I Like to Watch

Nov. 18, 2007 | As Thanksgiving dashes toward us faster than an anxious turkey, let's all fill our hearts with gratitude. For even as our housing market collapses, the value of the U.S. dollar falls and an ugly recession looms just around the corner, it's important for us to thank the good Lord for this great land of ours! Yes, it's true that our motherland is stumbling like a drunk whore across the back alleys of international commerce. Yes, it's true that we're falling behind other nations, thanks to the fact that the incompetent jackasses we knew back in high school and college are assuming positions of authority, where they're doubtlessly screwing things up with reckless abandon.

But let's give thanks anyway. Recessions aren't all bad, remember. At least now your dumb yuppie friends will stop prattling on about installing a Jacuzzi tub in their enormous bathroom. At least now fast food and cheap beer will be back in style. At least now college kids will stop thinking that they should be running their own companies or directing multimillion-dollar movies the second they graduate. Instead, they'll have to go get temp jobs, just like we did, back during the last recession. Because when recent college grads aren't eating Ramen and groveling for unpaid internships, there's really something wrong with the world.

We've been spoiled, so spoiled! With our stupid iPods and TiVos and iPhones and Nintendo Wiis! Wasting our days at work, checking the value of our stock portfolios, shopping online, giving money to fight global warming so we don't feel so guilty about fueling up our gigantic cars and driving them to the Container Store for more containers to put all of our useless stuff in. Sept. 11 was supposed to have changed us forever, given us our souls back, made us focus on the important things in life. Instead, we've spent the past six years reorganizing our walk-in closets.

Now we'll eat bad pizza and like it, thank you very much! We'll be grateful for our small houses and our enormous mortgages, grateful for our small tits and our crappy jobs, grateful for our outdated shoes and our threadbare furniture! We'll learn to sew patches on our clothes, we'll learn to cut our kids' hair, we'll learn to clip coupons and cook with beans! We'll start saying stuff they used to say back in the '30s, like "At least I have my health!" and "All I need is a roof over my bad haircut and a place to hang my unfashionable hat" or however that one goes. We'll turn down the heat and put on sweaters, just like our parents used to force us to do when we were little! We'll invite our dogs into bed to keep us warm!

Aww. I like us so much better than I did just a few minutes ago!

Flame out
You have to admit, there's an electricity, a raw-nerve-ending thrill to the tough times that the good times just don't share. Good times are all about improving your position in life (or just getting anxious about it), acquiring stuff (that doesn't make you any happier), trying to relax (in ways that aren't all that relaxing) and endlessly upgrading everything (which only trains you to look for flaws in your environment). Bad times, on the other hand, are all about acceptance and commitment and hard work: You forget what the neighbors are doing, you throw out the West Elm and Restoration Hardware catalogs, you survey your surroundings and you say, "This will have to do for a while. Honey, get me a can of beer. Let's watch something stupid on TV."

Can you feel it? Can you feel that jittery energy in your bones, the kick in your step, now that you're broke and the economy is going to hell in an overpriced Pottery Barn handbasket (which you only bought because you needed a place to store your Pottery Barn catalogs)? That's the feeling of being emancipated from the unwieldy chains of consumerism! Purge those unneeded needs from your body, shake off that upgrade angst, and you'll find yourself spiritually and emotionally refreshed! Or at least a little less sullen and distracted.

This is the "everything must go" spirit that Nancy Botwin embraces during Monday night's "Weeds" finale (10 p.m. on Showtime), and it's good to see her failings as a suburban mother, drug dealer and human being finally hitting her like a brick in the face. In fact, toward the end of the finale, I thought, "I like her so much better than I did a few minutes ago!"

Desperation becomes her. But then, let it never be said that Mary Louise Parker isn't the perfect woman for this role. She plays Nancy Botwin with the self-involved remoteness of a hideously shallow jerk, the kind who whines about her circumstances without making better choices, the kind who stumbles through life chewing on her Frappuccino straw and begging for salvation among known killers and felons.

Some questions remain, however: Why did Nancy follow Peter's ex-wife around for so long, befriend her, and then refuse to give her any money, forcing his ex to move to Seattle and trade in her medical tech scrubs for those of a surgeon? (Brooke Smith, the actress who played her, just landed a permanent position on "Grey's Anatomy.") Why did Nancy get a U-Turn sign tattooed on her ass cheek, if she hated U-Turn (the drug dealer who pushed her around, then died earlier in the season)? Nothing about this woman makes sense to me. And something about those trendy peasant tops she wears, something about her milky skin and her 20-years-younger-than-it-is face, combined with her character's distinctly American selfishness, makes me want to pull Nancy's hair the way neighbor Celia did back in the old days. Nancy would never work as a character, if she were disheveled and dumpy and aging badly. She's infuriating precisely because she toddles around like a teenager, bashful and spaced out, flirting and changing her mind and making crappy decisions every few seconds.

Celia, meanwhile, is willfully bitchy and a total wreck but far more likable. Elizabeth Perkins has always played Celia's nothing-left-to-lose nihilistic daring in an utterly convincing way, teetering and chuckling huskily and thinking on her feet. And how about how poor Celia opened up to the man she thought was her one true love, only to have Nancy screw him while she was watching? Heartbreaking!Shouldn't Celia have kicked Nancy's ass for this?

And then there's that Mary-Kate Olsen, embodying the pot-smoking anorexic Christian so convincingly that I'm pretty sure Mary-Kate Olsen is a pot-smoking anorexic Christian. I also loved Matthew Modine's character, Sullivan Groff, but it seems like he stirred things up and then sort of shuffled out of the picture.

And did you catch that very weird little public service announcement, where Parker and Perkins told us they were sincerely concerned about the recent fires in California? How many bong hits did those two do before they filmed that thing? Just looking at their zombie faces made me feel like I was high.

Anyway, I can't really write much more, since you haven't seen the finale yet. All I can tell you is that its appealing apocalyptic flavor made me wonder if "Weeds" has been renewed for another season yet.

It has been renewed, but it seems like some major changes are in store for us. I called up "Weeds'" creator Jenji Kohan to find out more, but you'll have to wait until next week to hear what she said.

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