Still, you probably waited — and you'll probably never actually admit to watching Entourage, since it has become en vogue to kill the show for being superficial and dumb. This despite the fact that Entourage never seemed to even have aspirations to be anything other than a goof of wealth, supermodels and weed. To no surprise, the season premiere had all three in excess. Here's how it broke down.

Wealth

Ne'er-do-well Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), who was last seen breaking up with Jamie Lynn-Sigler — blurring the lines of reality on Entourage since they broke up in real life too! — apparently owns a limo company with a fleet of Mercedes. Oh, and they are driven by a cabal of beautiful girls, one of which quits after Turtle tries to kiss her. No sexual harassment here!

Wealth rating: 5.

Supermodels

Not to be outdone by Turtle's Angels, Drama (Kevin Dillon) flirts with the craft services girl on the set of Vince's new movie...who just happens to look like a Maxim cover model.

Supermodel rating: 7.

Weed

Only on Entourage could an important business meeting begin with, "Want to smoke up?" And so, Johnny Drama and the network executive he has a deal with (played with lovely nonchalance by William Fichtner) light up and discuss the future.

Weed rating: 8.

Mr. Grenier's character Vince ended last season about to deal with the fallout from the film Medellin, which bombed at Cannes on the show. In real life, Mr. Grenier's career has stalled somewhat; his role as Anne Hathaway's boyfriend in 2005's The Devil Wears Prada has been his only breakthrough part. But last evening, by the time the afterparty at Mansion, on far, far West 28th Street, rolled around, Mr. Grenier was in full-on star mode. He was at all times surrounded by a bevy of young (and not-so-young; we spotted a white-haired lady we assumed to be his grandmother) women practically tripping over themselves to have their photos taken with him, or whisper in his ear. (By this point, Mr. Grenier's tie was rakishly loose.)

The Daily Transom spotted Constance Zimmer, who plays studio executive Dana Gordon (whom Ari Gold never fails to remind about their past dalliances), talking animatedly with Carla Gugino; Ms. Gugino, who was wearing a very Mad Men-esque green dress, plays Amanda, the agent for whom Vince leaves Ari, then abandons after they sleep together. We wondered what it was like to be women on such a male-dominated show.

"That's so funny, we were just talking about that!" said Ms. Gugino. "We play characters who are sexy, but also powerful and funny." Ms. Gugino paused. (Teensy-tiny spoiler alert!) "Though I wasn't so funny in this episode."

"We're happy to represent," said Ms. Zimmer. "There are so many hot women on the show. But we're powerful—we're not hoochie mamas!"

But maybe Johnny Drama’s time has come. Maybe he’s getting “respek” at last, as Ali G puts it. I guess it depends on how you regard the recently announced deal for a series of special four-minute cell-phone download “Johnny Drama” episodes for Cingular.

I don’t know if competing with the ring-tone market on a four-inch square screen is a portent of cutting-edge spin-off success for Dillon—or more of a Johnny Drama–like “success” comparable to his (fictional) Valtrex commercial.

But either way, it’s an exemplar of the growing recognition of Johnny Drama, Icon of Irritability, and his breakout from the blandness of Entourage. And the growing recognition of the Johnny Drama type—of the name he gives to a niche in the spectrum of American masculinity and its discontents—offers an occasion to re-examine irritability itself as a characterological trait. Maybe the time has finally come to give it respek. Irritability has long been treated as a character flaw, virtually a disability. Bring in the anger-management people! But irritability isn’t mere anger, the same way that rock music isn’t mere noise.

And who among us, except those irritating people smugly carrying yoga mats in their oh-so-special bags, isn’t at least a little irritable? You virtually have to have had a lobotomy not to be irritable in this world and this city.

Instead, it’s usually considered something negative, and in Johnny Drama, the poster child of contemporary irritability, it’s certainly not an appealing characteristic. But hey, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate irritability. I mean, couldn’t you consider some forms of irritability a kind of highly evolved sensitivity to things?

