HBO has been fantastic over the years at launching successful dramas but hasn’t had a lot of luck with half-hour shows, outside of the success of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Entourage.” Nevertheless, the network has been generous over the last few years to “How to Make It in America” and “Bored to Death,” continuing to pay to produce episodes despite little ratings success. “Hung,” the Thomas Jane dramedy about a male prostitute with a very large penis, found early success, but faded last season, and “Bored to Death” had never built much of an audience to begin with, despite the presence of Zach Galifianakis, Ted Danson, and Jason Schwartzman. I’d elaborate on the many reasons “Bored to Death” kind of blew, but it tends to bring out a very vocal, very self-righteous Jason Schwartzman fan base which, like Joe Rogan’s following, is something you don’t even know exists until you bad mouth something with which they’re involved.

At any rate, HBO has mercifully canceled all three “comedy” series, but in a somewhat surprising move, renewed the lowest rated of their comedies, Mike White’s “Enlightened” starring Laura Dern. Granted, Laura Dern did receive a Golden Globe nomination for her role in “Enlightened” (as did Thomas Jane for his in “Hung”), but it’s still something of a mystery why HBO would renew the most unpleasant-to-watch show on cable. I’ll concede that it’s the desired effect of “Enlightened” — to make us hate Laura Dern’s unsympathetic character and wallow in her narcissism — but I’m at a loss to explain why anyone would want to watch it besides self-hating critics.

I will miss pot-smoking Ted Danson, though. He’s brilliant.

MAAAAAAAKE OUUU- oh. You're past that. Carry on.

HBO’s “Hung” tells the story of Ray (Thomas Jane), a down-and-out Detroit high school teacher/baseball coach who loses his job, his wife, and his childhood home, then becomes a male prostitute because he has a big dong. It’s the American dream, really.

In Season 3, Lenore (the buxom Rebecca Creskoff) finds a younger, hotter male prostitute, and has designs on taking away all of Ray and Tanya’s (Jane Addams) clients, because there are lots of attractive women in suburban Detroit who can’t find a lover but have extra money and therefore pay for sex. “Hung” is TV’s finest science fiction dramedy.

The saucy trailer for Season 3 is below, with screencaps on the following pages. It’s got lesbianism, a busty redhead, pugs watching sex, and a hair-pulling catfight on a bathroom floor. I had no idea Detroit was so sexy!

It’s that time when we review the year through the prism of top ten lists, and Mr. Skin — possibly the most overhyped, annoying subscription site on the Internet — has released his top ten nude scenes for 2010 (NSFW). Fortunately for us, three of them come from television: Mary-Louise Parker’s belt-whipping railing from Mark-Paul Gosselaar on “Weeds” (#7), Rebecca Creskoff’s casual full-frontal scene in “Hung” (#6), and Paz de la Huerta’s everything all the time in “Boardwalk Empire” (#3, NSFW GIFs here).

As delightful as all of those scenes are, I think I might enjoy Mr. Skin’s copy even more:

#7 Mary-Louise gets a meat bong from behind in her most smoking sex session to date on Showtime’s potent pot-com. You’ll get high… in your pants.
#3 Latin lustbomb Paz couldn’t stop going off, getting off, or taking all her clothes off. She got so nude so often, it’s skin-possible to pick just one nude scene. So check out her perfect two.

With dry, cool wit like that, Mr. Skin could be an action hero.

Anyway, because subscription-based websites are for suckers, you can see high resolution NSFW screencaps of all the scenes over at Celebslam. Fun facts: two of the scenes feature belt-whipping, four involve water, at least three reveal bush, and two feature a pair of women. Now that’s what I call “sta-TIT-stics”! (With dry, cool wit like that, I could write for Mr. Skin.)

If you’re someone who works in the service industry who values your job, you should only tweet or blog about the celebrities you serve under the cloak of anonymity. That’s the lesson for Jon-Barret Ingels, who was a waiter at the LA’s Barney Greengrass until he mixed it up with Jane Adams, the beautiful co-star of HBO’s “Hung.” According to Ingels, Adams claimed she left her wallet in the car, then skipped out on a $13.44 check.

The next day, a representative for Adams came in to pay the actress’ tab — sans tip. Ingels thought it was a funny anecdote to tell to his few-dozen Twitter followers. “Jane Adams, star of HBO series ‘Hung’ skipped out on a $13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!” he Twittered. [...]

