Californication’s slow march to….

I was beating myself up a bit recently for not having reviewed last week’s episode of Californication. Truth be told, I tried, but there was literally nothing to say about an episode that found Becca and boyfriend Tyler (Scott Michael Foster) breaking up, and Charlie making a move on his son’s new nanny. It wasn’t that I found it to be bad or boring — two things I don’t think one could ever say about this show — but the thirty minutes moved the needle so minutely that there was little on which to comment.

In a way the same could be said for this week’s episode. But then, by week two that’s already something of note: What is it about the main theme of Californication’s fifth season that results in such little weekly plot development? The answer? The time jump left the weekly episodes behind to play catch-up.

Think about it. Every season on the show could broadly be described as Hank trying to get his life with Karen and Becca back. I’m not saying the show’s redundant … rather, that’s what this show is all about. A man whose life is so stunted that he’s never matured into the husband/father that these two women need him to be. And we love him every time he makes the same mistakes over and over again.

But this time the show jumped ahead three years into the future. Now Becca has a serious boyfriend and an adult life, and Karen is remarried to a man in many ways just like Hank. But because the show has told us that rather than allowing the story to organically evolve, we still have to watch as Hank grows into the developments. Karen’s been married for a while now, but this is the first we’re seeing Hank come face-to-face with that reality, and the writers have understandably chosen to have Hank still in the midst of coming to terms with that truth. But because it’s already happened, and isn’t going to change, the show feels a little like it’s running (okay, walking) while standing still.

What is evolving is the increasingly odd path of sexual deviancy that Charlie’s been traveling down ever since he and Marcy first split up. I don’t know how he was about to score the nanny, but his own inability to normally be with a normal woman blew that chance for him. Instead, he wound up with a virgin for a blind date … who he quickly managed to destroy by giving her what could only be described as the most disappointing first time experience for a person who’d been waiting to have sex for years and then finally decided to just get it over with already. He should have at least offered her to try again.

I’m beginning to wonder where this season is headed. Not that I could have predicted season four’s ending — or the giant leap made between seasons four and five — but at least the rape trial gave the season some form. If I had to guess I’d say that this season is about Hank and Becca repairing their relationship, although I could see Hank learning something from Tyler’s mistreatment of Becca and winning yet another shot with Karen. Hey, it could happen.

How about you? Where do you see Hank and this “bunch of very entertaining narcissists” going this season?

“There’s certainly nothing gay about having one’s prostate stimulated.” – Richard Bates to the dinner table

Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jan 31, 2012 @ 11:00 EST5EDT