UNLESS you’ve been smoking something funny, you know that “Weeds,” possibly the most clever and most unexpected show of all of last season, was super-ganja-sized hit.
The premise is that Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) – an unemployed, suburban mom (can we hunt down and kill the person who invented the term “soccer mom?”) who lives in a cushy nabe – suddenly becomes a widow when her yuppie husband drops dead while jogging.
With no visible means of support for herself and her two sons, Nancy does the logical thing – she becomes the neighborhood pot dealer.
And from there the story, like a happy pot plant, just grew.
And what a masterful and hilariously politically incorrect potboiler of a story it is, too.
Happily, “Weeds” hasn’t dropped a petal or missed even a beat this season, either.
When last we saw Nancy, she had hopped into bed with a divorced dad, Peter (Martin Donovan), whom she’d met when her younger son (Alexander Gould) got into a biting fit at a karate match.
As fate would have it, Nancy discovers that Peter has the worst possible profession in the world – well, at least for her and her growing business. Literally.
And Peter doesn’t go away as fast as she’d like him to. In fact, he’s still there by the fourth episode.
Nancy also decides to branch out and takes in partners – Doug (Kevin Nealon), the town councilman, and Andy (Justin Kirk), her no-account brother-in-law.
Nancy even convinces Conrad (Romany Malco), as well as a few other of her wealthy customers, to join up.
Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), meantime, is still wearing her cancer wig and is still torturing her chubbette daughter, but has taken time out from being a misery to friends and family to run against Doug for city council. Why? Because he refuses to listen to her complaints about a traffic light.
Thank God Lupita (Renee Victor), who had the best line in all of TV last season (the one about the coffee table) is back, and by episode two, she’s had two more potentially best lines in all of television. The woman’s a comic genius, and I love her so.
Tonye Patano, who plays Heylia (Conrad’s aunt, the pot dealer), is another one who never misses a beat, a line or an opportunity to underplay her lines. Brilliant.
Some of my colleagues found the first four episodes somewhat disappointing because they felt like the pot plot was wearing thin. Not me.
For me, it’s all just smoke. And for this show, at any rate, that’s a good thing.
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“Weeds”
[****] (Four stars)
Tonight at 10 on Showtime

