Plot

Years ago, as a student at Detroit's West Lakefield High School, Ray Drecker was athletic, popular and destined for success. Today, as a West Lakefield teacher and coach of the varsity basketball team (which is on an unprecedented losing streak), he's underpaid, uninsured and embittered that his wife of 20 years left him for her dermatologist, Ronnie Haxon. After fire damages the rundown lakeside home he inherited from his parents, Ray's fortunes reach an all-time low when his twin children Darby and Damon, who had been living with him, move in with their mom and her smug husband. Lonely, run down and at wit's end, Ray attends a self-help class, where the mantra is to identify a personal "winning tool" to market for financial success. After a not-so fulfilling encounter with fellow attendee Tanya Skagle, a would-be poet, Ray has a "eureka" moment. With the help of Tanya, the well-endowed Ray sets out to exploit his greatest asset in hopes of changing his fortunes.—HBO Publicity

"Hung" - "Pilot" - June 28. 2009

In the pilot of this new HBO dramedy we meet Ray Drecker (Thomas Jane). Ray is a high school history teacher and basketball coach.

He tells us in voice-over that everything in his life is falling apart. As he speaks we see the rundown place Detroit has become from car graveyards, closed factories, and boarded up buildings. He talks about how sad this crazy world would've made his ultra-normal midwestern parents.

Part of his terrible life is his losing basketball team. In the locker room of West Lakefield High School we see him try to inspire his boys by showing them a photo of a dung beetle carrying around his ball of dung. He instructs the boys that dung happens but that it needn't be carried with them everywhere they go like the dung beetles. He tells them to go out on the court and pretend they're on a winning streak they're starting tonight. (As pep talks go, it's kind of depressing.) As the team takes the court, Ray crumples, he tells his assistant coach that's he's passing kidney stones and that he'll take himself to the hospital.

He's not going to the hospital, though. We watch as he runs around the school to his Jeep and watch him drive to Detroit. He explains that he doesn't make much money as a teacher and that desperate times call for desperate measures. He's going to Detroit to do his side gig which utilizes his unorthodox skill set. He voices over that we're seeing the first day of the job as he walks down a hotel hallway.

He explains he's in this hallway because the last couple of years have been really rough.

First, he got divorced from his high school sweetheart Jessica (Anne Heche) - who then married an odious, but wealthy dermatologist named Ron Haxon. His kids - heavyset teenage boy/girl twins - wanted to stay with him but he was forced to move into his parents' old house on the lakefront. Then he got kidney stones, then his team started a losing streak, then an evil man named Koontz moved into the McMansion next door and started hassling him about his lawn and gutters.

Then the worst thing happened. As we look around the inside of the house at family photos, trophies, and news clippings, we're also shown many overloaded circuits. A cord under a living room chair starts to smoke. And where there's smoke, there's fire. We see his living room go up in flames and all of his life with it. He is sleeping upstairs. His son awakens him.

Outside the house Ray is distraught that he doesn't know where his daughter is. She rolls up in a SUV piloted by a boy named Hammer. Ray yells at her for being out after curfew and not answering her cell phone. They hug and look at the ruins of their house. He notices his son is wearing lipstick.

Instead of going to a hotel - Ray let the insurance lapse - he proposes the family pitch a tent on the property while they rebuild. The kids are not down with this and leave him for their mother. Ray ponders what happened to his life. He re-enters the burned out remains of his house, looking through the hole burned clear through both floors. Later while covering the hole with a tarp his evil neighbor Koontz offers "help" and tells him the house is a great candidate for a tear-down. Ray tells him to get off his property.

Ray voices over that he needs help and goes to Jessica and Ron's house to ask for a loan. (We get a flashback of Ray and Jessica screaming at each other 2 years earlier during the pinnacle of their break-up. She screams about being the homecoming queen and buying into the fairytale of marrying the king jock. She says he used to be the king: beautiful, talented, smart, popular and hung. But, she concludes, now he's just hung). She's appalled he wants to borrow money. Ron approaches and gives condolences on the house and offers to remove a mole Ray has free of charge.

She informs him the kids are staying with her permanently. He tells her to forget it and leaves.

As he sits in his car contemplating his lot in life he notices a "Wealth Whiz" seminars brochure in the passenger seat. He goes to the "unleash your inner entrepreneur" seminar. The teacher tells the class that the "tool" to their success is in them. Ray recognizes a mousy woman in class, Tanya Scagle, (Jane Adams). She had been a visiting poet in his class and we flash back to him hooking up with her - quite successfully judging by her unnerving screams. He says he never called her back.

Tanya catches up with him after class. He asks her out for coffee and they end up banging again and she screams as forcefully about how large and satisfying his unit is.

After the sex she reads a poem. He tells her he has to leave. (We do not get a glimpse of his love gun as he puts on his jockey shorts.) She bitches about him being cold and distant and he tells her not to act all wounded and mystified that a man doesn't want to get to know her after she hopped right in the sack with him. He says she remembered what she liked and got what she wanted, pointing out how often she climaxed. She gets angry with him and says he's no genius in bed. As she leaves she yells from her balcony that if he wants to be a millionaire he should market his dick.

He knows she meant it as an insult, but he thinks this is a good idea.

Ray does Internet research on how to make money with a large penis in his tent later that night. His son Damon shows up and asks for 50 bucks. He wants to camp out for Godhead tickets. Ray's confused about the goth thing. He's worried his son is gay. He doesn't give him the money. Damon takes off, and Ray is down in the dumps.

Back in millionaire class, he's listening to people offer up their ideas. Tanya talks about wanting to make "lyric bread"- putting poems inside of baked goods. The teacher likes it. Ray kindly suggests that she laminate the poems to keep the ink from running into the dough, but adds that she's got a winner.

The teacher asks Ray what his winning tool is. He says he's figured it out, but doesn't know how to market it. The teacher wants him to pitch it. Ray is uncomfortable doing that, but after the teacher insists Ray blurts out that he's got a big dick and asks what to do with it. He monologues about his crappy life and says he's at a precipice and his big dick is all he's got. Naturally this turns out to have been a fantasy -- in voice over he tells us that what he actually said was that he was good with old cars and wanted to be a mechanic.

In voice over he tells us that that night he bought a pre-paid cellphone and a box of condoms. He put an ad in the Detroit Examiner and put a picture with the online version. He gets a call for his first date and we cut back to him standing in the hotel hallway.

He knocks on the door. A woman comes to the peephole and pushes out a note saying she was sorry and she changed her mind. He gets mad and kicks the door, then apologizes and says to forget it. She pushes a fifty under the door with a note that says "for your trouble."

Later he stands on the dock outside his tent, looking miserable. Tanya shows up. She's brought him a Neruda cranberry-walnut bread. She says she's been concerned that he hasn't been coming to class. He shows her his ad and his theory about his winning tool telling her it was Tanya who gave him the idea. She goes pretty quickly from calling him pathetic to explaining that his problem is his ad and that she could help him sell himself better. She offers to do just that for a percentage. He realizes she wants to be his pimp. She says yes.

The next day Ray catches up with Damon in line for Godhead tickets and gives him the fifty. Damon tries to turn it down, saying Ron gave him money. Ray tells him to spend that on something else, he wants to help buy the tickets. Damon takes it.

We watch Ray drive away, and he says in a voiceover that he felt pretty good for the first time in a long time.