Gear up for more outrageous Southern Californian hijinks with Californication: The Second Season. Picking up several months after the end of the previous series, the second season finds sexaholic writer Hank Moody (David Duchovny, in his best role since The X-Files) reunited with his true love, Karen (Natascha McElhone). So far, life has been great for both Hank and Karen — as well as their daughter, Becca (Madeline Martin). But the days of sunshine and happiness soon go awry following a disastrous party at the mansion of music king Lew Ashby (Callum Keith Rennie), who hires Hank to write his biography.
Meanwhile, Hank’s best friend and publisher Charlie (Evan Handler) is all set to fry some of the biggest fish imaginable. First off, he loses his job. Next, his wife Marcy (Pamela Adlon) develops a serious cocaine problem. Thirdly, he starts to fall for a young porn starlet (Carla Gallo), whom he starts to manage so she can get a breakthrough part in Vaginatown, the upcoming period piece (no pun intended) that is supposed to raise the bar in the industry.
That in itself is the best description of this season, folks: a season chock full of unlikable adults behaving badly. And that’s probably what didn’t appeal to me. Sure, the same adults were behaving just as badly in season one (which I absolutely adored), but there was still something human about them. In season two, most everyone just seems to be one-upping Monty Python’s “Most Awful Family In Britain” sketch, with an abundance of drug use, drinking, and sex thrown in for good (?) measure.
Granted, I still enjoyed Californication: The Second Season — just not as much as the first season.
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