Weeds - Season One (DVD)

[budman]

WEEDS - SEASON ONE (DVD)

by Rory L. Aronsky
FilmThreat
(2006-08-11)
2006, Un-rated, 283 minutes, Lionsgate



Live for a time in one of Southern California’s valleys and not only will you gradually know where everything is, and what supermarket is promoting the lowest prices for the week, but you feel the wisps of a microcosm that has formed long before you got there. Live for a long time in one of these valleys and that same microcosm envelopes you. You know which traffic lights give you the most stress. You know that parking at the local Wal-Mart Super Center is a real bitch on Saturdays. And most of all, you know that you’ve never seen people like the kinds that live in these valleys, especially if you’re an outsider to all of this.

Well, that’s me. Outsider status three years ago and now here at least long enough to know that the Santa Clarita Valley can get mighty strange, with lots of inanities and vapidity. The ever-present mountains and the shift in altitude wherever you go (which isn’t much, but who knows with what we got here), might be a cause for that but for all that the satirically deft “Weeds” accurately captures in the fictional suburb of Agrestic, we’ve also got a peaceful side which the show portrays with much aplomb.

Now heading for its second season, “Weeds” is one of the finest exports the Santa Clarita Valley offers, namely because the show is filmed here exclusively, using locations all around the valley as well as Santa Clarita Studios. That shot you see of that rotund office building in the second episode, “Free Goat,” is actually the library at College of the Canyons. Same with “The Fashion of the Christ” with the successful t-shirt sales until the principal of the elementary school charges towards it. And the same still in “Higher Education” with shots of a bustling college campus. Still COC, still the campus I attend classes at, and a testament to how interchangeable a lot can be in Santa Clarita. The series is right in that respect. If our library wasn’t there, that could very well be an office building.

The main hook of “Weeds” is Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), recently widowed after her husband Judah (Jeffrey Dean Morgan in home video footage) drops dead of a heart attack while jogging in the park with their younger son Shane (Alexander Gould). As “Weeds” explains so well with Nancy’s career choice in order to keep money coming in, housing in the valley, the good housing anyway, isn’t cheap. So for the bills and the well being of her kids, she’s a pot dealer. The higher powers of the community do smoke it, as if it threatens to disappear the next day. Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), certified public accountant and city councilman, is one of her most supportive buyers, and Kevin Nealon has found, in some small part, his Will Ferrell role, the one to sustain him and keep him as fresh as he was on Saturday Night Live. Doug, and Nancy’s brother-in-law, Andy (Justin Kirk, who shared with Mary-Louise Parker one of the most haunting scenes in “Angels in America”, he as a drag queen and she just drifting through a dreamworld)---who appears later in the season and from the likes of him, will stay with the Botwin family for some time to come---are definitely the show’s Cheech and Chong. They love their weed and just wait until you see when it is learned that a rat chewed through part of Nancy’s stash. Just wait.

On the other side of Agrestic, there’s the revitalized Elizabeth Perkins as Celia Hodes, who I can attest does exist in many forms in Santa Clarita. In fact, it is thought that Agrestic is based on the Stevenson Ranch community, which has countless soccer moms as part of its populace. Celia isn’t so much a soccer mom as she is a quiet, ambitious bitch who just wants her share of the community and her share of perfection, first with being the president of Agrestic Elementary’s PTA and second, with her nastily chastising her young daughter, Isabelle (Allie Grant) for being overweight which leads to part of an episode you might not even believe as you see it, where Celia replaces Isabelle’s candy stash with laxatives and once Isabelle finds that out, she returns the favor by replacing her mother’s pills with Imodium AD.

Oh, and it gets better and better after that, as Nancy realizes that being a pot dealer isn’t as simple as giving part of the stash in exchange for cash. While at her supplier’s (sensational performances every time by Tonye Patano) house, a drive-by shooting forcibly shows Nancy that the business is never as easy as she believes. It may not get as extreme as that in her community, but there’s more to worry about. Her sons don’t know about her business and she tries to keep it hidden, but that becomes less and less possible as her housekeeper, Lupita (Renee Victor) also learns of her boss’s job. And just as intense still is the fact that grief over Judah’s death still runs within the house as Shane acts out in different ways, such as making a burning bush literal during a religious presentation by members of a Jewish temple (told to Nancy by the principal, but you can easily imagine how Shane did it with how Alexander Gould plays him), and Nancy’s older son, Silas (Hunter Parrish) gains a deaf girlfriend, breaks into one of the higher-priced houses, and tries ecstasy. It’s hard enough for Nancy to try to become the new rudder of the family as her husband obviously was, but it’s even worse when, as she rises in the pot-dealing business, her family is falling apart. So many broken pieces to try to catch.

