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“Weeds”: An abbreviated series primer

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:09:00 +0000

Showtime's hit drug dramedy "Weeds" returns tonight for its 7th season. When we last left matriarch Nancy Botwin, she had turned herself in to the police for the murder of corrupt Mexican politician Pilar, who was actually killed by her son Shane, who was ... you know what? Maybe this would be easier if we started at the beginning.

We've gone through every season of "Weeds" and boiled each one down to its most important plot points. It's all the fun of playing catch-up, without any of the boring subplots involving Doug and Celia.

Weeds: Season 1

Nancy Botwin: Selling large quantities of marijuana is the only way I can support my family after the tragic death of my husband. I'm a pretty good mom, all things considering.

Celia: You’re my best friend but I hate you.

Nancy: Ditto. Have you seen my kids anywhere?

Drug dealer: No, but would having sex with me help?

Nancy: Sure.

DEA Agent Peter Scottsman: Want to get married?

Nancy: That seems like a good idea.

Weeds: Season 2

I Like to Watch

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:45:00 +0000

TV today is very dark. We long ago replaced lovable stepmoms like Abby from "Eight Is Enough" with self-involved, irresponsible, adulterous moms and swapped out tirelessly righteous crime-fighters like Kojak with corrupt cops struggling to keep their atrocities hidden. Almost 40 years after Mary Tyler Moore brought her lovably haphazard but principled schtick to the workplace, our TV offices are populated by elitist corporate bosses, lazy, self-serving underlings, vaguely pathetic managerial chumps and endless variations on the vainglorious jackass.

While our TV shows paint us all as easily distracted, neurotic, spoiled, grumpy human beings, we chuckle along as if we're above it. "Ah yes, a dark comedy -- a warped, overly cynical take on life!" we say, then blow off even more work to troll the Internet for something shallow or despicable or depraved to distract us from our lazy, irritable, vainglorious selves.

Drugs, not hugs

"Quiet and mean, those are my people. I don't do chatty." -- Nurse Jackie

I Like to Watch

Sun, 31 May 2009 10:30:00 +0000

Modern life has a frustrating way of setting us up to fail seconds after we wake up. I didn't exercise this morning, and neither did my dogs, who sulked instead. I drank caffeine, which is bad for me, and wrote for a few hours instead of vacuuming the living room floor. I didn't shower. I drove my daughter to daycare and she didn't cry when I left, but I didn't spend the day with her. I walked the dogs but didn't run because I still have a cough, which must mean I'm doing something wrong. I paid some bills but didn't clean off my desk. I watched a screener of "Nurse Jackie" but didn't figure out what its central premise is. I made dinner but my daughter only ate bread. The baby nursed for an hour (good) then spent an hour sleeping in her automatic swing while I ate chocolate and watched "Make Me a Supermodel" (bad). I took my vitamins but didn't floss. I wrote this paragraph, but I'm pretty sure most of you won't like it, since it means waiting longer to find out what time "Jon & Kate Plus 8" is on (9 p.m. Mondays on TLC).

Finale wrap-up: “Weeds”

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:00:00 +0000

"I used to be able to rationalize the things I did. At some point recently, everything became right and wrong." -- Nancy Botwin

There you go again, Nancy. Discovering your moral compass at the least convenient moment possible, forsaking the lucrative illegal smuggling and the cushy work-free professional life that fell into your lap after just a few seconds of parading your milky-white legs around in a minidress.

Naturally, in the morally upside-down universe of "Weeds," the minute Nancy (Mary Louise Parker) locates some semblance of an ethical code, her world starts crumbling to pieces. By the time Monday night's fourth season finale rolled around, viewers were asking themselves the same thing they asked themselves at the end of last season and every other season before it: How will Nancy worm her way out of this mess?

I Like to Watch

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 11:00:00 +0000

There's a cafe in my neighborhood where I go to write where everything is all wrong. The tables are the wrong height for the chairs, the chairs are uncomfortable, the walls are covered in bad art, the bad stereo system blares the worst of Journey and Lionel Richie, the breakfast sandwich features over-buttered bread and that fake-smoke-flavor ham, the room is too hot or freezing cold, the teenage cashiers are friendly but inattentive, and a herd of middle-of-the-room flies circles endlessly in the sparsely populated dining area.

Now normally, I might not notice the fake-smoke-flavored ham or the chirpily distracted cashiers, except that the stubborn mediocrity of the place makes me hypersensitive to the countless managerial mistakes unfolding before my eyes. Soon I start to wonder if I'm the only one who's bothered by the ants crawling across the floors or the strong smell of ammonia in the air or the walls the color of baby poo or the murals depicting local sights, murals that look half-finished and that include an illustration of the front of the restaurant itself.

I Like to Watch

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:00:00 +0000

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.

