Californication Season 5-02 ‘The Way Of The Fist’ Recap

As things kick off in the second episode of season five of Showtime’s Californication, Mr. Moody is busy receiving some oral sex from Samurai Apocalypse’s girlfriend. Just then, the man himself walks in, shooting Hank with a machine gun. As Hank is torn to pieces by the bullets, he suddenly wakes up, turns out he was just dreaming and is actually in Runkle’s place, lying on his couch.

Karen calls Hank, telling him that Becca isn’t pleased with him after his outburst last week. To make things up to her, Hank surprises her on campus with an iPad, turns out she has one though. She tells him she’s disappointed that he doesn’t trust her. Just then her boyfriend Tyler shows up and of course, Hank gives him a hard time. After some brief banter, with Becca exposing Hank’s past exploits as a professor, somehow, the boyfriend ends up with the iPad.

Hank then heads toward Samurai’s place where he runs into his girlfriend. As Hank starts to hit on her, Samurai walks out and Hank tells him he can’t take the job.

We then cut to Stu, Marcy and Runkle. They’re meeting with a teacher at their son’s school, apparently the little guy was masturbating in front of a fellow classmate, like father like son. To make things better, a sizable donation is called for.

When we cut back to Samurai and Hank, the two are at a meeting with director Peter Berg. Berg isn’t too pleased with Hank’s involvement in the script, which seems to stem from a girlfriend of Berg’s that cheated on him with Hank. Berg wants to fight Hank and so he takes him out to the parking lot, where he lands a nice right hook on Hank’s face.

Elsewhere, Runkle is at the house of the classmate that his son traumatized with his little incident. He talks to the mother and apologizes. They get to talking and somehow it leads to Runkle replicating his son’s act for the girl’s mother.

At a club with Samurai, Hank tells him once again that he’s going to have to pass on the job. Just then he sees Becca’s boyfriend with another girl. He confronts him and it’s obvious that Hank wants to hit him but Tyler warns Hank that if he does, Becca will forever hate him.

Hank leaves the club and heads over to Karen’s house. As Neil Young’s Old Man (a cover version of it) plays over the scene, Hank talks to Becca and apologizes for everything. Just then she gets a phone call, it’s Tyler, he’s in the hospital. Apparently he was attacked while leaving the club.

Who was his attacker you ask? Samurai Apocalypse.

Overall, this was another lacklustre episode of Californication. Nothing happened, the plot really didn’t move forward and nothing progressed. The attack by Samurai on Tyler was interesting though, perhaps he’s trying to prove his loyalty to Hank in order to have him stay on the job. Either way, I wonder how Hank’s going to react to it.

Aside from that, nothing worth mentioning happened tonight. Runkle’s plotline was stupid as was Berg’s cameo. Neither of them felt necessary and both felt forced and just out of place.

I’m hoping things will pick up next week because as of now, I’m not a fan of what I’m seeing.