Really, isn’t being irritable caring in its own bad-vibe way? People who aren’t irritable—emotional flat-liners, you might call them, yoga-mat people—may just lack a certain impassioned engagement with life, the kind of engagement that makes the rest of us react irritably now and then. I mean, some people, some situations really are irritating. The point is to be discriminating in what one gets irritated about.

Now, I’m not a huge fan of Entourage, and I probably wouldn’t watch it as regularly as I do (the last two episodes of this season are coming up on Sunday, Aug. 20 and 27, at 10 p.m.) if it weren’t for three factors:

1) The possibility that Vince’s vegan-yoga-instructor girlfriend from Season 1 will return from Tibet. (If you saw the episode, you’ll understand why I’m not entirely opposed to yoga-mat types. Bring her back!)

2) The occasional over-the-top Jeremy Piven wisecrack (did you catch the one involving a Dyson vacuum cleaner this season?) He’s good, Jeremy Piven—I’m not taking anything away from his entertainment value—but he’s gotten his share of attention from the show, and I’m not sure his role breaks new ground the way.

3) Johnny Drama, Mr. Irritability, does.

In case you haven’t seen Entourage or absorbed it by osmosis, it’s the story of four guys from Queens trying to keep it real in Hollywood. The lead, Adrian Grenier, plays rising star Vince Chase with moist puppy-dog eyes. Then there’s his boring straight-arrow best friend, Eric, now his manager, and their comic-relief fat buddy, Turtle.

But the real star, to my mind, is Kevin Dillon as Vince’s older (half-) brother, who, according to the back-story (and the fake résumé that series creator Doug Ellin gave to Entertainment Weekly), came out to Hollywood first, changed his name from Chase to Drama (typical J.D. acumen there) and started to make it big with a role on a Star Trek–type rip-off called Viking Quest (he played “Tarvold”). Since that alleged high point, his career’s been sliding relentlessly downhill, with little to show for it but a role as a “Bulimic Pedophile” on The Commish, as “Singing Felon No. 4” on Cop Rock, as a “Dead Body” on NYPD Blue and “a three-episode arc as Tori Spelling’s sexual harasser” on 90210. (And he’s dimwitted enough to think the slide can be reversed by getting calf implants.)

Meanwhile, his younger brother Vince has suddenly become a new mega-star, offered eight-figure deals in James Cameron epics, while big brother Johnny can’t even get an agent anymore. (The parallels between Kevin Dillon and his A-list star brother Matt have not escaped notice.) No wonder Johnny Drama’s always in a bad mood just beneath the surface. Touchy. Resentful. Thin-skinned. Trying to look like a tough guy in his leather jacket and white T-shirt, and looking instead like he’s over-amped on “performance enhancer” workout drugs, always on the verge of ’roid rage. Trying against all evidence to keep up the appearance that he’s still a player, that he’s not washed up at an early age.

How could you not like the guy? Well, pretty easily. But something about him reminds me of that other great comic-irritable Hollywood character, Pat Hobby, from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s stories about an over-the-hill hack screenwriter who lost his juice when the talkies came in. A great comic character in the last short stories that Fitzgerald wrote, and one of his most underrated creations, too easily dismissed because he did the Pat Hobby stories for easy money from Esquire. And he’s touching as well—a somewhat sad self-portrait of the artist as an irritable lush who can’t get out of his own way.

What’s great about Mr. Dillon’s performance is that it walks a tightrope between alienating small-time punk attitude and comic pathos. You’re never quite sure if the guy is a total jerk or just a partial one.

And let’s face it: You almost never see real irritability in TV characters. It’s not ratings gold. Johnny Drama’s just about the only true portrait of irritability on TV. I mean most of the supposedly irritable characters on TV have been grouchy dads like Archie Bunker or Homer Simpson, types you always knew were really lovable teddy bears deep down.

