HIGH & MIGHTY

'WEEDS' IS TV'S MOST SUBVERSIVE COMEDY

BY ROBERT RORKE

Posted: 12:00 am
August 24, 2008


Now that the reign of "The Sopranos" is over, there's a new subversive family of criminals on TV: The Botwins of Showtime's "Weeds."

Mom (Mary-Louise Parker) is a hardcore drug-dealer, a sociopath who doesn't mind that her two sons have embraced and profited by the drug culture. Her brother-in-law, Andy (Justin Kirk), has begun making a living as a "coyote," taking illegal immigrants from Mexico to the United States. Her accountant (Kevin Nealon) is the kind of loser who spends most of his time getting high. Nancy Botwin's crew makes "Entourage" look like "High School Musical."

"They're her island of misfit toys, her little drug family," says "Weeds" creator Jenji Kohan. This season, the show's fourth, Kohan and her writers have taken Nancy Botwin far from her ticky-tacky suburban comfort zone in Agrestic, CA. After burning down her house, Nancy moved to the seedy beach town of Redmar, CA, delved deeper into the drug culture, making runs to warehouses in Tijuana, Mexico and then, most startlingly, discovered a tunnel that leads from a maternity clothing store to the basement of a Mexican drug operation.

Much of this activity was researched by the writing staff who took a road trip to Tijuana and decided to move the series to the border town. "The border guard was very curious about the 'Weeds' [marijuana leaf] logo on our luggage," Kohan says. 'We did a ride-along with the border patrol. It was one afternoon but we felt galvanized. Everyone was buzzing with stories" The tunnel was based on a 80-ft. underground passageway that authorites found near Tecate. "It was air-conditioned and they found it by accident," Kohan says.

Most of the new stories revolved around Nancy, whom Kohan describes as a "danger junkie." She stops short of saying that Nancy is mentally ill. "She behaves very irresponsibly. But Tony Soprano wasn't exactly father of the year, either. People have issues with a woman behaving that way. Mothers are flawed and why shouldn't we see that? In Nancy's mind, she's concocting rationales for her behavior."

Nancy has dialed it way back in the drug-dealing department, a decision that suited the production requirements as much as dramatic logic. "It's hard to get across the border, week to week, production-wise," Kohan says. "You don't need a white girl to do that but you probably do to open a store."

Kohan refers to the maternity clothing store Nancy currently runs with her friend Celia (the scene-stealing Elizabeth Perkins) that's a front for the tunnel and money-laundering operation. Her recent affair with the man responsible for the smuggling tunnel, corrupt Tijuana mayor Esteban Reyes (Demian Bichir), would seem to be another bad judgment call. But Kohan resists saying that she is using the demoralization of Nancy's character to make a statement about the downfall of the American family. "We don't think in those terms. We don't talk that abstractly," she says. "We talk about our characters like people we know. We talk about conversations we want to have our characters to have. We're invested in entertaining."

Even so, a comedy where nearly everyone in the family's a criminal takes more risks than most cable series these days. Now that "Weeds," which has been renewed for two more seasons and goes back into production next spring, Kohan has her own hard act to follow.

"The finale is [always] the pilot for the new season," she says. "If there's a clear track, then the audience is going to be ahead of us so we write ourselves into a corner. Then we say, how we do get out of it?"

WEEDS

Monday, 10 p.m., Showtime


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