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With its fantastic comedy series Weeds, cable network Showtime finally gave up its also-ran status to HBO and found itself with a controversial, buzz-worthy show that was as hilarious as it was dark, one about a truly desperate housewife. A recent widow with two growing sons, Nancy Botwin (Golden Globe winner Mary-Louise Parker) looks like a typical resident of the affluent Southern California suburb of Agrestic. She keeps a clean, upscale house (with the help of a live-in maid), attends PTA meetings, goes to her kids' soccer games, makes frequent stops at the local coffee franchise.... and sells marijuana in order to make it all possible. Left with no way to support herself after her beloved husband's fatal heart attack, Nancy turns herself into the "suburban baroness of bud," dealing to her neighbors in the area, with the help of her supplier Heylia (Tonye Patano) and point man Conrad (Romany Malco). Nancy's clients run from the local councilman (Kevin Nealon) to the just-barely-legal students at the local community college, but many in Agrestic are still in the dark as to how she keeps her family afloat, including her best friend, the sardonic Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), a wife and mother whose blistering, withering put-downs could make Dorothy Parker cringe in fear. But like many small-business owners, Nancy yearns for more success and cash, and like her workaholic neighbors, finds keeping a balance between work life and home life to be extremely precarious at best.
While Desperate Housewives yearned to be a suburban satire with bite, Weeds was the real deal, skewering upper-middle class mores with a sharp eye, a keen wit, and a mostly forgiving heart. In episode after episode, the show's creative team (led by creator Jenji Kohan) pulled back the layers of Agrestic's superficiality to show what lies beneath the squeaky-clean exteriors and smiling faces; it turns out that hunger, fear, desire, and, yes, desperation aren't that far down. However, Weeds forsakes pulpiness and florid drama for biting yet affectionate humor--its heroine is a woman with sliding morals, but one you'll root for to the very end. The effervescent Parker, the only actress who can mix perkiness with morbidity in just the right amounts, anchored the show with her amazing turn as Nancy, who by the end of the first season had become a kind of soccer-mom version of Michael Corleone, entering a corrupt world with both trepidation and fascination--and totally enamored of the power it brought her. Also perfectly cast, Perkins found the role of a lifetime as the bitterly hilarious Celia, and entering the show in its fourth episode, Justin Kirk (Parker's co-star in Angels in America) proved to be a potent secret weapon as Nancy's brother-in-law Andy, a slacker who wasn't above peddling t-shirts to elementary school kids. As icky as these characters might appear on the surface, Weeds made them all immensely appealing and great company to be around. Don't say we didn't warn you: one hit and you'll be hooked on this show. The DVDs feature six episode commentaries with cast and crew, outtakes, original featurettes, a music video, and most enjoyably, Agrestic Herbal Recipes (for entertainment value only, we assume) and the "Smoke and Mirrors" marijuana mockumentary. --Mark Englehart
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
You have seen "Desperate Housewives," well, this would be "Desperate Housewives" on drugs,
By Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER) (HALL OF FAME) Marijuana is not a gateway drug in the wacky world of "Weeds," and Nancy might be a dealer but she is also a mom, so if somebody starts dealing to 10 year olds she is more than willing to find them jumping on a bed in their underwear and to sit on them and read them the riot act (okay, actually she has to use coercion, but you get the moral position here). The people of Agrestic do not do harder drugs, they just smoke weed, and eat brownies (and hash browns and pot roast and, well, you get the idea). So, yes, just about everybody on the show is doing drugs, but they are not doing bad drugs, they are just smoking (and eating) weed. In other words, weed is not a hard drug it is a soft drug and people who take it get silly and or horny, which for a half-hour dramedy (black dramedy?) that airs on Showtime would pretty much be a prerequisite. Funny that things have not really progressed all that much from the classic anti-marijuana films of the 1930s, like "Reefer Madness" and "Assassin of Youth," which proved once and for all that smoking grass makes you giggle uncontrollably. Selling weed is only part of Nancy's life, because both of her sons are presenting her with problems. Silas wants to have sex with her girlfriends and Shane, who was with his father when he dropped dead, likes to respond aggressively to being bullied, which means he gets suspended from elementary school a lot ("You Can't Miss the Bear"). One of the few people in Agrestic who is not smoking Nancy's weed is Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), the president of the Agrestic Elementary School P.T.A., whose older daughter is the one Silas wants to have sex with. Celia is the sort of person who thinks diet soft drinks should be available to the kids at school and who calls her youngest daughter Isabelle (Allie Grant) "Isabelly" as part of constant pressure to lose weight. This is a mother-daughter war that gets dirty a way you have seldom seen before ("Good S*** Lollipop"). Then again, Celia does teach us that there are clearly worse things in this world than having Coke bottles from a Cessna fall through your roof ("Fashion of the Christ"). "Weeds" could be an interesting show without the marijuana because, after all, we are talking about Mary Louise Parker and Elizabeth Perkins here, which is a pretty dynamic duo (Parker grabbed a Golden Globe for her role and Perkins is up for an Emmy this year). But some of the funniest stuff here happens when the white lady goes to the house of her supplier, Heylia James (Tonye Patano), and proves how far in over her head she is in this new business venture. Fortunately Heylia's nephew Conrad Shepard (Romany Malco) takes a liking to Nancy or she would really be up the proverbial creek without a paddle ("The Punishment Lighter"). Nancy's C.P.A., Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon) is helping her hide her income when he is not buying her weed, and over the course of the first season she slowly puts together a support group that can help her move up the food chain of her chosen business. Unfortunately her brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) has showed up and moved in and the guy is a walking advertisement for weed being too much of a good thing at some point that he apparently reached years ago ("Lude Awakening"). In terms of ideological assault "Weeds" burns its satire at both ends of the political spectrum, which would mean everybody will find something to laugh at and/or be offended by, or probably both. This might be an idealized version of the marijuana business, but Nancy has spunk and it suddenly occurs to me that this show might also be "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" on drugs, because we have the feeling that Nancy just might make it after all. That is until the final shot of the first season when she turns on the light in the bathroom and sees what is embroidered on the shirt she grabbed to put on when she got out of bed in the middle of the night ("The Godmother"). The second season should be interesting and hopefully Showtime will keep "Weeds" around longer than they did "Huff." Final Note: Gould was the voice of both Nemo in "Finding Nemo" and Bambi in "Bambi II," which is why he sounds so familiar but you cannot place the face.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weeds 1,
This review is from: Weeds: The Complete First Season [Blu-ray] (Blu-ray)
Funny, deep, and entertaining. Lots of side plots. Characters you want to dislike but you actually may like a bit more than you think.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great show, novel idea, well written and acted!,
I don't love exercise so I bought this to watch while I do my 30 minutes on my elliptical and it works a treat - I barely notice the time pass with this amazing show!
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