The Moth Chase

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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!” Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »