Californication: Or, Mulder Does the Wild Thing (a lot)
Sometimes I think that the problem with TV shows and books and movies is that writers write them. The very fact that a writer is doing the writing casts a heavy pall of dubiety upon the enterprise from the get-go.
Ladies and gentlemen, presented for your consideration: Californication, premiering tonight on Showtime right after the season opener of Weeds.
This has to be a great time-slot for a new show. For one thing it’s following a series that’s already pretty popular. For another thing most of the people who watch Weeds are stoners and they’re going to be getting high while watching it. This means that they’re probably going to be too stoned to change the channel when the show’s over, and it’s also going to mean that they’re not going to be excessively critical. I’m sure Showtime would do fine if they simply ran some old Star Treks after Weeds. But you have to hand it to them, they’ve produced this new series, Californication, and, even though I watched the preview version unstoned (unfortunately), the show doesn’t totally suck.
The star of our show is David Duchovny. Say what you will about Duchovny and his abilities as an actor, he managed to pull off that rare feat, he brought to life an entertaining and memorable character in a long-running TV series: good old Fox Mulder of The X-Files: brilliant, wry, celibate, and slightly damaged Mulder. Thanks to this role Duchovny will never die.
But if an actor is to be an actor then he must keep acting, even if his greatest role is already behind him. So here’s Duchovny, back on TV. Can he do what James Garner and Bob Newhart and Andy Griffith and Jack Klugman did? Like those giants can he create another loveable lead role in a whole new successful TV series?
Well, who the hell knows. I couldn’t tell you from the première of Californication. As I said, the show doesn’t totally suck. And, besides Duchovny, it’s got this great British actress Natascha McElhone, for whom I’ve had the hots ever since she played a renegade Irish gunwoman in Ronin. Her role isn’t so cool in this show, she doesn’t get to shoot anybody, at least not yet (although I would like it very much if she would).
I hate recount-the-plot reviews, so all I’m going to tell you is that Duchovny plays a fucked-up writer in L.A. Despite being fucked-up and despite being a writer he gets laid. He gets laid a lot. Oh, if real life were only like that. This is where we get into the problem of shows being written by these writer-people. Come on — a show about a writer who gets laid a lot? What is this, Fantasy Island Redux? Okay, sure, the writer in question is David Duchovny. I can buy David Duchovny getting laid a lot. But David Duchovny is David Duchovny. Of course he’s going to get his end wet now and then. But a writer who looks like David Duchovny, and who is as cool as Duchovny? Only a writer would dream up such a conceit. Writers don’t look like David Duchovny. (And, no, they absolutely do not look like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard.) Writers are short, bald, dumpy, and lacking in social graces. And that’s just the women writers. The male writers are really unattractive.
So, okay, this is a fantasy world. It’s a TV show; what the hell, if you want realism watch Jerry Springer.
I suppose I should deal briefly with Duchovny’s fucked-upness, since that’s sort of what the show is about, besides him getting laid. Okay, his longtime girlfriend McElhone has left him, taking their twelve-year-old daughter (who looks disturbingly like a miniature 19-year-old art student), and of course McElhone is getting ready to marry some other dude whom we haven’t met yet, but if we do I suppose he’ll be even a bigger ass than Duchovny is in the show. And, yes, Duchovny’s character is a major ass; but, unlike you or me or anyone we know, he’s a charming ass. A rogue. A charming rogue. Chicks dig him, even though he’s a writer. (I guess they never heard that old Hollywood joke about the dumb actress. Oh, you never heard that one. Okay, here it is: this one actress was so dumb she fucked the writer. Sorry, I didn’t make it up.)
So what can I say, if you’re a Weeds fan, fire up an extra doobie and hang in there for Californication. Guys might dig the show because you have a dude who doesn’t seem to have a lot going on, but he looks like David Duchovny, and he gets off some good bitter lines, and he gets laid. He gets laid a lot. Women might dig it because it’s got David Duchovny, and after watching him not get laid for ten years in X-Files maybe they won’t mind seeing him get laid, a lot, now.
Poor Natascha McElhone is stuck playing the ex-girlfriend, and that’s a drag, because that’s all the character is right now: the ex-girlfriend. McElhone deserves better and I hope the writers give her better.
Showtime’s calling the show a comedy. Is the show funny? Well, sorry, Showtime, Seinfeld or King of the Hill or Malcolm in the Middle this show is not. It’s not even Becker, but then it’s not trying to be a funny ha ha show like those shows. It’s trying to be dramatic also, and I wish they wouldn’t try, because the drama is cliché: Dude is fucked up because he wants to get back with his longtime girlfriend, um — no. Somehow I’m just not buying it. And I’m especially not buying it (spoiler alert!) when they play Elton John’s “Rocket Man†over a slightly sappy montage at the end, and it’s not even Elton singing but some other sensitive motherfucker.
But I like Duchovny. I like him in the role. I like the way he plays it. The man is a charmer. And McElhone is a brilliant actress in search of a role. I just wish there was a better show for them both to play in. Or, failing that, that I had some pot to watch the show with.
(This has been another fine Newcritics exclusive for Desilu Productions. Go to my joint for more cheap thrills.)
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Yes! Exactly! It's very disturbing.
And you're dead on about the waste of McElhone, who, by the way, was also good in Laurel Canyon.
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Oh Dan, were thinking of me? I'm on your mind even when you're watching David Duchovny aspire to Jack Klugman heights, a show that doesn't suck?
Don't tell Manny: he doesn't like it when I resort to artifice. But just to put the clamoring masses off, I sometimes wear very impressive stillettoes, corsetry, and, well, I might need to beg and borrow for it, but someone I know must own a wig.
Aside from that, though: Did you say, dubiety?
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Hey, Beth, I feel you. To be honest I would watch this show again, but then again I watch "Becker" and "Still Standing" re-runs. Maybe Showtime has some sort of cheap try-out deal? Or you could always just think about something else for a year and then check out the show when it comes out on DVD.
Evan, as a staunch Bukowski fan I have to say you've nailed me dead to rights. But then, speaking of Bukowski, I watched this show after a brutal shift at my job and after drinking some several alcoholic beverages, drinking a couple more bevs while watching it, and then wrote the first draft of my review while drinking several more drinks. I then passed out and got up and went to my job again. Then had several more drinks, and, while drinking a couple more, "polished" my review, all of this in an attempt to get the review in on time for the première day. So no wonder my review makes no sense.
Kathleen, when I mentioned short bald and dumpy female writers I meant to add "present company excepted".
Did I really use the word "dubiety"? And even worse, I used the word "sucks" and I promised Blue Girl that the next article I wrote wouldn't have that unpleasant word in it. I forgot. I suck.
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Maybe I've just been listening to too much Amy Winehouse (up for a little "suckery" anyone?)
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its funny, hank is hot and the cruelty in it is awsome!!!
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