"Californication"

2007-2014
-created by tom kapinos
This show, about "bad boy" novelist hank moody (david duchovny - KALIFORNIA, THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW) bursts out of the gate with hip, bawdy hilarity. By the fourth season, that thrust peters out...but they muddle on. I would say the high point is the moment when the eighteen year-old who was sixteen when she seduced him, gets in bed with hank and the woman who plays her in the movie version of their affair, and they both reach into his pants together...but truth be told, the show's moralizing cracks are already beginning to show by that point. The show's fatal flaw is that the lead character would never watch this crap, especially when all that's left is the realization that hank is in no way actually subversive. Instead of articulately defending his libertine ways, he embraces all the judeo-christian-muslim morality being dumped on him, and becomes that most loathsome creature of all - a hypocrite. A damn shame, too - the dialogue and acting in the racier parts are often delightful (the intimate scenes less well-written). It all makes you wish they'd had one more writer on staff, someone like...well, hank as he originally almost was. Watch the first few seasons, then get out before the Hallmark era descends.