afraid at where this new insight would take him, he placed the issue down on a nightstand. Serenity washed over him. I had a similar revelation tonight about Entourage.

The nexus of perpetual adolescence and unapologetic, unearned wealth is enough of a cavalcade of horrors without exalting a world in which women only exist in the penumbra of masculinity. Meld to the wretched substance of the show a stunningly lazy sitcom predictability -- Drama really did get punk'd by the UFC guy and Pauly Shore! The female agent throws professionalism to the wind for a fling with Vince! Why shouldn't Ari's wife reward Ari's appalling behavior with sex? -- and Entourage might, on closer inspection, be a sublime merger of form and function. If only the show provided any textual reason to think its lesson is that we should hate everything about these people.