Of course, there’s also the Jerry Seinfeld–Larry David spectrum of what I’d call faux-irritability. Mr. Seinfeld himself offers not genuine irritability but whiny petulance—and if you ask me, Mr. David’s has become a forced, one-note, pro forma shtick. (I’ve been pleased to hear, over the years, that he actually finds me irritating for my critiques of the Seinfeld/David shtick. Badge of honor!) And hasn’t something similar happened to that once dependable and enduring icon of irritability, David Letterman? Many still find his Irritable Attitude appealing; I’ve begun to find his irritability merely irritating.

Maybe the only convincing recent TV portrait of irritability was Jerry Orbach’s Lenny on Law & Order, but that was a kind of mature, seasoned, almost-too-dignified irritability, a wise rather than wise-guy irritability. (Current inheritor of the wise-irritability mantle: House of House.)

Johnny Drama is, at least at times (and judging especially from this season’s last two episodes, where his temper led to physical violence), less teddy bear grouchy than junkyard-dog snarly. He’s not exactly a diplomat, not into “process” and dialogue.

BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, one could look at Johnny Drama in a different way: as part of the great tradition of American losers. Not malevolent so much as self-destructive, and at least a little bit lovable (or pitiable) because they’re so unself-aware—so oblivious at times—of how they get in their own way.

(Of course, sometimes this works for him, as in the Season 2 episode when he blew up at an audition and thereby succeeded in getting himself cast as a psychopathic killer.)

In addition to Pat Hobby, there’s a bit of Willy Loman in Johnny as he sadly, incompetently tries to sell himself. That scene at Sundance where he stands up alone to praise the arty Pedro Almodóvar–type director’s unconventional visual style—and then shamelessly proceeds to undermine it all by clumsily asking the director in front of the screening audience if he has a part for Johnny Drama in his next film.

Or his response to his brother’s generosity—at first gracious, then comically overreaching. There was a scene in one of this season’s episodes where Vincent offers to buy him a brand-new Ducati motorcycle as a gift to celebrate the successful opening of Vincent’s new blockbuster ….

And Johnny Drama, mistaking the Ducati for a Japanese bike, says, “You know I hate rice rockets, Vince. I’m a Harley man.” Or he was until “I had to hock mine to Michael Madsen after a couple bleak pilot seasons.” (“Rice rockets”—the important thing is that the show doesn’t play down the loudmouth-creep side of J.D.)

Anyway, when his brother offers to buy back the Harley from Madsen, Drama says, “You’re a fuckin’ prince, bro,” and then can’t help adding, “You know he’s also got a watch of mine, too”—making himself even more comically pathetic than usual (and adding, I have to think, a twisted allusion to Walter Burns’ classic last line in The Front Page).

But I think the secret to Johnny Drama’s rehabilitation of irritability inheres in his rehabilitation of the word “bro.” Usually, I’ve found that “bro” is a word used by someone who wants to steal your watch (metaphorically) or, anyway, to sell his to you. To say the least, it somehow doesn’t really convey the spirit of brotherhood. It’s a con, a con man’s word.

But with Drama, there’s something appealing about his loyalty to his bros, about his whole “I got your back, bro” style. With Johnny Drama, “bro” becomes likable, even earnest bravado. Genuine camaraderie. He sort of reminds you of the braggart soldier Pistol, one of the band of bros of another “fuckin’ prince”—Hal in Shakespeare.

Maybe it’s a minor accomplishment, but Johnny Drama has managed to give a kind of grudging dignity to that sleazoid word “bro.” (As for those surfers who use the word “brah,” the less said the better.)

What he’s done is, in a larger sense than a single word, given us a glimpse of a sweet side of irritability. He’s not irritable just on behalf of himself (as he was in the Starbucks-meltdown episode) but on behalf of his bros—in the episode after that, on behalf of E., and in the one after that, on behalf of Turtle.

And you can’t help note that whoever’s writing him has given him a nurturing side: He takes great pride in the fact that he cooks for the rest of the crew in the Entourage mansion.

Johnny Drama’s still a punk, and not in the good sense of the word, or the most part (post–Johnny Rotten/Joey Ramone punks didn’t crave the recognition of the establishment, or stop sneering at it once they’d gotten it), more in the “small-time punk” older sense of the word—though without the noble-but-doomed sensibility that De Niro’s Johnny Boy brought to being a small-time punk in Mean Streets.