All the satire that creator Jenji Kohan and her writers put forth is simply astounding, from dumb, dumb, dumb neighbors (I’ve seen ones like the fat woman who doesn’t know where her cat has gone after a mountain lion is reported in that area), to the futility of PTA meetings, especially in Agrestic, to all the opinions that lace every script. “The Passion of the Christ” is branded as a “straight-up snuff film.” Now that doesn’t sound different from what has already been disseminated in the media about it, but from the perspective of teenaged drug dealer Josh (Justin Chatwin) who’s been selling weed at a fast clip because of screenings of “Winged Migration” at the local movie theater, it’s made fresh again. Kohan has a lot more she makes novel, including the aforementioned peaceful side of the valley, which ultimately creates the most conflict for these citizens. Kohan and her cast and crew have that feeling down perfectly. There are days where it’s the most perfect time to be doing anything you want without being interrupted by whatever’s going on in your life and then blam! You’re interrupted and in even more emotional turmoil than you hoped to be. Those moments in this show are never marred by music that says that something unpleasant has happened to any of them. It’s simply happened, you take it, and you move on. Even when Nancy finds a new love interest in Peter, who she meets after Shane bites his son’s foot (Daryl Sabara as Peter’s son, proving that only in Hollywood can kids grow up faster than other kids) at a karate tournament, Peter’s simply there. He’s just part of this community, this valley, this lifestyle. Easily proven in Agrestic’s real-life inspiration. Things just happen in Santa Clarita. Whatever you do is your business, but you’ve got to do something, even if it seems close to nothing. With “Weeds”, there’s a lot that’s done and it truly is one of those rare shows that can combine everything it purportedly stands for and make it all work. Satire, bits of silly comedy, genuine drama, conflicted feelings, who do you like, who do you hate---it’s all here.

In the case of who you might hate on this show, it’s rather funny in how Celia suddenly becomes someone you think has been given a bad rap. Hey, she’s not the royal bitch after all! She’s just assumed the persona. Or has she? And inasmuch as I’ve found many parts of the Santa Clarita Valley roundly frustrating with all the dumbasses that come with it, I’m proud to be a part of it because of this show. If this is what this valley has been building up towards, then bullseye! We’ve been done proud.

The same can also be said about this DVD release, conveniently timed long before the second season premiere so curious parties can become addicted to it as well. Commentaries by Kohan as well as various actors from the show including Kevin Nealon and the inimitable Craig X (a weed expert who was the first to open a medical marijuana club in Los Angeles, and is a consultant for the show) outline how truly deep this show runs with its characters and all that goes into making this show run with the natural efficiency that comes with a satirical comedy unfortunately going too fast in its running time. Documentaries also line the rest of the second disc, exhibiting the appreciation through the knowing words the actors have for this show. They almost sound conspiratorial in their interviews, but it’s all in good fun.

Where Nancy Botwin will go with her business next is up to Kohan, but with how she’s positioned Nancy in the season finale, she’d better not drop it. This is too good to let go of, especially in how she intends to navigate her work. That second-to-last scene in the season finale is much more loaded because of what’s happened before, and hopefully it’s only going to get even better than what “great” usually stands for. It’s already part of what has made television great again over these past few years. And for poor saps like me who don’t subscribe to Showtime, it is also proof why DVDs are even more valuable now.

[palmspringsbum]

For the record, Kohan – whose credits as a writer include stints on Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls and Will & Grace – isn't one to break out the bong on a regular basis. "I'm too much of a control freak," she laughs. "And if we were always stoned, how would we put two words together?"

Never been a problem for me.

Tuesday, 5 December 2006

Weeds - no heroes or villains but plenty of secrets

Guy Davis
The Kalgoorlie News

<table class=posttable align=right width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=300 src=bin/weeds-1.jpg></td></tr></table>Weeds

WIN/9, Tuesday at 9.30pm


Starring: Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth Perkins


People are always asking Jenji Kohan if she's high on marijuana most of the day. Not the kind of question that usually arises in polite conversation, that's true, but when you're the creator of a TV show like Weeds, which follows the misadventures of a mother-of-two who just happens to be her neighbourhood's premier pot dealer, a few dope-related enquiries could be seen as an occupational hazard.

For the record, Kohan – whose credits as a writer include stints on Sex and the City, Gilmore Girls and Will & Grace – isn't one to break out the bong on a regular basis. "I'm too much of a control freak," she laughs. "And if we were always stoned, how would we put two words together?"

