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Cheers & Jeers: Californication Hits a New (Rob) Lowe

Jeers to Californication for letting Hank Moody get off—so to speak.Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine.The fourth-season finale of Showtime's smut-com (which, despite its flaccid ratings, has inexplicably been picked up for Year 5) opened ...

Bruce Fretts

Jeers to Californication for letting Hank Moody get off—so to speak.
Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine.
The fourth-season finale of Showtime's smut-com (which, despite its flaccid ratings, has inexplicably been picked up for Year 5) opened with David Duchovny's narcissistic novelist receiving a proverbial slap on the wrist for his statutory-rape conviction. That freed him up to attend a stomach-turning dinner party to celebrate the filming of his book F---ing and Punching that featured talk of mid-menstrual intercourse and "brother-sister Holocaust survivor" sex games, a stabbing, vomiting—all thanks to Charlie's girlfriend, filter-free psycho Peggy (Melissa Stephens)—and Rob Lowe's excruciatingly over-the-top return as a raspy, ranting and repulsive movie star (if this was his unofficial audition to replace Charlie Sheen on Two and a Half Men, he bombed).
Just when you thought you were safe from any more self-indulgent "shocks," Hank nearly drowned in a swimming pool (in an ill-advised homage to Being There, a truly daring satire) and imagined himself being saved by a dreadlocked Jesus. It turned out to be his ex-wife's African-American beau (Michael Ealy, who was much better-served by The Good Wife), to whom Hank had made casually racist remarks, because he's so un-p.c., you know. At one point, Peggy whined, "This is so boring!" Amen, sister!
Were you turned off by Californication's finale?