Wednesday, August 24, 2005
It's Showtime!
With Entourage and Reno 911! winding down their seasons, and The Comeback (which isn't exactly a comedy, but which I have grown to like quite a bit over the course of its season), I am in the market for a new half hour comedy I can DVR and watch whenever I have a half hour to kill. Discounting the broadcast networks (which generally don't know funny unless its either animated or on the verge of being cancelled [i.e., two or three episodes into the season and on its second or third night of the week]), I'm left with, uh let's see... not much new on Comedy Central and, um, nothing new on HBO either (but isn't Curb Your Enthusiasm starting up again soon, all six brand new episodes?). So I took a chance this week on the new Showtime series, Weeds.
And I am absolutely happy I did.
Weeds is the third surprisingly good Showtime series in a row (the first and second were, in order, Dead Like Me, and Huff) I've enjoyed, after years of half-assed efforts to out-HBO HBO. The premise seems simple enough (forgive me, I missed the first couple episodes, so my synopsis might have a few holes): Mary Louise Parker plays a jaded California suburbanite mother of two boys whose husband passes away unexpectedly. In order to make ends meet, she turns to her husband's pot dealer (I'm shaky on that one, too, and could be completely wrong about that), who sets her up with his wholesalers, an upstart black family in "tha hood." She then starts dealing pot to seemingly everyone in the neighborhood except the neighborhood bitch (played marvelously by Elizabeth Perkins) and her kids -- none of whom are seemingly aware of her new vocation.
The premise regularly stretches believability (how is it Perkins' character can know everybody's dirtiest little secret, but doesn't know Parker's character [whose oldest son is dating Perkins' oldest daughter] is dealing pot to her own husband?), but I'm not sure that really matters. Instead, it provides a structured environment for the writers to do a surprisingly nuanced job of looking at the way today's society socializes, gossips, parents, and copes with loss. It helps considerably that, aside from an odd tendency to appear as if she's staring down at the middle of the chest of anyone to whom she's talking, Parker absolutely nails her character. Watch two episodes, as I did, and you'll feel as if you know this woman. Which, if you think about it long enough, you probably already do.
That is, if you even have Showtime. Only you can fix that problem.
(Oh, and I also want to point out that the opening credit sequence for Weeds, which cleverly depicts suburban ubiquity in the visually punny style of Michel Gondry against the grating neo-folkie "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds, is the single best title sequence I have seen in years. If there's an Emmy category for that sort of thing, Weeds should be a lock.)
And I am absolutely happy I did.
Weeds is the third surprisingly good Showtime series in a row (the first and second were, in order, Dead Like Me, and Huff) I've enjoyed, after years of half-assed efforts to out-HBO HBO. The premise seems simple enough (forgive me, I missed the first couple episodes, so my synopsis might have a few holes): Mary Louise Parker plays a jaded California suburbanite mother of two boys whose husband passes away unexpectedly. In order to make ends meet, she turns to her husband's pot dealer (I'm shaky on that one, too, and could be completely wrong about that), who sets her up with his wholesalers, an upstart black family in "tha hood." She then starts dealing pot to seemingly everyone in the neighborhood except the neighborhood bitch (played marvelously by Elizabeth Perkins) and her kids -- none of whom are seemingly aware of her new vocation.
The premise regularly stretches believability (how is it Perkins' character can know everybody's dirtiest little secret, but doesn't know Parker's character [whose oldest son is dating Perkins' oldest daughter] is dealing pot to her own husband?), but I'm not sure that really matters. Instead, it provides a structured environment for the writers to do a surprisingly nuanced job of looking at the way today's society socializes, gossips, parents, and copes with loss. It helps considerably that, aside from an odd tendency to appear as if she's staring down at the middle of the chest of anyone to whom she's talking, Parker absolutely nails her character. Watch two episodes, as I did, and you'll feel as if you know this woman. Which, if you think about it long enough, you probably already do.
That is, if you even have Showtime. Only you can fix that problem.
(Oh, and I also want to point out that the opening credit sequence for Weeds, which cleverly depicts suburban ubiquity in the visually punny style of Michel Gondry against the grating neo-folkie "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds, is the single best title sequence I have seen in years. If there's an Emmy category for that sort of thing, Weeds should be a lock.)
posted by Bill Purdy, 12:23 PM
1 Buffaloes were bitter enough to post comments:
Is it that obvious I've got a lot of time on my hands? I was going to add a bunch of pictures with links, too, but lost interest halfway in.
(...which, incidentally, is exactly what's happened to my latest book from my Insanely Ambitious Summer Reading List [link not inserted because Blogger does not enable links in comments]: Forever Peace. This is particularly frustrating for me because I am well past the usual point of no return (like, page 200 or so), and because I've aborted at least five attempts to read this book already in the past five years. Is it OK to admit it's just not doing it for me?)
So, didja click on any of them, or didja just hover and look at the corner of your browser?
(...which, incidentally, is exactly what's happened to my latest book from my Insanely Ambitious Summer Reading List [link not inserted because Blogger does not enable links in comments]: Forever Peace. This is particularly frustrating for me because I am well past the usual point of no return (like, page 200 or so), and because I've aborted at least five attempts to read this book already in the past five years. Is it OK to admit it's just not doing it for me?)
So, didja click on any of them, or didja just hover and look at the corner of your browser?