While there is a whole lot of smoking going on as far as the characters on Weeds are concerned, Kohan is quick to clarify that marijuana is not the central focus of the show. Indeed, the weed is "just a device we use to tell our stories", a representation of the secrets lurking behind the closed doors of the perfect houses in the idyllic California suburb of Agrestic.

Supplying the residents of these perfect houses with their pot is Nancy Botwin, played by Mary-Louise Parker. A recently widowed mother of two young sons, Nancy has discovered that maintaining a middle-class lifestyle in the modern world requires a certain income, an income a woman who's been out of the job market for 20-plus years mightn't be able to earn, even if she could land a legitimate job.

"As a woman in her early 40s, if you want to maintain that certain lifestyle for yourself and your children, you have to look at other options," said Kohan.

That's not to say that Nancy is looking to make a full-time career out of peddling marijuana to her friends and neighbours – she's making a concerted effort to take the skills she's currently using as a drug dealer and transfer them to a straighter line of work. But in the meantime, she's constantly balancing the challenges of raising two sons, each facing troubles of their own, and earning a living outside the law.

It's all in keeping with Kohan's initial vision of the show. "I wanted to do my version of something like The Shield or The Sopranos," she admitted.

"I'm really inspired by shows with those kinds of anti-heroes who were deeply flawed. So I went looking for some sort of criminal activity. Around this time in California, a medical marijuana initiative had just been passed and a lot of people were talking about it.

"When I started asking questions, I found it amazing how everyone either had a stoner in their family or they themselves were the stoner in their family and had stories to tell about their dealers. Everything else came out of that, really, and Weeds was a one-line pitch to the network: 'Suburban widow, pot-dealing mom'."

The widespread perception that marijuana is a "softer" drug also influenced Kohan's decision to make Nancy a pot dealer, although Kohan stresses that Weeds does aim to take a neutral position about the narcotic.

"We don't say it's a gateway drug to heroin and that you'll ruin your life if you smoke it, nor do we say it's this wonderful thing that's going to change the world," she said.

"We try to present it as something that exists in the world, something that people are using, without passing judgement on it. If asked, I believe it should be legalised and regulated and taxed. But I'm in no way looking to become a spokesperson for the marijuana community."

Weeds isn't so much a look at the marijuana community as it is a look at the community of Agrestic, a middle-class suburb that looks the ideal image of conformity and uniformity on the surface but that is buzzing with secrets, lies, resentments and desires underneath.

Kohan and her creatives did their due diligence once the show was bought by US pay-TV network Showtime, travelling out to various "just-add-water neighbourhoods" to get the lowdown on what life was like for the residents of real-life Agrestics.

"There were about nine of us driving around in this big white van, and we would literally knock on doors and ask people 'Hey, could we come in and check out your house?'," laughed Kohan.

"There would be these women home alone, dying for company, who would invite nine strangers in a van into their house! And we found the houses had all shot their wad on one or two rooms that were beautifully decorated, then there'd be folding chairs and a card table in the other rooms because the budget had been blown. It was a very poignant insight into the way people were living."

Taking a warts-and-all look into the lives of women like Nancy and her acerbic best friend Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), complete with frequent drug use, coarse language and sexual references, required the kind of leeway Kohan couldn't expect from a commercial television network in the United States.

"That there are no heroes and villains, that everyone is so flawed and exist in such grey areas, is unusual territory for commercial networks," she said. "We all want to work on [pay TV] for the freedom to say what we want. We sacrifice some of the money we'd make working for the commercial networks but we do get to have our little party. Of course, now I don't have a swimming pool."

Sounds like life imitating art. "Well, I did have one of the advisors on the show saying, 'You know, I could set you up with something ..." laughed Kohan. "I don't think I'm quite ready to take that step."



Source: Rural Press Network

[palmspringsbum]

"Grey's Anatomy," "Weeds" lead Globe's TV picks

Thu Dec 14, 2006 1:19 PM ET
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The hit hospital drama "Grey's Anatomy" and offbeat comedy "Weeds," about a pot-dealing soccer mom, led the field of Golden Globe contenders for TV awards on Thursday with four nominations each.

"Grey's Anatomy," one of the most watched shows in U.S. prime time this season, scored nominations for best drama and for three of its cast members, including Ellen Pompeo, who stars as the title character, and Patrick Dempsey, who plays her hunky love interest.

Centered on the medical and personal complications confronting a group of young surgical interns at a Seattle hospital, "Grey's" is one of several hit shows that has helped the ABC network reverse a severe ratings slump in recent years.

