Captain Hammer Nails Aria Giovanni in ‘PG Porn’ Debut

As promised, James Gunn’s PG Porn premiered earlier this week on Spike.  And as promised, there’s no naked.

On a spartan construction site with Ikea cabinetry, Nathan Fillion (Dr. Horrible‘s Captain Hammer) masterfully channels every male porn star ever into befuddled Chris, an aloof carpenter with big arms, a nail gun, and amorous intentions.  Fillion is opposite adult film star Ari Giovanni, whose (type)cast as nubile, neglected housewife, Mrs. Grimes.

When the two meet while the foreman’s away, things quickly get hot and heavy, but just at the point where the action starts to turn XXX, Giovanni gets nailed.

Conceived by James Gunn with brothers Brian and Sean, PG Porn seems like a novel idea.  With its well executed production – a tongue-in-cheek amalgamation of cheap sets, bad music, scratchy footage, and over-the-top acting from the the last three decades of porno – and sex/star/sex-star appeal, it’s no surprise the first episode “has gone venereal” and racked up nearly 500,000 views in less than a week.

Still, despite the fact that no one’s ever done it before (save Diesel a week earlier

) PG Porn feels played out, hackneyed, obvious, like videos of dudes getting kicked in the nuts.  I was expecting awkward, adult-film hijinks and genre spoofs a la Dutchwest’s ingenious Chess Bus.  Instead it’s more like primetime Skinemax, relying on cheesy productions and punny jokes that the porn industry is already great at telling.

James told the New York Times, PG Porn “is a place where the porn and the mainstream film industries meet and get to have some understanding of each other.”  He continues, “We like to pretend that we’re miles and miles away from pornography, but we’re not.”

Technically, that’s true.  Hollywood actors like Fillion, Sean Gunn, and Michael Ronsebaum share the screen with adult film actors like Giovanni, Belladonna, and Sasha Grey, but I don’t think PG Porn is a forum of progressive understanding.  It’s a shtick.  A decent schtick, yes, but still just a schtick.

Stay tuned for the next two installments – “Genital Hosptial” and “A Very Peanus Christmans” – at PGPorn.tv.