Weeds: Watching Nancy

This week on Weeds, Nancy Botwin’s drug-lord, mayor boyfriend decided that his pregnant, pot-dealing girlfriend required a babysitter. This actually seemed like a pretty smart move considering the stellar decision-making Nancy’s displayed thus far on this show. It might have been better if the babysitter, Cesar, wasn’t also a ruthless hit man though.

So Nancy came down the stairs to find Cesar just chilling on her couch with his hand gun. Good morning! Shockingly Nancy was not too happy to see the cold-blooded killer in her living room and called her drug lord boyfriend Esteban to tell him to “call off his goon”. It’s good that she could maintain her wit in a situation like that. Plus, she spotted a little Jesus bobblehead doll – which offended the cold-blooded killer – with a note on the bottom addressed to “Blanca”, the nickname Guillermo gave her before she snitched on him and his secret tunnel to Mexico to the DEA.

To get her mind off the fact that the father of her unborn child hasn’t decided whether to let her live or die, Nancy went to get a pedicure. Skipping off to get a bikini wax, Nancy disappeared behind a curtain and out the back away from Cesar who was stuck with his feet in the dead skin-eating fish tank. I seriously couldn’t make this up. But she didn’t run far from trouble, heading to prison to have a little one-to-one chat with Guillermo. He said that he knows she was the one who turned him in and that her boyfriend’s going to kill her. She said he won’t. Couldn’t Guillermo tell she was glowing? Well, apparently he didn’t think that would get her out of trouble and with some very unbecoming language told Nancy exactly what he thought was going to happen to her. Nancy also started to realize that he was probably right: she was in way over her head.

Now pretty sure than she’s a dead woman walking, Nancy went to Dean to tell him where she hid all her money and that if she dies Silas should be Shane’s guardian. Somehow that just seems like a worse idea than getting knocked up by a Mexican drug lord. Speaking of, Nancy behaved exactly like the kind of woman you’d want having your child by going to a sushi restaurant, eating raw fish, drinking whiskey, and smoking. Then she got all choked up about how she once leapt from a bridge as a child. The newspaper wrote that she fell, but she didn’t, she leapt. So I guess that means Nancy has always had a little bit of a death wish?

Anyway, she leapt right from the sushi place to her boyfriend’s place. When he came in and was a teensy bit angry about her drunkenness, she grabbed his gun and told him that if he was going to kill her he should do it then. Esteban reacted by, hmm, asserting his dominance in a sexually violent way. Lovely couple these two, really.

In other lovely couple news, Andy got with Nancy’s sister Jill (Jennifer Jason Leigh in glasses – because she’s frumpy, I guess). Andy was sleeping on Jill’s couch along with Shane, with whom he’s hiding out from Nancy’s crazy drug lord life. Andy told Jill – a wife and mom to two freaky twin girls – that Nancy witnessed a murder so they needed to get away. Jill didn’t believe this, but did proceed to get very, very drunk and bond with Andy about how her husband and Nancy don’t appreciate them. Then they had inappropriate sex on the dryer. Shane witnessed this from outside and captured it on his phone. What a lovely family Nancy has.

Speaking of her family, eldest son Silas was out hiking in a national park with Doug looking for a place to grow their new strain of weed. Instead they stumbled upon some other people who had already thought up that idea and they thought to bring large weapons too. Silas and Doug did not think about the large weapons so they were tied up and the chief pot grower found Silas’ weed. But then he let them go, because Silas didn’t have a dad. However, he kept all the pot, leaving Silas with nothing. So how will he be a drug dealer like his mom now? Maybe he won’t? For goodness sake, can’t someone in this family make good? A little redemption in the midst of all this insanity would be nice right about now. But don’t count on it.

Season 5, Episode 2: Machetes Up Top (originally aired June 15, 2009)

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Photographs courtesy of Showtime, Monty Brinto