"Weeds," drawing a much smaller audience on the Showtime cable channel, was nominated in the Golden Globe race for best TV comedy or musical and garnered three acting bids, most notably for Mary-Louise Parker, who stars as a suburban widow who makes a living by selling marijuana to her neighbors.

ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Co., is the most recognized broadcast network in this year's Golden Globes competition, with 11 nominations total, all of them from four powerhouse shows -- "Grey's," "Lost," "Desperate Housewives" and comedy newcomer "Ugly Betty."

However, Time Warner Inc.-owned pay-cable channel HBO once again dominated the overall roster of Golden Globe TV contenders, amassing 14 nominations. NBC, a unit of General Electric Co., followed with nine nominations and Viacom Inc.-owned Showtime had six.

Television shows have been honored by the Golden Globes since they were added to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's motion picture accolades in 1956.

While the Globe movie nominations are regarded as a bellwether for the more prestigious Oscar race, the TV nominees invariably take a back seat, coming as they do months after the U.S. television industry's highest honors, the Emmys, are already presented for the year.

Still, the Globes, which are presented in January, can play a key role in drawing attention to shows in need of a mid-season promotional boost.

And unlike the Emmys, which tend to recognize more well-established hits, the Globes are known for celebrating lesser-known critical favorites or new shows like "Ugly Betty."

[palmspringsbum]

<table class=posttable align=right width=200><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg src=bin/parker_mary-louise.gif></td></tr><tr><td class=postcap>Mary-Louise Parker is Nancy Botwin in <i>Weeds</i></td></tr></table><span class=postbigbold>Out of the box with CLAYTON SMALES</span>

21dec06
The Townsville Bulletin

<span class=postbold>SMOKING, growing and dealing marijuana is illegal. But it's far from uncommon.</span>

In Townsville, like, I assume in almost every town and city in the country, local courthouses are a revolving door of users, pushers and idiots who weren’t careful enough not to get caught dabbling in the green stuff.

Channel Nine, arguably the most conservative Australian commercial network – with its litany of family-friendly lifestyle and inoffensive light entertainment shows – has decided to dabble in the green stuff too, screening the quite brilliant US comedy Weeds over the summer. It screens on WIN each Tuesday night from 9.30pm, with Nine running two half-hour episodes back-to-back as a one-hour offering.

Set in a fictional California suburb, Weeds focuses on the home and work life of mother-of-two Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), who starts dealing pot to maintain her comfortable lifestyle following the death of her husband.

It features a wacky support cast, including Nancy’s acid-tongued depressive friend Celia (Elizabeth Perkins looking and acting anything but the mild-mannered housewife she so often plays in family movies); and unashamed heavy smoker and city councilman Doug, who is a brilliant send-up of bureaucratc hypocrisy.

But for all its spliffs, joints and shady deals, Weeds is not really about pot dealing, in the same way that Six Feet Under was not about dead people in Los Angeles and The Sopranos is not about organised crime in New Jersey. Like these shows, and like the best of TV drama generally, Weeds is about people and their relationships. The dope angle is simply a means to an end. Plonk the same characters and their messed-up lives in a Sydney Chinese restaurant, a Queensland coal mining town or a Alaskan fishing village, and you’d more or less get the same thing.

That’s not to say Weeds’ central premise doesn’t produce some hilarious and insightful moments, such as Doug furiously puffing on a joint at his son’s soccer game or Nancy trying to condemn a teenage kid’s dope pedalling, oblivious to her blatant double standards.

No, to call the humour in Weeds a tad dark would be like saying the federal Labor Party is a touch disorganised. The expletive-laden dialogue (Celia called her teenage daughter Quinn the `c’ word on opening night) would curdle the blood of even the most die-hard Sopranos fan. And politically incorrect does not even comes close to describing some of the things that comes out of these free-spirited folks’ mouths. Last week, Doug was talking up the benefits of going to the medical marijuana clinic, where he could, legally, get his pot virtually on tap. He said that it was `like Amsterdam, but you don’t have to go the Anne Frank museum and pretend you’re all sad’.

And Celia treats her young daughter Isabel woefully. Last week, she slipped a laxative into Isabel’s secret chocolate stash, arguing that her daughter was too fat and needed to stop being such a pig with food. Isabel – who’s got to be at least 10 years old – subsequently soiled herself at school, earning herself the unfortunate nickname `S**tgirl’. Isabel’s father Dean (who’s having an affair with a tennis player) was hardly sympathetic to his daughter’s plight, with his words of comfort only going as far as telling her she’d have a funny story to tell people when she’s older.

So if your looks to Weeds for a comforting slice of family values, you’ve definitely come to the wrong place.

Best to just sits back and enjoy the laughs.