Californication Goes Mr. Mom

As season three opens on Showtime’s raucus “Californication” Sunday, Hank Moody, the woman-chasing author played by David Duchovny, is raising his teen-age daughter on his own because mom (Natascha McElhone) has taken a job in New York.
Not surprisingly, Hank’s got a few parenting issues to work out.
His daughter and a friend enter as he’s entertaining a lady friend. On top of that, they’re stoned. Where did they get the weed? They found it in Hank’s typewriter of course. After sending the girls off with a stiff lecture, Hank tokes up. That’s one damn fine role model.
Since no publisher wants his new book, Hank needs a new source of funds. Through a series of coincidences he ends up teaching a writing class at a college, where attractive nuisances abound in the form of other professors, teaching assistants and, of course, students. (Hooray for a Ferris Bueller shout out in class.) Of course he immediately gets off on the wrong foot with his boss, Dean Koons, played by an apoplectic Peter Gallagher.
Providing raunchier comic relief is the Hank’s ever-suffering agent, Charlie Runkle, played by Evan Handler.
He’s being abused by his estranged wife and harassed by Kathleen Turner as his dirty-talking new boss Sue Collini, “who always gets the weenie.
By the second episode the Runkles are awkwardly co-habitating and the gang is gathered around a dysfunction family dinner table. Meanwhile Hank and his darling daughter are shouting that they hate one another.
It’s just another father/mother-daughter moment in a series that’s still showing skin, but also showing heart.