I really enjoyed Weeds season 1, Mary Louise Parker's show about a suburban widow trying to make ends meet by selling marijuana in her gated community. The characters were pretty good, it didn't take itself too seriously and it pointed out the hypocrisy of white people in the suburbs when it comes to the drug war. Parts were pretty farfetched, but it's a comedy show so there's some wiggle room there. Also, Mary Louise Parker is hot.
Season 2 came around, and although the story wasn't great it was still enjoyable. The biggest problem was that Nancy's new boyfriend, DEA agent Something, is a really dumb character. He's played well by Martin Donovan, actually that's the only redeeming thing about the character. It's just poor writing, really. We're to believe that Nancy meets a new man and starts a relationship with him before realizing that he's a DEA agent. Fine. Then she's going to keep seeing him because she's "got everything under control". Ok. Then he reveals that he knows she's a drug dealer and doesn't care. That's a little weird. Eventually he starts helping her weed business by arresting her competition. Fine. Wait. What? Then he eventually goes psycho and tries to extort everything. I know we're supposed to suspend disbelief, but there's really only so much to be expected of the audience. A DEA agent going from by the book to murdering extortionist in a matter of weeks is a pretty big leap. Season 2 isn't a waste simply because of the characters that aren't Nancy Botwin or her kids. Councilman Doug and Brother in Law Andy save the show. Even Celia to a degree (at this point anyway- later they find a way to ruin her). The show at this point has become more about Nancy being stressed out and making bad decisions than it is about comic relief, but at least the side characters are in line with the original spirit. The season ends with a cliffhanger that I thought at first was pretty well done but upon reflection is really preachy. Nancy's oldest son makes a bad decision that puts people's lives in danger, at first I didn't mind it- the kid is naive and made a mistake, he's 16 or 17 and thought he was invincible. Not bad, since 16 & 17 year old kids are complete idiots, but given the future direction of the show it's clear that it was a message that drugs, even marijuana, lead to problems that can spiral out of control.
Season 3 quickly resolves the cliff hanger and moves on. It's like they end with these big events to keep us hooked for the next season, but then when they're writing the next season a new idea pops up in the writer's room and everyone just fills in the holes from the last season and moves on. The only good thing about season 3 is still the secondary characters. Kevin Nealon and whoever plays Andy (look it up yourself) are both awesome. They should seriously have ended Weeds and started a spinoff where those two drive around the southwest solving crime.
Season 4 and 5 will be covered together: they suck. Season 3 was the logical end point- the town they live in burned to the ground and scattered the cast to different places. It was the perfect amount of resolution, but no, that's not good enough. So they continued, and immediately started to be awful. Nancy doesn't even deal pot anymore, sure we see Andy and Doug smoking all the time and her oldest kid starts growing his own, but even that seems tacked on. Like a writer all of a sudden realized "Oh, crap, there's no one dealing drugs anymore on a show about dealing drugs. Make the kid do it. Done, now where can I cash this check?". Then I realized the major problem: the show is actually anti- marijuana. Nancy started in season 1 dealing weed to make money because no one gets hurt. By season 5 she is helping with human traffic and arms dealers. The point of the show is apparently that drugs are bad because they lead to other crimes that are REALLY bad. We can have a discussion about the validity of that thought process later, I'm just upset because it killed my buzz.
