Having generally worn out its welcome several seasons earlier, “Californication” ended its seven season run Sunday with the kind of whimper Hank Moody himself would disdain.
The series about a writer who dissipated his life and destroyed his most important relationships featured little or no actual writing.
From the first, it was clear that the central character — Hank, played so loconically by David Duchovny he could have been sleepwalking —should have made up as soon as possible with his longtime partner Karen. There was never anybody in the series — and few on all of TV — as alluring and smart as the character played by Natascha McElhone.
And yet he had to ping pong to other women and other gigs — always yearning to go back to Karen and occasionally succeeding only to muck it up again.
By series’ end, even an idiot knew they’d finally get back together, and so they did, in a plane en route to their daughter’s New York wedding.
Corny enough, but all during a montage of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” — a song about as middle-aged and overused as Hank himself — we see all the other coupling that occurs, a happy ending as neat as it is unconvincing.
The seventh season has seen Hank become a TV writer and discover a son he had from a previous marriage — an unlikable brat named Lucas (Oliver Cooper). That his mother Julia was played by Heather Graham made Hank a little interested in revisiting his past.
He became a role model for the kid, enough that they did bong hits with one another other bad habits were passed along. By Sunday’s episode, the best Hank could do for his “Father Knows Best” moment was to admonish him: “No more hookers!”
The episode began with Hank still in disbelief about the marriage of his daughter Becca (Madeleine Martin), who suddenly popped up after a long absence. He has a nightmare that she jumps from a bridge and says he half expects Ashton Kutcher to show up (a “Punk’d” reference, indicating just how creaky this show has gotten).
Hank sets up Lucas with a girl who previously was one of his students, Tara, and the two start a possible relationship shakily (the kid has practically no social skills).
Marcy (Pamela Adlon, who also finished up the season as romantic interest of “Louie”) is still going through with sleeping with Stu for $1 million and Charlie (Evan Handler) can barely come to terms with it (even though Marcy, in previous seasons, had lived with and married Stu). In the end Marcy can’t go through with it and is grossed out by seeing Stu’s own Marcy love doll (though it can’t be too much more gross than everything else that happens on the series).
Charlie tries to console himself with one of the two hookers that Krull (Steve Jones, the ex-Sex Pistol) brings over but isn’t up to it. Eventually he goes over to Stu’s to put a stop to it. Marcy wasn’t going to go through with it anyway, but he still gets the credit. More than that Stu decides to give them the money anyway. Because happy endings are incongruous like that.
Back home, Charlie’s jilted hooker — played by Kelen Coleman, familiar from a bunch of things but including “Newsroom” and the upcoming sitcom “The McCartnys” — tries to entice Hank, but he turns her down, just as he did with Julia, who was coming on to him.
Instead, he arranges a dinner with Julia , but only so she can meet Rick Rath (Michael Imperioli, who was pretty good this season), the head writer on the TV show Hank was working on.
The only writing Hank does is to type up a letter to Karen that she refuses to read, so he reads it aloud on the plane. And it’s pretty awful, if this is an indication of his writing genius. But it wins Karen’s heart and that of other women on the plane.
And during the super corny Elton John montage we see all the couples supposedly left happily ever after: Hank and Karen, Marcy and Charlie, Stu and his love doll, Lucas and Tara, Julia and Rick Rath.
Add one more: The long suffering viewer and his Sunday nights, free forevermore of this low grade dead end.