By Curt Schleier
“Why does everything have to blow up simultaneously?”
It’s the question Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) asks as the WEEDS world around her seems about to crumble. Her son Silas (Hunter Parrish) got his ass handed to him by members of a motorcycle gang. They were upset that Nancy refused to buy the club’s inferior product, and took it out on junior. Worse still, they said she was next.
As bad, younger son Shane (Alexander Gould), the genius, believes he sees his dead father. Nancy can only handle one problem as a time. First she takes Silas to Dr. Tupelo, a physician who asks no questions, requires a $500 cash deposit only in American money and no longer accepts barter. Silas needs stitches, but the good doctor is out of Demerol. So Tupelo uses only a topical anesthetic.
Under the circumstances, can you blame Nancy for wondering “How can we call ourselves a first world country when we can’t provide basic health care for our criminals?” It is just one example of the show’s maliciously off-beat sense of humor.
Nancy then returns to the Spanish gang for whom she’d once performed her brick dance to see if she can buy protection. She walks into their headquarters carrying a Starbucks Frappachino, as though she was going to a regular business meeting. If only it were so. These Latinos drive a hard bargain; they want half her business. What’s a mother to do? She capitulates.
Meanwhile, Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) makes her monthly nut by renting her home to Nancy’s operation as a grow house. But she’s discovered trying to run your life when you’re paid in cash is not as easy as it looks. She can’t deposit large sums of cash in the bank, because there are IRS forms she has to fill out. She can’t pay her bills by cash. “I never realized how useless cash is.”
So Celia consults her new friend Heylia (Tonye Patano), who refuses to “train another white girl in the ways of the drug dealer.” But Heylia does suggest Celia find a crooked accountant to create a dummy corporation to funnel the cash through. Of course, that means Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), her former paramour.
Wilson is the one who stole the large cross from the Church of the ATM (Absolute Truth Ministries). Church members are going door to door in Majestic to see if anyone has seen anything suspicious. One volunteer knocks at Celia’s marijuana grow house where Conrad answers the door.
He wonders who would stoop so low as to steal the Cross of the ATM. Obviously, the volunteer tells him, the Jews. Ironic, since there are no Jews in Majestic.
More irony, the cross was in that very house, lit up and providing energy for Nancy’s latest crop. But he who lives by the cross may ultimately be arrested by it. The DEA does a heat-sensing satellite sweep of the area to look for grow houses and spies the cross. Will the DEA raid the place or just let Sullivan Groff (Matthew Modine) know where his missing cross is?
And will it make a difference. Before the Spanish gang could put its protection in play, some of Nancy’s marijuana fields are put to the torch. She’s clearly desperate when she tells Shane to ask his father what to do.