DVD Review: CALIFORNICATION Season 3

CALIFORNICATION The Third Season

DVD Review by David Blackwell

DETAILS: 341 minutes, blooper reel, Marcie’s Pajama Party featurette, photo gallery, cast bios, first two episodes of THE TUDORS season 4, Ebridge extras (cast interviews)

VIDEO: 1.78:1 (Anamorphic Widescreen)

AUDIO: English 5.1, English 2.0, Spanish Mono

Subtitles: none, only English close captioning

STUDIO: Showtime/ CBS DVD/ Aggressive Mediocrity/ And Then…

RELEASE DATE: 11-16-2010

DISC 1- WISH YOU WERE HERE/ THE LAND OF RAPE AND HONEY/ VERITIES & BALDERDASH/ ZOSO/ SLOW HAPPY BOYS/ GLASS HOUSES/ SO HERE’S THE THING…/ THE APARTMENT

DISC 2- MR. BAD EXAMPLE/ DOGTOWN/ COMINGS AND GOINGS/ MIA CULPA/ blooper reel/ Marcie’s Pajama Party featurette/ photo gallery/ cast bios/ first two episodes of THE TUDORS season 4

Writer Hank Moody (David Duchovny) is up to the same old things as he is left to raise his teenage daughter Becca in Los Angeles while the mother of his child, Karen, is working in New York City. He falls into a teaching job at a college and strikes up affairs with the teaching assistant Jill (for the writing class he is teaching) and one of his students, Jackie (who is also a stripper). Then he flirts with the Dean’s wife (who is also the mother of Becca’s new best friend). Meanwhile, Charlie (Hank’s agent as played by Evan Handler) takes up a job at a new agency to hit it off with his sexual harassing boss (Kathleen Turner) and signs Rick Springfield (who is a womanizing prick). Also Charlie sir forced to move back into the house that he and Marcie (his soon-to-be ex-wife) are trying to sell.

The third season of CALIFORNICATION is about karma as everything Hank does will come back to bite him. Hank is the leopard who may not be able to change his spots while Charlie finds out he still loves his wife (and may even put his career as an agent on the line). Karen wants to move Hank and Becca to New York, but Hank’s affairs may be a road block as Karen may find one thing that is hard to forgive Hank for. Los Angeles is in Hank’s blood and his hedonistic ways are a result of his lifestyle. If he was willing to give up on his love for several women, he may just be a prick who wanted the love of his life. It just his choices and personality are the things that may be his own undoing. He loves his daughter and Karen, and yet the temptations in his life are addictions he continues to feed. All of the troubles in Hank’s life over the first three seasons of CALIFORNICATION are a result of Hank refusing to give up on his lifestyle and make different choices. MIA CULPA sets the stage for what may be an interesting fourth season as the first season and his choices have finally come back to hit him hard.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

A blooper reel is on disc 2 along with a fluffy featurette called Marcie’s Pajama Party (as the actress who plays her talks with real divorced California wives) in addition to cast biographies and a photo gallery. Cast interviews are available via Ebridge technology if you have a DVD-Rom to put the disc in to watch the interviews on the internet (I wish they would just put the interviews on the disc). Rounding out the extras are the first two episodes of the Fourth season of THE TUDORS.

FINAL ANALYSIS: CALIFORNICATION season 3 is as good as the first two seasons. I do wish Showtime would include more show related extras on the set. I did find a flaw with the play all function on Disc one, it skips two episodes near the end and go to the final episode on the disc.

This DVD review is ©11-22-2010 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments to lord_pragmagtic@hotmail.com