Weeds, Season 2

The TV show Weeds has six seasons so far, but I'm way behind, and have just finished watching the second season. I've seen articles that the latest season was becoming too bizarre, a frequent occurrence when a show has outlived its original purpose, and the writers just start throwing weird plot twists at the characters. I can see the seeds of that in the second season.

Once again we are with Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a suburban widowed mother, who makes a living as a pot dealer. As season two begins, she goes into business with her associate Conrad (Romany Malco) as a grower. They rent a house and Malco, something of a horticulturist, endeavors to create a popular strain.

But Parker complicates things by dating a DEA agent (Martin Donovan). He knows what she does, but considers her small time and because he's attracted to her promises he will look the other way. Then there's Heylia (Tonye Potano), Parker's former supplier, who doesn't take kindly to betrayal, and an organized crime group of Armenians.

Meanwhile, Parker's friend Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) runs for city council against the popular incumbent, the perpetually baked Kevin Nealon. Justin Kirk plays Parker's louche brother-in-law, who is trying to get out of the service by going to rabbinical school, where he falls for a tough Israeli girl. Parker's two sons have their own travails--the older one gets his deaf girlfriend pregnant, and the younger goes through puberty.

Weeds is nothing if not entertaining, but even in its second season it began to drift from the beginning premise--a look at the conformities of suburbia. There is some of that, notably in Perkins' run for office (she wants to put up surveillance cameras), but mostly the show bounces along from one quirk to another. We have a character lose some toes to a vicious dog, two character fall into bed, despite their hatred of each other, and there's lots of smutty talk--so much that at times it seems like the work of sequestered teenage boys. A scene in which Kirk instructs the younger son on how to masturbate is a symphony of vivid euphemisms, and I doubt I'll ever forget the same actor stumbling into bed with his Israeli girlfriend only to see her wearing a large, black strap-on dildo. When Zooey Deschanel shows up late in the season as Kirk's kooky ex-girlfriend, the show started to buckle under the weight of its whimsy.

The show opens with a song, "Little Boxes," about the sameness of suburbia. This season the song was sung by different artists before each episode, from Elvis Costello to Englebert Humperdinck. It also ends with a humdinger of a cliffhanger, which means I'll have to rent season three.