Weeds: Season One (2005) – DVD

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"You Can't Miss the Bear," "Free Goat," "Good Shit Lollipop," "Fashion of the Christ," "Lude Awakening," "Dead in the Nethers," "Higher Education," "The Punishment Light," "The Punishment Lighter," "The Godmother"

by Walter Chaw Showtime Entertainment chief Roger Greenblatt told the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER in August of this year that he was surprised "Weeds", the pay channel's latest attempt to catch the HBO original series tiger by the tail, had generated no controversy whatsoever. The ongoing saga of a soccer mom, recently widowed, selling pot to her friends and neighbours, "Weeds" has apparently aroused no ire from the traditionally prickly right-wing groups that make it their stock and trade to get their panties in a bunch over this sort of thing. Credit "Weeds"' decidedly non-controversial make-up and storylines for its complete inconsequence; its weak writing and suffocating air of self-congratulation very quickly metastasizes into a lump of middlebrow prestige. Seen by many as the blue-state response to the red-state Stepford conformity of the allegedly subversive "Desperate Housewives", "Weeds" is more accurately a comedy that uses the very same neo-conservative fear-mongering and race-baiting its satirical targets use but re-deploys them to ostensibly satirical effect. Yet there's so little weight to its happy serial horseshit that what's probably meant as smarty-pants sociology comes off as limp and pandering. I see "Weeds" as an Ayn Rand piece, its straw men stuffed with dolled-up ganja and its slack grasp on the legitimately subversive hidden under a pile of insubstantial, terrified condescension.

Rather than sacrifice her cushy suburban-goddess lifestyle, Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) turns to dealing the wacky tobaccy–the deeper rationale for her decision never expounded upon but, tellingly, left as a foregone conclusion for the audience of cable subscribers who would watch something like "Weeds" in the first place. If you lose your breadwinner, what better substitute than illicit, felonious endeavour? It's a true reflection, perhaps, of the madness of paying for something that owes its existence to selling you more things. Maybe the best corollary you could draw to "Weeds" is that it's talking in an oblique manner to the addictive qualities of the boob tube. How many of us, after all, turn to its cathode glow for our daily fix of release, pleasure, and cognitive escape? Nancy presides over the usual suspects of the dysfunctional family craze that largely defined the major films of the '90s (making the series feel at least a decade out of phase) while supplying her tiny coterie of middle-management pluggers with first baggies, then baked goods, thus successfully completing her own Martha Stewart Darwin chart. Her suppliers are black, of course, headed by a jive-talking soul mama (Tonya Patano) and a soulful entrepreneur, Conrad (Romany Malco), although "Weeds"–despite Nancy's chief antagonists being a crew of papi chulos who give her the fever–is too low-aspiring to be racist. Nancy's ultimate object choice is a face-swallowing (hold for the irony…) DEA agent Peter (Martin Donovan) who comes into her life after her wayward youngest Shane (Alexander Gould, the heart and soul of the show, for what it's worth), bites Peter's son during a martial arts tournament.

It's the same brand of quirky™ as Showtime's recently-axed craptavaganza "Huff"–and indicative mostly of how little its creators think of its audience. If "Weeds"' blunt elbows tickle your ribs, then you'll buy whole hog into the broad conventionalized ideas embedded therein. Consequently, the best storyline involves neither Nancy's brushes with Mexicans and other "traditional" substance peddlers nor her CPA's (Kevin Nealon) polyester one-liners, but Nancy's imperious, castrating pal Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), who's infected halfway through this season with the show's literally cancerous shallowness. Bald, brutalized, and, after lacing her chubby daughter's stash with laxative, given a wondrous comeuppance in the form of a homemade sex tape (featuring her hubby with a nymphomaniac), Celia is the scabrous shadow to Nancy's virtuous white capitalism. If Nancy's gentrification of the drug game is the American Dream parceled out in dime bags and the subjugation of East Indians for cheap but educated labour, then Celia's deconstruction is the real toll of domestic colonization on the colonials. She's malaria and headhunters where "Weeds", even with the effervescent and brilliant Louise-Parker at the rudder, is just The Godfather without irony, poetry, melancholy, or the tragedy of encroaching, consumptive corruption.

