Though it feels like a cultural violation to talk about any television shown in contest with “Mad Men,” our national homage to past depravities, it is merely one of two series about a good-looking divorced white man in conflict with his virility that is offered on Sunday nights at 10. The other series is “Hung,” a comedy that, although it has not given birth to a single trend, expression or style of tie, has distinguished itself as the most topical fictional programming on television. As it’s moved into its second season on HBO, “Hung” has become an even more finely drawn satire of the Great Recession.
Thomas Jane as Ray and Jane Adams as Tanya, one of his pimps, in the second season of “Hung.”
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Notionally a sex farce, “Hung” is substantively a continuing commentary on the humiliations of middle-class life during a downturn in which the spending of the still well-to-do strikes many as a kind of aggravated assault.
“Hung” is predicated on a conceptual gag — Ray Drecker, a 40-ish high-school teacher, coach and father of two, supplements his burdened cash flow by providing sexual companionship to women who are bored, lonely, crazy or recovering from frigidity. But the most evocative recurring joke is visual, the shot of Ray’s lakeside bungalow, a casualty of fire, overwhelmed by the towering McMansion next door that is occupied by a saucy woman to whom Ray is providing his gifts gratis.
Television - Thomas Jane on ‘Hung,’ Symbol of the Recession - Review - NYTimes.com
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