NETWORK: Showtime
AIR DATE: June 16, 2008
STARRING: Mary Louise-Parker, Elizabeth Perkins, Romany Malco, Justin Kirk, Mary Kate Olsen, Kevin Nealon, and Matthew Modine
CREATED BY: Jenji Kohan

Showtime programming is blunt and honest, so let's follow suit and state something that TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly won't tell you - it's a tough time to be a TV fan. The summer season of 2008 sucks. We were planning a "Summer TV Preview" but after Weeds, Burn Notice and Mad Men, there's not much to write home about. There are a few new shows hitting the nets that show varying degrees of potential, but a lot of networks are still struggling to get their schedules together. Typical summer staples like Rescue Me and Entourage will have to wait for cooler months. But, like we've said a lot lately, Showtime is leading the way. They've not only brought back one of the best shows on television but paired with a sexy new series. At least there will be something to watch on Monday nights.

At the end of the controversial third season of Weeds, creator/writer Jenji Kohan essentially set her own show on fire. Critics of the series argued that the junior year of the show went a little off the rails. I'll agree that having mom and pot dealer Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) involved in a drive-by shooting and doing a now-legendary "brick dance" stretched the boundaries of believability, but that's what I loved about season three. Kohan took the core foundation of her show, which is essentially about a mother trying to keep her family together through whatever means necessary, and turned it into something completely unpredictable. And every time that Weeds threatened to become a ridiculous and satirical soap opera like Desperate Housewives, the believability of what Parker does in the best female performance on television brought it back to Earth. Parker alone is reason enough to watch this show, but great supporting work by Elizabeth Perkins, Justin Kirk, and Kevin Nealon doesn't hurt.

So, where are we in season four? Agrestic/Majestic is still burning and the Botwins are on the run. The show picks up immediately after the end of season three - Nancy still smells like the gasoline she poured all over her living room and she's not even sure where to go next. The clan ends up at a very unlikely place, the home of Nancy's father-in-law, played with deadpan perfection by the still-awesome Albert Brooks. He never liked Nancy, doesn't get along with his son Andy, and is stuck taking care of his bedridden mother. He's grumpy and very few actors do grumpy as well as Albert Brooks. But it turns out that Nancy isn't near the Mexican border just for a family reunion. She's reunited with Guillermo and realized that a white woman going back and forth across the border doesn't raise the same suspicions as the average drug runner and that she can make a pretty penny doing so.

Meanwhile, Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) got nabbed by the DEA for allowing Nancy's weed business to run out of her house and Doug (Kevin Nealon) is still hanging with all the other evacuees from the fire. Celia keeps trying to tell the cops about Nancy, but everyone turns on her and it looks like she could be in jail for a while. As you can tell, the gang is pretty divided and it leads to something of an identity crisis at the beginning of the fourth season of Weeds. Completely splitting up Nancy, Celia, and Doug might not have been the best idea. By the end of the third episode, Kohan seems to have found a way to get Celia back into the mix but Doug and Isabelle are still floating in no man's land. The chemistry that these actors have developed over three seasons is one of the main reasons that Weeds works. Not allowing Parker/Perkins or Kirk/Nealon to shine together makes for a show that doesn't feel like the Weeds we know and love. That's not necessarily a bad thing - there are dozens of shows that could use a shake-up like this one and it's daring of Kohan to even try - but the first three episodes of the fourth season feels like a transition period. There's some great stuff thematically, like the idea that you need to go back to the beginning (Nancy's father-in-law and Andy's summer home as a child) to start fresh, but the show feels more scattershot than usual and, honestly, not that funny. I have full faith that Kohan will settle Weeds into another brilliant groove, but, like its lead character, she feels a little lost right now.

NETWORK: Showtime
AIR DATE: June 16, 2008
STARRING: Billie Piper, Iddo Goldberg and Cherie Lunghi
CREATED BY: Lucy Prebble

Whatever may be said about the flaws of the first three episodes of the new season of Weeds, they still surpass Showtime's new series in nearly every way, the British import Secret Diary of a Call Girl (how is it secret if we're watching it on Showtime?). I'm honestly torn about this new show, one that wears its "sexy chic" intentions on its sleeve and has moments of charm, but mostly falls a little flat in both the sexy and chic categories. Don't get me wrong - Billie Piper (Doctor Who) is as hot as anyone on television, but there's a fine line between "being sexy" and "trying to be sexy" and Secret Diary of a Call Girl often makes its racy intentions a bit too obvious. The show is based on the controversial autobiography by the mysterious "Belle du Jour", a high-class prostitute. This is not like HBO's "Hookers at the Point". It's closer to the world of expense accounts and private planes that took down Elliot Spitzer. The production notes promise to expose "the secrets of the inner workings of the high-class escort world." That's a great idea for a show and the titillating tagline brought in millions when it aired on ITV in the United Kingdom. But the inner workings of the high-class escort world, I'm sorry to report, aren't really that interesting. With powerful politicians watching their careers go up in flames on the national stage, what could Belle du Jour have to say that could really shock us?

Piper plays Belle/Hannah, the first name in her world of escorting and the second in her normal life, where her friends and family has no idea what she does to pay the bills. Believe it or not, the 'Hannah' side of Call Girl is a lot more interesting. Piper lends a believability to that side of the show that the sexual encounters don't have. There's an odd, hazy sheen to the sleazy side of Call Girl that gives that side of the series the look of a perfume commercial. A show like Secret Diary of a Call Girl only works if you believe the secrets are real. I'm not saying what happens in the show isn't going on with high-spending clients right this minute, but the way it's shot and written just doesn't feel real. Especially with the lack of new characters on this season, you could do a lot worse than spending Monday nights with Nancy Botwin and Belle du Jour, but these ladies could both use some work.