I Like to Watch

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 12:00:00 +0000

In calculus, I hit the wall when variables started approaching infinity. Up until that point in my math classes, I had been very brave. I held my breath and sallied forth as more and more unknown variables and steps and bizarre rotating parabolas were thrown into the picture. But when infinity came into play, I threw up my hands. Even though I knew that you could just move infinity around like any other variable (although it doesn't obey the usual rules of algebra, oh no, that would be too easy!), even though I realized that you didn't need to grasp infinity in order to solve most equations, you merely had to politely step around it and tolerate its unknowable existence, I still couldn't handle it. I felt overwhelmed by the sight of that little 8, lying on its side, helplessly slouching toward some unfathomable abyss ... Black holes... Outer space...

Still smokin’

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:00:00 +0000

Writers have always relished the suburbs as a nice, clean canvas against which a messy outsider can best take shape. On a pristine suburban landscape, flaws -- whether they're rust and blemishes and dirty windows or financial setbacks and chronic illnesses and existential angst -- have a way of standing out. This suffocatingly immaculate setting provides the perfect backdrop for Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a slightly scattered widow whose attempt to support her family by selling pot (and more recently, growing it) forms the thrillingly deviant center of Showtime's "Weeds" (second season premieres 10 p.m. Monday). The show gets its name from Nancy's profession, but it also hints at those unruly parts of ourselves that spring up, uninvited, and mar every attempt at a perfect picture. This is damn fertile soil for a comedy, and creator Jenji Kohan and the writers of "Weeds" farm it for all it's worth in the show's second season, cultivating vivid, surprising stories that naturally transcend the typical limitations of the half-hour format.

I Like to Watch

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 12:30:00 +0000

I know you don't want to hear this right now, but the end of the summer is fast approaching. That means we need to get real, people! We have to hunker down, get our heads together, and really focus on the task at hand: soaking up as much crappy summer TV as humanly possible before the fall season begins.

Because, no matter how indifferent you've been to TV this summer, when it comes to exquisitely debased, feeble entertainment, there's nothing quite like the pointless talent competitions and frivolous social experiments that air during the long, hot months in the middle of the year. Sure, you're probably looking forward to new seasons of "Lost" or "The Wire," but you still can't deny that there's something gripping about watching Dr. Will and Mike Boogie of "Big Brother" cackling in the Diary Room, marveling that, even though Mike keeps creating fake alliances and Will keeps announcing that he hates everyone there and wants to go home, somehow no one has put them up for eviction. Another season of "Battlestar Galactica" or "Prison Break" might keep your attention, but will it really offer the same cotton-candy thrill of seeing Janice Dickinson lose her mind and attack her business partner with her bare hands? I think not.

Heavy petting

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:07:00 +0000

Showtime's "Weeds" offered more than a few memorable moments in its first season, including this odd interaction between Doug (Kevin Nealon) and Celia (Elizabeth Perkins).

I Like to Watch

Sun, 02 Oct 2005 22:20:00 +0000

Escape from paradise
After spending three weeks in France and Spain, you might think that landing in Los Angeles would feel a little depressing. In the taxi on the way home, driving past miles of billboards and strip malls, gazing out at that eerie brown glow on the horizon where the latest brush fires are burning out of control, you might expect your heart to sink a little. Unlocking your door and finding an avalanche of tapes and DVDs of new shows, along with a backlog of TiVoed shows, you might have a little existential crisis about your shallow American existence. You might look back on all of the lovely jamón and Rioja you consumed in some town square, as little clusters of adorably authentic Spaniards meandered nearby, and you might think: "Why do I live in a cement wasteland, when it's the cute little foreign world peoples who really know how to live? They have a sense of history, they care about food, and architecture, and community! They embrace the good things in life! Why do I live this way? What's wrong with me?"

I Like to Watch

Sun, 31 Jul 2005 20:17:00 +0000

Narm fuzzies
Narm! Welcome back to another week in television, sweet corn fritters.

What's that? You say you haven't watched any television all week? Well, good for you, fritters. Good for you! And what did you do?

Um, you can't remember? What do you mean you can't remember? You checked your e-mail, you say? Well, that's something. You watered your plants? You showered? You ate some cereal? You called your friend on the way to work and complained about how hot your apartment gets in late July? You went to a doctor's appointment, and in the lobby you read an old copy of People magazine that had Jennifer Aniston cuddling with Vince Vaughn on the cover, and you were excited that Jen was getting a little revenge, but when you read the article, you saw that Jen and Vince weren't even dating, they were just starring in a movie together?

Nick Nolte

Tue, 14 Dec 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Nick Nolte is like Clark Gable with an anguished soul. Writing about him in 1982, when he'd been playing movie leads for about half a decade, the critic Pauline Kael called him "an ideal screen actor -- believable, and with a much larger range than McQueen or Wayne." Like Steve McQueen and John Wayne in their best roles, it's his physical actions that often articulate what's going on under the surface; like Gable and Mitchum, he's magically relaxed on screen and projects an outsize, sprawling likability. But his real lineage is agonized men's men like William Holden and Dana Andrews and Robert Ryan, and later Paul Newman -- actors whose sensitivity complicates their macho credentials.