Review: HBO's 'Hung' a tale of the times
Smallscreen Reviews
By April MacIntyre Jun 27, 2009, 15:34 GMT
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I am so sick of statements like this in your article 'Why does a teacher make so little in salary...' Teachers in California make 75K on average per year! they also have summer off and a nice winter vacation and every holiday off! This is pretty a pretty cushy job but we are always praising teachers as if they were saints and wishing they could make more money.
I totally disagree with you; across the board in the US teachers are grossly underpaid and in constant threat of being cut due to waning state budgets. The American public education system is as bad as our health care system, with no easy fixes in sight.
yes the whole myth that 'teachers are underpaid' has been debunked in the past few years. Teachers get paid far more than chemists, psychologists, etc. The teachers union are a money hungry entity who cares more about money than they do about hiring quality teachers. They've created so many loopholes, processes, and barriers to protect their teachers that it has become impossible to fire one of their own even when one has committed a crime ie sexual harassment.
I've had some good teachers in my time but there are also many bad teachers who have absolutely no passion to give their students a quality education.
sadly these website comments sections have become the stomping grounds of people who have no idea what they are talking about.
any unsubstantiated bogus claim can be made in here and nobody will ever have the incentive to disprove it.
ah well, it keeps a certain kind off the streets.
gosh . . i almost forgot to substantiate my bogus claim . . .
www.aft.org/salary/2003/download/2003Table2.pdf
in 2004 the average US starting salary for a teacher was $30,496.
if you took the time to work that out . . it's about $15 an hour assuming you work only 8 hours a day 5 days a week.
teachers work a lot more hours than 40 hours a week and because schools are so underfunded they often pay for supplies from their own pockets.
so . . look up a few facts before you open your piehole to complain.
I watched it with an open mind and high hopes for what seemed to be an easy plot to follow and lots of easy humor to be had.
Unfortunately, it was neither humorous nor where you left that involved with any of the characters to care to follow thru with another sitting.
All in all the attempts at humor where dry and you can see them coming a mile away (like the scene at the Whiz meeting). The kids are seemingly place holders in the main characters life and simply serve as a reason for the plot but with very little involvement in the plot itself it seems.
Very disappointed at HBO. They dropped the ball on this, but with so many previous hits under their belt I can understand one flying under the radar, but this begs the question, with so many previous hits, the only show left on HBO's hit line up is Entourage and True Blood while its competitor (showtime) has a laundry list of great current running hit series.
It maybe time to vote with my wallet and snip HBO from my cable bill and stick with Showtime only. I can always watch Bill Maher on HBO.com.
Cheers-
Steve... thanks so much for returning the conversation to the POS (and I don't mean point of sale)HBO tossed out there Sunday night. I mean, talk about captive audience... I was psyched. The trailers were good, it's Sunday night and the subject-matter is a giggle just waiting to happen. Look, it didn't have to be Sex and the City... it just needed to follow thru on what I think most thought was hit concept, and regularly throw in something topical... some meat... a twist. I'm no expert and I've written about as many shows as George Costanza, but I think I could thrive writing into that set-up. It would be like tee-ball! I know the reviewer says to give it a few weeks and I probably will, but that would have been a lot easier to do had HBO given me some reason, any reason to do that. Unfortunately, on what I saw Sunday night, they didn't do that. It was like going to a website to see reviews about a show, and instead seeing multiple posts debating the merits of our educational system, economics and social policy.
Bawdy humor in ugly crumbling Detroit? Depressing as hell. While pampered overcompensated middle class America deservedly spirals into permanent decline after decades of high living at the expense of the rest of the world, who in America or Europe would want to watch this poorly scripted mess? Some of the biggest HBO & Showtime hits have made it because they had world wide appeal. 'Hung' does not.
The cast is real enough, too real in fact. Too typically boring American middle class. The creators should take a clue from genuinely humerous well written, sexually ironic shows with unique characters...and might I add talented actors like Weeds. I certainly won't watch 'Hung' again. Future episodes can only continue to be boring, depressing, and I surmise sexy and saucy as a Mid West rust belt born again Evangelical get together.
I love the show and besides the opening it is not filmed in detroit.
I was not a fan of sex and the city; it was full of nudity. At least one, so far, has not exploited women for a change. As a matter of fact, the women is the smart one of the two.
I'm loving this new series! It gets better and better each Sunday!! My husband and I both look forward to the next one!
How in the world are viewers supposed to believe that a hot guy and his good looking x-wife produced two children that are so ugly as to be unbearable to even look at. Does no one understand to two phenotypes of upper percentage of the gene pool, actually produce children of higher attractiveness, they don't produce children ugly as sin.
I'm not sure if this is of importance to you. I found this site when looking for Botox surgeons. It's completely free and they only deal with the best of the best. I have used them a couple times now. Check them out (www.ThePatientsAdvantage.com); seriously.
It's not the length, but the width that counts!
I've watched all the episodes so far and though I want to like the show, I'm finding it tough to really 'latch on' to. Is it just me, or is the acting, especially Thomas Jane's, just not that good? Also, like another person commented, why the ugly ass kids? I'd believe it if Louie Anderson was the father and the mom was a Hobbit from the Shire.
I'll still watch a few more episodes, though, as it is more interesting than most other stuff on TV right now, mostly because of the attempt at working in some sociological commentary about the impending death of the American middle class.
And though I don't approve of or ever have engaged in mindless, anonymous slamming of other people that comment on websites, I have to make an exception for sanfrancisco's comment. Everyone go back and read it if you haven't. It's the perfect example of someone not so bright acting like he should be writing for the New York Times Op-Ed pages. Besides the painful spelling and grammatical errors, it's a type of pseudo-intellectualism that seems to come from the overcompensated, self-entitled upper-middle class with prepaid college educations and underdeveloped intelligence.
Sorry sanfrancisco... I don't know you and you don't know me, so it's kind of dumb for me to go off on you, I know. After all, it's just all about a stupid TV show and I don't even completely disagree with you. You were just the trigger that made me want to write my own self-important, faceless diatribe after years of reading rants similar to yours. If you want to communicate and be clever and 'humerous' with the endless space people like you are granted on this huge blackboard called the Internet, at least learn how to spell it first... humorous, that is.
I love you, Tony!
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