Ever in search of that elusive good television program to help pass the time between seasons of LOST, I have stumbled upon the Showtime program Californication, which I hesitate to refer to by name due to its being embarrassingly confusable with the Red Hot Chili Peppers album of same name. Phew, long opening sentence! We watched the pilot episode two nights ago, and then skipped ahead to episode six, then went back to episode four last night. It’s no LOST, that’s for sure.

I will address the numerous liberties the creators have taken in developing a plot in a moment, but first I want to mention the writing. It is atrocious. More so than with an epic prime-time drama, it is unacceptable for a program’s writing to be called into question when its central character is himself a writer. How can a series evolve into something special when it revolves around an author who speaks mostly in cliches, and never seems to deliver any effective, thought-provoking rhetoric? Are we to believe that the guy is so troubled he is utterly incapable of saying anything inspiring? I mean, I hardly consider myself to be a writer, but even I utter more expressive, stimulating thoughts in a day than Hank Moody (David Duchovny) does in one twenty-eight minute episode.

The writing deficiency is not just limited to Duchovny’s character, either. It is a pandemic. It is my belief that there have been way too many topical references in TV shows for the past few years, but Californication really ups the ante as far as “Google” “MySpace” “YouTube” “blog” and other timely references are concerned. What drives me crazy about television shows like Family Guy is how temporal the writing is. What the hell significance is a joke about MySpace going to have in a future where MySpace has been rendered superficial or worse, completely forgotten? The name-checking of of-the-moment trends is not a harbinger of quality writing. I call this the Juno effect. If anyone gives a shit about that movie in five years, I’ll buy you all steaks.

If the writing of the show is irksome, the general scope of the plot is downright implausible. I’m sorry, but I have to take umbrage at the intentions of creator Tom Kapinos. I understand that most folks watch TV because they’re looking to escape their otherwise mundane lives, but come on…authors aren’t rock stars who can fuck anybody they desire. Women aren’t lining up to fuck The New York Times’ best sellers. Sixteen year old bombshells won’t lie about their age to fuck James Patterson or John Grisham. I keep thinking that writer/creator Kapinos simply dreams of being David Duchovny’s character, and he gets off on fantasies of himself reliving the experiences he writes into each episode. For a guy whose only career credit before creating Californication was working on Dawson’s Creek, can you blame him?

The sole purpose for watching this show is to see lots and lots of topless women, like the “sixteen year old” — and even that is uncomfortable, seeing as how she used to play the little girl on The Nanny — and Rachel Miner from the Larry Clark flick Bully. It’s also inspiring in the sense that it makes me feel the familiar urge to get off my ass and write more. Why? So that I can hopefully someday provide entertainment for you that isn’t steeped in overt trashiness and lowest-common-denominator jokes. Yeah, I need to start writing again.

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