Reviewed by

Eli Keel


Season Two of Weeds left us with a delicious cliffhanger. All the main characters are in dire and hilarious trouble, and the wait for season three seemed too long to possibly stand. Especially if you don’t have cable and have to wait for it on DVD. Fortunately for me, my friend Frosty sends me fun things in the mail, and it made my friends jealous that I had it a week before it came out. Suck it friends, I am cooler than you.

But I digress.

If you don’t know, Weeds is a Showtime original series that chronicles the life of widowed housewife Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker, who I might sell my soul for a night with) who turns to drug dealing to make ends meet. It is not for the easily offended. If that sounds like fun, go rent the first two seasons and meet me back here in a few days.

The first two seasons take Nancy from a nickel and dime small time dealer to a major player who grows her own special brand of hydro, which guest star Snoop Dogg dubs “MILF Weed.” As season three opens she is in hot water, because drug dealing can apparently be dangerous. Who knew?
Without spoiling anything I’ll say that Nancy gets out of one kind of trouble and into another pretty quickly. This formula will feel familiar to fans of the first two seasons, but familiar isn’t bad in this case. Other shows could have dragged out the story lines from season three for forty or fifty episodes, to the point that we all would have been tired and ready to watch something else. The basic sitcom formula keeps anything from changing. With the exception a kid being born every once in a while or people getting together after umpteen seasons of flirting and having problems, nothing happens.

Not in Weeds.


Ostensibly a comedy, the writers take risks and ask us lots of questions about morality, raising what could be a low brow drug comedy to something much higher, along the lines of social satire. And even though it would be easy to fill the show with all drugs all the time, the writers question us on the nature of family, fidelity, friendship, race, and always beneath it all: what is right, and what is wrong. No answers are given. Work it out for yourself.

I love this show, go buy all three seasons. But by know you’ve guessed I love it, so let me get down to some seasons three specifics.

The bad news is that overall this season is not as funny as season two. The good news is that it’s still funnier that most other shows on TV. Which basically means there are only about three episodes that made me laugh so hard it hurt as I pounded my fists on the coffee table. There rest of the time I was merely guffawing out loud with the zest and vigor of a touretts patient high on whippets. Good stuff anyway you slice it.

The main characters from the first season are all here, but personally I could have used a little more of Andy Botwin (Justin Kirk) and a little less Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins). This season really shows off the character of Shane Botwin, and the acting talents of Alexander Gould, the actor who portrays him. This kid has got chops, and I look forward to seeing what his career does post Weeds. Unless he spirals out of control and gets hooked on drugs.


The extras are okay. Only true Weeds addicts will want to watch the commentaries, and only true weed addicts will enjoy the “music collages.” Other than that, all the extras mostly amount to an extended add for the upcoming season four, and a plea for the watcher to plunk down some extra cash for the soundtrack CD (available now!) I’d been much more impressed if the actual full soundtrack had been one of the extras. But I think I will go buy the soundtrack anyway, because the producers continue to use excellent music that fits perfectly with the end of each episode, and because I just can’t get enough of that theme song.

The packaging is just plain pretty. My wife and I sat and looked at it for a good five minutes, just marveling and how gosh darn attractive it is. And it 100% recycled. Because recycling is green. Get it? Green? Like marijuana?

Go now. Buy. Watch.