By There are certain TV shows that I can’t stop watching, even though I feel like slime for tuning them in. For example, The Apprentice with Donald Trump. It’s a dumb reality show, but I just can’t stop watching the Donald as he shamelessly promotes his buildings and shows off the product placements of the week. I can’t stop watching the new Night Stalker, even though it can’t hold a candle to the Darren McGavin original, it’s got Gabrielle Union, and you just never know when she’s gonna walk around in her underwear.
Then there’s Weeds on Showtime. The first season concluded last Monday, a ten episode run that took half-hour comedy into a whole new realm. Mary-Louise Parker is a recently-widowed mother of two boys, living in an upscale suburb in California (think of the suburbs in San Diego or LA). The credits to the show are hilarious, showing images as a folk song says “houses made of ticky-tacky and looking all the same”. We see identical SUVs pulling out of garages, identical female runners jogging on the streets, and lemming-like business men streaming out of a Starbucks-like coffee shop. This is a slap in the face to my very way of life! My friend who lives in the People’s Republic of Berkeley thought this was insightful commentary. I can tell you that I live in a new suburb, but I bet I am the only one with a pristine mint copy of Amazing Spider-Man 121. We are not all the same!
This isn’t why I feel like slime for watching the show. All the characters are doing things that are morally reprehensible. You have Parker’s mom, selling marijuana to make ends meet. Parker’s character goes through the show in a ditzy haze, expanding her pot-selling business to college campuses and getting caught up with a variety of men from different classes: a Mexican drug dealer, the black nephew of her supplier, and a DEA agent. She seems oblivious to the damage she is doing to both of her sons. Parker also sells to her circle of male friends, including Kevin Nealon from Saturday Night Live. Nealon is the best part of the show, with his subdued delivery of ironic jokes, but he isn’t on screen nearly enough. Parker’s brother-in-law is played by Justin Kirk, an actor I had seen before on the WB’s Jack And Jill. Kirk delivers a standout performance as a morally bankrupt guy who thinks nothing of getting on the computer for cyber-sex with his nephew’s mute girlfriend. He catches the same nephew smoking pot, and lets him go after taking a few tokes on the pipe. Elizabeth Perkins plays the funniest woman on the show, a wife suffering from cancer. She has a fling with Parker's black supplier and scolds her daughter for being fat: “The only female you should kiss is Jenny Craig.”
Despite my moral indignation, Weeds is a good show—so good, it should be on HBO. It’s funny and sly and unexpected things happen to the characters. It’s refreshing to see a good comedy that’s not about life in Hollywood. If I had teenage kids, I sure as hell wouldn’t let them watch it. Or maybe I would, just to see if they were doing drugs. Nuff said.