THE DVD
Lionsgate spreads the entirety of "Weeds: Season One" across two DVDs that showcase all ten insipid and insipidly, cutesily-titled episodes ("Fashion of the Christ," "Good Shit Lollipop," and so on) in a nice 1.33:1 fullscreen presentation that looks a lot like a direct digital feed. Similarly sophisticated DD 5.1 audio makes minor use of its capacity, which is fine and dandy for a show that has as its only pyrotechnics the occasional raising of a voice. Its contemporary soundtrack of folksy faves comes across clearly through the peripherals, with dialogue relegated to the centre channel and the subwoofer sitting there forlorn and ignored. But you didn't come here for an A/V demo. Presumably, what you did come here for are the nuggets of wisdom vomited up by series creator Jenji Kohan, and Lionsgate obliges with a pilot commentary long on meaningless drivel ("This title song I got from iTunes. Some people love it, some people hate it") and baby cooing as Jenji's co-commentator–her "third child, Oscar"–mirrors our disinterest in what mommy's doing as her day job. She complains about not getting a credit on the first episode because of something to do with the Writer's Guild and then spends a lot of time on the minutiae of filming. Kohan also takes delight in picking out moments that are paid off later in the series, which is, of course, unbecoming and self-aggrandizing.

Medical marijuana pioneer Craig X speaks under "Good Shit Lollipop" and sounds a lot like a fucking stoner. Tell me: how can one continue to contend that there are no long-term side-effects to smoking pot when everyone I've ever known who's spent a significant amount of time smoking pot sounds exactly as spaced-out and moronic as this dude? The contention isn't that you can't be a productive member of society and on the weed–the contention is that, just like any other recreational substance, abuse of it makes you stupid. Craig names each of the cast members before rambling on in the delighted way of people who've traded brain cells for a sense of euphoria and mild paranoia. Cast member Patano, meanwhile, presides over episode 5 "Lude Awakening"–an odd choice, as I can't imagine that Patano is much of a key player in the creative processes of the show, hence her spending a lot of time narrating the action and acting (then again, probably not acting) surprised. It's all worthless, don't get me wrong, but this track actually made me kind of angry. Malco pipes up on "Dead in the Nethers" and likewise trainspots his co-stars: "There's Mary Louise-Parker!" Lord almighty. A trailer for the series running a minute-and-a-half or so is heavy with critics' raves that seem, mainly, to be about the channel in general as opposed to this show in particular. In any case, they're wrong. Though I'm mildly intrigued, I have to admit, by "Dexter".

Onwards: Disc Two finds Nealon expounding on "The Punishment Light" (1.8). He's amusing in a way that suggests he's either actually funny or just funny by comparison to the other commentators. Nealon identifies himself as one of the people who likes the theme song and proceeds to demonstrate a lot of the same inability to say anything of substance about a series that is almost completely devoid of substance. That said, his practiced inanity functions as an intelligent satire of the general uselessness of commentary tracks in general. It's the only thing worth a damn in the whole collection. Alas, Kohan returns for the season cliffhanger, "The Godmother," with more of her homespun gobbledygook. On the other hand, the spiralling gyre of the series can hang itself handily on Kohan's declaration that she was really happy with how "Weeds" turned out. Font of wisdom, she. "Agrestic Herbal Recipes" opens a sub-menu with clickable invitations to investigate the many ways that you can integrate trollop'd-up oregano into your dinners ("I'm Baked Ziti," "Ganja Lasagna," "Hash Browns"), while "Smoke and Mirrors" (7 mins.) is a light documentary about the history of weed that instructs on the social beneficence of hemp and hemp-based products. A pair of Showtime Shorts (2 mins.) is extended junket-reel promotional blips for the show in which the principals answer dumb questions in a hyper-edited way that unsuccessfully simulates hip in precisely the same fashion the series it's pimping does.

45 minutes/episode; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, English DD 2.0 (Stereo); CC; 2 DVD-9s; Region One; Lionsgate