A Slight Apocalypse

Most comedies are generally fun in one way or the other. After all, that’s their purpose in life, but not all comedies go beyond that superficial pleasing feeling that laughter gives you. “Scrubs” doesn’t, and neither does “How I Met Your Mother” - two of the very best shows in the genre that are still on the air. “Weeds”, however, delivers both the phunny as well as more depth than every other sit-com combined, and that’s why I love this show so much.

That, and all the other reasons listed below, of course.

The premise of the show is… well, I guess this is where the word “original” starts calling attention to itself. Nancy and Judah Botwin are living in the suburbs of L.A with their two boys and everything is fine and dandy. They have a healthy income, they love each other and the kids are getting along fine in their respective schools. That’s when Judah has a heart attack while he’s out jogging and dies tragically, thus leaving poor Nancy with the job of paying for their expensive lives in “Agrestic”. Most people would get a job, cut down on commodities, get the kids into state schools… but not Nancy Botwin.

She decides to become a drug dealer.

And that’s where season 1 of “Weeds” begins; with things in a slight disarray…

I’ve been watching this show on and off for a couple of years now. I’d catch an episode on cable, and would always find myself entertained and intrigued by its uncommon qualities, but not enough to actually do something more about it. Until a couple of months ago when I finally got around to watching the entire thing from start to end.

And I didn’t like it.

To begin with, that is. The first couple of episodes were really slow and very different from anything I’d tried before. I was actually *this* close to put it away when I gave it a final resuscitation attempt, and was surprised to discover that it wasn’t boring at all; it was goddamned hil-arious, and suddenly I couldn’t stop watching it to save my life.

“Weeds” combines it’s bright and sunny environment with the darkest humour I’ve tasted since I tried “Wonderfalls” and “Dead Like Me” (neither are shows I ended up liking). It’s got a great and diverse cast of characters (my favourites being “Celia Hodes”, “Doug Wilson” and “Andy Botwin”) and its got surreal plotlines that keeps the show ceaselessly entertaining. Sometimes the show gets overly slow while its building up to another climactic confrontation, but normally the writing is so clever that you don’t notice these dry patches too much. Because this is a smart show, and a show that dares make fun of, and often, satirize stuff that other shows only pick the scabs off. These things include, drugs (obviously), religion/”Jesus freaks”, how to run a family (poorly), teenage obesity (it’s wrong!), and a whole host of other things.

If it’s got any problems, they aren’t big, but I’ll mention some things that has been on my mind:
1. It isn’t for everyone. A lot of the humour may strike some people as downright unfunny, or in the worst case, just wrong. It tickled me, that’s for sure, but, you know, if you’re of the skittish sort, I would recommend you stick to watching safer stuff.
2. It can be a bit slow on the surface, and it doesn’t always go for the laughs where it has the opportunity to do something more meaningful. Yes, this should be an obvious plus, but I get the impression not everyone feels that way about a dark dramedy (what a horrible genre name!)
3. Some characters that are no longer needed have a tendency to stick around for too long, or simply vanish without a reasonable explanation. These are of course minor supporting characters, but it’s frustrating none the less.

So, “Weeds”, right? It’s a keeper, and I highly recommend it. It’s pure quality through-and-through in a way I’ve never experienced with a comedy show. If you haven’t watched it yet, you’re in for a real treat: It’s time you get a hold of “Weeds”…

… and smoked it!

9.0/10 (weak)

This series looked like it was over-average interesting when it first aired, oh-so many years ago. A lot of my friends and other people I know started watching and raving about how good ‘Lost’ was, and I thought to myself that I’d better see what all the fuss is about.

But I never did. Till now.

The reason behind that is the same that sent me running away from watching ‘Prison Break’ in the first place: Popularity. And I don’t mean whether it was popular within its genre or target-group, I mean the ‘universal’ sort of popularity that affects people of all demographics to the same extent. Shows that accomplishes that feat are more often than not things I normally enjoy. ‘Home & Away’? ‘Beverly Hills’? ‘Desperate Housewives’? No thanks, sir, I think I’ll stick with nerdy shows that the masses keep well clear off.

But ‘Lost’, despite its continuing smash-hit status, was never a show that I could entirely rule out as a possible exception from my illogical rule. Here’s a show about a plane full of passengers crashing on a an island somewhere in the Pacific, which does seem very Robinson Crusoe-esque on the surface, but with the twist of having a supernatural element stuffed in somewhere between the coconuts and palm trees. Or at least it has the semblance of something supernatural to me, but hey - I’m biased when it comes down to such things.

Every episode in ‘Lost’ is about the life on the island, but it’s also built up around a ‘Person of the Week’ where we delve further into the background story of a passenger; who he/she was, why the person ended up on the plane et cetera, et cetera. I thought this approach worked well for the most part, though it could’ve easily have benefited from mixing up the recipe from time to time. A couple episodes were downright uninteresting and some episodes that fell a bit flat due to a poorer subject or if the history didn’t have much to add to the continuing plot of the season.

Because there is a plot here, or at the very least a general idea of where things are going. There were parts of the season where I felt that the writers weren’t exactly sure if they were taking the right way through the narrative jungle, but the show usually didn’t take too long in finding the right path again. The ‘finding of the right path’ was usually very well co-ordinate with the American Season Syndrome (i.e. that a show begins with a bang, episodes 1-4, slacks off in the middle, episodes 5-8, and picks up again towards the end of the first half, episodes 9-11. Rewind and repeat for equivalent episodes in the second half of the season). Thankfully though, the yay-worthy bits were much stronger than the less-interesting bits were weak, so it was nearly all good.

My favourite episode of the season is a tie between episode 4 “Walkabout” and episode 9 “Solitary”, both of which were written by the masterful David Fury (who was one of the main reasons I decided to give ‘Lost’ a shot), but the pilot and the season finale were also of a very high quality.

There is much more I could say about this show; I could express my fears and hopes for the upcoming seasons (Methinks it’s going down…), or I could comment on the acting (generally good), but I think you’ve caught my drift by now. I like ‘Lost’. I could’ve liked it more, and wouldn’t have minded a bit more information on the supernatural side of the show, but I guess I’ll have to watch and see… But as far as American mainstream shows go, ‘Lost’ is definitely something to check out.

8.0 /10 (weak)