If you pay any attention at all to celebrity gossip, then you know that David Duchovny checked himself into a facility to be treated for sex addiction last year. This happened right before the second season of Californication premiered on Showtime. Normally I wouldn’t mention such trivia in a DVD review, but given the promiscuous manner in which his character, Hank Moody, behaves in this series, it’s the obvious elephant in the room. Further, his most famous character, Fox Mulder (of The X-Files), had a fascination with pornography. Given these character stats, it’s now become impossible to entirely separate the dancer from the dance.
It’s not that one should judge any of the work that’s come before Duchovny’s real life problems, but what are we to expect from Hank in Season Three? If the character continues to go down the roads he’s previously traveled, it’s difficult to understand Duchovny as an actor, and any declarations he might make akin to “He’s just a guy I play on a TV show” are unlikely to alleviate the conundrum. Since he must have shot most – if not all of – Season Two before his problems were made public, the issue has less bearing on what’s presented here, but there’s no denying that the further you get sucked into the universe of Californication, you can’t help but wonder what the future will bring, what the whole thing’s really about, and whether or not Duchovny chose the role as an excuse to work through/explore personal issues.
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