Weeds - TV Review

For all of you in dire need of a break from summer reruns and reality overload, Showtime has the answer in a surprisingly dead-on, emotionally charged, yet totally mellow, new show called Weeds. In the picturesque suburban community of Agrestic, California, the wives are well dressed, the kids are well behaved and "the cookies are cut with cannabis."

Emmy Award winning creator Jenji Kohan's (Friends) catchy take on a suburban mom who deals pot to other parents to stay afloat is bound to be met with some resistance, but Kohan feels that the most captivating moments, the ones that make for the best TV, are the moments that not everyone is comfortable with. "I wanted to focus on the gray areas of human nature and life as opposed to the standard black and white; good guys/bad guys stories that we see all the time on television," she says in the press materials for the show. "It's where the comedy and drama lie, and when your heroes function outside conventional morality [they] must then develop a set of moral codes and boundaries of their own."

Nancy Bartwin's (Mary-Louise Parker) moral code is in flux. Although she never touches the stuff herself, she doesn't think twice about selling dope to other grownups, but things get complicated once she starts baking special brownies for her customers instead of muffins for her children.

But like Kohan says, it's never that cut and dry. For Nancy, dealing pot isn't about Manolo Blahniks, it's about keeping a roof over her head. Weeds is the off-kilter, yet somehow strikingly poignant, story of a previously unemployed suburban mom trying to make ends meet after her husband kicks it and leaves her with two kids (Shane 8 and Silas 15) as well as a pile of debt. After discovering she has a knack for sales, Nancy starts dealing pot to the soccer dads of her scenic gated community.

Okay okay, drugs are bad and drug dealing is worse, but that's the beautiful part of this clever dramedy - it isn't about drugs, per se. Kohan has her finger on the absurd pulse of suburbia (like how people got stoned for The Passion Of The Christ) and manages to bring out the intricate façade that dominates this strip-mall existence without any condescension. In Agrestic, the neighbors spy on each other and gossip behind each other backs, the kids want to party and have sex, and the parents are clueless as to how to stop them. Sound just like where you grew up? Kohan doesn't imply that people need drugs because their lives are lacking something (although for some, it is an escape), nor does she take a moral stance against them. Pot is just another staple of suburban living. But for her heroine, dope is the only way she knows to make money.

Emmy, Tony and Golden Globe Award winning actress, Parker infuses Nancy with a bittersweet desperation and consequently her use of unconventional measures to ensure the financial security of her family are completely understandable. Between having Nancy keep up with the younger competition and trying to move on from her husband's sudden death, Kohan packs Weeds with primo emotion, air-tight dialogue, and quality characters. As Nancy learns the ropes of dealing from her hilarious, close-knit, African American supplier family - where she feels more at home than in her hypocritical, alienating neighborhood, but who would sell her out as fast as sell to her - she finds it more difficult to hide her secret job from her kids and her friends.

Under Kohan, Nancy is more than just sympathetic, she's real. Yes, her husband is dead, but Weeds isn't a pity party. And Parker infuses the character with a delicate complexity. Every day Nancy battles not to fall apart at the seams while walking the thin line between cool mom and total pushover, PTA member and drug dealer, grieving widow and competent, functioning matriarch. When she finally does break down in front of Conrad (Romany Malco), her supplier Heylia's (Tonye Patano) super hot nephew, the scene is surprisingly powerful.

The ladies of Wisteria lane have met their match in Nancy and Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), Nancy's sadistic and lonely friend of convenience. "I think sometimes the more powerful the issue, the more humorous the situation has the potential to be," Perkins has said of Weeds. In that case Weeds is heavy on the issues, because it's fall out of your seat funny. But no matter what you call it, a comedy with issues or a funny drama, the show is bound to spice up the morning water cooler chats.

"There's a lot of stuff people don't want to talk about these days," Kohan says in reference to the show's "anything goes" subject matter; "we take a lot of sacred cows, beat them over the head and milk them for laughs. I think some people will be upset and some people will be really glad to see us." Couldn't have said it better myself.