Hooked on Weeds

Showtime’s brilliant and addictive comedy series, ‘Weeds’, takes modern suburban life in southern California and turns it upside down, just barely keeping things on this side of normal. While I fastidiously avoid TV serials, especially network comedies, ‘Weeds’ has made me care once more about a TV show, much like ‘The West Wing’ did in its earlier seasons. Now that Season 2 of ‘Weeds’ is here, I think it’s high time (pun intended?) that viewers still deprived of this wonderful series finally make its acquaintance.

The setting for ‘Weeds’ is a planned community called by the harsh-sounding name of Agrestic. (I think Stevenson Ranch northwest of LA doubles for the town.) The series title could refer to the waywardness of people’s behaviour beneath that suburban veneer of perfection, but it also plays on Nancy Botkin’s (Mary-Louise Parker) new means of livelihood shortly after she loses her husband: selling pot to the Agrestic community.

Season 1 begins with Nancy’s sudden widowhood, leaving her to care for two sons, 16-year-old Silas (Hunter Parrish) and 10-year-old Shane (Alexander Gould). In order to maintain their upper middle class lifestyle (she drives a Range Rover and lives in a McMansion), she starts to secretly sell weed to her neighbours (for her, it's that - or being 'the oldest Gap employee in Southern California'). She can’t divulge her new source of income to her family or anyone else in Agrestic, and so, with the help of her accountant (and best customer) Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), she fronts her illegal trade with the Breadsticks and Scones bakeshop, also known as ‘the fakery.’

Nancy never does drugs herself (she never even samples the stuff she sells), but she might as well be doing so, considering her continually confused desperation and absent-mindedness. She’s unable to deal with Silas and Shane’s new problems and her own bills go unpaid. She’s not without guilt at dealing pot, and insists on keeping it away from kids. She does wrong things with good intentions, usually anchored in her concern for her family’s well-being. She gets a little careless at times, like later taking on a dopey (pun intended) but self-described ‘smart and underachieving’ Indian-American student, Sanjay (Maulik Pancholy) to help her deal pot at Valley State and work at the ‘fakery’. On rare occasions, Nancy actually wakes up from her spaced-out reverie to wonder how and why she did what she’s just done – like engage in casual sex with a stranger.

Nancy hangs out with her pot suppliers, a black family headed by the formidable wiseacre matriarch, Heylia James (Tonye Patano), with her aimless nephew, Conrad (Romany Malco) and pregnant daughter, Indigo (Vaneeta). Nancy seems to find the comfort and friendship she lacks in Agrestic among the Jameses, from whom she need not conceal her secret trade. A source of erotic tension as well as humour is the tenuous attraction between Nancy and Conrad. It doesn’t escape Heylia’s eye. Due to unforeseen events, she later decides to ban any direct communication between the two.

The other female lead is the more tightly wound Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins) who is Nancy’s friend – of sorts. A burning rage simmers beneath Celia’s cool exterior. She oozes condescension, frustration and intolerance through every pore, calling her younger, 12-year-old daughter, Isabelle (Allie Grant), ‘Isa-belly’ for her chubbiness and propensity for eating. Her vapid spouse, Dean (Andy Miller), isn’t spared her withering remarks, either. With all these and lots of other un-PC conduct, Celia then surprises us when she speaks up on behalf of the gym teacher during a PTA (parent-teacher association) meeting. Alas, she’s late and has just been dethroned in absentia as head of the Agrestic PTA.

Cut from the same cloth as Miranda Priestly of ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ (being made memorably b!tchy at the current cinema by Meryl Streep), Celia possesses a similarly sharp, acerbic wit. For all her beastliness, Celia can’t totally disguise the brittle creature within. She’s perhaps most unforgiving of her own self, but can see her faults only in others. Celia offers comic catharsis by releasing our own id impulses, doing and saying things we normally suppress for the sake of social harmony. (Similarly, Nancy’s younger son, Shane, also embodies our hidden, uncensored selves whenever he blurts out embarrassing comments and questions to strangers, winkingly excused by the show as a post-traumatic stress reaction.)

Other goofy types in Agrestic include Nancy’s accountant and city councillor Doug Wilson, a perpetually stoned, perpetual adolescent. Actor Kevin Nealon invests Doug Wilson with just the right dose of credible silliness to still endear himself as an amusing crack-up. Of similarly juvenile bent is Nancy’s carefree brother-in-law, Andy Botkin (Justin Kirk), who has no proper job to speak of. After his brother’s death, Andy moves in with Nancy and her family, blithely sponging off his sis-in-law for food, lodging and entertainment (which includes dipping into her supply of pot). The excellent Mr Kirk turns the initially vexatious slacker Andy into a likeable lazy bum who makes a perfect buddy for Doug in their ‘joint sessions’. Both Mr Nealon and Mr Kirk walk that fine line between overdone farce and the truly funny, each actor giving his respective part a more appealing, human dimension.

