Grid Effect

With the current drought of quality new and original programming, we took it upon ourselves to catch up on a series that we have since overlooked. And given our penchant for television you have to pay extra to receive, we thought Weeds would be an appropriate choice. It’s a half hour long, we had never seen even a millisecond of it and they’ve burned through four seasons in three years. For a network taking a stab to be the “new HBO” of original programming, they sure as shit don’t act like it. Generally that’s the length of hiatus’ on HBO.

Anyhow, the series revolves around our protagonist Nancy Botwin, a recent widow with two sons, a maid and a freeloading brother in law, played with an understated coolness by Mary-Louise Parker, the hottest +40 year old we can think of. We never get any back story, but presumably she had limited options after burying her husband and resorted to selling marijuana to make ends meet (Yeah, I really want a back story, the woman virtually lives in a mansion). All while coping with the pressure of raising two boys on her own and maintaining the facade as a law abiding citizen in the town of Argrestic (I’m assuming on the outskirts of LA) to all the wives and mothers and dealer to all of their husbands.

She buys her packages from the Shepard’s, a sharp witted black family that seems genuinely concerned for her but still prioritizes business over her well-being, particularly the matriarch of the family Heylia, who not only initially sold her cheap marijuana but also took her car then wedding ring as collateral when she was unable to make payments. Six episodes in she has yet to recollect her ring, but got the car back after the Shepard’s house was shot up (not a norm for the series).

When not buying/distributing drugs or tending to her sons Shane and Silas, she’s gossiping with a neighborhood “frenemy” that she mostly likes (and admits to her as much), Celia Hodes. Celia is a gossip monger while claiming to disapprove of gossip. She’s married to a pothead who carries as much disdain for her as she does him. It’s really quite depressing. They casually cheat on each other and seem all but content to go on that way, presumably because both of them are worried about getting slighted in a divorce. Celia is probably the simplest and most cliched aspect of the show. She saunters around insulting everyone from her own children to her husband to run of the mill middle schoolers.

Everything about this series is for people on drugs.

It isn’t Celia’s unpleasantness that undoes the character, it’s the obviousness of everything that she spouts. She’s essentially like the blond from Sex and The City, except married, less slutty and more self-conscious. Even by episode five we discover that she has breast cancer. The similarities are endless I tell you.

Occasionally we are treated to flashbacks of Nancy’s deceased husband Judah, usually through video footage. And honestly, their is a stockpile of footage of this cat. They could make a documentary on this guy’s foreplay from what we’ve seen. The scene always ends with either Shane or Nancy looking longingly at the camera, Nancy is generally in tears but at one point displays some frustration/bitterness that her husband died prematurely when she chucks the camera into the wall of the house.

The show has its downside, like the introduction of characters that we never see again. Namely Josh, a rival dealer still in high school who made his bones selling to preteens. I use the past tense because the kid was in the pilot episode and has yet to reappear. And considering he’s the son of Kevin Nealon’s character Doug Wilson, Nancy’s biggest client and CPA (also city council man), it isn’t really consistent that he would disappear from the cast like that. At least when they got rid of Quinn, Celia’s daughter, they provided an explanation (Celia sent her to boarding school after Quinn flicked her off through a hidden camera device Celia conspired to spy on her daughter with). But Josh seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.

The humor often seems to try a little too hard and remaining unfunny. Kevin Nealon and Nancy’s suppliers are the comedic highlights of the series, but to often are the kids left with comedy material that the actors seem ill-quipped too handle. Not only that, but too maintain a semblance of realism, some of the humor in this series should be met with some hostility as it is very disparaging, but usually it’s brushed off and never touched on again. The characters all seem ambivalent in this regard, and it’s distracting.

Still we recommend it if you’re looking for something new to watch during these strike ridden days we’re living in. If you want a short review of this series, an adapted for television version of American Beauty is pretty accurate, minus the Kevin Spacey character. It’s set in a bland suburban community (as the oddly hypnotic opening credits would suggest) full of duplicity and deception from its inhabitants. Not exactly uplifting but a solid half hour of entertainment. We’d conclude that the series starts to hit its stride by the third episode, so don’t judge it by its pilot or sophomore efforts.