Weeds Still Lighting It Up

Aptly named “Yes I Can,” Weeds’ seventh episode of its fourth season proves that Showtime’s critical, controversial darling still has what it takes to light up primetime. The fourth season took off on a perilous note, with producers daring to move the show’s location from the little boxes of the suburbs to the Mexican border. But their daring has paid off.

At the end of season three, everyone’s favorite dope-dealing suburban housewife, Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) set fire to her picture perfect home, packed her pot-pushing brood into the family Hybrid, and took off for the California sea shore. This left not only Agresia up in the flames, but much of the show’s original premise. During the first season, Nancy was trying desperately to retain some normalcy for her sons Silas (Hunter Parrish) and Shane (Alexander Gould) after the sudden death of her husband. But Nancy’s not trying to keep her family life normal anymore. As she said at the end of season three, she “tried”, but now Nancy’s given up on suburbia. So what better place for a dealer to go than the Mexican Border?

The new locale certainly gives the writers the opportunity for some fresh, controversial plotlines. Thus far this season, the stories have wrapped around not only drug trafficking, but immigration and euthanasia while still managing to be devilishly witty.

Episode Seven finds Nancy once again looking for some extra cash. Disgusted by the frat house her home has become while living with brother-in-law Andy (Justin Dirk), lost and lonely Doug (Kevin Nealon), and her two sons, Nancy wants a second bathroom. Working as a manager of a maternity store/drug front (there’s a tunnel to Mexico in the storage room – seriously), apparently isn’t paying as well as one might think, and so Nancy returns to her roots and heads to her new supplier and international drug runner Guillermo (Guillermo Diaz). However, an angry Guillermo refuses to give her the drugs. Miffed, Nancy goes over Guillermo’s head to his boss, Esteban Reyes, who also happens to be the mayor of Tijuana. After a good spanking (you read that right, and I’m still not sure how I feel about it), Esteban lets Nancy have the drugs – much to Guillermo’s chagrin.

On the outskirts of the action, a newly-released Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) heads to Mexico with her daughter Isabelle to pick up some prescription drugs. There’s not much to her character’s plotline in this episode, except that DEA agent Till dismisses all charges against her, but Elizabeth Perkin’s portrayal of the uptight, despicable, just so wrong mother is spot-on and always a delicious hoot. And speaking of hoots, Andy and Doug provide plenty of chuckles as they research their desired new careers as coyotes (immigrant smugglers) by befriending some illegal aliens, resulting in Doug joining the minutemen. Additionally, Doug referring to his own minute man – if you catch my drift – as his “Jeremy Piven” may be my favorite line all season.

The one downer to an otherwise great episode was 17-year old Silas’ new relationship with Julie Bowen (Lost, Boston Legal), who plays a hot, single mom. In this week’s episode the two get seriously down in her cheese store. But haven’t Pacey Witter, Eva Longoria’s gardener, and what’s sure to be the whole male cast of next season’s Gossip Girl done the cradle-robbing cougar thing to death? The MILF plotline reeks of desperateness, and there’s no need for Weeds to go to pot with such a cheesy, barely-scandalous twist. With half its fourth season still to come, it’s already flying high.