Weeds is a series created by Jenji Kohan that is centered around the character of Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a widow from the suburbs of Agrestic in Los Angeles California. Nancy’s husband Judah died tragically from a heart attack which left her to take care of her two sons Silas and Shane. Nancy decides to earn her living by selling weed in the suburbs of Agrestic. Heylia James (Tonye Patano) and Conrad Shepard (Romany Malco) are her weed suppliers.

Throughout the season Nancy’s business and personal life start to intersect and everything that can go wrong does go wrong. She has issues with Silas and the girls he dates and Shane’s constant emotions. She also has to constantly interact with her crazy and psychotic ‘friend’ Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), who has a daughter that hates her and a marriage that is one the rocks. Also while she is trying to deal her weed her troublesome brother-in-law Andy Botwin (Justin Kirk) (who always makes the worst decisions possible) shows up to live with her.

With all these issues and people that she has to deal with, she has to try and run a successful ‘business.’ Her money issues as a dealer affects her personally since you simply can’t buy everything with singles and crushed up money from potheads and you can’t drop everything into a bank account. Nancy’s hilarious accountant [and client] Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon) suggests she makes a front business. Nancy then goes on a mission to make said front and put together a business team.  She does all this while doing her best to keep her family and neighbors from knowing what she is doing and staying out of jail.

IMDB describes this show simply as a ‘Comedy about a suburban mother turned marijuana dealer,’ it is much deeper than that and becomes a serious drama in later seasons. I really like the first season of Weeds as both a comedy and a drama because they deal with serious issues, with a bit of light or dark humor. This show takes the issue of drugs [one that has been stretched out in many possible ways in various movies and series] and puts it in a slightly new setting – the suburbs. Generally when you see drugs in movies and such, its in the ghetto, if its not, its about rich people who love coke or heroin. This show takes a realistic look at the fact that someone has to peddle weed in the suburbs; and whats funnier than a hot Soccer mom.

As I mentioned before, Weeds has light and dark humour [just not always at the same time].  Meaning that the jokes are usually ones you grin at, or find extremely funny because of unfortunate events. Situations you normally should not laugh at, but can’t help laughing with a bit of a ‘oh my God’ feeling when it happens. Nancy would spend the entire day dealing with weed issues and then come home to find out her son [Shane] is acting out because he misses his father. For example:

I like this type of dark humor because it also shows the naivety of the people of the suburbs. Within all its comedy and drama it finds ways to be mostly realistic. The realism may fall short with the series of unfortunate events coming one after the other like a domino effect, but the reactions of the humans involved are dramatic and deep and it also shows the ease and the difficulty of dealing drugs in the suburbs.

In this show there are many characters that I like but for this season I will focus on two main characters. The first one is Andy Botwin. Andy is the definition of the screw up. He has no purpose, smokes a lot and is overall hilarious. He is constantly saying witty one liners and doing everything he can to get with a girl but can never seem to choose the right one. He has very jittery mannerism. He is the last person you want around you in an emergency situation. Though Nancy can’t stand him, she doesn’t have the heart to get rid of him, plus, he takes care of the kids. Andy is a young pothead trapped in a mans body, one such act of immaturity happens when he sells blasphemous t-shirts that have the typo ‘Chris Died for your sins’ at Shane’s school.

The next character I will mention is Andy’s friend Doug Wilson. Doug is the weed smoking Councilman/ Accountant who gets in trouble because he cannot make good decisions or control his sex drive/smoking habits. He and Andy make a hilarious combination which is usually filled with odd comments and random conversations, mostly occurring when both are extremely baked.

The show for me is one of the funniest dark comedies I have seen and draws me episode after episode mostly because I can’t wait to see what else can go wrong.

– Simo-B rating: 8/10