The Moth Chase

As with every other season opener to Californication, last night’s episode was a little awkward and over-the-top.  But my faith holds firm that this season will progress like the others; in other words, it will settle back into itself and its brilliant mode of alternative-family-structure-storytelling once again.

So in reflecting on Hank’s foray into single parenting – which includes a pathetic attempt to stop his 14 year old daughter from smoking pot only to light up himself and the childish inflicting of bodily harm on the father of her friend – let me just tell you why I love this show so much.  Despite Hank’s exuberant sexcapades and bad-boy attitude and Karen’s confused forays into other relationships and messy attempts to find what she’s looking for, what truly defines their relationship is a mutual love and admiration for each other; not a silly, romantic gushy love, but the deep down love of commitment forged through time; a deep down love that grows out of understanding each other’s strengths, desires, flaws, hopes and, in some of the more beautiful moments, a deep down understanding of each other’s aesthetic ways of being in the world.  Karen gets Hank’s writing; he gets her architecture; they get art together.  They get each other.  And at the deepest point, their connection is held together by their shared love for their daughter, Becca.

But this is more than a lovely vision of your standard nuclear family.  It’s a vision made possible by the sexual revolution.  It’s a vision that incorporates the sexual revolution – and all its wonderful and problematic effects – into its vision of the family.  And so not only does their co-parenting look vastly different than the Cosby’s version of the same, but their single approaches to parenting look very different to anything Ross or Rachel tried with Emma before they hooked back up again at the end of Friends only a few short years ago.

This is a truly dysfunctional family that functions better than any other one I can think of on television.  Hank and Karen are one of the few heterosexual couples on tv in which the woman experiences neither a lessening of her own selfhood in order to pursue relationality, nor the requirement of feeling her feelings any more or less powerfully than she does, in fact, feel them.  And they are kind to each other, inviting and ushering each other into the fullness of what each as an individual person is…even when that individual fullness results in a loveable (read: sexually promiscuous) a-hole.

Posted by: Natalie

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Episode 2
Californication Explores Consequences?

If you tuned in for your first episode of Californication last night, oof, I’m sorry.  Somewhere between Becca’s refusal to stop texting at the table, Marcie’s rape revenge fantasies, Balt’s attempted suicide, Charlie’s terrifying stocking-headed attempt to get his wife back, and Hank telling his daughter that he hates her, I had to wonder how and why the show had taken such a steep plunge into something much darker than its usual fare.

Californication has never really taken itself seriously – one of the reasons so many of my friends don’t like it.  But last night it seemed to leap into the seriousness of showing the disastrous consequences of poor choices with such abandon it wore me out a little.  Yes, your daughter is likely to become a brat if you never discipline her (and, as Eva prophesies, telling a kid they can be and do anything they want when they grow up might cause more problems than telling them when they suck at stuff).  And yes, if your marriage is in the toilet not only because you cheated on your wife, but also because your love was built primarily on a shared love of kinky sex, there might come a time when kinky just don’t cut it anymore and instead becomes scary.  And yes, a really dramatic response to lazy approaches to teaching might be a student’s attempted suicide (ok, that one was a little far-fetched, but I did love Gossip Girl’s Ed Westwick in that role and the multiple biting allusions to the current popularity of the vampires this blog clearly loves!).  And finally, yes, if you force a teenage girl to grow up too soon with your laissez faire parenting, you’re going to enter a lower circle of hell when she hits those hormonal, finding herself, asserting her independence years.

I wrote last week about how Californication offers an image of family love with the most extreme forms of the sexual revolution already imbibed.  It seems this season is going to explore the consequences of that.  My hope is that it will be able to do so with the humour and creative avoidance of sentimental moralism it has managed so far!

Posted by Natalie

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I’ve got to say it, the highlight of this season is for me, without a doubt, Sue Collini.  Kathleen Turner is brilliant as Runkel’s crass-mouthed, sex-crazed, professionally brilliant, polyamorous – did I mention she likes sex? – boss.  The woman is almost unreal.  Squeezed into every outfit she comes on screen in, and somehow it seems, squeezed into her own flesh in a way that makes her appear to be constantly bursting at the seams with life, with desire, with energy and lust, she makes Hank look like an inexperienced schoolboy with a string of silly crushes.

