It seems unlikely that anyone pitching a show would have an easy job of it. A man pitching "Magnum, P.I.," for instance, might say something along the lines of, "...and Tom Selleck will run around in obscenely short shorts and fire guns and solve crimes." That wouldn't fly well. Nor would, "Silver foxes past their prime lounge about and talk of all the hot sex they used to have." So, one might imagine the shock a Showtime executive received when he heard this pitch: "A recently widowed, upper crust Jewish housewife and mother sells pot to her equally upper crust white Jewish friends and gets her dope from wise-cracking Mama, who be calling her a skinny bitch."
And yet, that is the basic premise for Showtime's ingenious series, "Weeds." The pilot wastes no time in semantics and begins in full-fledged medias res. Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) lost her husband to a heart-attack witnessed by her youngest son Shane (Finding Nemo's Alexander Gould). She's already selling the MJ to suburban dads at soccer matches, already making pot-lemonade from the metaphoric lemons with which her late husband left her.
The writing is snappy and sharp. (Do the writers not indulge in this mauie wowie, I wonder?) . That doesn't mean that it doesn't veer into well-charted territory. It's as though "Desperate Housewives" moved from Wisteria Lane to Agrestic, California and, rather than sleep with the gardener, they move pot and sleep with the drug lord of the community college. Nancy's friend, or rather, PTA associate Cecelia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins) is the vindictive, perfectionist mother that hides laxatives in her child's hidden stash of Hershey bars so she'll lose weight. There are cheating husbands, dead husbands, and - most importantly for Nancy - pot smoking husbands.
Nancy must quickly find a covert cover-up business before suspicions start to arise of how she's maintaining her expensive lifestyle. And why not open up a bakery, where her product can be consumed without the damaging affects to the lungs. But things aren't exactly 'smoking' for her.
You've got it all here. Intricate plot, disturbed children who imitate terrorist videos and then wave to Mommy, sexually charged deaf teenagers, and even poop humor. And the added bonus of seeming really cool when you talk about "Weeds" with your friends.
Don't mow the lawn; the grass can wait. It's this entertaining joint where you want to be.
Quote of the Day: Andy Botwin: How can you be so blindly pro-Bush?
Doug Wilson: I like his wife Laura... I used to buy weed from her at SMU.
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