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With its first season, Hung proved itself to be a more than decent hour of television, an entertaining show in which it feels oddly natural to root for Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane), a man defined by the fact that he has a large penis (hence the title). Ray is a high-school teacher who has fallen on hard times and has had to turn to prostitution to get by. It's sort of a strange concept for a television show, but it ends up being one that fits nicely into the gap between comedy and drama. Ultimately, I liked the second season premiere (‘Just the Tip’), and I’m glad to see Hung back, but I’d be lying if I said I haven’t started to notice the moments where it doesn’t really work.
The opener for season 2 sees Ray stuck in the middle of a conflict between his two pimps, Tanya (Jane Adams) and Lenore (Rebecca Creskoff). Although occasionally being great (like in this episode when she finally stands up for herself against Lenore), I can’t help but feel that a lot of the time Tanya just doesn’t fit in quite right with the rest of the show...she’s a little too frumpy to be a convincing pimp. Lenore, on the other hand, is very convincing but still doesn’t really get enough time onscreen. The clash between the two of them does work well though, and I'll be interested to see who turns out to be the better pimp for Ray. The client for this episode is a pregnant woman (played by Katherine Hahn) who reminds Ray of his ex-wife. This could have worked really well but Hung doesn’t succeed in any attempt to get comedy out of the situation, and it doesn’t have anything worthwhile or meaningful to say either - so this renders much of the episode kind of pointless.
One of Hung’s biggest issues is probably the fact that it only really has one interesting character. Whilst Thomas Jane continues to do an outstanding job portraying Ray, nobody else among the cast really stands out. Ray obviously still has feelings for his ex-wife, but the character of Jessica (Anne Heche) herself comes off as rather bland and uninteresting. I couldn't mention Hung's failures without pointing out that Ray’s kids (Charlie Saxton as Damon and Sianoa Smit-McPhee as Darby) might be some of the worst cast kids on TV right now. Not only do they look much older than they should, their terrible acting also sucks up valuable screen-time from everyone else and their characters are seriously boring.
The most obviously effective moments of Hung tend to focus on Ray and his own personal dilemmas, rather than his relationships with his family or his pimps. His character has developed to have a much clearer set of aims and a calmer outlook which makes the final scene of the premiere a delight to watch. There unfortunately aren’t enough of these good moments in this episode but overall it still provides a fine opener to what I hope will be a season that brings out more of what Hung can do well, and leaves some of those less effective moments behind.
Hung airs on Sundays at 11.05pm on More4 and can be caught up with on 4OD
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