This was truly an ill-conceived episode of Californiacation. There can be arguments to mitigate the dreck through which viewers were forced to wade, but that won’t make it all worthwhile.

Despite wrangling a few noteworthy guest spots – the always hilarious, if underemployed Stephen Root makes an appearance as does Kevin Corrigan – this was a pretty atrocious showing. And while that latter actor was more prominently featured, Root’s brief screen time only left a desire for his role to become a reoccurring character. I mean, a wheel chair pervert. Are there better things? Probably not.

Anyway, Corrigan’s character – the low rent Mike Zlosowski – is the center of the episode. In an unlikely confluence of arrivals and departures, Zlos’ flight touches down in LA just moments after Becca’s been sent off to New York to spend time with her mother.

From minute one Zlos is presented to audiences as Moody’s lame foil. For every erudite and smooth quip from the show’s main character, Zlos is there to counter it with some poorly thought out half sentence that wouldn’t be all too problematic if not for the wooden delivery.

Corrigan’s background includes appearances in Tree’s Lounge as well as Goodfellas. So, he’s got chops, they’re just not on display here. It might be the due to the fact that the actor isn’t attune to beach style stuff, but that’s part of the character he played here, so it doesn’t really make too much sense as to why the delivery of each of his lines was subpar at best.

Even more painful, was to watch Corrigan interact with Duchovny. While neither actor has been christened a genius, Duchovny is usually able to make levity work as well as the more serious moments of the show. While Zlos and Moody, though, look back at childhood memories and examine current relationships, it’s just all a mess. Most disturbing is the beach scene where Zlos reveals his marital problems. But beyond the scene being rendered rather bland and poorly played, why would this character choose Moody to have this discussion with?

That makes no sense.

So even while the duo scenes are barely worth watching, scenes that subsequently include Runkle don’t fair any better. It was alright when Moody randomly frequented some strip clubs, but the sequence that’s included here is plainly contrived as a setting to get Zlos into trouble with Moody’s agent looking on.

I’ve not ever been to a nudie bar, but it should be assumed that the Zlos character has. And if I’d be able to guess that sucking on a strippers breast is over the line, Zlos should have as well.

Yeah, there’s a fight and it’s another narrow escape for the old tyme chums, but the entire episode came off in the same manner. Everything was expected – well not the tranny thing, but the party scenario was easy to prefigure.

It was just a bad week for Californiacation. But with Moody’s better half making a surprise visit and accompanying Becca back home, perhaps next week’s episode’ll be something more than a litany of actorly obscenities.