I understand your disappointment with the direction that the show began to take in Season 4 and 5, my question is why are you still watching? This switchup clearly happened in season 4 and things only got darker from there, it reached rock bottom in early season 5 and has come back from there. Weeds is a different show and you can think back upon how great it was at the beginning but you are missing the point of the show. It isn't a story of a woman who is put in a bad situation when her husband dies and tries to cope to support her family but becomes a good mother. It is a show about a woman who starts off on this path and can't get off it, she just gets more and more entrenched. Things aren't going back to the way that it was. You should stop watching and stop hoping things will go back to how they were or accept that Weeds pre season 4 and post are completely different shows. Weeds is a drama with comedic moments, you need to accept this. And here's the thing, once you accept that fact you'll realize what a good show it is.

Jane - I don't want to be too negative about your reviews because they have been far more consistent than others on TVsquad but your disdain for weeds is a constant upset. I wonder if at this point anything weeds does will make you happy. You keep hoping Nancy will be a good mother, it's not in her character to do that. I have been really enjoying weeds, I must confess I did go through a discontented period for the second half of S4, but I got over it when I realized that it was a very good show. Try watching weeds with less negativity and you might find yourself enjoying it more. But remember this show is more than a comedy, it is a deeply insightful show, and I dare you to watch from S1-S5 so that you can see the show changed and matured. Weeds is a show that would've stagnated without the change up. And it is a damn good, original show for it.

I think that perhaps Jenji Kohan's attention has been relegated to coming up with "cutesy" ideas about how to display her name at the beginning of each show. Other than that, I agree with those who think that Weeds, comedy, drama, and all permutations in between, has become a ghost of it's once moving, heart breaking self with the frequent smiles and sometime laughter as we followed this family attempt to survive the loss of a beloved husband and father.
Nancy is a mixed bag of contradictions, both brave and irresponsible, narcissistic on a grand scale while at least invested in keeping the family in food and clothing...but one wonders if the Agrestic lifestyle she tried to maintain with her designer clothes and expensive house seduced her into sacfrificing her sons and even minimal emotional presence in their lives after their father dies. Why couldn't she have down sized and gone legit?
Well, there wouldn't have been a show which spoke volumes about the seduction of the masses into those "ticky tacky little boxes" that all looked just the same. I kept waiting for Nancy to show signs of emerging from the paralyzing grief of a new widow into some semblence of a mother who could parent her sons with even a minimum amount of empathy and guidance but all these years later Shane is still being told to be quiet and wait until his mother finishes whatever else is more important, which has been everything, and Silas has miraculously become the boy father to a pair of adult male clowns who, while tossing out the occasional ridiculous and inane comment, have worn out their welcome.
I keep wishing that Elizabeth Perkins would come to her senses and comandeer the show. She's so under used and given such flimsy, crazy things to do. Yet she does them with style when she breaks your heart for a moment while facing breast cancer to dressing in those awful orange prison jumpsuits with the pseudo gang girl make up and accompanying hairstyle. I think we all know she's just scratched the surface of what she can do.
Which is the overall dilemna. Of course Mary Louise Parker is also an awesome actress who has now spent too much time sucking straws, ignoring her kids, taking unbelievable risks with no motivation since leaving Agrestic unless Agrestic wasn't the problem and she just suffers from your garden variety character disorder - a narcissist with borderline personality traits...it's hard to say what came first - the Nancy Botwin chicken or the Agrestic egg.
Now that all of the crazies have moved en mass down south, something has to give. Comedy, drama, -now it's just plain sad. My biggest wish now is that Justin Kirk keeps kicking butt as Andy. He is one under appreciated actor in this role, which seems like a walk in an adolescent teen movie at first glance. Look a bit closer. He's had to play the glue that has held things together in his unorthodox way but he has played everything from manipulative freeloader to partner in crime to man in love ready and willing to lead a family. If only he and Celia would get together. Imagine the craziness that would ensue! He should have gotten an Emmy for Angels in America and I hope that next year he's given some great writing and that the Academy takes notice.
And though Weeds has seemed to have lost its way, I will br rooting for Mary Louise and Elizabeth on Emmy night.

Dan, I totally agree with you...a bit less angrily, though. :-)

I have always insisted that Weeds is not a pure comedy, and people who just want a silly show about a pot-dealing mom are missing the point completely. And despite the love that Doug and Dean get in these reviews, I find them to be the weakest links. Back in the Agrestic days, they were funny...now, they're just a one-note waste of time. I still love Andy and think he's hilarious, but I also like his complexity and the fact that he's protecting such a kind heart behind the silly facade. I think Silas is surprising me the most, seeing him become a mature and decent young man. Nancy is my favorite, though...she still draws me in with the way that she fails to see how each move she makes takes her farther from the life she wants and needs.

First off, Celia. I am sooo tired of her at this point. The show is in a rut and this character is all the proof one needs. Now we're watching Celia try and follow in Nancy's footsteps and it's not working for me at all. I wish that Celia was still in South America at least then she was doing something interesting.

I would have much rather heard a C. Thomas Howell reference from Dean. I'm enjoying the trio of Dean, Doug & Isabelle but would rather see there efforts going in a more interesting direction.

My fav quote of the episode was Andy reading the quiz "Or the basic human need to feel connected and leave the prison of aloneness." Which is exactly the instinct that has driven Nancy into her ruinous relationships post-Juda.

I liked the Shane & Silas scene, thanking Silas for not leaving and Shane's badassery, which I enjoyed on a visceral level but this is just another step on Shane's road to ruin. As the youngest he has been the most affected (with a bullet to make the point) by Nancy's parenting. I find myself most interested in what's going on with him, I think there is a lot of unexplored territory with where Shane's head is at and what the future has in store for him.

I really liked the scene with Nancy and Andy where he laid in to her. This season has been dark and I have enjoyed it. Nancy has done one helluva job screwing up her life and the lives of her family and now it serves her right that she is "lost and twisting in the wind".

I miss Conrad and Heylia. They need to be back on the show somehow. I am glad that Guillermo is having some air time again. Of course every time I see him I think, "Scarface" from Half Baked, so he makes me laugh. But I agree, I keep thinking that Nancy is going to somehow "get out of this" like she usually does.

Thanks, Collin! I loved seasons 1 and 2, and mostly season 3. They started losing me in season 4 and definitely season 5. It will be interesting to see where the show goes from here (if anywhere).

Bruce - I guess we called that one!

Dan - Wow, dude. If you've been reading my reviews, you'll see that I've been watching Weeds since the beginning, but have only recently starting saying the show's fallen in quality. I've held out longer than most viewers. And it really does make me sad, because the show used to be good.

Wow, Bruce. Don't want to share the hate? (just kidding)

I've been bitching about this lame show since the beginning of the third season. This show has NOTHING going on and continues to get worse each episode (with the exception of one this season... but things returned to suckville immediately after).

Andy's cold hard facts about Nancy was probably something that someone should have told her a few seasons back.

I cannot understand how people think this show is funny. It used to be hilarious in the first two seasons, and then fell apart. And why does Elizabeth Perkins still have a job?

Jenji Kohan should have been fired a long time ago for running this show into the ground.

Bruce - I know. Clearly, I'm taking my life into my own hands here! The thing is, I really *want to love Weeds, but it's just not doing it for me this season. And it's bumming me out!

Careful, you're saying some negative - but blatantly true - things about this season of Weeds, and those 50,000 or so highly vocal "Weeds can do no wrong/I wanna have sex with Mary-Louise Parker" people will tear you a new asshole. I've been saying this season is stupid, pointless, and terribly sub-par compared to previous seasons for quite a while now.