HBO Sunday Night - 8/16/09

Hung: Episode 7
“The Rita Flower, or, the Indelible Stench”

Ray (Thomas Jane) gets some mixed signals from Jemma and tries to be his own pimp. Tanya (Jane Adams) meets Pierce (Joshua Leonard) in a bar and he tries to get her to write poetry again, leading to a meeting with her mother (Rhea Perlman). The addition of Perlman is nice, deepening Tanya’s character, but Leonard struggles to find footing with his character’s implausible set-up. The best scenes from the show so far have been between Ray and Tanya, and this episode was no different with Ray’s reaction shots at Tanya’s front door when Pierce is talking about eggplant. His confused and disapproving looks were hilarious . . .

But Tanya was front and center for this episode and the poetry stuff (mostly an internal cathartic thing) didn’t resonate. Given its premise, it’s surprising the show hasn’t got as sexually explicit as this episode before, which may be uncomfortable for some viewers. B

Entourage: Season 6, Episode 6
“Murphy’s Lie”

People making stupid choices is one of my pet peeves and in this episode, we had 3 (count ‘em!) out of 4 members of Vince’s crew doing that very thing. Vince allows a college girl to videotape him while they do it. Eric lets his new relationship unravel by lying to her (I can’t believe anyone – George Segal, in this case, would want to hire him if he wasn’t smart enough to realize that she knew the truth about Sloan right away). Worst of all, Drama roughs up his boss and commits career suicide.

The writers didn’t help anything early on by doing the same scene twice when Ari and Eric reconcile with their respective ladies. What was so great about last week’s episode - Fore (minimal plot, all character, great guest stars) went down the drain. Gary Cole was even severely wasted. Jeremy Piven was the only bright spot (as per custom the past few years) as Ari, spouting profane insults, promises, and declarations his usual aggressive, confident, hilarious way. C+