5 Reasons Californication Is Really Hank Moody's Imagination

4. Becca And Karen's Virtual Sainthood

Tom Kapinos is fantastic at creating compelling characters. That should be first and foremost. However, his characters do all fit into boxes. That's really the point of the show. Everyone fits into certain boxes and it's Hank that really needs to get out of his box and fix his behavior to have the life he wants with Becca and Karen. The writing of a novel is distinctly different from the writing of a film or television show. Novels often need characters to represent specific feelings or they need a character to behave in a set way to make points when it comes to the large picture of the story. In television and film there is a lot more room to breathe because you can bring across whatever artistic points you wish with other techniques that may be technical or visual. Californication, on the other hand, is written more in the vein of a novel. Karen and Becca exist as virtual saints in the series. They almost never make mistakes and the few they do make often lead back to Hank. This played up goodness of character would be very much explained by the show being Hank's novels because the writing would be influenced by point of view (as television and film many times aren't). Hank sees Karen and Becca as his almost godly saviors and that's how they are portrayed. Meanwhile, Hank's flaws of drinking, screwing around, laziness, etc. are played up in the show in the same way that a character like Henry Chinaski's bad behaviors were in books like Post Office and Women. Hank is a hard character to love sometimes. Hank's flaws being overplayed and Karen and Becca's good features being overplayed would be explained if the show was really a series of books by Hank Moody. Novels have no choice but to have point of view and Hank's self loathing point of view explains the way these characters are shown and portrayed on the show.