WEEDS (TV SERIES): SEASON 3 - Blu-ray review

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they all came out the same
And there's doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Clever title, clever title sequence, and clever writing. That pretty much covers "Weeds," a suburban satire that offers a family as offensive to a community of well-manicured lawns as a crop of dandelions. What makes them stand out is that (pun intended) they sell weed. And this season, I do mean "they." The whole family gets involved.

The first season of the popular Showtime half-hour series introduced viewers to Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), a housewife whose life literally went to pot after her husband died and left her with two kids and a mountain of debt. Most normal people would try to get a job, but Nancy isn't normal. Her decidedly non-ticky tacky solution is to begin selling marijuana to make ends meet, all the while hiding her "career" from her maid (Renee Victor) and two sons--the teenaged Silas (Hunter Parrish) and adolescent Shane (Alexander Gould). That first season, the sheer absurdity of the situation was responsible for much of the show's humor. In fact, Season 1 is probably the funniest of the three, because Nancy's business is still small enough to be laughable and what she does seems like such an innocently "in your face" contrast to the staid and uptight world represented by her friend and civic leader, Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins).

But by the second season, Nancy's business had grown so much that she decided Heylia (Tonye Patano) couldn't supply her anymore, and that it was more efficacious to just produce and process her own crop, with the assistance of master-grower Conrad (Romany Malco). Of course, you can't expand your drug trade without drawing the attention of some mean and nasty people, and so Season Two begins an escalation that ends with two rival gangs converging on her house to "protest."

Each episode begins where the last left off, and each season begins the same way. So Season Three starts off with some pretty heavy fecal matter, but it also features some pretty soapy content--so much so that it begins to feel like a cross between "Desperate Housewives" and "The Sopranos." That's not bad company to keep. "Weeds" is a smartly written and performed series that just got a little darker this season. The Botwin boys get in trouble with the law, Celia's husband (Andy Milder) bonds with his daughter (Allie Grant) at the exclusion of Mom (who has to live in a sleezy motel), Silas and Shane run afoul of the law, Uncle Andy (Justin Kirk) runs afoul of the military, and CPA Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon) just runs afoul--which is about all you can say of someone who sits in the audience of a city council meeting and not only shaves, but also cuts his toenails. This season, Nancy gets in deep doo-doo and finds herself virtually indentured to "gangsta" U-Turn (Page Kennedy), and also ends up taking a real job with sleezeball developer Sullivan Groff (Matthew Modine), who represents a neighboring community. And Celia? She learns about Nancy's secret and uses it to her advantage, while coping with her breast cancer and having an affair of her own. Did I mention that Conrad and Nancy have a thing? We won't even talk about how Uncle Andy gets into the porno business.

It's all as quirky as can be--perhaps too much so, this season--but the performances are so wonderful and the production values are so slick (again, think "The Sopranos") that you can't help but be mesmerized by the show. There also isn't a better title song than the lyric by Malvina Reynolds, made famous by folksinger Pete Seeger in the early Sixties. It was an anti-establishment anthem, and for a woman like Nancy, what better tune is there to dance to? Certainly not the ones that gang-bangers make her do, in order to pick up and deliver a package to U-Turn. Though Season 3 gets darker and weirder (as if that seemed possible), there's enough satire here to make the show intellectually satisfying . . . if you're of the right political persuasion. One particularly funny storyline finds Nancy selling pot to a security officer at a college, while her son, Silas, finds willing customers for his mother at a Christian youth group. As Silas negotiates a relationship with "good girl" Tara (Mary-Kate Olsen), some of the season's funniest satire spills out.

Here's how the 15 episodes play out:

1) "Doing the Backstroke." Silas takes off with Mom's stash before the gangbangers demand it, leaving Nancy holding the bag and Celia holding all the aces.

2) "A Pool and His Money." Andy is mistaken for a child molester, Celia is estranged from her husband and daughter, Doug begs Celia to take him back, and Conrad sticks up for Nancy.

3) "The Brick Dance." As Conrad and Heylia team up to find a new site for their "grow house," Nancy is sent into the lion's den to retrieve a bundle . . . and ends up being forced to do a table dance.

4) "Sh*t Highway." The DEA is on Nancy's tail, and Majestic wants to run its sewage right through Agrestic. Meanwhile, Silas likes community service and the people he meets, much to Mom's chagrin.

