Hung Up on Weeds’ Formula for Success? An Intertextual Comparison

The premium cable television networks HBO and Showtime compete for subscribers by constantly trying to find edgy, innovative concepts for their original programming. However, sometimes the success of one network’s programming has been enough to spark the creation of a similar media text from their rival.

After five seasons of Weeds’ great success, HBO has come up with their own dramady sitcom that follows a similar formula. Having just finished its first season, Hung is a show that also explores the lengths that people are willing go and the social norms that they are willing to violate when economic times get tough.

Hung is about a former high school basketballs star Ray Drecker, played by Thomas Jane, who is in his early forties and is struggling as a divorced, down on his luck, high school coach. When times get really tough, Ray turns to male prostitution in hopes of earning enough money to pay his bills, fix his house, and convince his ex-wife that he is fit to share the custody of their two children.

Weeds and Hung hold similarities in that they both explore the lives of single parents willing to live on the fringe of society in order to maintain a facade of suburban normality. The similarities between the two shows are tied to this ironic dichotomy between maintaining the appearance of normality and the unconventional means by which they do so.

What is most interesting about Weeds’ story line is the extent of the sacrifices that Nancy is willing to make in order maintain the trivial comforts of the suburban ideal. Rather than finding a real, honest, nonetheless legal job, Nancy chooses to break the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior by becoming a drug dealer. While she maintains that she is making a sacrifice for her family by working in the dark margins of society, the reality is that she chooses to sell drugs over making reasonable and pragmatic concessions in the lavish lifestyle that she attempts to maintain.

A central theme to Weeds’ story line is that no matter what burden dealing drugs places on Nancy or her family, her sacrifices are justified so long as the appearance of her lifestyle remains the unchanged.

HBO’s Hung operates on a similar premise, while retaining a pointed originality. As the show’s protagonist Ray Drecker undergoes a string of bad luck that results in his home being destroyed in a freak accident and the loss of his children in a custody battle to his ex-wife, he too makes the decision to violate norms of social behavior by becoming a gigolo.

Though sex is to Hung as marijuana is to Weeds, the two shows do have a their own take on the what roles their illegal professions play in the character’s lives. In Weeds, Nancy sells pot as a way to avoid slipping from the fantasy like suburban ideal with unnecessary luxuries like maids, high-end SUV’s, and gated communities. In Hung on the other hand, Ray enters prostitution as a way to supplement his underpaying high school coach’s income that falls short of allowing him to pay for his bills, child support, and basic necessities.

He struggles to keep his electricity and his water on, all the while battling his wife for a place in his children’s lives. Even Hung’s creator Colette Burson proclaims that the two show are different in both “style and substance,” insisting that they are “not as interested in playing the secrete of the illegal profession like Weeds does,” (Hickman).

Though both Nancy and Ray opt for an unconventional rout towards earning a living, one does so out of dire necessity, while the other does so in order to fulfill materialistic desires. Since Ray has lost his home and his children he does not have any real concessions that he can make in his life, so he turns to prostitution out of pure desperation. Nancy on the other hand chooses a lucrative and dangerous profession as a means of avoiding making lifestyle concessions, all at the expense of her children’s wellbeing.