Customer Reviews

Hung: The Complete First Season

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Hung started about the same time as True Blood season two. After the second episode I was hooked! The main character is a high school history teacher and basketball coach whose house burns down, children want to live with his ex-wife and he's broke broke broke. He meets up with a poet who he once (ahem) and together they hatch a harebrained scheme to pimp him and his ... out. Through this he has to deal with women he isn't attracted to but learns to love what's under the skin, crazy women who pay for him but not his "services" and the working in's and out's of women. Meanwhile his pimp, Tanya, is suffering as a failed poet and drowning in her own lack of love in her life. Bumps and bruises along the way but every episode bring laughter and smiles to my face (and my husbands!).
The characters learn and even though they get a lot more bad than good cards, they always grow. I'm very pleased with the direction this new series is going and sit in anticipation every Sunday night when my little red dot that indicates my DVR is recording blinks on. Hung is a lot more than I had anticipated and am tickled with the gem found under dirty gym socks and a slathering of sexual innuendo.

I thought the first season of this show was ok but I think it needs a lot of fine tuning to survive. Primarily, I found my attention wandering because the show was meandering. There are a lot of characters. All of the characters seem uncertain about what they are doing. Because they lack focus and intent, the show lacks focus and intent. Thomas Jane, he who is "hung", sort of decides to become a prostitute to solve his money problems. He never really seems 100% committed to the proposition though. It's as if he's dabbling in it. His pimp, the woman poet, has the same problem. His ex-wife is also just a little bit more happily married to her 2nd husband than she was to him but her dedication to that marriage is also hanging by a thread. Their teen children are also aimless. It is thus not surprising that the show lacks Oomph and pizazz. Worst of all, I never felt like hiring Jane myself, never the faintest little jingle of charismatic attraction to him. Yes, he's very good looking but a man who wants to attract lot of women typically exudes a lot more than just good looks.

I think Jane needs to rev up the charm and allure and shed the soft beta male attitude that is his habitual mien. His pimp also has to either be someone else entirely or she has to become focused and intent on promoting him. She has to step up to the plate, not drift up to it. The gal muscling in on her territory is a lot more believable as a pimp than she is.

The ex-wife and the kids need to be pulled sharply into focus or go entirely out of focus. Right now they are just blobs on the canvas.

Most of all, the writers and overall creator of this show really need to get down to doing some heavy rewriting for season two, if there is to be a season two. I suspect it is their fault that this show is so unfocused. There is only so much actors can do when the script doesn't know where it is going.

If I compare this to another TV series premiere of the same season also by HBO, EASTBOUND AND DOWN, there is no comparison. That show nailed what it wanted to be and where it wanted to go right from the very first show. Then the show only grew in power. Focus never drifted far, if at all, from its main character played by Danny McBride.

Wasn't sure what to expect from this besides the obvious. It seemed in the beginning that there was a lot to balance between the facade of the student admired, all around good guy of Coach Ray Drecker and his cocky and at times infantile alter ego. Then you have hot mess, wanna be pimp Tonya who seems likes she's one bad hair day away from workplace homicide. But in the end, it all somehow works and entices you to want to watch more. (It doesn't hurt Thomas Jane isn't afraid to show his bum off alot!) It was HBO's most watched freshmen show ever so I hope that means a 2nd season and beyond will be secured because watching these characters come into their own will be entertaining!

I'll watch all of Deep Blue Sea just for Thomas Jane in a wetsuit, so it isn't too much of a hardship to watch him in Hung. It's actually nice to see an HBO series tackle the recession even if the protagonist is forced to sell his body to make ends meet. It sounded like an original storyline, it was available OnDemand, and once I got started, it keep me coming back to finish Season One in just a couple of days. I think Thomas Jane does a fantastic job with the role of Ray Drecker. He's likeable and even as he bumbles his way through his first few jobs, still very believable and endearing. Jane Adams as Tanya, Ray's pimp, drives me crazy. She's so sweet and naive, it's kind of excruciating watching her try to be a pimp - I just want to smack her and tell her to grow a backbone, so I'm actually looking forward to Lenore's expanding role and tough love approach. I'm hoping now that the writers have gotten their feet wet, there will be some more consistency and a lot more heat. I mean, come on, the show is on AFTER True Blood. I was expecting a little more erotic content.

Notice I said "entertainment" NOT "art." Anyone who expects to find "art" in a cable television series needs to get their head examined. Sure, the title and the storyline hinge upon the longstanding myth/reality (depending on which side of the fence you're on) that the better-endowed the man, the better a lover he is...but this is just an excuse for the movie, the "hook" if you will. There are a lot of other layers to this series as well. As far as mass entertainment goes, there is a refreshingly low percentage of cliches, stereotypes and stock characters...many scenes from "Hung" actually do contain a nice bit of originality and authenticity.

Excellent camera work and film editing, great music (especially the intro song by The Black Keys, "I'll Be Your Man"), excellent cast (including a bevy of some FINE FINE babes in various states of undress, especially Alanna Ubach, Natalie Zea and Rebecca Creskoff), and strong dialogue all make this a pleasure to watch. AND to top off all the eye candy, there's a fair bit of social realism and cultural satire happening too. Jane Adams, Anne Heche, and of course Thomas Janes do most of the heavy lifting, and there is often a strong "indie-film" vibe to many of the scenes. The viewer is not constantly being challenged to suspend disbelief, in other words. The viewer does not feel manipulated or patronized or pandered to, which is exceedingly rare in most TV and cinema offerings these days.

I borrowed this DVD set from a friend and watched the entire thing on two successive evenings. LOL, can you guess that I was hooked? Highly recommended!

I don't necessarily agree with the questionable morals of some of the characters in this series and the fairly graphic sexual content is a bit much at first. Having said that, there are plenty of other things to like here though, good characters, cool locations and generally good storylines. The sex stuff is played mostly for laughs and the protagonist is basically a good guy who loves his family. He is trying to make the best of a bad situation. Overall, a well made adult comedy that I relate to as someone who lives in the area where the series is set.

Take a ridiculous commodity (big penis), attach it to the most unsuspecting guy Coach Ray Drecker, throw in a dizzied and frantically fanatic poetic wanna-be pimpette named Tanya Skagle and you have the basis for this show called Hung.

Though sounding laughable at first I found this series to be really all about the hard times in America and what lengths people will go to to survive and make it in this economy.

Jessica Haxon is Ray's ex-wife and married to a nervous and timid dermatologist. She's in the money now after giving up the dream she thought her life would be when she first married her high school sweetheart Coach Ray. She has neurotic episodes and is always trying to convince her two children Daman and Darby (whom she had by Coach Ray) to love her as any children would love their mom. But they just don't. The kids are great. The episodes are hysterical and everyone is made fun of and made to laugh at themselves.

Hung is a light and fun comedy for adults that plays around and pokes fun at the prostitution industry. Here we have two characters trying to make a million out of...

I love Ray. I cannot watch hours and hours more of Tanya. Please, creators, cut back a bit on Tanya. It's not entertaining to watch hours of someone being whiny and humiliated, especially if they are also made to be physically unattractive. Give Tanya a more interesting life, or at least make her antics funny. Watching someone be stereotypically pathetic all the time starts to become unbearable after a while.

On the face of it Hung is a comedy, with more serious undertones. Although very enjoyable, it also explores a man's fall from popularity, marriage and job security to obscurity, divorce and financial worry. However, it also demonstrates how people adapt to changing cirumstances, as well as the unyielding strength of a father's love for his kids. Although if you don't want to analyze it that much, just throw the feet up and have a good laugh.

Most of our friends were not HBO subscribers when we first introduced them to the Hung series. Some have since signed on so they can enjoy the next season. I purchased the First season for a friend that is now hooked on the series. My wife and I think the writing,casting,directing and acting could not be better.