I've been watching a lot of Entourage lately. The HBO series is often hyped as Sex & the City for guys, which isn't that far off. The show revolves around Vincent Chase, a swaggering pretty boy who moves from Queens to L.A. to become a movie star. Just for fun, he brings his three best friends along, including Drama, Vince's washed-up TV actor brother; Eric, his level-headed manager; and Turtle, the crass but cuddly hanger-on.

Entourage is one of the rare shows that critics seem genuinely conflicted about and I feel the same way. Over five seasons, it's been called a "cuddly, fluffy, annoying little lamb" (The New York Times), "a show that makes you feel smart" (The New Yorker, of all places) and "intermittently sexist" (Slate). Some celebrate it as a stinging satire of Hollywood glitz and greed, while others see it as a glitzy glorification of just that.

There's no doubt that Entourage can be superficial and chauvinistic. The writers seem to have made a pact not to let two episodes go by without Vince getting it on with an unrealistically gorgeous woman or showering his buddies with a new sports car or home movie theatre. And while they coddle Vince, the others rag on each other like frat boys. Drama is a "pussy" for spending hours chatting with his long-distance girlfriend. Turtle is "gay or something" for not approaching a woman at a club. And then of course there's Ari, Vince's potty-mouthed alpha male agent whose routine harassment of Lloyd, his openly gay personal assistant, is a constant source of hilarity.

Yes, Entourage is existentially un-P.C., but it has its virtues. Like Sex and the City, or Stand By Me, or the recent film I Love You Man, it's a show about relationships. Ari, for all his scheming and raging, is fiercely loyal to his wife, to Lloyd, and above all to Vince (in Season 5 he rejects a $10 million offer to run a major studio when he sees Vince is heartbroken by the thought of working with someone else ).  The East coast boys, who live together in a supersized bachelor pad, take care of each other. Drama cooks. Turtle drives. Eric manages. Vince provides.  Sure, they only express their love for each other when they're tripping on mushrooms, but isn't that how it goes?

The show also represents a fairly broad spectrum of masculinity. Drama is almost cripplingly self-conscience; he refuses to be filmed on his right side and fusses over his diet like a pop diva. Slightly-built Eric is the constant butt of short person jokes, but is the only one in the gang who's capable of (or interested in) having a serious relationship. Turtle is a delayed adolescent who grows into himself more every season. And Vince is a classic Prince Charming - smooth and self-assured but utterly helpless on his own.

As the Times' Virginia Heffernan put it, Entourage is a  show "about how men love men, and how they hate themselves for loving men, and how they worry about loving men, and how they need to stand up to men so they can love women, or stand up to women so they can love men." It's both "a portrait of young-straight-guy wish fulfillment" and a workshop for straight-guy self-knowledge.  It can be obvious and inconsistent and it's steeped, satirically or not, in the legacy of patriarchy. But with every season, the characters and stories and relationships perfect themselves, and you know what? So do we.

*****

Dan Levy is a writer and editor in Montreal. He blogs sporadically at www.danjlevy.wordpress.com