Comedienne's Second TV Show Canceled This Year
'Red Widow' Gets The Axe
Way to kill whatever momentum you had, Hung
by Jason Hughes, posted Jul 6th 2009 7:03PM
HBO has billed their new series Hung as a comedy. But last week's pilot was pretty light on the laughs. That's not to say that the show doesn't have potential. I do think it's fair to say it's not living up to any of it, though. I didn't get around to watching the premiere until this weekend, which is when I realized that there was no new episode this week. It makes sense when you consider the Fourth of July holiday. But when you're trying to establish a rhythm and audience for a new show, it's a horrible idea. Especially when your show is only "eh" to begin with. The biggest flaw in the premiere of Hung was how it ended. You have to consider that after only one episode to get to know your premise and characters, you're going to be asking people to wait two weeks and then come back for more. That means you have to grab onto them with something that makes them need to come back. Hung just kind of withered at the end.
As it works so well on How I Met Your Mother, the narration by Ray really drives the story. That coupled with the non-linear storytelling technique used in this pilot could drive much of the comedy ... if we ever get any. We even got a "fantasy" sequence in the classroom, another gold mine for comic possibilities. There's nothing more fun than an unreliable narrator.
The non-linear storytelling approach could have saved the ending of the episode for me. As it stands, I was left feeling kind of flat. Here's an ending that would have gotten my attention. After Ray calls out Tanya for basically wanting to be his pimp we get Ray's voice over:
RAY (V/O): "So Tanya became my manager, and things improved. If you want to call it that."
Cut to a scene of Ray standing in leather underwear (possibly other fetish gear), holding a whip and a white cat.
WOMAN (Off-Camera): "Who's been a bad Puss? Does Puss need a spanking?"
CAT: Mrow?
RAY (V/O): "But that wasn't even the worst of it."
Really, you could end with any sort of cryptic statement that would make me want to come back. "Things were going great, until I got recognized." All the show needed to do was find a way to keep itself on my mind and leave me dying to know what happens next
But they didn't. I know that Tanya wants to help him, but I don't know how well that might work out. I'm left kind of blase about the whole thing. And they've given me two weeks to decide that maybe I don't really need to know what happens next. Maybe they thought the fact that Ray was "hung" would do it. We'd come back week after week hoping they're gonna show it (HINT: they're not). Secret Diary of a Call Girl was much more compelling.
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