But you have a feeling that the show is setting Drama up for major punk martyrdom. The last episode saw him being dangled out a window by some of Turtle’s rappers, barely escaping a head-bashing on the concrete apron of the pool below. (“I coulda made the pool” is his after-action report—kind of a nice revision of “I coulda been a contender.”)

Is the show setting him up for a bigger fall? I can’t believe that they’d make it fatal. Irritability may deserve to be smacked around, but not permanently smacked down.

And I really don’t want to make too much of this, but I wonder if the appeal of Johnny Drama’s irritability has something to do with the way it echoes America’s irritability in the post-9/11 world: touchy, often ill-advisedly explosive. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Such a comparison would involve another long-demeaned brother figure, though that might be carrying it a bit too far.

But you’ve got to give Drama/Dillon credit for deepening our sense of the varieties of human irritability, and at least partially rescuing it as a legitimate—if not always admirable—emotion. One I’ve always been a kind of fan of. (I wonder why?) In fact, I originally wanted to call my Observer column “The Irritable Enthusiast” rather than “The Edgy Enthusiast,” because “irritable” conveyed the connotation of small-e edgy I was going for. Edgy as in irascible; enthusiasm about some aspects of the culture, usually triggered by my irritation with other aspects. Irascible—there’s another word that needs rehabilitation.

Fox staffers were irate last week after the Vice President, in a marathon stretch of television appearances on Wednesday and Thursday, Nov. 29 and 30, purposely blew off the Rupert Murdoch-owned news channel. Trying to bolster support for his re-count challenges, Mr. Gore appeared for a string of interviews on ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN, but passed on Fox's offer to appear on its airwaves.

Mr. Gore's decision wasn't business; it was personal. Mr. Gore's campaign staff has been miffed at Fox News for what they consider to be a bias against the V.P. "I think Fox's coverage during the campaign has been decidedly one-sided," Mr. Gore's campaign spokesman, Mark Fabiani, told The Observer .

Mr. Fabiani said the Vice President and Senator Joseph Lieberman did sit occasionally with Fox News correspondents during the campaign season. But once the election was over and Mr. Gore shifted from campaign to re-count mode, appearing on Fox was judged an unnecessary chore, he said.

"You can get your message out without covering every single broadcast outlet, and given the fact that Fox's coverage has been decidedly negative, if you are going to economize, they're the place you economize," Mr. Fabiani said.

So the Vice President left Fox News out in the cold. Mr. Gore's decision prompted Fox News' Washington bureau chief, Kim Hume, to issue a strongly worded letter to Mr. Gore's campaign. "We have been told that it's obvious why we are being excluded," read one passage of Ms. Hume's letter. "It's not obvious to us. Our coverage of Vice President Gore has been even-handed.

"We find it unfortunate that you choose to exclude the news division of one of the four major broadcasting networks," Ms. Hume's letter continued. "We protest this decision and respectfully request equal and fair treatment."

Even though Mr. Gore's decision was politically calculated, it did put Fox News in a frustrating, somewhat embarrassing situation. The 4-year-old network has made significant gains in the ratings recently, to the point that it regularly nips at the heels of CNN. But not getting Mr. Gore on any day when the desperate Vice President appeared on nearly every channel except the Food Network was a potential blow to Fox's efforts to achieve status as a straightforward, legitimate news outfit, particularly since the network has been plagued by accusations of conservative bias.

Ms. Hume didn't see it that way. "Our reporters do fair and balanced reports," said Ms. Hume, who is married to Fox chief Washington correspondent Brit Hume. "[Mr. Gore] has the opportunity to come on and basically give one side of the story. If they decline to do that, that's their problem."

Most newsmakers have no problem with appearing on all the major networks, Ms. Hume added. "If they are trying to reach their constituents, they try to reach their constituents. They are not worried about having it only played in a certain light. If the Gore campaign wants to manipulate the media … that's their business. We don't like to be manipulated."

