Weeds stems from some high concepts

By Jon Juliano
Collegian Reporter
September 13, 2006

“People got stoned for The Passion of the Christ? That’s disturbing.”

“It’s not as disturbing as seeing it not stoned. Religion my ass, it’s a straight-up snuff film.”

That attention-getter is brought to you courtesy of the show Weeds, which is now in its second season on Showtime. Weeds is the ideal show for people who like dramas, and at the same time pleases those who love stupid comedies. It is, in a sense, Desperate Housewives Go To White Castle.

The show delivers its message through a chic upper class California setting that could easily represent my hometown on the opposite coast or any other suburban town in the United States. The show perfectly depicts the politics that run through recreational sports and PTA meetings, the soccer moms and the pressure they put on their kids, and the gossip network that runs through towns like power lines.

Mostly, the show is about family; Nancy Botwin, played by Mary-Louise Parker, has to support her family by selling marijuana after her husband dies of a heart attack. She has to deal with going to ghettos to get her drugs, the dangers of competing drug dealers and running a fake business to front her drug dealing.

Weeds also works as a great platform for Kevin Nealon’s return to television, and not just hosting stupid TBS specials. Nealon steals the show as a pot-smoking accountant who goes from Nancy’s biggest customer to partner in crime.

With a lack of Arrested Development and a decline in the quality of Entourage episodes, Weeds is now the best show on television. The only problem with the show, other than it being on Showtime, which limits its viewers, is that the creator Jenji Kohan feels the need to overtly make a social commentary through his characters.

Whether it’s showing the differences between black and white cultures, the dangers of children on prescription drugs, or the war in Iraq and George Bush, Kohan puts his views about political issues into the show a little too excessively. Of course, Kohan adds comedy to the political statements. In one scene, Nancy’s brother-in-law, Andy, asks Nealon’s character, “How can you be so blindly pro-Bush?”

Nealon’s character replies, “I like his wife Laura... I used to buy weed from her at SMU [Southern Methodist University].”

However, the saturation of satire is just a small problem and does not take away from the great plot or amazing characters Kohan creates. Also, the political commentary has completely died down in the second season. What Kohan does do is an unbelievable job at not leaving any holes in the story and making the fictional life more three-dimensional than a Magic Eye, with less eye strain.

Whether it’s Nancy missing the physicality and touch of her husband or the two sons missing their father, every detail that you’d expect to see in a similar real-life situation is in the show. Even a little thing like Nancy’s older son getting angry with a catalogue company over the phone when he sees mail for his dead father makes the characters, the plot and the setting tangible and authentic.

The second season, currently airing, started right where the first season left off, with Nancy in the bedroom of a DEA agent and how she is going to break it off without him knowing she’s a drug dealer. Also, Andy is in school to be a rabbi so he doesn’t have to go to Iraq, and Nancy and Conrad are starting a grow house. Whether you get Showtime, want to buy the first season DVD or desperately download the poor quality files illegally, I highly suggest checking out Weeds.

julianoj3@lasalle.edu