Parker, who won a Golden Globe for Season 1, is still a pleasure to watch.
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Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they all came out the same
And there's doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.
Clever title, clever title sequence, and clever writing. That pretty much covers "Weeds," a suburban satire that offers a family as offensive to a community of well-manicured lawns as a crop of dandelions. What makes them stand out is that (pun intended) they sell weed. And this season, I do mean "they." The whole family gets involved.
The first season of the popular Showtime half-hour series introduced viewers to Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a housewife whose life literally went to pot after her husband died and left her with two kids and a mountain of debt. Most normal people would try to get a job, but Nancy isn't normal. Her decidedly non-ticky tacky solution is to begin selling marijuana to make ends meet, all the while hiding her "career" from her maid (Renee Victor) and two sons--the teenaged Silas (Hunter Parrish) and adolescent Shane (Alexander Gould). That first season, the sheer absurdity of the situation was responsible for much of the show's humor. In fact, Season 1 is probably the funniest of the three, because Nancy's business is still small enough to be laughable and what she does seems like such an innocently "in your face" contrast to the staid and uptight world represented by her friend and civic leader, Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins).
But by the second season, Nancy's business had grown so much that she decided Heylia (Tonye Patano) couldn't supply her anymore, and that it was more efficacious to just produce and process her own crop, with the assistance of master-grower Conrad (Romany Malco). Of course, you can't expand your drug trade without drawing the attention of some mean and nasty people, and so Season Two begins an escalation that ends with two rival gangs converging on her house to "protest."
Each episode begins where the last left off, and each season begins the same way. So Season Three starts off with some pretty heavy fecal matter, but it also features some pretty soapy content--so much so that it begins to feel like a cross between "Desperate Housewives" and "The Sopranos." That's not bad company to keep. "Weeds" is a smartly written and performed series that just got a little darker this season. The Botwin boys get in trouble with the law, Celia's husband (Andy Milder) bonds with his daughter (Allie Grant) at the exclusion of Mom (who has to live in a sleezy motel), Silas and Shane run afoul of the law, Uncle Andy (Justin Kirk) runs afoul of the military, and CPA Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon) just runs afoul--which is about all you can say of someone who sits in the audience of a city council meeting and not only shaves, but also cuts his toenails. This season, Nancy gets in deep doo-doo and finds herself virtually indentured to "gangsta" U-Turn (Page Kennedy), and also ends up taking a real job with sleezeball developer Sullivan Groff (Matthew Modine), who represents a neighboring community. And Celia? She learns about Nancy's secret and uses it to her advantage, while coping with her breast cancer and having an affair of her own. Did I mention that Conrad and Nancy have a thing? We won't even talk about how Uncle Andy gets into the porno business.
It's all as quirky as can be--perhaps too much so, this season--but the performances are so wonderful and the production values are so slick (again, think "The Sopranos") that you can't help but be mesmerized by the show. There also isn't a better title song than the lyric by Malvina Reynolds, made famous by folksinger Pete Seeger in the early Sixties. It was an anti-establishment anthem, and for a woman like Nancy, what better tune is there to dance to? Certainly not the ones that gang-bangers make her do, in order to pick up and deliver a package to U-Turn. Though Season 3 gets darker and weirder (as if that seemed possible), there's enough satire here to make the show intellectually satisfying . . . if you're of the right political persuasion. One particularly funny storyline finds Nancy selling pot to a security officer at a college, while her son, Silas, finds willing customers for his mother at a Christian youth group. As Silas negotiates a relationship with "good girl" Tara (Mary-Kate Olsen), some of the season's funniest satire spills out.
Here's how the 15 episodes play out:
1) "Doing the Backstroke." Silas takes off with Mom's stash before the gangbangers demand it, leaving Nancy holding the bag and Celia holding all the aces.
2) "A Pool and His Money." Andy is mistaken for a child molester, Celia is estranged from her husband and daughter, Doug begs Celia to take him back, and Conrad sticks up for Nancy.
3) "The Brick Dance." As Conrad and Heylia team up to find a new site for their "grow house," Nancy is sent into the lion's den to retrieve a bundle . . . and ends up being forced to do a table dance.
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