Entourage survey makes me twitch

For some reason HBO sent me a survey link by email yesterday, as a followup to Sunday’s debut of Entourage (which I watched, and enjoyed). I took the survey (hey, a chance to win $10.00 from Amazon – why the hell not) and did not enjoy it. All the usual stuff about whether you watched it, how did you hear about it, do you get HBO, and then the part where they clearly want to get some REAL INSIGHT as to the appeal of the show. Yeccghhhh.

Using a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means Poor and 5 means Excellent, how would you rate the following aspects of ENTOURAGE?
The humor
The drama
The characters
The idea for the series
The dialogue
The music in the show
The locations
The relationships between the characters
The story
The action
The uniqueness
The pace
The ending
The beginning
The title, ENTOURAGE
The look of the show
The realism
The inside look at a Hollywood lifestyle

I think after about 6 aspects, it starts getting ridiculous. As if you can slice your reaction to the show that precisely? The title? Who gives a crap what the title is? Obviously, they do, but then, how is that information useful? Are they going to relaunch under a new title?

Now we’d like you to rate the characters on ENTOURAGE. For each character, tell us how much he/she adds or detracts from your enjoyment of the show.

This was also five choices:

Adds a lot Adds a little Detracts a little Detracts a lot Not sure
VINCE, who slips easily into stardom
ERIC, who is learning the rules of Hollywood as he tries to help Vince make the right choices
DRAMA, Vince’s half-brother whose own acting aspirations have been eclipsed by Vince’s success
TURTLE, the least experienced of the group who’s always up for a good time
ARI, Vince’s high-powered agent who clashes with Eric over his client’s decisions

To be helpful, they included headshots of the characters with this breezy description. It seems like they’ve taken pitch-meeting copy and tossed that into the survey, where it rings incredibly inappropriate. Again, we’re asked to provide input at a very silly level – the show worked as a whole – there are characters you like and don’t like, doesn’t drama come from conflict? Oh, I wish there was less of the people we don’t like? I personally couldn’t pick my feeling about the show apart enough to assess individual characters, and further, I don’t want to, and beyond that, I don’t want them to listen to us, the viewers, about what characters they feature.

I’m sure this type of thing is nothing new, and that ER and Will and Grace and every other damn thing (more Seven of Nine, puhleeze!) gets this treatment…

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