About a month after the run-in with Adams, the actress returned. She stormed up to the waiter and slapped three dollar bills on the table in front of him, Ingels said. Clearly caught off guard, Ingels replied, “Thank you so much,” he recalled. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“Well, I read about it on Twitter!” Adams retorted, according to Ingels. [...]

A Barney Greengrass representative began following his Twitter account, and he was soon confronted by his manager, he said. The manager reviewed a printout of Ingels’ tweets in front of the defeated waiter, and said he was being fired due to various complaints — one of them from Adams, Ingels said.

Wow, beautiful AND charming! Jane Adams should be commended for defending her good name against month-old tweets that nobody read. It’s good to see that struggling single father taste a little bit of justice. Somebody had to stop that monster.

Anne Heche went on Letterman Wednesday night, ostensibly to promote “Hung” on HBO.  But she also had enough time to say how much she hated her ex-husband, and how she’s happy she divorced him, and how she doesn’t want to see him, and how all he does is just collect alimony checks, and by the way nobody should ever get married because marriage didn’t work for her.

Hey, I get it.  Divorce is hard.  But a nationally televised late-night talk show is probably not the best forum to vent.  And I absolutely cannot STAND people who think that their experience translates across all of humanity.  “Oh, you absolutely CAN’T have kids before the age of thirty.  Dan and I waited until we were 32 and it’s been perfect.”  How self-centered and ignorant do you have to be to think that what’s right for you is right for everyone?  Get bent, Anne Heche.  And take your spaceship with you.

[Best Week Ever]

All three of HBO’s current shows (“Hung,” “Entourage,” and “True Blood”) have been renewed for subsequent seasons, but I can’t help just pick out the parts of HBO’s announcement that sound like they are referring to Thomas Jane’s enormous “talent” on “Hung.” For example:

“The size of these shows have broken into the popular culture in a way we haven’t seen in a while,” said HBO co-president Richard Plepler. “…we were the newbies. It was tough. It was a much more stressful session for us two years ago.” [Variety]

See, once you got big penis jokes on the brain, it’s easy to skew. Truth be told I am a big (like 9 ½” uncut) fan of all three shows (yes, even “Entourage” — suck it, Ufford) so the news makes me tumescently happy.  As the receiving end of these throbbing shows I hope I can live up to HBO’s assertion:

“‘Resilient’ is the way I’d describe how the business has held up,” Plepler said.

Okay, that one was a stretch. (Get it? A stretch!?  Never mind, I was leaving anyway.)

Wait, I thought “Battle of the Bulge” was a FOX reality show?

Right on the heels of HBO’s “Hung,” a show about a man who becomes a prostitute because his penis is big, MTV is making “Hard Times,” a show about a teenager with a big penis.  Original!

[The] show chronicles the hellish life of RJ Berger, a desperately unpopular 15-year-old.

When RJ’s anatomical gift is dramatically revealed in front of the whole school, he goes from anonymous to famous and finds his first sliver of confidence. But he also has to deal with a best friend trying to capitalize on his newfound fame, a student body with no shortage of cruel jokes and an insane home life.

Actually — and it kills me to say anything remotely positive about MTV programming — this is a way more interesting (and realistic) premise than “Hung’s” grown-up-loser-becomes-gigolo.  So good work, MTV.  Unoriginal and interesting is a nice change of pace from your routine of unoriginal and sh-tty.

(By the way, I apologize for using a military history reference for the image.  For some reason I didn’t quite feel like doing an image search for BIG TEENAGE COCK.)

“Hung” is a new show premiering on June 28th that stars Thomas Jane as a high school teacher with a big penis.  Sounds like the beginning of a pretty good porn, but it’s actually an HBO original series intended to be a dark comedy.

Ray Drecker (Jane) is underpaid, uninsured, and embittered that his wife of 20 years (Anne Heche) has left him for her dermatologist.  After a fire damages the run-down Detroit home [Is there any other kind? -Ed.] he inherited from his parents, Ray’s fortunes reach an all-time low when his twin children, who had been living with him, move in with their mom and her clean-freak hubby.  Lonely, run-down, and at wit’s end, Ray attends a local self-help class whose mantra is to identify a “winning tool” to market for financial success. [HBO]

The series is directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways), and I can firmly say that this looks a little flaccid.  I’m not trying to be a dick, but I have a bone to pick with the writing: the main character is too impotent, leaving the viewer unsatisfied.  Boner cock throbbing erection.

[TV Squad]