5) "Bill Sussman." Andy goes AWOL, Shane goes to summer school, and Nancy gets in deeper with U-Turn.

6) "Grasshopper." Mary-Kate Olsen guests in this episode that also finds Nancy charged with the job of mending fences between Majestic and her community.

7) "He Taught Me How to Drive By." U-Turn takes a wrong turn, there's a pregnancy, and everybody tries to sabotage everybody else (except for Silas, who enjoys spending time with Tara).

8) "The Two Mrs. Scottsons." Nancy meets Peter's other ex-wife, Valerie (Brooke Smith), while every other cast member gets involved in a relationship, it seems.

9) "Release the Hounds." Sullivan and Doug come to blows over a golf membership, Tara turns out to be more conniving than she looks, and Conrad and Silas bond.

10) "Roy Till Called." The DEA comes calling again.

11) "Cankles." Nancy tries to find out who tipped them off, while Silas learns that Tara isn't what she seems.

12) "The Dark Time." While Andy and Dean play "murderball," Doug runs afoul again, and Heylia and Conrad abandon ship.

13) "Risk." Nancy experiments with a new supplier, while Heylia finds a new neighborhood.

14) "Protection." More trouble for Nancy. Meanwhile, Heylia shows Celia a thing or two.

15) "Go." A wildfire symbolizes how out-of-control everything has gotten, as people have to flee their community and Silas finally comes to terms with who Tara is.

Video:
In his review of Season 1, Dean remarked that the MPEG-2 encoded video (1.85:1 aspect ratio, which fills out the entire screen) looked inconsistent, and I'd have to say that's the case this season too--but not nearly as bad as Seson 1. Some frames look remarkable, while a few (and only a few, mind you) look so grainy it snaps your head back for a moment. Sometimes the picture looks a little soft, while most other times the black levels are so strong you really see the people and objects pop out. Dean complained that interiors were often murky, and while I didn't find that to be the case, there was still a little inconsistency.

Audio:
The audio is a nice DTS HD 7.1 Master Audio, the clarity of which is established in every title song (sung by a different performer every episode). The show is largely dialogue, though, and so the seven channels seem underutilized unless we get background music. That said, there's still good balance between the bass and treble. Subtitles are in English and Spanish.

Extras:
Lots of bonus features here, though they're all brief and there are a few turkeys. First, the commentaries. There are six decent commentaries for Episode 1 (writer Kenji Kohan), Episode 4 (producer Mark Burley), Episode 5 (actor Justin Kirk), Episode 9 (director Ernest Dickerson), Episode 14 (writer Roberto Benabib), and Episode 15 (Kohan again). Trivia tracks are also included for seven episodes, though they're not terribly episode-specific. In fact, from what I watched, they're among the most trivial trivia tracks I've seen. Dull and really reaching for information. Like, how many women smokers are there, when the Lexus first appeared, or what factors are involved in determining alimony. Who cares? Come on, where's the juicy stuff? Not here.

Aside from a gag reel, soundtrack sampler, and a throwaway "Little Boxes" musical montage, what's left are a handful of featurettes and "Kush Kush and Away," a Blu-ray disc game. The featurettes are "Uncle AWOL" with Justin Kirk, which is just a character recap, "Little Boxes" with singer-songwriter Randy Newman, who gives a little musical history lesson, a Mary-Kate Olsen bio (for fans, obviously), and "G.M.A.--Good Morning Agrestic!," which is a basic town/concept surface-level featurette that doesn't really show or tell all that much. That leaves the game, which is probably the most primitive, low-tech game I've seen since the early Space Invaders and Pac-Man graphics. Two stick figures are manipulated through little rectangles that are supposed to be donuts but look an awful like Pac-Man power pills. There are multiple levels, but they're all just as low-tech stupid as the first. Whoever came up with the idea of including this on the Blu-ray is probably running an errand for U-Turn right about now.

So all that's worthwhile, really, are the commentary tracks.

Bottom Line:
"Weeds" won't be for everyone's taste, especially this darker third season. But subtle black humor abounds, and if you can picture "The Sopranos" sleeping with "Desperate Housewives" (instead of the fishes), you've got a fix on the direction this show has taken. "Weeds" received 10 Emmy nominations its first two seasons, and Parker, who won a Golden Globe for Season 1, is still a pleasure to watch.