And last night she got to add her moan to a long list of fake-orgasm entertainment moments, performed most famously of course by Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, but done recently and brilliantly embarrassingly by Kristen Bell in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.  Collini’s was so exuberant, it silenced the ferocious noises coming from Marcy and Rick Springfield and, in so doing, was her gift to a pained Runkel forced to listen to his wife go at it with a rock star.  And so far from using a performance of female desire to turn a guy on or shame him with a reminder of how real fakeness can sound, Collini’s O-Noise performed female desire for the sweetness of friendship in a way that in no way diminished her own power and fabulousness.

This is what I love about Sue Collini – she’s master of her own domain in a way that the guys on the show strive so desperately to achieve and yet can’t manage. She’s got a successful work life, a happy marriage, a confident self-image and affairs that are consensual on the part of her, her lovers and her spouse.  In a way that Hank and especially Runkel will never manage, she’s truly got it all.

Collini, out!

Posted by Natalie

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Episode 5

The Coolest Guy in High School

I loved this episode because inasmuch as we all think of Hank as the anti-hero, we met a fallen anti-hero this week in Hank’s old buddy Zloz.  For how terrible all his pick up lines were, they weren’t that much worse than Hank’s.  Even the ‘last time on Californication’ bit at the beginning of the show reminded us that Hank, too, has uttered references to his ‘hardness’ as an effort to pick up a lady. And as my husband so often points out to me every week as I stare doe-eyed at the Duchovny-filled screen, I wouldn’t be so charmed by Hank’s sexism if he weren’t so darn good-looking.

And so we get to imagine what Hank looks like in bad jeans, a terrible elastic-waisted jacket and a bad haircut…what Hank circa 1987 supposedly looked like or aspired to be like.  Zloz had been Hank’s idol – the guy everyone wanted to be who’d landed with the girl every guy wanted to bed.  In the end what we see is that Zloz made the decision Hank always regrets not making – he married the girl back in the day.  And so in a strange way, we find that Hank is still a little jealous of Zloz because Zloz has the girl to go home to.  Despite appearances, it seems that Zloz is still the winner and Hank is, well, still the loser.

Until of course Karen comes back at the end.  And I’m so glad to have her! The moment when Hank and Karen both turn to Becca to say ‘shut-up’ at the same time is perhaps the most responsible thing we’ve ever seen them do together.  And Karen’s under-the-breath mumbling to Hank immediately following was so perfectly executed it made me as thrilled as old Hank to see her return. The not-so-happy happy family has always relied on sweet little Becca to hold them together. I’m more than a little excited to see how the family bond is held with a much more teenage-angsty glue!

Posted by Natalie

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Episode 6

The Girl Whisperer

Californication finally explicitly asked two questions last night that we’ve all deep down been wondering about Hank.  The first came from Dean Koonz, in a moment of desperate exclamation: “How do you do it?” he whined, “You obviously have this thing with women, this strong connection. Some very strong connection that no matter what you do, no matter how big of an ass you are, they seem to respond. You’re a goddamn girl whisperer!”Of course, we learn that Stacy isn’t asking Hank this in an innocent way. He’s not just broken by his wife’s infidelity and wondering how it happened. There’s a yucky undertone here as Stacy confides in Hank that he too has had illicit relations with a girl so hot a priest would have defiled her.  And so yuckily enough, it seems Stacy asks this of Hank because he wants to know how to girl whisper too.

And so the real, genuine question gets asked through Becca’s mouth – she’s the one who manages to call Hank out because she’s the only one who really loves him and really, truly wants to know what makes him the way he is.  “Why,” she asks, “there has to be a reason, make me understand”.  As Hank tries to deflect her with jokes – as he’s been doing all episode long while these three, gorgeous, talented women are throwing themselves at him – Becca holds his feet to the flames.  “No,” she insists, “You need to talk to me. You need to tell me why you do the things you do when you know that people can get seriously hurt. Myself included.” And while we all wonder how Hank scores so many girls – what his secret power over them is – this is the real question: just because he can, doesn’t mean he should, and so why does he keep hurting those he’s supposed to love, or at least momentarily cherish, when he does seem to set out usually with good intentions?

