There’s nothing but bad news if your name is Hank Moody or Charlie Runkle. Hank’s ill-fated tongue left him without a bond to get bailed on. Becca delivers Hank a message that Karen was leaving him in slammer to teach him a lesson.
Meanwhile, Charlie’s assistant Dani reveals a deftly edited video of Charlie masturbating on countless occasions in his office to the president of their agency. Needless to say, Charlie gets the boot. A few lines of coke later and Charlie is crying like a sick puppy that his career as an agent is over.
In jail, Hank meets up with Lew Ashby, the man whose woman Hank had mouth raped. Ashby ends up more than bailing Hank out of jail. He also bails Hank out of his financial rut and breathes new hope to Charlie’s misdirected life by offering Hank the opportunity to write his long-awaited biography.
This kind of luck can only happen in Hollywood.
On the home front, Becca gives Karen a guilt complex for not bailing out her father. In a textbook cliche line, Becca tells her mom to love the man she has and not the man she wants Hank to be. Unfortunately, this also leaves Karen wondering if she made the right choice of jumping into Hank’s beat up car at the end of season 1.
I have the sneaking suspicion that Karen will not return for a Season 3 of Californication. To keep the story fresh, Hank may have to exist in a Karen-less world. That would suck to no end. I’ve come to love Karen’s character and her internal strength and fortitude. I’d really like to see her character grow. Unfortunately, as the story stands, Californication is not written to allow Karen’s character to grow outside of Hank. And, there is only so much back-and-forth conflict that can go on between the Hank and Karen before it becomes overtly monotonous.
So an inevitable character write-off may be in the not to distant future.
I miss the old hank moody. He’s a wous now. He reminds me of Vince in Entourage before they shot Aquaman. When vince had that girlfriend that he fell head over heals for and became a loser.