Unlike its main character, Hung is far from well-endowed.
Divorced high school basketball coach, Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), is a monument to the under-achieving middle-American male. As a teenager he was a sports star who snaffled a beauty queen (Anne Heche) and looked forward to a golden future. But his athletic career never happened, his 'DAQ dipped and two years ago Ray's wife left him for a short dermatologist. In Hung's opening episode, a series of unfortunate events leads Ray to examine his financial worth, and he quickly identifies his large penis as his only real asset. So our protagonist attempts to fix his money problems with a spot of man whoring. Oh.
Like Breaking Bad, Hung is a potent Average Joe fantasy. In both shows an emasculated teacher hits rock bottom so formulates an unfeasibly macho plan to save himself from financial ruin and a numbing, tragi-normal existence. In the brilliant Breaking Bad, a dying chemistry teacher does everything he can think of to raise the money for his chemo but gets nowhere. So we buy into his desperate decision to start cooking top-grade crystal meth.
At least he's well-Hung
It's a contrived premise--one that its creators forgot to back up with proper motivation and fleshed out characters. To establish Ray as pathetic (they bother to do that at least) he spends most of the first episode getting clobbered. After the house burning incident, his teenage twins leave him for his ex-wife. Even before the fire, life is far from blissful. Ray's team is on a losing streak so he resorts to pepping up a motivational speech with an unconvincing dung beetle metaphor.
As his life collapses, handsome Ray still manages to get it on. His conquest--a dreary, struggling poet--is the catalyst for his sexy scheme, though she doesn't know it at the time. Tanya Skagle (Jane Adams) has sad eyes and nothing much about her. And so her dalliances with Ray--an awkward double hook up followed by a fumbling "business partnership"--are as implausible as they are dull.
And of course there's the mandatory self-help seminar scene--the go-to cliche for writers struggling to think of an interesting way to get a character in crisis to formulate a plan. Buckets of panache are required to pull off such an obvious move but, sadly, here you couldn't fill a thimble. It's just an excuse to crowbar in more innuendo--the speaker's flat call to action: "Identify your tool!" Hmm.
For a series with a brash phallic premise, this is a depressingly flaccid offering. It's not fair to titivate us with a name like "Hung" then deliver something this staid and risk adverse. Just put it away, HBO.
Hung starts tonight, Thrusday October 15, at 10pm on More4.
Comments (2)
Hung is so unique, well written and well acted, I'm surprised it hasn't been noticed more. I've re-watched every episode to make sure I've picked up all that the writers. has left as crums sprinkled behind them. There's a lot going on here. Not all in your face.
I've watched this show from the get go, and at no point has it ever pretended to be more than it is. It's a shame the reviewer thinks that a show called Hung would or should be any kind of enigma, or be free from innuendo. If it wasn't for sexual innuendo I don't know how it would be even possible to write anything for this show! I mean come on; it's a comedy about a guy with a big d**k prostituting himself... Hung is a show for people who want to kick back and relax after a hard day’s work and watch something light hearted, entertaining and generally have a laugh. There's an element of Soap opera without venturing into the ridiculous, and there’s so much room for the characters to develop as the audience gets to know them...
The only sad thing is that Thomas Jane is doing TV when he should be doing movies. If this was the 80's he'd be racking up the titles, but his persona doesn't fit the metro sexual drivel that Hollywood is pumping out these days where the guys look prettier than the girls. I always thought he was a spit for Christopher Lambert and I'd love to see him starring in a new Highlander film!
If anything needs more work, I think we should see more happening in the kids’ lives (they kind of remind me of the Osborne kids, perhaps this was done on purpose?), but there's plenty of time for this to happen down the road.
What the reviewer has also failed to identify is the unique way Hung explores the female of the species; from the attractive, to the overweight, to the old, the neurotic, tortured, confused, dull, exciting, b*tchy, loved, unloved, bored, frustrated, those looking for closure, redemption, those that don't know what they want and those who do. Something connects them all, they all want sex. This may be something that the female reviewer is made uncomfortable by, as it is the underlying core of the show. I can imagine a women watching this show and finding the lead man attractive, then being disgusted by his antics, on the flip side a women may watch this show and find him unattractive, then just loose interest when the "titivation" doesn't lead to titillation.
In short I think this is more of a show for the guys, as guys love routing for the underdog, and the array of female specimens and their varying psyches is simply to intriguing not to watch.
Keep it coming!moreless