Review: Hung Season 1 DVD

STUDIO: HBO/Warner | DIRECTOR: various | CAST: Thomas Jane, Jane Adam, Anne Heche
RELEASE DATE: 6/22/2010 | PRICE: DVD $39.98, Blu-ray $49.99
BONUSES: featurettes, commentaries
SPECS: TV-MA | 315 min. | comedy | 16×9 letterbox | Dolby Surround 5.1 | English, French, Spanish subtitles

RATINGS (out of 5 dishes): TV show | Audio | Video | Overall

HBO‘s critically acclaimed comedy Hung has a refreshing look at the economic crisis: No money? No worries … just use your biggest asset to pump up your wallet, especially if your biggest asset is in your pants.

The series follows Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane of Give ‘Em Hell, Malone) as a divorced high school coach whose money woes take a turn for the worst when his house burns down. When he meets a former one-night stand, Tanya (Jane Adams of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), at a wealth-building seminar, an idea is formed, and Ray discovers he has a knack for being a “happiness consultant” to the everywoman.

Jane does a good job of showing us a man who’s not too successful at life, despite his God-given gift. The fun in the show is watching him fumble his way through “dates” with various women, some more dominant than others. And Adams is a good yang to Jane’s ying, adopting the role of the brains of the gigolo business, while baking cookies and knitting scarves.

As Ray’s ex-wife, Anne Heche (TV’s Men in Trees) provides an added disturbance to Ray’s life, especially as her husband (Ocean’s Thirteen‘s Eddie Jemison) is wealthy. But further examining the economic crisis we’re all feeling now, Heche’s character has to come to terms with the fact that the man she married for money, no longer has so much money.

The two-disc first-season set includes all the first 10 episodes of the show, plus a number of special features.

The two featurettes, “About Hung” and “The Women of Hung,” include behind-the-scenes interviews with Jane, Adams, Heche and series creators Colette Burson and Dimitry Lipkin. Both are short and entertaining enough, but they’re more promotional than revealing, such as when Burson tells us how much “we believe” Heche and Jane could have been a once happily married couple.

More funny, but even shorter, are “Ray and Tanya’s Personal Ads,” in which Jane and Adams awkwardly film ads for their growing business.

Burson, Lipkin and writer Brett C. Leonard also provide commentaries for three episodes, including the pilot. In that initial track, we learn about the genesis of Hung, that Burson and Lipkin are married and what it is like to shoot in Detroit.

The bonuses are fine, but they’re not the meat in this set.

The DVD and Blu-ray release is timed weeks before the second season of Hung premieres on HBO.

Buy or Rent Hung: The Complete First Season
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