WEEDS is back on Showtime in its fourth season. With two episodes under the belt, it's time to kick the tires a bit and see how this baby rolls.
After a tired and meandering third season, Weeds seems to have returned to form... kind of. Gone is Agrestic, a tract-housing suburb so important to the show that it served as a character for three seasons. Instead, we get the the border-town of Ren Mar, complete with nearby ocean, German food, and miles of fencing separating America from Mexico.
Gone are two of the shows biggest characters, Haylia, the supplier to Nancy's seller, and Conrad, not only the most-important non-Botwin Family character, but the romantic interest.
So where does that leave us?
Let's start with the good and work our way to the bad, eh?
Albert Brooks is pretty terrific as Judah and Andy's father, who is a total asshole, a gambling addict, and 100% classic Albert Brooks. He's curmudgeonly, he's exasperated, and he doesn't want "Not-Francie's" family in the house. Good. Great. I'm only bummed knowing that Brooks is only contracted for two more episodes. Bummer. He brings an inner life and a sense of lived-in-ness that the show was missing all last season.
Andy. Justin Kirk is a pretty terrific actor all around, and while I imagine he's on this show to pay the bills, he never slacks off. It also helps that he's been given some great material to work with, like the scene in the 4th season premier where he tells Nancy about how her dead husband showed him pictures of her naked when they had first started dating. It's a great bit between the two actors, and it plays to a lot of the strengths the show has forgotten it has...
And, of course, Mary-Louise Parker is great... when she has the chance. There's something a little crazy and sad in her eyes that makes her believable... even when she makes really, really, really terrible decisions. She's funny, and you can understand that she's just trying to carry on after the death of the person who was her other half...
Which leads us to one of my big problems. Which is that in season 1, Nancy sold weed to maintain this lifestyle for her and her children. As she got more involved in it, she lost track of where she was, and how her absence was affecting her children. But now, having burnt down their house, having picked her kids up and moved them hundreds of miles, having employed her eldest son in the drug trade, after ignoring her teenage son's obvious cries for help and attention, I begin to wonder... why is Nancy selling drugs? She has given up everything she sold weed to keep, not least of all her family. She is a terrible, terrible parent. Shane should be put into foster care, or should be adopted by someone at least moderately more stable. And Silas is just ... I mean, he's going to end up in a trailer, in the middle of the desert, making meth, and crossing over into AMC's Breaking Bad. We all know that's how it ends for him.
So what does Nancy want?
With Conrad gone it's hard to say. When he was on the show, he provided a warm counterpoint to Nancy's ingenue. He was in the drug trade, but he knew how rough it was. He wanted to protect Nancy for the ugly angles of things. And for Nancy, he was the possibility, that maybe there was a new life ahead for her, that maybe she could find someone who she cared for, and cared for her. That maybe things could ultimately come together.
But not anymore. So I'm left wondering why Nancy is working for the (much less threatening than last-season) Mexican drug-lords. I'm left wondering why they're on the lam, when I imagine Nancy has a chunk of insurance money coming her way from her house. And I'm left wondering where the show is going.
The ship has righted itself. But I fear they've lost the map.
-RoboNixon
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