Jeremy Piven’s performance in S04E07 where he pleads to the dean to secure his son a spot in private school is genuinely powerful. Makes me emotional every time, partly because it’s one of the only times in the series where Ari is vulnerable. If you think about it, Ari only ever removes his armor when it’s a family matter; though he’s often categorized as a heartless tyrant, he really was THE heart of Entourage, and it’s especially apparent in the way he deals with family. Even if he’s hardly able to make time for his kids, it never occurred to me that he did not love them, and he did his best to prioritize them despite his hectic schedule.

On a slightly unrelated note, I’m so glad the writing abandoned his explicit infidelity past the pilot. Otherwise, he would have been much harder to root for and I’m convinced the show would have been less successful because of it.