For the uninitiated, here's an overview clip:
But as Alex shuns and Denis mulls, there are more things bugging me about the show than loving about it right now.
Like Duchovny's character name, Hank Moody. He's a sarcastic, self-loathing, mid-life crisis case...oh, I get it now.
The opening title sequence felt wrong. Jittery home-movies (a la Wonder Years) of Duchovny and his ex-wife and his kid in what appear to be happier times set to a rockin' upbeat diddy just didn't jive with the show I was watching. Too bad The Red Hot Chili Pepper's tune wasn't available (I read somewhere it had already been bought by Disney for a theme park ride).
Moody smokes, but Duchovny's not a smoker. Sorry, but non-smoking actors trying to pull off smoking always comes off unconvincing...major buggage.
Duchovny's ex, played by the lovely and talented Natascha McElhone, smiles too much...at him and his little quips especially. He's been nothing but clingy and annoying while clearly living in the past and yet she won't just tell him to F*** off. If this is to set up the two of them getting back together, I won't buy it.
The blogging gig Duchovny takes to try to break his writers block clearly points the series in the direction of being a male variation of Sex In The City (with some of Entourage's west coast attitude thrown in). I don't know why that bugs me but it does.
And speaking of sex...all that sex, I now seen it's being depicted like Sex In The City sex...or more specifically, Kim Cattrall SITC sex - as in: Smash cut to the bedroom for effect or shock or laughs, as opposed to sexy sex. That wouldn't bug me per say, but the series has been sold so far as 'ground-breakingly' sexual. Misleading.
And the biggest bugaboo...believing that 21 year old actress Madeline Zima (Mia) is supposed to be sixteen. The big shocking twist of the pilot hung on that fact, and a lot of the complication of the second episode hinged on it as well. She looks and acts too old. Never. Bought. It. For. A. Second.
Californication feels like it's still trying to figure out what it is or what it wants to be. A single man in his 40's tries to find sex, love, happiness, and more sex in LA? Or a writer distraught by the breakup of his family tries to get back together with the mother of his child?
The XXX Files? Or The Ex Files?
We shall see.