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Sophomores Patrick Looby, Tom Quinn, and Dan Scardigle watch Entourage Sunday night in the Kappa Sigma fraternity house on Locust Walk. Entourage is becoming the "Sex and the City" for males on college campuses. Credit: Chris Poliquin

Guys crowd the bed and floor of a room in the Tau Epsilon Phi fraternity house as they watch the season finale of HBO's Entourage on Sunday night.

"This music's been so good," one brother says.

"I wonder how it's going to end. A cliffhanger?" another asks.

Johnny "Drama" Chase, a character on the show, professes his love for a woman, drawing a chorus of "WHAT?!" from the brothers.

As the fourth season of the hit show about a movie star and his friends living in Los Angeles drew to a close, guys all over campus watched together - and perhaps even bonded.

"It's about a group of guys, so a group of guys should watch it," College sophomore and avid Entourage fan Ben Zachs said.

Entourage has become such a popular TV show for college-age males to watch together because it is one of the few non-sports-related programs that target the audience, experts say.

By comparison, TV networks have focused more on programming that young women will watch together, such as Friends and Sex and the City.

"Entourage is really tapping in to what had been for a very long time an untapped market of older adolescent guys who were watching professional wrestling and sports together but very little else," said Sociology professor David Grazian, who specializes in popular culture.

Though television watching is a predominately solo activity, certain shows - such as reality shows, game shows and soap operas - are commonly watched with others because of their interactive nature, said Bob Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

Since Entourage deals with a lot of the issues that are traditionally associated with women's programming - relationships and physical appearance, for example - the show falls into the soap-opera category that is popular for group viewing, he said.

"It's the male bonding alternative to a football game," Thompson said. "It has all these things men can talk about and laugh about."

And, for the most part, guys seem to prioritize watching the show in the company of other guys, whether it was over the summer with buddies from high school or back at Penn.

"I don't know anyone who watches alone," Wharton and Engineering sophomore Reed Lerner said. "All summer long, every Sunday night, we'd all go to the same guy's house."

And some guys make a whole day out of the experience; at the Kappa Sigma house, brothers counted down to Sunday's finale by watching previous episodes in the afternoon.

Wharton senior and Kappa Sigma president Matt Ross recognizes that TV watching is an important part of male bonding for his fraternity.

"There are a lot of girls blown away by the thought of male bonding," he said. "We watch football every Saturday."

He said guys in his house also watch Weeds and Flight of the Conchords together regularly.

But Entourage is by far the most popular of such shows, and guys on campus will surely anticipate the next season.

"This is our Grey's Anatomy," College sophomore Dan Scardigli said as the show began.

"It's our Sex and the City," Wharton sophomore Jamie Seltzer added.

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