Californication: Blind Faith, Review

Whether you have been all around the world or not, at some point, no matter what demons await, a homecoming is necessary and in “Blind Faith,” we see that getting a glimpse of the past can help figure out an uncertain future. Like Bon Jovi said on the 2007 album Lost Highway, who exactly says “you can’t go home” ?

Everyone knows the impending awkwardness that comes before meeting your first girlfriend’s parents for the first time. It probably isn’t Hank first go-around but we still find him in a situation he is rarely in. He is given the kinda-sorta-boyfriend treatment by Faith when he gets the chance to make a visit to her childhood home but all the pressure of meeting the parents is erased when Hank finds out why she hasn’t been home in so long. Up until this point, Faith hasn’t been developed as a character like she deserves to be. She admits she asks for no directions in life. Hank points out that she’s jobless. Her father says she has been looking for God in the back of a tour bus. For a beautiful, clearly smart and witty woman, Faith seems like a rebel without a cause. Now we know that the motivation for her promiscuous lifestyle is her holy than thou mother.

After only a few hours home, Faith is broken down by her mother’s unwillingness to let go of the past. We find out that she was once a model student, a child of Christ and a young adult destined to marry God by preparing to take her solemn vows to become a nun. When a home is as strictly religious as Faith’s, it was only a matter of time before she would flake out and ultimately find her way into the arms of rockstars both named and unnamed.

The storyline isn’t anything out of the ordinary. It is a coming of age, or coming out of the suburbs, tale that gives Hank’s new muse a much needed backstory. In the episode’s climax, Faith awakes from a naughty church dream not unlike Hank’s recurring chapel fantasy (which finally plays out in this episode.) In the dream, Atticus is nailed to a cross and ends up hooking up with Faith, who came into the church looking for forgiveness.

The dream was a wake up call in more ways than one. She leaves the cross of the unnamed rockstar with her mother and ditches home in the middle of the night with Hank, and in the process Faith exorcised some of her demons. As was aluded to in the beginning of the episode, Faith has long been seen as someone incapable of being tied down. After a trip back home, you have to wonder if her life might be ready to go in another direction.

Hank Moody was a quote machine in “Blind Faith.” Here are a few for a road:

“Only thing that makes you a writers is gluing your ass in a seat and getting what is in your head out on paper.”

“Things that seems romantic very rarely are.”

“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”