The name's Hank Moody. While Moody is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, Hank's a no-b.s. name. For truly punny yucks, the character should be named Frank, not Hank.
He revels in the profane and is a gen-u-wine masshole. Restraint is not in Hank's seemingly boundless vocabulary--social conventions be damned.
I liked Hank immediately. What's there not to love about this character? He doesn't give a flying fluck. Really? Actually, he gives quite a few flying flucks. He's a walking catastrophe. He has loads o' fun, but he's f'unhappy.
Welcome to Hank Moody's world. LA's the other main character, where people are paid to act natural and pretend to care and where nice is a bit of b.s. verbage, not a quality. A guarantee that what you see ain't what you get.
Hank's the real deal. What you see is what you get. A striking contrast between Hank and his environment (AKA: anomie for those bored with the passe that is irony).
A guy who's written something that means something yet he's trapped in NYLA hell. A native New Yorker who may hate LA even more than he hates his life and himself.
With the exception of sleeping with the director's wife, he's casual, receptive, and utterly passive--merely fleeting encounters rather than exploits. The women signal to him. He responds in 'sure, why not?' sort of way. The women are on top. When not ejaculating, he spends a good deal of the pilot wandering around, dejected in absolute wonder at the turn of events but far too blotto to fully feel it.
The only time Hank runs toward something in a self-directed way, is active in any real sense, is when his daughter, wife, or both ask for him. The rest of the time, he avoids being alone with his own thoughts. Yeah, sure to casual sex. Sleeps. Gets comfortably numb to greet the world, wanders to the movies and the bookstore, marveling at the nightmare, trying to accept it but doing a piss-poor job of it.
The only thing that pulls him right out of his wandering and wondering is, his wife asks for him, his daughter needs him ... He's useful and for a little while, feels meaning again. Helpful in an emergency, but kids need more than primal protectiveness and nurturing. So does his ex.
The WTF turn of events makes a turn of phrase a rather what's the point. What gave Hank meaning in his life--his family and his work--have changed so drastically as to be almost unrecognizable.
So what if he's disillusioned and demoralized? LA's a great place to get distracted and drown his sorrows, and he gets laid every 7-8 minutes in the pilot. Freedom's just a word for nothing left to lose, though.
Hank lives with no illusions--his equanimity and honesty vs. LA's perversity and hypocrisy. The pilot zig-zagged between absurd and sweet sorrow, culminating in a moment of latent clarity. Hank's got honesty in spite of the hypocrisy around him, but does he have integrity? So far, the journey looks promising.
If you prefer stories that explore moral ambiguities without being hit over the head with the moral of the story and can handle seeing human sexuality minus the hand holding, check out Californication.
