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MATT NEFFER, BOY SPOTWELDER is not Dreaming of Californication, in this here guest post...

Seems to me like there are basically three kinds of TV shows.

The first kind takes place in a world that makes for really great television, but you wouldn't want to live there. The Sopranos was a good example. Really cool and endlessly compelling, but I couldn't survive in that world. I mean, yeah, it would be nice to know there was always a little leftover baked ziti in the fridge. But then there's the murder and the arson and the beatings, and that would get to be a bit much after a while. Besides, I'm a squealer and a weasel and I can't cover my tracks for shit. I'd be dead within days.

Mad Men falls into this category as well. Yes, yes, I know. The clothes are great and you can smoke indoors and drink in the daytime. But there's also a lot of casual racism and homophobia and the women are treated miserably. Oh sure, I suppose I could look the other way, but I'd still hate to have to sit on my hands for 30 years, waiting for internet porn to be invented.

The next kind of show is both fun to watch and, seemingly, an awesome world in which to live. I'd love to hang out in a neighbourhood bar as fun as Cheers, or with friends as clever as the How I Met Your Mother gang, or even go to the community college on the season's funniest new show, Community. And of course, for a TV writer there's no greater wish fulfillment than the world the characters get to inhabit on 30 Rock: A job in midtown Manhattan, Alec Baldwin for a boss and a chance to celebrate Ludachristmas? I want to go to there.

(I guess Entourage sort of fits into this category as well. A night out on the town with Vince and Turtle and Ari would almost certainly have its privileges. On the downside, I'd have to resign myself to the fact that I had become, irretrievably, a total douchebag.)

The third kind of show has that same wish-fulfillment vibe going for it. It takes place in a world that looks like it could be fun. The only problem is, the show itself isn't actually any good.

I'm thinking here, specifically, of Californication. Having just watched the third season premiere, I have decided to put together a handy reference guide so that you, too, regardless of experience level, can write an episode of this show. Simply follow this handy, step by step guide.

#1. Hank gets laid by an improbably hot woman. He says something smart or smarmy or condescending, and she leaves. Which is what he was going for.

#2. Hank goes out and flirts with a new woman. Make sure you remember her name, because she'll be the one he's fucking at the beginning of the next episode.

#3. Hank pisses someone off. Usually a guy.

#4. Hank winds up at a dinner party also attended by whatever guy he has just pissed off in the previous scene.

#5. The dinner party devolves into general, uncomfortable weirdness aided by some combination of drugs and alcohol.

#6. Hank calls either his daughter or ex-wife and says something sweet.

End of show.

Now, for some reason, I've seen every episode of Californication. Except it's not "for some reason," it's for the reason mentioned above, which is that the show is essentially wish fulfillment for a certain segment of its audience.

I'm a writer. Not a very good one, perhaps, but that's what it says on my business card, so of course I was initially intrigued by the idea of a fellow writer who gets to have endless bouts of recreational sex, drink straight from a liquor bottle whenever he feels like it and fall ass-backwards into money. But sooner or later with a show likeCalifornication, the seams start to show. And, baby, they are really, really showing.

What the fuck is this show about? Where is it going? I've heard Duchovny say that only stupid people think the show is about a lothario on the make -- no, no. This is a show about a guy trying to get back to his first love.

Well guess what? I GET it. I got it, in fact, about halfway through the pilot, but stuck with the show out of laziness, or habit, or a taste for fleeting glimpses of nudity, or because I couldn't keep all the characters and plot lines straight on a real television show like The Wire because I'm not that bright. Oh, I know Duchovny is currently in rehab for sex addiction, and that life has now imitated art, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if recovery from sex addiction made it into the season arc somehow.

But I'm done. I give up on this show. It's the worst example of the sort of free-floating, meandering, we'll-end-the-show-with-a-brooding-look-and-a-dolly-backward-and-hope-that-people-imbue-that-with-some-sort-of-meaning style that gives all pay cable television shows a bad name. Mad Men (a far, far superior show), has begun to flirt with this desultory sort of story-telling, and one can only hope that it's not the beginning of a trend.

I love cable shows, and if you ask me, this one is poisoning the well.