Disillusioned with the American dream? Get 'Hung.'

The first thing you should know about HBO's new series "Hung," which begins airing tonight, is that it's not just a show about a guy with a big penis who decides to become a gigolo. No siree.

According to its wife-husband co-creators, Colette Burson and Dmitry Lipkin, "Hung" is about the fraying of the American dream and the battered resiliency of the middle class. It's about the former golden boys and golden girls of high school being forced to navigate midlife's tricky shoals. It's about the lip-smacking ironies of extreme gender reversal, and how they can affect the dynamic between a couple.

And it's about that eternal Freudian brain-teaser, 'What do women want?' (Hint: It's not just roses and Godiva chocolates.)

Even so, Burson and Lipkin concede, for writers like themselves it's intriguing to get inside the mind and skin of Ray Drecker, the aforementioned, hugely well-endowed main character in "Hung," played by actor Thomas Jane. "It's a really weird personality type, these guys with huge penises," Burson reflected recently. "It's like they won some lottery."

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(Photo courtesy HBO)

Comments

[jaredUK]

I've just finished watching the first episode of this great show and immediately began thinking about certain homages 'Hung' pays to Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

There are several aspects of 'Great Gatsby'-esque moments of triumph and success closely underpinned by frailty and failure. The once popular and athletic jock whose domestic life has turned sour; the loss of a golden house of perfect marriage re-manifested in a house set a light by golden fire; the direct parallelism of monetary wealth and 'average joe' struggle symoblised by two contrasting houses that sit by open water.

And finally, that flashing green light at the end of Ray's garden-cum-campsite, ticking on and off like the blinking remnants of Gatsby's inconsistent and layered inauthenticity. Yet, there is a deep honesty in Ray's character that comes slowly into focus, a trustworthy and welcoming voice that holds nothing of Gatsby's decadent parlance.

I for one, anticipate greatly where this series is going and hoping for a 2nd series already.