Lonely "bitch" finds new home

Last year, "I'm Rick James, bitch!" was the nation's favorite catchphrase, taking over locker rooms, restaurants, swimming pools, churches, and knitting gatherings like a virus that just would not die already. But now that Dave Chappelle has abandoned Comedy Central, HBO's Entourage fills the void with "Let's hug it out, bitch!" Finally, "bitch" is back with swaggering machismo!

If you've missed out on this season of Entourage, it's high time you gets yourself some HBO. What other place can you see a humbled Bob Saget (playing himself) cavorting with hookers, taking bong hits, and dropping the f-bomb like America's Funniest Home Videos drops the clips of a poor dad getting ball-busted by a wayward toddler?

The show deftly straddles the line between mockable braggadocio and raw vulnerability: Johnny "Drama" Chase (Kevin Dillon) begs his brother to fork over ten grand so he can get new calves (his are too "weak"), but he also worries that the kitchen knives won't cut the tomatoes paper thin, just the way his "bro" likes 'em. To be sure, the show is mocking the artifice of Hollywood (and in many ways, our own obsession with it), but it's one of the few shows on television that does more than merely scratch at the surface, even if it is the superficiality of Tinseltown and every other city it captures in its glare that the show represents.