Becca realizes this is just part of his broken nature: “you wouldn’t get mad at a big dumb dog for shitting on the rug, would you?”  Hank realizes he’s holding his daughter to a higher standard than he’s holding himself to because he would get mad at the dog…and so he realizes finally that they all have a right to get mad at him.  And so he apologizes – he explains that he just wants to help these girls feel special, to find the part of themselves that is special and to give them the feeling of having that special self regarded by another.

And despite it all, we believe Hank – we believe him because that’s what we see him constantly trying to do with Becca.  And we believe him because that’s why these women fall in love with him – because in all his terrible ways of relating, he does open them up to some part of themselves that they fall in love with.

But realizing that deep down there’s the same desire – this special-making, special-regarding act – acted out for the women that he acts for his daughter, we realize with Becca that there will come a point when his sorrys won’t mean anything anymore: and we too get a funny feeling that that’s going to happen for her real soon.  And we too worry with him that his ongoing ways of treating women will have created a daughter who thinks of herself as one ‘walking vagina’ among many and who needs to find affirmation in a string of men who’ll never live up to the special-making skills of her father.

Was anyone else like me a little creeped out my Rick Springfield meeting a girl whose mother had sex with him once upon a time without a condom, only to have sex himself with that girl?  Was anyone else a little creeped out that he was unknowingly doing his own daughter?  Uck – consequences!

Posted by Natalie

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Episode 7

That Nymphomanaical Psychopath I’ve Grown to Love and Loathe

And no, I’m not talking about Rick Springfield or even Sue Collini, although I’ve certainly expressed my appreciation for the latter here before.  No, the nymphomaniacal psychopath I’ve grown to love and loathe is actually Hank and, by extension, the show Californication itself.  It used to be that they managed to – or at least sought to – balance the circus madness of the show’s ADD driven flitting around from one outrageous moment to the next over-the-top one with good plot and character development…but last night it felt like the circus madness took the prize.

Between the labia flashlight, everything Rick Springfield, Marcy’s mopey waiting for RS’s call, Runkel’s pathetic wish to have someone take care of him, the ridiculous showdown between our boys and the mall-cop-type dorm security guard and Collini’s drug dealer being in Thailand for ‘some sex-tourism thing’ (too far, Californication – too far!)…between all these over the top moments and more, there was actually very little going on.

Hank’s screwed up by sleeping with another woman; Karen’s trying to be open-minded but is stewing underneath; the other woman is smitten; there’s a creepy other guy trying to move in on Karen; Runkel and Marcy are on the rocks but we all know they’re meant for each other at the end of the day – this could be any season!  And these characters aren’t growing as human beings; they’re simply repeating the sad tropes they performed in season one again and again and again to the point where they’re getting a little boring (hence the need for things like labia flashlights to brighten the 30mins of tedium).

Here’s the thing – I do still love this show.  I just need it to pull its pants up and get back to being awesome!  It doesn’t need to keep hyping up the shock value – at this point it’s kind of numbed me to shock.  What it needs to do is hype up the story value.  Maybe Hank needs to start writing, or Karen needs to get to work on some amazing house.  Maybe Becca could get a new friend or Hank could actually get passionate about teaching.  I don’t know – but give us something new, please!  Something to help these folks seem like real human beings again.

I suppose in the end the one thing that’s shifted is Becca.  She’s finally complicating things by becoming her own person.  But even her development is a repetition of the father-disappointment she’s also been expressing from the beginning.  Each time she asks Karen when they’re going to learn, when they’re going to get real answers, I have to wonder with her – when are we going to get the same?

Posted by Natalie.

