Showtime’s ‘Weeds,”Californication’ giving HBO run for its money

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With the school year just around the corner, here’s a standardized test tip, straight from the couch: If the question is “HBO is to Showtime as a pony is to _____,” the answer is C) an edgier, foul-mouthed, fresh-out-of-rehab pony with a lip ring and a sex tape that’s been leaked to TMZ.

Thanks to its new shows “Dexter,” “Brotherhood,” “The Tudors” and, most recently, the creepily fun “Meadowlands,” the pay channel has been making HBO look as old and tired as HBO once made the rest of the TV universe seem.

Now, Showtime is reloading with the third season of its blunt comedy “Weeds” (10 p.m. today) and the premiere of David Duchovny’s darkly funny “Californication” (10:30 p.m. today).

When last we saw suburban pot-slinger Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) in “Weeds,” her 12-year-old son Shane (Alexander Gould) was in a van headed to Pittsburgh by way of Paraguay, her 17-year-old son Silas (Hunter Parrish) was about to be arrested with a trunk full of stolen weed, and she and her partner Conrad (Romany Malco) were being held at gunpoint by gangsta U-Turn (Page Kennedy), his henchman, and the three Armenian hit men who just murdered her slimeball DEA agent husband. Throw in a lingering shot of Nancy’s feet and the whole thing would have been positively Tarantino-esque.

But this season, the high times are over. Because U-Turn wasn’t able to steal their $300,000 worth of pot, Nancy and Conrad now “owe” him that money thanks to some sort of twisted dealer logic. The two go their separate ways, with Conrad forced to grow his way out of debt and Nancy left to do U-Turn’s bidding.

Before long, Nancy’s new boss becomes so demanding and repetitive — gimme my money, bitch; do what you’re told, bitch; I’m gonna hurt your kids, bitch — it’s like watching Cinderella’s thugged-out stepsister, and you just want to beat him with a thesaurus.

And, really, does every episode have to be weighed down by the lingering threat that Nancy could be gang-raped at any moment?

But, truth be told, things were going far too smoothly for her as she moved up from seller to supplier. And I have faith the writers will nip this “Lost”-style split-everybody-up-and-make-them-miserable story line in the bud before it becomes a chronic problem.

No matter what they throw at her, though, Mary-Louise Parker is a delight. As an added bonus, I’m no longer getting her mixed up with Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and, for some reason, Annabeth Gish. (Adding to the confusion, though, Mary-Kate Olsen will join the “Weeds” cast later this season.)

As Nancy’s brother-in-law Andy, Justin Kirk is one of TV’s true joys. It takes a special gift to make you root for a character while he’s taking his pre-pubescent nephew to a massage parlor for a happy ending.

But the biggest surprise of all is still Kevin Nealon as Nancy’s accountant, Doug. The least valuable “Saturday Night Live” cast member since Brad Hall, Nealon never has been more entertaining, especially with throwaway lines like the one about the morning-after pill for dogs called ArfU-486.

While Parker has plenty of supporting help in “Weeds,” the success of “Californication” will hang on how much you enjoy David Duchovny and bare breasts. Neither is off-screen for very long.

Duchovny stars as the too-literally-named Hank Moody, a self-described one-hit wonder of the literary world who’s as angry that his wife left him as he is that his arty tome, “God Hates Us All,” was turned into the romantic comedy “A Crazy Little Thing Called Love” starring “Tom and Katie.”

Hank’s the kind of guy who Googles himself, picks up women by hovering near a bookstore display of his own novel, and even goes to see the crappy movie version of it. Hank has, what they call in film school, Issues. And several of them seem a little artificial.

The Julia Sugarbaker scenes — one in which he wrestles a man to the ground for talking on a cell phone in a movie theater, the other when Hank rips his blind date to shreds for enjoying the Tom and Katie version — just seem showy. And the sight of a nun seducing Hank in church and his Wednesday Addams-like daughter finding a naked woman in his bed — primarily so she can say “There’s no hair on her vagina. Do you think she’s OK?” — are just there to shock.

But Duchovny, back on his old “Red Shoe Diaries” stomping grounds, makes it all work. After a few years away, you forget the amount of star presence he has on TV.

Despite its problems, there’s promise here, and a lot of it.

After just one episode, it may not be clear where the series is going, but “Californication” definitely makes most of the HBO lineup look ready for the glue factory.

Christopher Lawrence’s Life on the Couch column appears on Mondays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.