Season 1 - 10 episodes (2005)
Season 2 - 12 episodes (2006)
Season 3 - 15 episodes (2007)
Rent Weeds on Amazon Video (paid link)
Created by: Jenji Kohan
Starring: Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Perkins, Justin Kirk, Tonye Patano, Romany Malco, Hunter Parrish, Alexander Gould, Allie Grant, Kevin Nealon
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer
Plot
When a suburban mother Nancy turns to dealing marijuana in order to maintain her privileged lifestyle after her husband dies, she finds out just how addicted her entire neighborhood already is.
Verdict
I only watched the first three seasons of the total eight seasons, which seems to be the consensus peak of the show. I get why people like the show, but I was never engaged. The show relies on the absurdity of the situations and quirky characters, but it's never very funny. Mary-Louise Parker is fun to watch, but it's just not enough. Maybe part of the joke is that Nancy keeps failing upwards. I don't know. What I did realize is that three seasons was enough. I had no desire to continue, and I considered stopping in the middle of the third season.
It depends.
Review
Kohan would go on to create Orange Is the New Black (2013) for Netflix.
Season 1
Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) is a drug dealing soccer mom living in the suburbs of Agrestic. While this seems to capitalize on Breaking Bad (2008), this released three years earlier. It's also a comedy. Nancy is widowed and just trying to make ends meet. Life gets in the way when you're trying to peddle weed, and it's not like you can easily deposit illegal gains in the bank. It doesn't help that medical marijuana is also impacting her business.
Nancy's wayward brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) visits, and he wants to start selling in the same area. She doesn't trust him, instead recruiting a college student to start selling for her.
 |
| S1E3: Mary-Louise Parker plays Nancy Botwin |
I wondered how Nancy survived the business this long. She doesn't know what she's doing, failing at nearly every step. Her advisors aren't the most adept, and she's hampered by a brother-in-law who's living in their house, and her youngest son is acting out.
When she's robbed in episode nine her, supplier Conrad (Romany Malco) helps her with no good reason. Her suppliers are overly gracious, though it makes for a silly and intriguing premise. The season ends with a nod to The Godfather (1972) with Nancy planning to expand her business.
Season 2
Nancy's recent boyfriend Peter turns out to be a DEA agent. He also knows she's a dealer, but they quickly marry to provide spousal privilege. It seems like a relationship destined to fail. Nancy teams up with Conrad. He's looking for a partner to grow his own strain of weed so they buy a grow house. When Conrad discovers Peter is DEA, he's highly concerned. When Peter raids the surrounding grow houses and not theirs, Conrad uneasily agrees to the arrangement.
 |
| S2E12: Romany Malco, Mary-Louise Parker play Conrad, Nancy |
The constant body shaming that Celia subjects her daughter to seems unnecessarily cruel. Even if it is acting, it's still a child. It's crude with the show trying to masquerade that as offbeat comedy.
Nancy's older son Silas gets his girlfriend pregnant on purpose as she's leaving for school.
Reviews for this show were pretty good, but even in the second season I'm ambivalent. I like Nancy and while this is an interesting concept, it's packaged in what is basically a raunchy comedy. To add irony, Celia wins the town council seat and plans to make the neighborhood drug free. Little does she realize that her best friend is a dealer.
While Nancy's marriage solved a problem for her, it continues to create issues for everyone else. It was a marriage with a predictably short viability. When she mentioned getting rid of Peter to Conrad, she doesn't realize Peter was spying on her and hears. He spins that into pushing her to sell out and he'll take the money. The only person willing to buy is the dangerous dealer U-turn, and this ends on a cliff hanger. U-turn planned to rob Nancy and Conrad with Conrad hiring Aremenians to kill Peter. The only problem is that Nancy and Conrad don't have the weed.
I liked the second season better. The absurd premise is the draw, but this is rarely funny beyond the crude joke or situation. This show's humor relies on the absurd.
Season 3
Nancy can't find her weed that she owes U-turn. She ends up working for him to pay off that debt, and he saves her from another group of dealers. Nancy lost the drugs due to Celia.
This season features a number of twists. Nancy gets a job with a corrupt developer to help earn money since she's not dealing. U-turn begins training her, seeing her as a future lieutenant. That upsets Marvin who works for U-turn and hoped to get a promotion.
Nancy takes over the drug trade for the area, borrowing money through Doug who uses Agrestic's treasury. While she's risen to the top, that doesn't make things any easier. She battles plenty of people that want to shake her down. A PI hired by her ex-husband's wife Valerie attempts to extort money. Nancy and Valerie became friends, but the life insurance money for Peter gets in the way of that. Valerie thinks it should be hers. Celia also tries to shake down Nancy who flips out on her.
The end of the season literally and figuratively burns everything down to the ground.
This show gets by on being quirky, but it was never enough. All the reviews I've read stated the first three seasons are the peak of the show. I already wasn't fond of the show. The idea of liking this less doesn't sound appealing. I initially planned to watch the entire series, but I was ready to stop before I read the disdain for later seasons.
No comments :
Post a Comment