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Episode 9

It’s Time to Answer Becca’s Questions

What could have happened if Karen and Marcie had answered Becca’s question seriously?  What is so great about being married?  Is it more than a guy making you laugh and fixing things around the house?  Perhaps if either of them had taken her question seriously, we would have gotten somewhere in last night’s episode.  But once again, we eschewed digging a little deeper into these characters and really developing their relationships by ignoring Becca’s questions.

Last night I officially gave up on Hank and Karen (and maybe, by extension, Charlie and Marcie).  In the beginning of this series, and even this season (see my initial post), they were all pretty messed up, but still sweet and trying to get it right.  At this point, it seems like they’ve all given up!  Hank’s boyishness is no longer endearing, but desperately childish and annoying.  And Karen is starting to feel pathetic for sticking around.  Becca asks if Karen really thought that moving to New York for a few months would change Hank, and once again the question is avoided and the possibility for character development skipped over.

And so in the end, with the usual moment of redemption, as Karen started to make breakfast for Hank, it was sweet, but it also felt sad…like she’d resigned herself to her lot.  She was right to shrug off his tattoo – it wasn’t a declaration of love thoughtfully inked; it was a drunken game with about as much value as Charlie’s butterfly.  And if that little anchor symbolized anything, it symbolized Karen and Becca being dragged down by the weight of Hank rather than any lovely image of them being what holds him in place.

Because they don’t hold him in place!  With a gun stuck to his head, Hank’s love for them flashed before his eyes and then he still stayed out all night drinking with his buddy.  I’m starting to think Hank’s just a guy who wants to think that he’s a guy who truly loves, but he’s deluding himself because all he loves is himself.

Hank and Karen are a couple relying on their history rather than cultivating a present or really living into a future.  And I think the same can be said of Californication itself right now.  We had a number of references to previous episodes last night (the squirting, the artist within, the bookstore wanderings, and even Charlie’s description of his own life as a television show watched on tivo) as if the writers were trying to remind us of some of its former glory.  But the present was messy and chaotic and the future promised nothing except a frantic wind down into the series closer.

I’ve been a staunch defender of this show.  I’ve found its play with sexual morality and family structures to be interesting and insightful.  But something’s slipped in the last few episodes and its chaos now feels too silly for insight.  With what seemed to be Sue Collini’s last out, I realize I’m only hanging on now because there’s only 2 episodes left and I may as well see what happens.

Posted by Natalie.

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Episode 10

The Wise Women of Californication and Some Musings on Academic Life

While these episodes continue to grow in how ludicrous they are – an ambush luncheon of lovers past and a duel to top it off – what gets me even more is the level of self-referentiality that Californication has reached.  Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but it seemed like the writers were using the mouths of the women to describe not Hank or even their own lives, but rather to describe the show itself.

The first happened when Felicia looked at the boys rolling around on the ground fighting and wondered, “I can’t tell if they’re joking or not”.  This is how I’ve felt about this whole season of Californication.  Are they trying to take themselves seriously or are they just taking the piss?  They come close to real emotion.  They come close to actual human interactions.  They come close to telling a real story.  And then Charlie gets a tramp-stamp or Karen stares overly-googley-eyed at her old prof.  And as the show oscillates between real human emotion and the silly silliness of it all I, like Felicia, wonder – are they joking or not?

The second happened with Marcy.  I’ve got to say, I really hoped those crazy Runkel kids would make it.  Every relationship has its ups and downs and, sure, their ups and their downs are of the manic type.  But those two do work so well when they’re working.  And so when Charlie asked Marcy if the beginning was great for her and she responded, yes, of course, it’s the end that’s the disaster, I was right there with Charlie thinking, well just make the end the middle!  Keep it going so that the “shitty part” ends up creating something magical that becomes the real ending.  And as I thought that I realized that Marcy too was describing the show – whether the writers intended it or not, she was describing the show.  The beginning was great – I was hooked.  We hit these sections that suck, but then they become the middle and it all works out and I love it again. I want Marcy to stay with Charlie because I want to believe that the show too can sort itself out and get great again.  Marcy might be right.  There’s always going to be a “shitty part”.  But hopefully Charlie is right as well and we’ll get back to the magic.

