Grid Effect

When it comes to Marie Louise Parker’s and Jenji Kohan’s Showtime dramedy Weeds, we’ve waffled as much on this show as any in the past. For one thing, the text and tone of the series is original. A spoiled, upper-middle class housewife is suddenly widowed, then forced to deal with the economic reality of maintaining the lifestyle her and her kids have become accustomed too without that massive paycheck that her dearly departed was bringing home.

At first we were relatively enamored with the series, and thought the second season improved on its debut. Maybe we were running low on television to watch and needed something to cling to, but after watching this third season, they seemed out of new ideas, and the third season turned into a fifteen episode long nosedive that ended as conveniently as possible. The problem is, while Nancy has never been perfect (though the show has always wanted us to root for her), she became almost completely unlikable during the third season. Everyone, whether it was Conrad, Heylia, Silas, whoever she is fucking at the time, is put into some kind of danger just by associating with her.

There is a little self-awareness throughout the season. One scene in particular when Nancy confesses to Andy that she did, in fact, play a part in Peter’s (The CIA agent she was technically married to) death. Not that she intentionally sought to have him murdered, but rather that by virtue of knowing her, he died. Andy offers up a hilarious but not quite accurate analogy (paraphrasing): “I taught Natalie something how to give her first blow job, three years later her boyfriend drove his car into a river while she was giving him head and they both died. Does that make me a murderer? No, it makes me a good teacher. And her boyfriend a bad driver.”

It’s moments like these that make the series redeemable, because they speak to the motives and logic of the characters. These moments were few and far between, and there was little interlacing of storylines that worked so well in the first two seasons. So what do they do instead of trying to work through it? They have Nancy and her new Mexican business partner/eventual fuck buddy burn down the city in a brush fire, which the series still manages to blame partly on global warming.

In short, the season seemed aimless, and filled with too many new, one-dimensional, unlikable and uninteresting characters (namely Peter’s ex-wife, the motorcycle gang, the latino gang, Sullivan). You can be unlikable, and still be a worthy screen presence, see: virtually every show with its own category to the left. But this just seemed to jump from scene to scene with little or no connection to anything that has taken place. Character’s emotions and intentions seemed to shift dramatically with no explanation for why they did so, and there was just too much failed humor.

That can be chalked up to a limited amount of Justin Kirk and Kevin Nealon. By far, the two funniest (and by extension) and most interesting characters. Kevin spends the season butting heads with the city council of majestic, and has some brilliant lines about the nature of political elections and he simply epitomizes how low-brow politics tend to be. Kirk spent the third season trying to get out of the Army (in what was probably the series’ most absurd plot line in three seasons) then the rest of it hitting on disgusting biker women and fucking porn stars with his three toed foot.

We have to admit, his inability to fit in was hilarious.

Not that they were completely wasted, but doing a borderline slapstick comedy that centered on these two would be world’s better than what they produced this season. We don’t necessarily think everyone else is irredeemable, but these are the two comedic highlights, and for a series that is supposed to be a satirical comedy, they sure were underused.

Another complaint about the series is how proud of itself it appears to be. A series has never been so unapologetically liberal and completely hostile to the other side of the argument, yet these people really feel like their making a difference by having Andy say something along the lines of, “the war in Iraq is for oil”. Wow, what a terribly unique and original concept. I mean, it hasn’t been made a talking point for the last five or six years or anything.

Look, I have no problem with a series taking a stand on certain political issues, or even unabashedly aligning itself with a political party (The Wire has certainly made its thoughts clear on No Child Left Behind and the war on drugs). But there are sensible and rational ways of doing this, and then there is Weeds, who seem more offended by religion being taught in schools than their protagonist participating in drive-byes.

Again, we know it’s satire, but when you are going to attempt to voice an opinion very controversial issues, you can’t have it both ways. We’re not going to take you seriously when your series revolves around a woman who drinks iced lattes all day, but in the peripheral has the Army killing its own soldiers for essentially no reason. If you want to see what intelligent, nuanced, scathing social commentary looks like, Mrs. Kohan should watch The Sopranos or Mad Men for her queues.

All this aside, we’re still tuning into the fourth season Monday night to see if they can recover from the drudgery that was their third season. We think the new setting might help, but are dutifully unimpressed that they needed to revamp the entire series after a paltry three seasons. Christ, even Nip Tuck waited until its fifth, and it spans over the course of several years. If you’re looking for a half hour comedy to compare it too, Curb waited until the end of its sixth season to have Larry and Cheryl separate for good.

Considering each Weeds season picks up in the same scene that the season before it left off, three seasons for them equates to what? Maybe six weeks? If you look at it that way, Nancy Botwin has managed to go from dealing dime bags to her neighbors, to being an accomplice in several murders, to burning down her entire town in a bout of gang warfare, it looks even more ridiculous. Her little “I tried, Judah” memoriam right before she burnt down her own house and pulled off on a segway (seriously) was hard to take literally.

We’re going to cut it short here and not even delve into how tiresome it is that Nancy’s genitals manage to get her out of every situation. Relative to the website, maybe we’re too forgiving, too loyal to series’ we begin watching on appointment. But this series has so much potential that it wasted in season three, were optimistic that it will turn things around in its new setting hopefully with more Silas, Shane, Andy and Doug; and less caricature gangsters, Celia (whose appeal we understand but we just see her as vile), and essentially everything else that didn’t involve Conrad or Heylia.

That’s it for the week, have a good weekend.