My Thoughts On Californication "Exile On Main St"

"You're not a piece of shit Hank, on paper or otherwise."


Hank Moody thinking of himself as a bad guy is nothing new. He’s had moments like this throughout Californication’s run. For the first time however, we the audience need the reassurance that we are not supporting a bad guy. Is Charlie’s assertion that Hank is not a piece of shit enough? That remains to be seen, but at this moment in time, Charlie is all Hank has. No longer does he have Karen or Becca to reassure him that his screw ups are merely just him being a loveable jackass.

Season 4 opens up 72 hours after Season 3 ended. Hank has spent the weekend in jail on assault charges. While in jail, everything Hank was hiding in his life has come to the forefront, namely the fact that he slept with a 16 year old girl who then later stole his novel about said act and marketed it as her own. He is met hilariously by his agent Charlie with a cigarette, some booze and the classic Hank Moody sunglasses. Hank can not go home because Karen and Becca will both not speak to him. He has a meeting with an attorney (played wonderfully by Carla Gugino) who feels like she can get him off the assault charges despite not getting along with him so well at first. The upside to Hank’s stay in the pokey is he has gained a lot f buzz from the entertainment community. So much so that the book that was revealed to actually be his, “Fucking and Punching”, is now being turned into a movie. Playing the role of Mia will be a young sweetheart actress looking to shed her good girl image named Sasha Bingham. Sasha immediately takes a liking to Hank and makes it her goal to have Hank write the script even though he is less then enthusiastic. Charlie also has something to gain from this as he is promised his old job at UTK if he can get Hank to commit to doing the script. Charlie brings Hank to a rendezvous at Sasha’s hotel room and predictably they sleep together. The next day at Hank’s arraignment he is informed by his lawyer that they are dropping the assault charges but they are arresting him for statutory rape. We end the episode with Hank, yet again, being hauled off to jail

Now that we got all that out of the way, let’s delve into what we saw in a little more depth. Hank is worse off now then at any point we have seen him. Not only is he in serious trouble with the law; but for the first time ever he has screwed up so bad that his family won’t even speak to him. Despite the fact that he was set up and never did know Mia’s true age, he still slept with an under age girl. When Karen says “You stuck your dick in a girl that’s the same age as Becca’s” the words hit the audience almost as hard as they hit Hank. It was almost as though he had never thought about it that way. And it seems that he’s finally gotten himself into something that he can’t just charm his way out of. The beauty in all of Hank’s screw ups are not that he convinces people that the things he does aren’t wrong, but it like he could almost bring you down to his level to understand his worldview. That is one of the things that make him such a great writer. He lets you know why he feels the way he feels.

The rest of the episode is focused on the rest of the world’s perception of Hank. His newly rediscovered celebrity, while welcomed by Charlie is somewhat of a burden to Hank. He just wants to make things right with his family. And after his first novel was turned into a sappy Rom Com, the prospect of him entering the world of movies again is less than ideal. But he knows part of getting his life back together is finding work. We all knew that he would eventually take the job, so when Sasha makes it her personal goal to convince Hank to do the script and to seduce him; we know that she will succeed on both fronts. The scene where they are actually fucking and Hank has her re enact the punching foreplay that he originally had with Mia, was not Hank reliving some sick fantasy, it was Hank asking to be punished for how he has been acting. He wanted to feel pain because he knows he deserves it. And when the pain of the punch was not enough, Hank has a dream in which he sees his two girls at home and how they are dealing with everything. By seeing this in his dreams Hank has to deal with the pain of seeing how much he hurt the only 2 people he loves

So things are set up for a bumpy ride for season 4. We can assume that season will see 3 stories; Hank attempting to reconcile his home life, the film adaptation of Fucking and Punching, and most importantly Hank’s ongoing battle against the charges of statutory rape. With Carla Gugino in the fold and Rob Lowe coming up in the future, the show has its strongest cast to date. The season premiere gave me great hope that this season will continue what has been an amazing ride. Lets just hope that Hank can finally get himself out of this abyss.