Californication: The XXX-Files

I don't know why, but when I popped in my DVD of the new Showtime series "Californication", I was expecting it to be bad. I didn't want it to be bad, but I thought it would be. I'm not sure if the ads somehow made it seem dumb. Perhaps the sbect matter seems tried, but not true. Perhaps I was genuinely frightened that David Duchovny, who I really loved in The X-Files (or at least the first 4 or 5 seasons, before I just couldn't keep track of the madness), wouldn't work. He always seemed like such a square as Mulder, and here we're to buy that he is a once-prolific, now blocked, writer in LA, heartbroken over the one that got away, filling the void with many, many hot LA women. And whiskey. He plays, here, a sweet grown boy, filled with darkness and neuroses, balancing, or at least reacting to, a multitude of different relationships. The structure seemed somehow to be cliché city, and so it was the execution that would decide it's merit.

And I am here to announce, for those that haven't assumed the best, or checked it out and judged themselves, that the execution of Claifornication is great. I don't really understand how it is that a premise so obvious can be interesting, but it is. Perhaps it's obvious because, after The Sopranos, all new TV shows are structured on the idea that the protagonist must be hit from many angles of his life, simultaneously, and he must react in a way that's both stronger than you or I, and very reminiscent of what we would do in the same situation. But there's a grace applied to the writing of this show that jumps between the protagonist's different worlds less in a juxtapositionally shocking way, and more in way that leads the audience, or me, anyway, to smile knowingly and say "yep. That's what life's like." Between intimate sexual details being open conversation, and little kids dealing with first crushes, Californication seems to be fascinated with the ways in which a a person can be multiple things to another person. Th writers don't shy away from whatever comes down the pike at them.

Maybe it isn't so interesting a show. Maybe it just feeds us what we all know about love and relationships, and how life is about those things failing, and so it's nice to see a classy fella like Duchovny reinforce it. That he can see the humor in the tangled web, and keep fox-trotting on, is re-assuring. That he can say something hilarious in the face of a bunch of people who are pissed off at him, and smile only for a second before actually responding to their anger, is what's interesting, and charming. In the shiny world of television, everyone is socially successful, but here Duchovny does it with an earnestness. He isn't getting out of trouble with a laugh, just reacting in his half-lidded, impish way. The issue is never circumvented.

It's genuine, and it's very funny, and it's an important series to be airing right now. Netflix that shit.