Weeds fans the flames and heads south for the summer
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- June
- 16
How do you feel about marijuana? The answer that question—and a score of related ones about regulation, legalization, medical use, etc.—may well inform your feelings about Weeds, Showtime’s dark comedy about the stuff.
Depending on what your feelings are, it might be a lot to put them aside and just enjoy the brilliant performances by series star Mary Louise Parker and her host of suburban partners in drug crime. It’s worth a shot, though.
Parker returned in tonight’s “Mother Thinks the Birds Are After Her” as Nancy Botwin, drug dealer to the upper middle class. Or is it lower upper class? Doesn’t much matter now, though, since exec producers Jenji Kohan and Roberto Benabib let the show’s very setting go up in flames last season.
Agrestic is no longer majestic. Instead its tract houses lie on the ash heap of history, thanks to wildfires at least in part aided by the fuel Nancy added to the fire at her own home. And she just can’t shake the smell.
On the run toward the border town of Ren Mar, she takes her family to see their great-grandma, whose electronic attack dog doesn’t keep them from her gurney-side for long. Tubed-tied and prone, great-grams in under the care of bitter son Lenny (the legendary Albert Brooks who fades into the role nicely).
The kids, Silas and Shane (Hunter Parrish and Alexander Gould) are surprisingly receptive to their uprooting, a testament to how they’ve adapted since the innocence that was Season One. And then there’s Andy (Justin Kirk). Slightly sleazy, at times sage but mostly a numbskull, he takes Nancy down memory lane as the bitterness of her mixed marriage into a Jewish family that never accepted her reemerges.
Dubbed by Lenny as “Not Francy” in reference to the Lasik specialist she stole her late husband away from, Nancy finds herself pondering childhood pictures of her beloved Judah as Andy recalls Judah showing off scantily clad photos of Nancy she’d thought had been destroyed. Andy’s train of thought is interrupted by the mental image of Lenny changing great-grams, even as Nancy’s thoughts turn to her latest grand plan.
The downfall of Agrestic won’t be the downfall of her business, far from it. She’ll be working the Mexican border supply routes, playing the role of pretty American lady she knows well.
The comedy in this premiere comes mainly from the Agrestic evacuees: the arrested Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) versus Doug (Kevin Nealon), Sanjay (30 Rock’s Maulik Pancholy), Dean (Andy Milder) and Isabelle (Allie Grant).
Celia under interrogation is a hoot. But the way her family and friends sell her out to save Nancy is even better.
Things are set up for not only a drastic change of scenery but a whole new vibe this summer season. How you feel about the substance at the center of it all might lure you in or steer you away. You’ll be right for the wrong reasons in the first case and you’ll miss a ton of fun in the latter, in my opinion.
Yes, Weeds is about weed. But there’s a lot more to laugh at, think about and tune in for than just that.
This entry was posted
on Monday, June 16th, 2008 at 10:30 pm by Brian Howard.
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