Californication: The Seasons Aren’t A-Changin’

Californication is a half-hour, twelve-episode season Showtime series. It features X-Files star David Duchovny as a brilliant but unprolific novelist with a mighty self-destructive streak and a penchant for drinking too much and sleeping with just about any woman with a heartbeat. The first season was a knockout, full of irreverence, hilarity and pathos. But though Duchovny remains effortlessly appealing and charismatic and the show still entertains, the last two seasons have felt like a letdown to me. The main reason? The characters all seem to be getting into the same situations over and over again, making the same mistakes, repeating the same destructive cycles. Sure the details change a little, but mostly the show seems content with delivering the same thing again and again.

The first season introduced Hank Moody (Duchovny) as being stranded in L.A., trying to hold on to his soul, connect with his preteen daughter and revive his once-promising but lately-dry career. He was also madly in love with his longtime girlfriend Karen (the lovely Natasha McElhone), who was engaged to some ugly jackass with a chin problem and a dry voice named Bill. Hank was, to quote Roy McAvoy, chock full of inner demons. He dealt with all this by drinking hard, acting like a child and refusing to take any responsibility for his actions. And damn if I didn’t love him for that.

Hank is a sad character, but not a pathetic one. He never whines and he has such life and vitality, an irreverence and a contempt for convention and authority. You can beat him down but you can’t run him down. Plus, compared to Bill, he was a much fuller and appealing person, and though he made all kinds of mistakes and definitely deserved the brunt of the blame for his breakup, you could tell that he loved her  fully and deeply. He may have been wrong for her, but in a way that’s what made him right. Yes, he was the irresponsible choice, but love isn’t always responsible. Jesus christ what the hell am I talking about?

Here’s what I meant. In the first season, Hank was appealing because his behavior had a context: he was about to lose the love of his life forever to an asshole. He had the much-coveted underdog status. Karen had clearly moved on, had been damaged by Hank, and seemed committed to Bill, the safe choice. So when Hank did things like sleep with a girl who turned out to be underage and Bill’s daughter, you could still feel sorry for him. And believe me, that girl—Mia—is a real piece of work. She intentionally seduced Hank and then later on in the show, stole the manuscript of the novel that was going to put him back on top (and, coincidentally, was inspired in part by their ill-conceived liaison) and claimed it as her own.

But in spite of all that, the season ended on a high note, with Karen surprisingly ditching Bill at the altar and speeding away with Hank and their weird-creepy daughter Becca in Hank’s beaten up vintage Porsche. Hank got his miraculous second chance…then in seasons two and three, continued to find awe-inspiring ways to mess that up. He just rarely gets anything right. The problem is that Hank is no longer an underdog. He won Karen back and she took an amazing chance on him. So when he goes around acting like a self-destructive fool and sleeping with an impossible amount of women, he’s frankly not as likable. And the more the show features him repeating these destructive patterns over and over again, the more monotonous it becomes.

This monotony extends to the other main characters on the show, Hank’s agent and longtime best friend Charlie Runkle (Evan Handler) and his sexually-adventurous wife Marcy. To say their relationship has its ups and downs would be the understatement of the year. As a bonus, this season had some pretty high-profile guest stars, including Peter Gallagher, Embeth Davidtz, Peter Fonda, and Kathleen Turner. But Turner wasn’t a welcome presence on the show. She was, in fact, horrifying. She played Charlie’s new boss, a depraved sex fiend who refers to herself in the third person. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m as far from a prude as Bavarian crème pie is from spaghetti, but the stuff that continually came out of Turner’s mouth was just foul. And I’m sorry, but although Kathleen Turner was beautiful in the Romancing The Stone and Body Heat days, today she looks and sounds like a freak of nature. Imagining her in any sexual situation of any kind is enough to make you go celibate for the rest of your life.

I have to say, this season ended on a dark note and made Hank take responsibility for one of his biggest mistakes, which is an improvement. Also, the show does paint a pretty fair portrait of the bright but often whorish wasteland that is Los Angeles.

Maybe the show, by having Hank and Charlie make the same mistakes over and over again, is trying to make a point about how hard it is (especially with middle-aged, high-maintenance men) to break the cycle of self-destructive behavior. The problem is that showing variations of the same thing over and over again doesn’t make for really compelling tv, especially when your lead character keeps growing steadily less sympathetic. I’m still on board with the show and think it’s better than most of what’s on. But I’d have to call it a poor man’s Rescue Me at this point. That show is also all about self-destructiveness, but the protagonist Tommy Gavin (written and wonderfully played by Denis Leary) manages to be more appealing and more complex. It also has an infinitely better ensemble. Maybe the Californication people should bone up on Rescue Me before they start putting together the fourth season.

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Photographs courtesy of Showtime and Jordin Althaus.