Product Description

At first glance, Ray Drecker seems like an ordinary divorced dad who’s facing tough times and trying to make ends meet. But Ray’s got one extraordinary, God-given gift – call it his “winning tool” – that sets him apart from other underpaid high-school teachers. With a little help from an unlikely business ally named Tanya, Ray is about to hatch an inspired plan to ride his winning tool all the way to a moreproductive, debt-free life.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Featurette
Other

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1708 in DVD
• Brand: HBO Home Video
• Released on: 2010-06-22
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Widescreen, Subtitled, Closed-captioned, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Dimensions: .35 pounds
• Running time: 315 minutes

Amazon.com
Produced by Alexander Payne (Sideways), who directed the pilot, Hung reinvents the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype for the postfeminist era. High school basketball coach Ray Drecker (a first-rate Thomas Jane) lives in a Detroit devastated by the decline of the auto industry. After an electrical fire destroys his home, he loses custody of his kids to ex-wife Jessica (Anne Heche); joins forces with poet-turned-pimp Tanya (Jane Adams), with whom he once had a fling; and becomes a male escort. Though Drecker's life looks nothing like the one depicted in Boogie Nights, the anatomical anomaly he shares with porn star Dirk Diggler makes him well suited for his new line of work. To ensure that things look legit, Tanya markets Ray as a "happiness consultant." While she attempts to locate clients, he sleeps in a tent until he can inhabit his house again, tries to maintain a relationship with mopey twins Damon (Charlie Saxton) and Darby (Sianoa Smit-McPhee), and wages a stealth war against his image-obsessed neighbor, Howard (Loren Lester). Once Tanya reconnects with Lenore (Rebecca Kreskoff), a forceful fashion consultant, Ray hooks up with a controlling executive (Dirty Sexy Money's Natalie Zea) and a married woman who could use some TLC (Margo Martindale).

As the poignantly funny, if tonally erratic first season unfolds, Tanya meets a new man (Humpday's Joshua Leonard) and tangles with her pompous mother (Rhea Perlman); Jessica finds out her wealthy dermatologist husband, Ronnie (Eddie Jemison), isn't as wealthy as she thought; and Lenore tries to steal Ray away from Tanya. The premise may sound salacious, but Hung concerns itself more with economic imperatives and unconventional friendships than with cheap thrills. Created by Colette Burson and Dmitry Lipkin, the married team behind The Riches, Hung ends with the intimation of layoffs and affairs, rich dilemmas to fuel the second season. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Customer Reviews

Big smiles, big problems, and a big...
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.

Shows Promise But Needs More Oomph and Focus
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.

Hung up on Hung
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!