It is Hollywood’s odd fantasy about itself that it is more hedonistic and corrupting than anywhere else in America. And the golden-oldie music cues-Rolling Stones, Elton John-thumbtack Hank to his Romantic wishfulness, his wall-to-wall nostalgia for himself.īut I have my doubts. The breasts-all three pairs-are firm but bouncy. The jokes-about cell phones, blow jobs, and nuns-are passable. Martin and Zima, on opposite sides of the Lolita line, are both keepers. Handler seems as usual to seethe, as if his psychic baggage were a portmanteau containing equal parts helpless resentments and embarrassing secrets. You have to grow up to get her little boys need not apply. McElhone, à la Rene Russo, manages to convey the notion of adult womanhood without being either drippy or schoolmarmish about it. Here he delivers a tousled sort of aw-shucks Huck Finn, lighting out for erotic territories. Some of his best moments on The X Files were spent making fun of himself and, while he was at it, sending up the paranoid eschatology of the woo-woo series. The executive producers are Tom Kapinos, who created the series and used to write for Dawson’s Creek, and Scott Winant, a veteran of thirtysomething, My So-Called Life, and Dead Like Me.ĭark comedy suits insouciant Duchovny. The other regulars include Evan Handler ( Sex and the City, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip) as Hank’s worried agent, Charlie, who gets him an online sex-writing gig, and Madeline Zima ( The Nanny) as Mia, a slinky, novel-reading, surprise package of jailbait. Becca, played by super-savvy Broadway wondergirl Madeleine Martin ( A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, The Pillowman), is only mildly disconcerted to find naked women in her father’s bed, but she has a harder time slipping back and forth across the border between warring parents like a refugee, a smuggler, or a spy. So Karen has taken their 12-year-old daughter, Becca, in search of someone more authentic. Since arriving in Los Angeles, all that Hank has done at his computer is Google himself. Karen, played by a Natascha McElhone so resourceful that she can also be seen this week as a Hungarian freedom fighter in TNT’s CIA mini-series The Company, is less interested in money than in truth-in-advertising. Which is certainly how he presents himself as Hank Moody, a New York writer who sold his novel and his soul to Hollywood who, behind vampire shades, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth like a fuse, tools around town in a black T-shirt and a sporty convertible and who hasn’t been able to write an honest sentence since Karen, the mother of his child, left him and wound up with some square who makes money instead of art. Or maybe all those nipples are actually eyes, watching David Duchovny be a bad boy. Since the entire pilot episode is only a half-hour long, it’s almost as if, on premium cable, nurturing were the thesis, the subtext, and the leitmotif. Not that I’m complaining, exactly, but two different pairs of naked female breasts show up in the first eight minutes of Californication, and a third pair just before the seventeen-minute mark. With the instrumentalists' interplay at an all-time telepathic high and Kiedis peaking as a vocalist, Californication is a bona fide Chili Peppers classic.Illustration by Sean McCabe Photo: Courtesy of Showtime And like their 1992 introspective hit "Under the Bridge," there are even a few mellow moments - "Porcelain," "Road Trippin'," and the title track. The quartet's trademark punk-funk can be sampled on such tracks as "Around the World," "I Like Dirt," and "Parallel Universe," but the more pop-oriented material proves to be a pleasant surprise - "Scar Tissue," "Otherside," "Easily," and "Purple Stain" all contain strong melodies and instantly memorable choruses. Anthony Kiedis' vocals have improved dramatically as well, while the rhythm section of bassist Flea and drummer Chad Smith remains one of rock's best. Frusciante was a main reason for such past band classics as 1989's Mother's Milk and 1991's Blood Sugar Sex Magik, and proves once and for all to be the quintessential RHCP guitarist. An obvious reason for their rebirth is the reappearance of guitarist John Frusciante (replacing Dave Navarro), who left the Peppers in 1992 and disappeared into a haze of hard drugs before cleaning up and returning to the fold in 1998. Many figured that the Red Hot Chili Peppers' days as undisputed alternative kings were numbered after their lackluster 1995 release One Hot Minute, but like the great phoenix rising from the ashes, this legendary and influential outfit returned back to greatness with 1999's Californication.
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