Californication
So I've been catching up on Californication and it's... interesting. I really enjoyed the 1st season. It was raunchy and gritty and yes, very male-fantasy-focused, but in a way that I consider good fun sometimes. I read reviews complaining about it being misogynistic, but I didn't consider it particularly so. It was obviously written by men and the female characters weren't the best developed, yes, but that sort of goes with the territory when you're telling the story from the pov of a guy who's your classic embittered drinking-and-smoking-and-womanizing author. It was kind of silly sometimes how much play Hank Moody (the main character) got--I was rolling my eyes at women stopped next to him at red lights giving him their number uninvited (come on, David Duchovny isn't THAT hot)--but he also got his comeuppance with women occasionally. Thinking back on it, even in the 1st season, I don't think there was one single woman that Hank found attractive who didn't either end up sleeping with him or wanted to, but the plot didn't throw it in your face so much then. And the continuing storyline of him trying to win back the mother of his child, and his depression and aimlessness amid his hedonistic lifestyle, at least provided a nice sentimental balance.
But with the finale of the first season on, the 2nd season has just become awful and ridiculous. Attempting to win his lady love back is no longer in play (for various reasons), and Hank is still depressed and aimless amid even greater debauchery, but after the 1st season it just seems redundant. And the show has started to focus on the debauchery more, with a less critical slant, and to deal with its fallout less. Even as it presents Hank in clearly self-destructive situations, more and more the show seems to cast a fascinated and admiring gaze at both Hank and his shenanigans, in spite of their consequences. In the first season, he came across as damaged but compelling. Now, he's become some kind of antihero we're supposed to revere for his very damages.
And the show has also gone from being somewhat misogynistic and something of a male fantasy to just being an all-out over-the-top base male ego wankfest.
In the 1st season, Hank flirts with a cute girl at a supermarket buying wine, she follows him home, and sleeps with him. Then she robs him, but comes back to return his stuff because he treated her so nicely the night before. Acceptable fantasy.
In the 2nd season, he runs into her again, and she is just GAGGING to have a repeat of their go-around. She tells him how much she'd like to enjoy his carnal pleasures once more while "seductively" sucking on a Popsicle that she pops into his mouth as she leaves. That, my friends, is ohmygod cliche and just preposterous fantasy.
In the 1st season, Hank picks up a woman at a bar that he thinks is joking about being a prostitute, who turns out to in fact not have been joking. Even though he had not realized the situation, she insists on charging him anyway, and when he can't pay her pimp beats him up.
In the 2nd season, she comes back to tell him that even though she's a hooker, she enjoyed her tryst with him so much, and he was totally truly one of the best she's had, and she was really sad he never called her again to ask her out on a "proper" date. She spends quite a while detailing just how good he was in bed.
He goes to get a vasectomy, and the hot nurse tells him he's got a "great looking cock" and that she'd love to help him out get it back in working order. Come on! When does a vasectomy nurse compliment a patient's goods, or even care--and where would she ever offer herself up on the spot, except in really cheesy porn? And Californication, apparently.
He goes to the house of a married hottie who's off limits, and she has an equally hot Latina maid (in a perfectly fitted maid's uniform of course, of the kind real maids would never wear for fear of busting a seam when they do the floors). The husband is in a coercive relationship with the maid, but of course the maid wants nothing more than to make it with Hank about an hour after she meets him, because he's so charming. Part of his wonderful charm? He assumes for some reason that she doesn't speak English and attempts to monologue at her in terrible Spanglish as a way of making conversation. Mostly about what a bitch his ex is. Most normal universe ladies would find that racist and tiresome, but here it's the way for a hot hook-up.
He meets a female Rolling Stone writer who calls herself a feminist and once wrote a scathing review of him where she called him a "misogynistic prick no one would ever want to fuck"--and of course ends up asking to fuck him. And it's sooooo goood that she has to take a break in the middle to catch her breath. Of course.
