Update: You can watch the Season Four premiere in edited fashion at Variety.
Over the past three weeks I’ve devoured the first three seasons of Showtime’s darkly funny Weeds. For those who watch the show and I’d assume love it dearly, please skip ahead and know that the shows returns tonight at 10 p.m. on Showtime for the start of Season Four. We’re all terribly excited around these parts.
Like the best television shows, Weeds works on a level beyond its mere premise. Sure, it’s “about” a suburban mother who sells pot, but it’s also “about” the gray area people will live in and justify to survive. It’s about trying to take the American Dream and keep it from slipping from your fingers.
Nancy Botwin is a single mother (twice widowed), who’s slowly moving up the drug food chain to provide a better life for her two children, Shane and Silas. Except that, you know, dealing drugs leads to all sorts of problems and rather than make her children’s lives better Nancy just about ruins them.
Played by Mary-Louise Parker with a dose of intelligence, survival instinct, recklessness, ingenuity and coquettish charm, Botwin finds herself in one pickle after another like inadvertently becoming the driver for a drive-by-shooting, becoming romantically involved with a Drug Enforcement Agent, and so on and so on.
She keeps it together by the friendship of Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), her wacky CPA; her rivalry with frenemy Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), perhaps the most loathsome character on the show but I root like hell for her to find redemption or at the very least stop being such a bitch; the irrepressible brother-in-law Andy Botwin (Justin Kirk), who has nothing but good intentions but fails miserably as a porn star, rabbi, Army recruit, Uncle, business partner, well pretty much everything he does except for sleeping with crazy women; and of course, Conrad, the best damn grower of marijuana and Botwin’s love interest.
The cast of characters on this show keeps things breezy and funny, but the darkness of the material and the constant valleys for all involved elevate the material to something more meaty than your average sitcom.
The radio show is also a Showtime show. I’ve yet to see the television show, since, um, I don’t have Showtime. However, people rave about it and hopefully I’ll be able to pick it up on DVD. After watching this animated short from Season Two (it premiered on May 4 and the second episode was last night) I really want to see this show. I love how this video illustrates the hazy notion of memory and storytelling and why both are so essential to the human DNA.
Showtime has teamed up with internet TV provided, Brightcove, to allow Emmy voters to stream full seasons of their signature shows like Brotherhood, Weeds, Dexter and Californication. The move aims to forego the traditional process of mailing out screeners of their shows. Now, voters will be able to simply enter a passcode (hint, hint can anyone dig one up?) at: http://sho.com/foryourconsideration and you’ll be able to watch any of their shows at their leisure.
Now, this isn’t necessarily the first step in the right direction, but would consumers pay a small fee to access this content as opposed to getting leeched from their cable provider? I think I would, but I would also gladly sit through commercials for the opportunity to watch these shows as well.
Showtime series will be available beginning Feb. 15 and continue streaming through the summer (which includes the Emmy season’s June balloting and August judging).
“This year’s Primetime Emmy campaign initiative was driven by a goal to create a new and unique way for voters to view Showtime’s eligible programming anywhere in the U.S,” said Richard Licata, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications for Showtime.
Not available to regular old consumers, but this seems to be a step in the right direction to push for internet television.
By James Furbush | November 28th, 2007 | 6:05 am PST
Anyone watch The L Word on Showtime? I don’t, can’t say I’ve ever seen a single episode. But if I told you their new promo for the show features lesbian oil wrestling, is that something you’d be interested in?
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