Weeds: Season One

For a long time the American dream was to have a nice house in suburbia, complete with wife, kids, lawn and mini van. The thing is this ideal is typically dependant on the husband earning the living and the wife managing the home front. The Showtime series ‘Weeds’ looks at what happens when the dream ends. In the California suburb of Agrestic life was good for thirty-something house wife Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) until the untimely death of her husband. The soccer mom is faced with something life up to then never prepared her for, making financial ends meet. Nancy went right from the home of her father and family to that of her husband; never really coping on her own. All of a sudden she has to fend for herself and her two sons; teenager Silas (Hunter Parrish) and his younger sibling Shane (Alexander Gould). Nancy decides to think way out of the box and supports her family and he life style they have become accustomed to by selling pot. Now Nancy is not your typical pot dealer she has her rules. For example she refuses to sell to kids. She develops a clientele that includes the local city councilman Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon). His son Josh (Justin Chatwin) is a burgeoning dealer is the star of the high school baseball team and is the boy toy an older man. Nancy’s supplier is an African American woman Heylia (Tonye Patano) who runs her family and business with a firm hand and has a bit of a laugh at selling to a ‘little white girl from the burbs’. This includes her son Conrad (Romany Malco) who naturally enough has his eye on Nancy.

Nothing in Nancy’s life remotely resembles the typical television look at sub urban life. Her best friend Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins) is an acerbic kind of gal that would appear to have little or no self censorship. Celia is blunt to the point of being insulting but to Nancy she is the right kind of sounding board. While unaware of Nancy’s new profession she helps Nancy to emotionally cope with the fundamental problem, the loss of her husband. The acid tongue of Celia is not restricted to other adults. She refers to her slightly chubby daughter Isabelle (Allie Grant) as Isa-belly and even goes so far as to replace her ‘secret’ chocolate stash with laxative to help the child loose weight. Isabelle does return the favor in kind with very humorous results. When a case of soda falls from a plane into Celia’s bedroom she finally tells her philandering husband that she has breast cancer. It seems that the surreal crash through the roof was just too much and she could no longer hide her health condition from others. Her husband Dean (Andy Milder) is not only cheating on her he just happens to secretly be one of Nancy’s best customers.

Nancy also has more problems than just the pot dealing and financial woes. Her two sons both give her more than enough to deal with. Silas is entering that strange part of life where his hormones are kicking in and be beings to notice the opposite sex. As usual for a boy his age he is always plotting to bed his girlfriend Pam (Becky Thyre) who just happens to be Celia’s eldest daughter. Nancy is having enough problems coping with the loss of her own sex life to worry about her son’s. Shane is growing into a very strange child obsessed with death, and constantly watching home videos that include his late father. If Nancy isn’t having a difficult enough time with her sons matters are complicated when her brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) moves in. He is a free spirit that is more than willing to get high, play video games and generally offer a bad influence on the boys.

There was something about this series that just pulled me in. Not all at once but slowly, carefully. The humor is dry almost to the point of being arid. In this it Weeds is almost more like some British comedies than the usual American faire. The often dark wit of the script derives from an adroit combination of surreal circumstances and very intelligent dialogue. The series also seems to start in the middle. The audience is never told how Nancy became involved with dealing as a solution to her financial problems; we join her in the opening episode with her business already in place. The writers assume that the audience is smart enough to fill in the gaps themselves. The characters are involved in very tangled relationships and that does take a little time to put together but it is ultimately worth it. It is this juxtaposition of characters that contributes to how the series works. When Nancy is speaking to Celia we see two very different women that relate on a level that we can believe and understand. The mother-daughter relationship between Celia and Isabelle is contrasted to how Nancy has to relate to her sons. There is alsoa Greek chorus of sorts with the Botwin family maid, Lupita (Renee Victor). She knows what Nancy is up and just sits back to what her employer try to manage.

Even for a premium cable series this is one eclectic cast. Mary-Louise Parker has made a career out of underplaying her roles. She rarely goes for the over the top presentation, her characters are built on more subtle nuances. Parker also provides personal growth for Nancy. At first she seems on auto-pilot at home. She drifts through the day especially with her family. By the end of the season she has taken more control of her life than ever. Nancy has built a business and as season one closes has purchased a bakery as a front and even returned to being interested in men. Elizabeth Perkins gives one of her best performances as Celia. Instead of taking her character in the expected direction of being the town evil and conniving woman Perkins fleshes out the role giving Celia a wonderful measure of pathos. She starts as someone willing to give laxatives to an already stressed out pre-teen girl and winds up a woman that has to completely redefine every aspect of her life. For Saturday Night Live alumni Kevin Nealon this is just about the prefect role. At time his stoned out city official seems a bit like an extended sketch character but his natural dry comic talent shines through here. One surprising guest appearance is by the West Wing’s Allison Janney as a pot advocate lawyer; simply incredibly funny.

Lion’s Gate brings the first season of this strange little series to DVD with their usual flair. Showtime is used to producing series with a smaller target audience and more dark comedy elements than HBO and Weeds is a very good example. The full screen video is clear with an excellent color palette. The Dolby 5.1 audio provides a full sound stage although not much use is made of the sub woofer. The extras are as unusual as the series itself. Several key episodes had cast and crew commentaries and one does have to wonder if any illicit substances where employed. There is a featurette ‘Smoke And Mirrors Original Marijuana Mockumentary’ that is worth the viewing and a little Agrestic herbal cookbook. Rounding things off is the music video "More Than A Friend" by All Too Much. This is a sleeper hit that is worth addition to your video library.

Posted 6/14/06