Casting Mary-Louise Parker and Elizabeth Perkins in the respective roles of Nancy and Celia was a stroke of genius. These two fine, underappreciated actors finally get parts worthy of their gifts, and fashion a couple of curiously compelling characters from them. Uncannily, Ms Parker and Ms Perkins bear a close resemblance to each other in name as well as in looks. They could be sisters, but their characters couldn’t be more different.

I’ve always sympathized with the quirky screen personas of Mary-Louise Parker. Most well-known, perhaps, for playing the ill-fated Ruth Jamison in ‘Fried Green Tomatoes’ (1991), she’s won a Golden Globe for the first season of ‘Weeds’, and a Tony for her role in the original stage production of ‘Proof’ (the 2000 version which I missed on Broadway by a just few years). On ‘Weeds’, Ms Parker plays Nancy Botkin to preternaturally scatter-brained perfection. It’s another charmingly naïve, softhearted, blundering character that’s uniquely hers, with that typical wide-eyed look that signals equal parts innocence, bewilderment, surprise and despair. In the final episode, we wonder what will happen next season when Nancy finds out that her new lover is a DEA agent (Martin Donovan).

Elizabeth Perkins might best be remembered for her role as Tom Hanks’ grown-up girlfriend in ‘Big’ from 1988, and the unexceptional comedy with Kevin Bacon, ‘He Said, She Said’ (1991). More recently she had a small but similarly nasty part in one segment of the HBO special, ‘If These Walls Could Talk 2’ (2000). Almost doomed to so-so roles, Ms Perkins at last has a proper vehicle to showcase her talents. Playing Celia Hodes with a piquant and cutting irony, she spouts the woman’s caustic remarks with such nuanced sarcasm to draw laughs – and even sympathy – from us.

The exceptional script of ‘Weeds’ boasts lines that crackle with a keen and brilliant wit, delivered with impeccable comic timing by the ensemble cast. Zingers abound, but they sound more like real conversation than artificial, sit-com punch lines, and we’re thankfully spared the patronizing distraction of comedy laugh tracks. Credit goes to series creator/executive producer/head writer Jenji Kohan, her co-writers, and the show’s directors.

I like the casualness with which ‘Weeds’ crosses class, colour, ethnic and social lines. Characters of Caucasian, Asian, African and Hispanic descent get to interact with more than just the typical coldly professional, heated or condescending words. Novel characterizations overcome the latent banality of clichéd roles. Stereotypes are turned on their head, yielding many instances of surprising humour.

Like so many film and TV predecessors, ‘Weeds’ sets its sights on the familiar target of suburbia. Unlike most of them, ‘Weeds’ seizes upon more realistic and timely events for its sweet and sharp satire. And while its characters may face the usual everyday and not-so-everyday concerns, few react in expected ways. That delightful unpredictability in character development as well as plot keeps ‘Weeds’ from going stale.

‘Weeds’ isn’t perfect, and might not be for everyone. The excessively raunchy dialogue could rankle those who don’t find too funny such liberal use of profanity. The wordly, wise-beyond-their-years remarks given to the pint-sized cast could also offend others. (I also wonder if the young cast understand all those adult lines that they mouth.) An uninhibited libertine sensibility prevails in ‘Weeds’ that sees sex and pot and drugs as merely recreational pastimes – most concerning, perhaps, with the teenage characters. As with real folks, rare thought is given to the potential perils to health and life (although some might question that premise in the case of Nancy’s herb – the show’s understated mockery of society’s avid acceptance of *officially prescribed* mind-altering substances while demonizing pot to excess is especially delicious).

As far as this viewer is concerned, the show’s insistent neutrality on many issues works more in its favour. ‘Weeds’ offers subtly intellectual (not to mention delectable and wickedly humourous) viewing fare for the open-minded, thinking *adult* who detests being lectured to as if he or she were a six-year-old. Some bits will surely rub some viewers the wrong way. The show’s light-hearted tone belies the dark and deeper truths revealed about the neuroses, obsessions, contradictions and hypocrisies of modern life, but ‘Weeds’ hardly means to be a morality play. Presenting a kooky cast of characters who sally forth in amusingly dishevelled, unboring and often poignant lives, it just tries to be smart, eccentric and witty. Ultimately, it attempts to be a finely observed, touching comedy of modern manners. In this it succeeds, and succeeds beautifully. If you decide to see this and find yourself hooked, don’t say you weren’t warned. Four-and-a-half stars.

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N.B. The new season of 'Weeds' has just started on The Showtime Channel (Mondays at 10 pm with reruns throughout the week - check http://www.sho.com/site/weeds/home.do for details).

I’ve seen the first and second episodes, ‘Corn Snake’ and ‘Cooking with Jesus’, and they’re as witty and riotous as ever. In one segment in ‘Corn Snake’, the normally tentative Nancy suddenly goes postal on her sons and brother-in-law while persuading them to gather at the table for a proper ‘family dinner’. The sequence will keep you in stitches for a while.

With its raw language, partial nudity and sex, ‘Weeds’ would be considered by many as inappropriate for the pediatric age group. It’s totally fine for non-right-wing adults with a wacky sense of humour, though!