Tuesday 31 January 2017

Weeds, Season 3 (2007)



There's a scene in this season where Nancy Botwin asks someone "Am I a bad person?".  She gets a reassuringly negative response in the episode, but the actual answer is "Of course you are a bad person.  You're a character on Weeds."

Because make no mistake, while many of the characters in this show are likeable, and even have some admirable traits - such as Nancy's protectiveness of her sons - they are none of them good people.  Nancy herself is reckless and impulsive, frequently instigating the very situations from which the boys must be protected.  Her accountant Doug is kind of oafishly charming, but he's also petty, selfish, and - probably unsurprisingly, given his willingness to cook the books for a drug dealer - an inveterate embezzler.

This season of the show follows the same basic shape as the previous two: Nancy's illicit activities put her family in jeopardy of some kind, prompting her to make dubious decisions that stave off disaster for now at the cost of even greater disaster in the future; and then when the chickens come home to roost, repeating the process with ever greater risks.

While the outline remains the same, Weeds does a pretty good job of changing the colouring within those lines, so that (at least so far) things haven't felt too repetitive.  They shake things up pretty well as they go, and the season finale here is a particularly big one in that regard.  In fact, it has repercussions that mean it works pretty well as a series finale, should you decide to not watch any further (and I've seen more than one person say that you should in fact do just that).

If the basic premise of a black comedy about a suburban soccer mom turned drug dealer appeals to you, then you should at least give Weeds seasons one through three a watch.  Whether you should continue after that or not ... well, I'll be back for a review of season four at some point, and we can discuss that then!

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