Californication, Season 1

"Californication" (2007), the brainchild of one-time "Dawson's Creek" writer and producer Tom Kapinos, is an existential conundrum: a painfully real show flourishing in an atmosphere of complete unreality. Los Angeles is a city that has always played by its own peculiar rules, confounding the rest of society at large. This quirk of existence is a fact not lost on our protagonist, novelist Hank Moody (David Duchovny). Transplanted to LA from his native NYC by a seemingly serendipitous turn of events, Hank is constantly and often violently at odds with his adopted city and the version of reality that rules there. An old-fashioned guy caught in the midst of the screaming fast pace and ugly indifference of Southern California, Hank maintains an attitude of disgust: disgust at the starry-eyed text-talking young women of LA, disgust at the Hollywood crowd who have summarily butchered his 'staggering work of heart-breaking genius' and then immortalized the carcass as a piece of saccharine-laced film, and above all, disgust at himself for falling prey to the Hollywood lifestyle.

The audience soon learns the real root of Hank's towering self-loathing: he's recently lost Karen (Natascha McElhone), the only woman he's ever loved, to Bill, a man that Hank despises as an archetypical specimen of all the things he hates about California. Hank is a walking talking mid-life crisis mess. Devastated by the success of the horrid film adaptation of his best novel, set adrift without Karen, and without his precocious pop-punk-goth daughter Becca (picture a much more annoying version of Wednesday Addams), Hank wallows is self-hate, self-pity, and enough booze and women to take the edge off. On top of this, Hank suffers from epic writer's block. As the money dries up, Hank turns to peddling his prose as a blogger for an alternative news magazine owned by, you guessed it, his arch-nemesis Bill.

While his blogging is razor-sharp, sardonically exposing the seedy underbelly of LA, Hank is still unable to make an iota of progress on a new novel. He spends his days listlessly trawling for his next sexual conquest, searching out anything with tits and ass, enacting his indirect revenge out on Karen, who he still desperately loves and wastes no opportunity trying to lure back. For his part, while a bit distant and boring, Bill is hardly a bad guy. He seems almost infinitely tolerant of Hank's continued presence in Becca's and Karen's lives, as well as Hank's less-than-kosher relationship with Bill's 16-year-old daughter Mia (Madeline Zima).

The first season of "Californication" is astoundingly, painfully good. The writing is perfect, the storylines engaging on multiple levels. Each show is alternatingly hilarious, sexy, and emotionally raw. Duchovny brings Moody to life with his characteristic dry-as-the-desert humor and careworn features, portraying Moody as largely apathetic about his various debaucheries, a man just a step above rock bottom, but for whom hope apparently springs eternal. Best of all, Natascha McElhone, who I've always found to be rather plain and uncompelling, is positively radiant here as Karen, a woman caught between a decent man that she may not love, and a depraved wretch that nevertheless owns a large part of her heart.

The show's only detractors, other than the annoying Becca, are the title sequence, which features a fairly heinous song and plays like an early '90s show intro; and the season finale. As often happens with TV series, the season finale becomes a free-for-all where the previous rules and feel of the show tend to get thrown out the window in favor of cliffhanger shock value. While "Californication"'s season one ending is a bit of a shocker, if it pans out, it would more or less destroy the central dynamic of the entire show. Here's to hoping that the ending is just one of Hank's ubiquitous dream sequences.

Storyline & plot: 9/10
Cinematography & effects: 6/10
Music & mood: 6/10
Performances: 9/10

The Reverend says: 8/10