There are a lot more pure misogyny bits, but I'm actually having the most trouble with these outrageously ludicrous teenage fantasy bits that are presented as serious plot development. I say "teenage fantasy" but I think even teenagers have more sophisticated fantasies than what this show peddles. (At one point another character finds himself having--nay, forced!--to fuck a porn star on camera when the lead male actor is incapacitated. He does this with permission and pressure from his wife, in order to salvage their investment in the flick. As he goes off to nobly bang the porn starlet he's obviously been fantasizing about, he whispers to his wife "I'm doing this for us, honey." She looks at him lovingly, and squeezes his hand.)
Anyway, if the show continues like this, I am in shock that this got 4 seasons on the air.
But with the finale of the first season on, the 2nd season has just become awful and ridiculous. Attempting to win his lady love back is no longer in play (for various reasons), and Hank is still depressed and aimless amid even greater debauchery, but after the 1st season it just seems redundant. And the show has started to focus on the debauchery more, with a less critical slant, and to deal with its fallout less. Even as it presents Hank in clearly self-destructive situations, more and more the show seems to cast a fascinated and admiring gaze at both Hank and his shenanigans, in spite of their consequences. In the first season, he came across as damaged but compelling. Now, he's become some kind of antihero we're supposed to revere for his very damages.
And the show has also gone from being somewhat misogynistic and something of a male fantasy to just being an all-out over-the-top base male ego wankfest.
In the 1st season, Hank flirts with a cute girl at a supermarket buying wine, she follows him home, and sleeps with him. Then she robs him, but comes back to return his stuff because he treated her so nicely the night before. Acceptable fantasy.
In the 2nd season, he runs into her again, and she is just GAGGING to have a repeat of their go-around. She tells him how much she'd like to enjoy his carnal pleasures once more while "seductively" sucking on a Popsicle that she pops into his mouth as she leaves. That, my friends, is ohmygod cliche and just preposterous fantasy.
In the 1st season, Hank picks up a woman at a bar that he thinks is joking about being a prostitute, who turns out to in fact not have been joking. Even though he had not realized the situation, she insists on charging him anyway, and when he can't pay her pimp beats him up.
In the 2nd season, she comes back to tell him that even though she's a hooker, she enjoyed her tryst with him so much, and he was totally truly one of the best she's had, and she was really sad he never called her again to ask her out on a "proper" date. She spends quite a while detailing just how good he was in bed.
He goes to get a vasectomy, and the hot nurse tells him he's got a "great looking cock" and that she'd love to help him out get it back in working order. Come on! When does a vasectomy nurse compliment a patient's goods, or even care--and where would she ever offer herself up on the spot, except in really cheesy porn? And Californication, apparently.
He goes to the house of a married hottie who's off limits, and she has an equally hot Latina maid (in a perfectly fitted maid's uniform of course, of the kind real maids would never wear for fear of busting a seam when they do the floors). The husband is in a coercive relationship with the maid, but of course the maid wants nothing more than to make it with Hank about an hour after she meets him, because he's so charming. Part of his wonderful charm? He assumes for some reason that she doesn't speak English and attempts to monologue at her in terrible Spanglish as a way of making conversation. Mostly about what a bitch his ex is. Most normal universe ladies would find that racist and tiresome, but here it's the way for a hot hook-up.
He meets a female Rolling Stone writer who calls herself a feminist and once wrote a scathing review of him where she called him a "misogynistic prick no one would ever want to fuck"--and of course ends up asking to fuck him. And it's sooooo goood that she has to take a break in the middle to catch her breath. Of course.
There are a lot more pure misogyny bits, but I'm actually having the most trouble with these outrageously ludicrous teenage fantasy bits that are presented as serious plot development. I say "teenage fantasy" but I think even teenagers have more sophisticated fantasies than what this show peddles. (At one point another character finds himself having--nay, forced!--to fuck a porn star on camera when the lead male actor is incapacitated. He does this with permission and pressure from his wife, in order to salvage their investment in the flick. As he goes off to nobly bang the porn starlet he's obviously been fantasizing about, he whispers to his wife "I'm doing this for us, honey." She looks at him lovingly, and squeezes his hand.)
Anyway, if the show continues like this, I am in shock that this got 4 seasons on the air.