Weeds, Season 3

The third season of Weeds continues our heroine's slide into the more dangerous realms of her chosen profession, peddling marijuana. It's an interesting year in the show, as it wraps up certain elements--future seasons will see Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) leaving the pre-fab suburb that was the basis of the show's main theme song--"Little Boxes"--and also leading viewers to come to the uncomfortable conclusion that she's just not a very good mother.

The season begins by resolving the cliffhanger of season 2, when druglords have their guns trained on her. She wriggles out of that one, and that becomes another theme for the show--whenever she faces imminent calamity, something almost divine helps her out of it, whether it's a timely death, or, at the end of the season, a wildfire. Parker gets in cahoots with U-Turn (Page Kennedy), a thuggish drug kingpin, who is at war with Mexicans. Later, she will tangle with bikers.

Meanwhile, her family life becomes tangled. Her eldest son (Hunter Parrish) wants in on the business. He gets a girlfriend (Mary-Kate Olsen), who is a Jesus freak but also a pothead, and she becomes Parker's biggest seller. Then the younger son, Shane (Alexander Gould) starts seeing his dead father.

The other throughline in the season is a character played by Matthew Modine, who builds new suburbs. His new town, Majestic, ends up absorbing the smaller town of Agrestic. This causes problems for Parker's pothead accountant, Doug Wilson, who declares a prank war on Modine. And then there's Elizabeth Perkins, as Parker's frenemy, who always does her best to cause Parker no end of problems.

I found it interesting that the writers of the show took Parker down a slippery slope. It had always been about her doing anything she could to help her family, even if it was dealing drugs. But over the course of this season it became clear that it was more than that. A certain amorality crept into Parker's character. She tried to help out the ex-wife of the DEA agent that she surreptitiously married (and ended up getting his life insurance), but that went horribly wrong. But allowing her sons to get involved in the business would not get her mother of the year awards, and it's clear that the inattention she gave to the younger son led him to go nutso.

There were other peculiarities during the season. The character of Andy (Justin Kirk), Parker's ne'er-do-well brother-in-law, bounced through several storylines during the season. He was in the army reserves, had a brief career as a porn star, romanced a biker chick. All of these lasted no more than two episodes. For a season that only had 15 episodes, there were too many storylines introduced. It might have been better to slow down the pace and focus on fewer story arcs.

I did find the last episode satisfying, as the idyllic town goes up in flames, while Pete Seeger sings the theme song. I may get frustrated by this show, but I will rent season 4.