Wednesday 14 October 2009

Watching Weeds Television

By Dan Levine

There are many American comedy-dramas on television today but one that has become particularly popular is Weeds, a Showtime show made by Lionsgate television and created by Jenji Kohan.

Weeds' plot is basically about a housewife whose husband dies suddenly and thus must find a way to make money and continue her affluent suburban lifestyle. She becomes her neighborhood's marijuana dealer in order to keep her income up and continue her lifestyle.

Weeds, the tv series' name, means both the plant that the protagonist sells (marijuana) as well as "widow's weeds" which is the type of clothing one wears when one becomes a widow. Some also point out that Weeds is a good metaphor for the suburban community which grows quickly like a weed and which involves many houses and people who are indistinguishable like weeds.

Weeds' opening theme song is called "Little Boxes" which is played along with images of many small houses in a typical American suburban neighborhood. This is to further enforce the weed like mentality that was spoken about in the preceding paragraph.

Weeds has five seasons as of date and made its debut in 2005. It is Showtime's highest rated series during its first year playing and it is the channel's definite success. The season has attracted 962,000 viewers on average.

The Season 5 premier brought in 1.2 million viewers with an additional 500,000 viewers for the rerun later that night bringing the total viewership to 1.7 million. Not bad for the Showtime channel.

Much of the scenery and exterior shots on the show are shot in California in places like Santa Clarita Valley and Calabasas, California.

The main characters involve Nancy Botwin who is the protagonist of the show. She is your basic all-American soccer mom who lives the suburban lifestyle until she loses her husband and must enter the marijuana trade to make a living. Her customer base involves many people like her suburban friends, lawyer, accountant and more but eventually she is led to new challenges when she tries to expand her customer base.

Celia is Nancy's best enemy and friend. She is in a marriage that is particularly unhappy which may explain why she is so attracted to various vices like alcohol and trying to take others down in order to "teach them a lesson". However, her friend/enemy status is interesting in contrast to Nancy.

Weeds' Season 1 begins with Nancy's husband dying which is the catalyst for the basis of the show which involves Nancy entering the marijuana dealings to keep her affluent suburban life alive.

Her children both attend the public school system but in order for Nancy to continue to support their upper middle class lifestyle in the suburbs, she must sell marijuana to her neighbors and friends.

At one point, some of Nancy's customers begin to go to the medical marijuana shop because its quality is much higher than the quality of Nancy's marijuana. For this reason, Nancy is forced to make baked goods using her cooking skills to find a new way to sell her inferior quality weed. She does a good job of this and covers up her sales by actually making her own bakery and putting Costco's products on her shelves as her own.

Weeds is an excellent television show and has had a long standing viewership. If this sort of topic and protagonist sounds interesting to you, you should definitely check out the show on Showtime. You may also find clips and other previews if you search on the internet for the television show, Weeds.

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