Alright, then. Tonight on the Fox News Channel, The O'Reilly Factor , hosted by that best-seller-writing madman Bill O'Reilly. Mr. O'Reilly has long held that Mr. Gore is too chicken to sit on his show. [FNC, 46, 8 p.m.]

Thursday, Dec. 7

When NBC opened its very own comedy studio in Soho earlier this year, local comedians were giddy. At last, they figured, every Manhattan joker with a halfway-decent Christopher Walken impersonation was going to get a fat network development deal with Drew Carey-type money.

Alas, the NBC space, called PSNBC and located at Spring Street and Sixth Avenue at the Here Arts Center, hasn't been a gigantic launch pad thus far. Though PSNBC has allowed the network brass to sample the local fare (and the network did recently sign up one local comedian, Carmen Pelàez, for a deal), it hasn't been a yellow brick road to television stardom.

"You are led to believe it's a pipeline, but in all actuality, it's not," groused one comedian about PSNBC. That may change, however: NBC has decided to jettison its post-Conan Friday Night variety program (yeah, yeah, boo-hoo) and replace it with a late-night stand-up comedy program. Though the NBC show will be taped in Los Angeles at the Knitting Factory on Hollywood Boulevard, network executives are hoping to tap some of the PSNBC talent. "Certainly we'll be using some of the people from PSNBC that we feel might cross over," said Marc Hirschfeld, NBC's executive vice president of casting.

Even though it's going to air deep in the night at 1:35 a.m., the NBC show represents the first major network stand-up venture in several years. Television stand-up was pretty much left for dead in the latter half of the 1990's, as cable networks in particular saturated the airwaves with lame comics waxing ad nauseam about airplane food and the differences between New York and L.A.

Mr. Hirschfeld said the NBC show will deviate from that tiresome mike-and-a-punch-line format, spotlighting the creative, sometimes arch alternative comics who have popped up with increasing frequency in recent years at places like the Luna Lounge in New York and Largo in Los Angeles. Mr. Hirschfeld described the kind of comedy the show is seeking as "free-form, a little less joke-telling and a little more storytelling."

Tonight on NBC, Friends , which could use a little less joke-telling and a little more storytelling, too. [WNBC, 4, 8 p.m.]

Friday, Dec. 8

Tonight, ABC debuts something called Dot Comedy , which is easily the worst title for a new show this year. This is your classic example of an idea that actually sounded good in the network development room, back when Amazon was trading at $100 a share and people still read Red Herring . Now ABC leaves this clunker to die in its Friday-night wasteland. [WABC, 7, 8:30 p.m.]

Saturday, Dec. 9

The actor Kevin Dillon was riding a three-game winning streak at the foosball table the other night at Hog Pit, the hip barbecue dive in the meatpacking district. Mr. Dillon and a group of buddies that included his brother Paul poured into the joint after attending a charity event earlier that evening; before that, some of them had been playing golf.

After wrapping up his game, Mr. Dillon sat down. An attractive female bartender came over and began hitting on him. "We're going to make some babies," the young blonde said. "I don't know anything about him being an actor, I just … I think we're going to get married and have some babies."

Mr. Dillon, who has brown, curly hair and the same sharp cheekbones as his brother, Matt, laughed hard. "We better get down to it pretty soon," he said.

After the bartender left, Mr. Dillon was asked if that kind of thing happened to him a lot. "I don't want to sound like an arrogant guy, but it kind of happens every night, really," he said. "But not as bad. Of course, Matt has it in a more extreme way. And Tom Cruise, he can't even move."

Mr. Dillon is currently starring in the CBS show That's Life , a lighthearted drama about the trials and travails of a thirtysomething woman and her working-class Italian family in New Jersey. The show stars Paul Sorvino, Ellen Burstyn, Debi Mazar and an actress named Heather Paige Kent. That's Life has struggled in the ratings, but Mr. Dillon, who has had his ups and downs in show business, sounded grateful for the steady job. "It's good to be working as a regular on a series, work all the time, knowing where my next check's coming from, rather than doing a movie where you're unemployed for … I don't know," he said.

