The Guardian Online
Current Issue: September 13, 2006

Putting the herb in suburb

Letter to the editor
Nikki Ferrell
Issue date: 9/13/06

A dope-slinging mom deals with Armenian drug lords
threatening her business, her 17-year-old son getting
his girlfriend pregnant, and her lazy live-in
brother-in-law taking her 11-year-old son to a
prostitute. Sound like South Central?

Try a few miles farther from L.A.

The gated community of Agrestic, California may seem
like a ritzy small-town suburb, but a closer look at
Showtime’s ground-breaking series "Weeds" reveals
big-city drama.

Mary-Louise Parker won a Golden Globe for her
portrayal of Nancy Botwin, a suburban mom. After her
husband drops dead while jogging with their son, Nancy
is left to keep the family together alone. She has no
experience and few job skills, and, as a last resort,
she starts selling marijuana to make ends meet.

Soon she finds herself with a prospering business,
complete with a staff of four pot-smoking slackers, a
husband in the D.E.A., and a ‘grow house’ in a
neighborhood that she monopolizes.

Though everything is going well on the business side,
her home life seems to be falling apart. Without her
husband to do some of the parenting, she is not able
to watch her kids as closely as she wants. Her older
son is obviously deeply troubled by his father’s
death, as his borderline-stalker relationship with his
girlfriend displays, and her younger son cannot seem
to make friends at school. However, Nancy has not
seemed to recognize her kids’ issues.

She makes it worse with the way she handles her own
life. She tries to hide her dealing from her kids, but
when her older son finds out she is selling weed he
stops seeing her as a mom and treats her as an equal,
even calling her by her first name. She secretly
marries a D.E.A. agent (so that he cannot testify
against her), who then uses his power to protect her
‘business.’

Meanwhile, her suburban friends are starting to
wonder: where is her Nancy’s money coming from? Why is
Nancy passing on soccer mom duties by skipping PTA
meetings and refusing to work on her friend’s campaign
for city council? What is she doing with her time?

Tune in to Showtime Monday nights at 10 to find out
when everything will fall apart (and it will). Only in
beginning episodes of the second season, "Weeds" is
already getting hot, and seems like the pot (or bong)
could boil over any second.