As an academic myself, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this picture of academia, though – in my world, there is way, way less sex…at least, I think there is. Maybe I’ve just gotten left out.  But I think Felicia was on to something when she said that none of us can really function in the real world; that we function within the confines of this strange little world of the university, and only do that in limited ways.  That is sort of the sense one gets from being an academic – we do this because we don’t know how to do anything else…sure there’s passion and there’s excitement about the craft.  But there’s always that nagging suspicion that we’re all stuck in the eternal return of the semester, playing the same game over and over because that’s the game we know.

But perhaps that’s just life.
Argh, see – Californication has made me a cynic.  Sigh.

Posted by Natalie.

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Season Finale

Californication is Back!

Finally!  It has probably become clear over my last few posts that I’ve become quite sick of Californication this season.  The mayhem, childish antics and total lack of consequences have started to wear on me.  But last night felt like a return to so much of what once made this show great!  The thing is, Mia always annoyed me, and I was happy when she left, but the show has been in a strange holding pattern since her absence; a holding pattern I didn’t recognize until last night.

With Mia gone, our greatest plot driver was gone too – she’s the one who Hank has to worry about, whether she’s going to tell on his inadvertent indiscretion and how far she’s going to take his stolen book.  Karen and Becca can hold Hank to a limited type of accountability, but I realized last night that they need Mia to keep his feet to the flames in any real way.  I was surprised to feel so pleased at her return!

But not only did we get some real dramatic tension, we also finally enjoyed a return to some of the more artistic, interesting modes of storytelling that have been long absent.  Opening in a dream-like sequence in a swimming pool with Hank surrounded by the three women of this season, we realize how many deeper connections he has actually forged; the deepest connection being forged with Felicia as she held the prominent place of sharing Karen’s chair while the other two swam around him like sharks in the pool.

Karen warns Hank – and us – that there’s not going to be a happy ending, while Becca bombards him with the questions she’s been asking all season.  When he once again is unable to answer her, she begins to sing ominously, “I think I’m sinking down,” in a great allusion to her own name recently tattooed on the anchor on Hank’s shoulder.  The scene is worrisome, but not without hope, especially as when Becca loses her virginity later in the episode, she is able to assure Hank that it was neither magical nor bad but simply a necessary rite of passage; a sign that “you didn’t fuck me up…I’m a woman now, Dad”.  It’s the later pool scene, in which Felicia has left the side of the pool to swim with the sharks and drag Hank down into drowning, and as Karen takes Becca’s hand to lead her away, that we know things are not going to end well.

And so consequences mark the whole episode – not only Hank’s bedding of Mia and everything that results from that, but also Marcy’s insistence on divorce, Mia’s terrible writing that follows up her stolen book, and of course Hank being arrested for beating up Mia’s agent.

In the end, I was so pleased that Hank outed himself to Karen and the scene was played perfectly.  We didn’t need to hear the content of their conversation; we just needed to know that they were over.  And we needed to know that for all his faults, Hank would out himself – however late – for the right reasons, and not to further his own career.  Hank’s face shows that he knows it’s over; that there’s no hope.  But when push comes to shove, he steps up to take responsibility for his actions rather than just let the great, tragic machine he’s created expose him.  This is the Hank that deserves to be played by Duchovny – the complex, tragic hero who is so much more than the horny boy-man we’ve had to sit with all season.

Californication has been criticized this season for selling out to sensationalism in an effort to get higher ratings and those critics have struggled with the fact that the ratings ploy worked.  After last night, I have to wonder if the crazy, ludicrous mayhem of the whole season, its inability to get serious, actually provided the necessary foil or the necessary context for this very, very serious finale.  Was the finale something completely other than the rest of the season, or was its impact made possible by the rest of the season?  With my ongoing desire to read this show in the most generous light possible, I’m hoping for the latter – but I’m also hoping for a season 4 that doesn’t require such a stark shift at the end because it has woven at least some of the seriousness throughout.

Posted by Natalie.