By Curt Schleier

After a brief one-episode hiatus, CALIFORNIATION is starting to heat up again – in more ways than one.  This time out of the gate, the show is a perfect mix of sex, humor and pathos, especially the last. 

Hank Moody’s daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin) is not particularly optimistic about life. She reads her dad a Robert Frost poem she likes because of its message, “How nothing good ever lasts.  It all turns to shit like you and mom.”

Moody (David Duchovny) wants her to hold on to the possibilities.  “Happy endings may get a bad rep” he tells her.  “But they do happen.”

In fact, he’s hoping for one himself.  “Action between him and Karen (Natascha McElhone) heated up a tad in the last episode, and this time around, he tells her, “I hope to get to second base.”

Moody is not the only one who may be getting action this week.  His agent Charlie (Evan Handler) has not been doing the nasty with his wife Marcy (Pamela Adlon) of late.  Partly this is due to the guilt he feels for spending office time spanking his assistant, Dani (Rachel Miner), but a solution may be at hand.  To spark things up, Marcy wants to try a threesome – and with Dani no less.

Even Moody looks like he’s getting closer to Karen.  She’s an architect and he arranges a really great commission for her.  To celebrate, he may have a threesome of his own – Hank, Karen and Becca for dinner.  And Becca has to go to sleep some time.


But Becca’s right.  Good things don’t last.  Marcy and Dani are just getting into it when the former stops to admire the latter’s bra. “This is not how it’s supposed to be,” Charlie explains.  From there on it goes from bad to Robert Frost’s verse.  Happiness really doesn’t last.  Dani supplies nipple clamps and after putting one on Charlie, Marcy gets the other caught on her lingerie; when she gets up to walk away she takes part of his nipple with her.  Instead of a ménage a trios, they wind up in the emergency room.

And things don’t go better for Moody.  He’s at the door with the cheese delight he cooked for his family when Karen announces she has to leave.  Her fiancé’s daughter is in some kind of trouble.  She’s cried wolf before, so Hank is skeptical.  But he goes along with Karen anyway.  They save Mia (Madeline Zima) who overdosed, but the evening is ruined.  When he returns Becca tells him:


“You tell me you never let me down but you do.  It’s all well and good to talk about happy endings, but if a person can’t deliver or keeps screwing up, you eventually have to say ‘fuck you’ – or words to that effect.”

You can’t argue with that.