Happy day! The return of "Weeds" [0] — clearly a favorite here [0] — is finally upon us tonight, as is the premiere of the highly anticipated David Duchovny comedy, "Californication." [0]

I've chosen to remain blissfully unspoiled about the goings-on in the season premiere of "Weeds." I finished season two on DVD recently enough that the crazy cliffhanger still looms large in my mind, and I wanted to wait and see the resolution when everyone else did. (Granted, "everyone else" has probably either watched it online [1] or downloaded those leaked episodes [2] by now, but hey. It's the principle of the thing.)

I did check out the premiere of "Californication," though, in which Duchovny plays a sex-crazed, self-destructive novelist in a writing rut. My hopes were high for the show, but I ended up feeling a little disappointed, mostly because I felt like I'd seen everything done better on another series before. It seemed a bit like a paint-by-numbers version of a pay-cable show — a dash of expletives here, a shot of bare breasts there. Two things will keep me hanging around for at least a couple of episodes, though: 1) Duchovny himself, whose aloofness is amusing here, and 2) Madeleine Martin, who gets all the funniest lines as Duchovny's potentially screwed-up daughter.

To watch previews for both "Californication" and "Weeds,"

Photos courtesy of Showtime [3]