By Curt Schleier

WEEDS continues to impress with its quality. In fact, it is on the verge of moving from the ironic to the iconic.  Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louis Parker, henceforth referred to as the Brilliant M-LP) is now in serious debt to gangsta U-Turn (Page Kennedy), and doesn’t know how she’ll pay him off.  The stocks and mutual fund shares she thought she had are long gone.  Her house is worth little, because a new, religious development is opening near by.  And the few thousand dollars she offers U is just enough chump change to get him angry.

To work off her debt, U sends her to an Hispanic bar and pool hall to pick up a package.  She doesn’t know what it is and the locals insist she do a brick dance before she gets the brick she came for.  Clearly most middle class women would be shiting a brick, not dancing one if they walked into this dark bar.  But Nancy knows no fear.  It takes her a couple of minutes, but she soon figures out what’s needed. And she does a dance – fully clothed – that raises the temperature in the bar by about 10 degrees.

This is a difficult role that calls for numerous mood changes from funny to ‘fraid and the Brilliant M-LP is fearless in her approach to this demanding part.

She gets her brick, of course, but the wrong brick –weed, not the harder stuff U expected.  So now he insists she sell it at exorbitantly high prices.  It’s funny in a bizarre kind of way watching as Nancy argues about price with U, as though this was a rationale business situation open to negotiation.


Meanwhile, Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) consults her divorce attorney Arlene Cutter (the always funny Carrie Fisher) who advises her to try to spend quality time with her daughter, Isabella (Allie Grant).  Isabella earns scads of money performing in commercials, and Arlene figures if Isabelle can get back in her daughter’s good graces, she might be able to win full custody of her cash cow – I mean daughter.

Of course, Celia’s idea of quality time is sitting in her seedy motel room and ordering up a cot (that comes with a used condom wrapper) for Isabella to sleep in while she boozes it up.  But Isabella’s no dummy; she calls Child Protective Services and is immediately returned to dad.


Andy gets called up for active duty, though he’s lost a couple of toes.  They promise he’s scheduled for a stateside desk, but, as we all know, promises are made to be broken.