Hank Moody's perennial cycle of pursuing, winning back and then driving away Karen, the supposed love of his life, is interrupted by the arrival of a son he never knew he had. In a lot of shows "surprise, you have a kid you didn't know about" suddenly turning up after six seasons would make me roll my eyes. Given this is nigh-pathological womaniser Hank Moody though, it feels if anything, overdue.
Anyway, in between getting to know his 20-21 year old son and trying to win and hold onto a job at a TV show, Hank's got quite a lot on his plate. That means less Karen-chasing than usual, especially since Julia, the mother of his son (whom he dated before Karen), turns out to be still beautiful and vivacious. You're shocked, I am sure.
After the execrable season six, this series of Californication is a welcome return to something approximating the show's best form. It remains crass and crude and the core cast are still pretty horrible people, but there is a sense that they're trying to be a bit less awful at last, and most of the new characters for this year are actually pretty decent sorts. Even Hank's son, who has a pretty high douche factor for a lot of the season, actually takes some steps towards being human near the end.
I'm not sure that I would say that this final season of the show makes up for the missteps of the year before - I'm not sure that anything could make that rot become watchable - but it's a pretty fitting end to the series as a whole: flawed and sometimes cringe-inducing, but still holding out some hope that its better natures will eventually win through.
No comments:
Post a Comment