Mr. Dillon was asked what was the most trouble he's ever been in. "I was in a lot of trouble as a kid," he said. "I got caught with a stolen plate on my motorcycle once. It wasn't mine–I didn't steal it–but it was stolen nonetheless. I found it and tied it onto my bike. I had a little release string that I was going to pull to get rid of the plate, but I never got a chance to pull it … the cops were on me."

Fights?

"Look at my right hand," Mr. Dillon said, motioning with his fist. "I've broken every knuckle in my right hand. I grew up with five brothers and I'm Irish and I drink. I've been in my share of fights. Plastic surgery on my left eye. I used to hang out on North Avenue in New Rochelle and we used to get into big, seven-on-seven type brawls. It was pretty good. It's kind of like movie stuff."

Any moments where you really kicked ass?

"I kicked a lot of ass," Mr. Dillon said. "None that I'm proud of. I still can't sleep at night over some of the people that I've hurt, and I've been hurt really badly, too. I hope the other person's feeling the same way about me."

–George Gurley

Watch the pugilistic Kevin Dillon tonight on CBS' That's Life . [WCBS 2, 8 p.m.]

Sunday, Dec. 10

New York-based supermodel Roshumba phoned up to talk about her upcoming VH1 special, Ibiza: Music Paradise , which airs on Thursday, Dec. 14, at 10 p.m. Ibiza is that sunny rock off the Spanish coast that attracts thousands of hedonistic, angular-cheekboned pretty people (and a lot of gawking producers from goofy syndicated travel shows) because of its 24-hour parties featuring boatloads of drugs, booze, foam machines and D.J.'s with Messiah complexes. In the words of VH1 itself, Ibiza is "Mardi Gras on acid, Ecstasy and triple espresso shots."

In other words, hell on earth , right? Naw, Roshumba said, Ibiza was pretty cool, with fewer creeps roving around than your average night at Spa. "It was incredible," she said.

Roshumba had a theory as to why Ibiza is such a phenomenon. "One of the biggest reasons why Ibiza may be so big, especially in Europe, is that right now the world is not that happy of a place," she said. "Everybody has got this crazy stuff going on–people with cancer, or whatever. And when you go there, you forget about all that. You go and you dance, you eat, you have sex, you take drugs, you play on the beach, you do whatever."

So did Roshumba and her crew expense a little Ecstasy on Sumner Redstone's Viacom tab? "Honestly, I have to say I was tempted to take the Ecstasy just so I could be on the same vibe as the people, but I was too chicken," the cover girl confessed. "I was like, 'Aaaaah, I might have to go to rehab–I can't do it.'"

Roshumba said that some of the locals were kind of bummed that VH1 landed on the island. "We got a lot of–I wouldn't say rejections, but cautionary warnings from a lot of the native people and the original people who started the scene," she said. "They were like, 'We don't want to ruin it, we don't want to cause problems, we don't want the officials of the island to think that we're partying and having these hedonistic experiences and not obeying their authority. So please, please, please, don't show this, don't show that, don't show that ….'"

Yeah, well, so much for that: "We're showing it all," Roshumba said.

Aw, what are those 'fraidy-cat locals scared of, anyway? Don't they know that D.J. foam parties are a centuries-old indigenous Ibizan tradition? Tonight on VH1, Behind the Music sips on Ice-T. [VH1, 19, 8 p.m.]

Monday, Dec. 11

On tonight's episode of Ally McBeal , Robert Downey Jr.'s character, Larry, mystifies colleagues by strolling into the office with a "friend" dressed in a Wonder Woman costume. [FOX, 5, 9 p.m.]

Tuesday, Dec. 12

On Showtime tonight, Election . This fine film, about the ugly double-crossing that takes place during a student-council election, used to seem sort of unbelievable. Not anymore. [SHO, 48, 8 p.m.]