Weeds - Season 2

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STUDIO: Lionsgate
MSRP: $39.98
RATING: Not Rated
RUNNING TIME: 283 minutes
SPECIAL FEATURES:
• Commentaries on selected episodes
• Trivia tracks
• Behind-the-scenes featurettes
• Gag reel
• Spoof commercial
• Montage of introductory credits
• Extended musical performance

The Pitch

“It's like Full House with more overt drug use.”

The Humans

Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Nealon, Romany Malco, Justin Kirk, Martin Donovan, Hunter Parrish.

The Nutshell

At the end of the first season of Showtime's compromising-situational comedy, suburban widow Nancy Botwin (Parker) had made the decision to move beyond small-time marijuana dealing into her own growing and distribution business. Around the same time, she also started dating an agent from the Drug Enforcement Agency. Accidentally.

Everything's looking rosy for this second season!


This, friends, is called "elegance."

The Lowdown

The first season of Weeds worked as a well-developed piece of absurdity in service of cynical commentary on American suburban life. The premise was a great hook, and the character of Nancy stumbled into familiar morals by way of some unconventional means, most of them involving drug culture and genteel crime. I dug it, because it sucked the saccharine out of American dream myths and replaced it with smoke.

This second season aims itself in a different direction. Where before Nancy was aimless, and frantic to maintain her family despite the hardships of losing a husband and father, now she has a solid direction: the foundation of her growing and distribution business. A lot of the charm of the first season came from Nancy's bravery in her various legal, mundane, ethical, or life-threatening situations, provoked or not. Now, with a solid direction in life, she has grown up significantly, like the transition from a undeclared freshman to a graduating senior.

Accordingly, the charm of the show has dissipated. I enjoyed the first season immensely, mostly on the merits of Mary-Louise Parker's wit and resilience, which ran to the enchanting more often than not. With a clearer purpose in mind, those two qualities find themselves in not as much demand, replaced on set by business acumen and cleverness. I have to admit that this is more of an observation than a criticism (which could be said about most of what I write here,) because, though the change is fundamentally a drastic one, it keeps the interest held as tight as did the first season, even if it is in a different hand. Or possibly a prehensile foot.


I am seriously conflicted about this picture.

The thing is that while Nancy Botwin: Dealer Mom was an engaging anchor for a show, Nancy Botwin: Shrewd Drug Lord is equally entertaining. There are some aspects of the show that suffer; the family life becomes not as much of a subplot, save for a few spikes of drama, and the attending secondary characters get largely sidelined. The season-long track following the Agrestic city council race becomes a distraction from the main events, and the litany of little things -- the ones which drive a mom batty, such as a brother-in-law who fights his way into Rabbinical school in order to claim exemption from the Army, or a son who winds up at a massage parlor at the age of twelve -- buzz around like flies, given too much running time without serving purposes more valuable than comic relief.

The winning current of this season, though, is the continuation of the bizarre similarities between Nancy's life and those of the law-abiding citizens. Last season, she tried to keep her family together when it was threatening to splinter apart, by means of dealing marijuana to small fry; this season, she becomes a workaholic, and her family life begins to suffer like those of so many of her suburbanite peers. That her work involves setting up a grow house and getting rival drug lords busted by her DEA boyfriend makes no difference. It's all about the family, after all.


Too pants.

The second season of Weeds shows a great example of fleshing out characters, of giving them new directions and motivations while maintaining a consistent level of quality and entertainment. It couldn't have been an easy task, redirecting the energies of just about everyone in the cast and coming up with a dozen episodes that hold the feel, but jettison the aim, of the previous twelve. The writers ought to be commended, and you ought to give the show a try.

The Package

Seven of the twelve episodes have commentary with whichever cast and crew members happened to be walking past the studio. These commentaries tend toward the anecdotal, so there's not much in the way of substantial interest. You also get some trivia tracks to accompany selected episodes, so you won't be hurting for education on, say, what the marijuana plants are made of.

In addition, there are four brief behind-the-scenes featurettes, a gag reel, and montages of the opening credits, which the producers got a gaggle of musicians to cover this season. Also a commercial for the girls' plus-size “Huskeroos” clothing brand that features substantially in one subplot, and a reggae performance which was used in the episode in which Nancy goes to a growers' convention.

8 out of 10