Sunday, July 6, 2008

Weeds, Season 3 (2007)

Weeds is the id on methamphetamine. It's hedonistic, narcissistic and self-indulgent. Sometimes some of the characters are mean, even cruel to each other. Yet, I look forward to marathon viewing. This season contains 15 episodes running approximately 30 minutes each.

(Spoiler Alert: Read at Your Own Risk!)

Is Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) a bad mom? In the previous two seasons, it may have been easier to avoid the question. She got into this "business" as a matter of survival. She's good at it and has met the right folks to help. Life has become more complicated. By now both her sons Silas (Hunter Parrish) and Shane (Alexander Gould) know she's a pot dealer.

Nancy's often on the go, working and nurturing her criminal mind through myriad issues that continue to crop up. With all this navigating, she isn't home much. She enrolls Shane in summer school, which turns out to be different than expected. Silas starts dealing and recruits his new girlfriend, Tara (Mary-Kate Olsen) to help.

They take jabs at the military this season and there are times when Doug (Kevin Nealon) crosses so many lines that you wonder how much longer he can get away with it. Nancy gets a job and occasionally sleeps with her boss, (Sullivan) Matthew Modine, who's also sleeping with Celia (Elizabeth Perkins). Much like but better and faster paced than a soap opera, this escape-from-reality continues when Nancy has to pay off a debt to a thug called U-Turn. For supposed toughs, they're pretty nice to her. When she has to deal with the antagonists of those thugs, again, they respect her in spite of her being a skinny white lady that really has no idea of what she's getting herself into.

I enjoy watching Nancy trying to do the right thing while watching her back while having to outsmart those who want a piece of the earnings. The scripts are witty and always turn a corner, even when you think they've hit the roadblock to end future plots.

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