Last season left Hank on his way to jail for assaulting a police officer. The truth about his affair with Mia had come out to the world and to Karen, and his daughter received a birds eye view of her father being put in handcuffs. Needless to say Hank’s life had taken a turn for the worst. Hank has never been the most positive influence on the lives of his loved ones but even for him this was bad.
Exile on Main St. picks up three days after Hank was taken to jail with Charlie posting his bail and picking him up. It quickly becomes apparent that this may be the last screw up his wife and daughter can take. Karen won’t even talk to him and she is keeping his daughter away. Normally we would see Hank unmoved by all of this, but we can see subtle cracks in his armor.
Hank doesn’t have a home to go to and it is clear he has zero direction. It is nice to see that he is finally getting credit for writing the book that Mia stole from him but it is hard for him to take solace in the fact knowing that his family might never talk to him again. The majority of the episode deals with Hanks apathy toward anything not relating to his family and Charlie trying to help him at least get his professional career back on track. He has become the hottest commodity in Hollywood both for the book and also for the story surrounding the book.
We see another potential love interest enter the show and seeing what the writers are going for is impossible to miss. The biggest young star in Hollywood looks almost identical to Mia and when Hank inevitably sleeps with her later in the episode they use flashes of Mia to screw with Hank even more. It’s funny really if you think about it. Of all the horrible and dangerous things Hank has done over the years his biggest mistake was sleeping with Mia, which at the time seemed like the only genuine action he had taken.
With all the action going on throughout the episode it is easy to forget that Hank to could really be in some legal problems. Hitting a cop is a pretty serious charge and the outcomes is a bit jarring. His fancy new lawyer informs Mr. Moody that the police have agreed to drop the assault charges, but instead are going to charge him with statutory rape for sleeping with Mia when she was 16. It is important to note that in statutory rape cases it is not the family that presses charges but the state. Bill and Karen have nothing to do with Hank being on the line for it but with Mia being MIA at the moment it is hard to think how Hank can possibly get out of the charges.
The season premiere was an amazing episode of the show and the only real negative would be lack of Mia. All of this is pretty much her fault and I want to see what Hank has to say to her and how this is all going to play out.
