jenji kohan

Well, here's a rarity: a TV producer who wants you to watch a show illegally!

At least she's the only one who is admitting in public, that is. Weeds creator Jenji Kohan actually loves the fact that episodes of the new season are available online. In fact, she wishes that the entire season was online already:

"Revenue aside, I don't expect to get rich on 'Weeds.' I'm excited it's out there. Showtime is great, but it's a limited audience...if I had my druthers, the whole thing would be available right now."

Largely a retread of August's New York Times piece on black women in advertising, today's Detroit News has published a feature on the use of Aunt Jemima imagery on TV today. The piece sticks mainly to commercials, but this type of criticism has also come down on Weeds' creator Jenji Kohan for giving us the kitchen-bound, dope-dealing Heylia who proclaims herself a member of the original NPR - "Negroes Preachin' Right."

The article asks if Aunt Jemima is back. They probably should be asking if she ever went away.

(S02E12) Weeds went the way of Tarantino last night with an old-school Mexican stand-off by way of Armenia. The slowly crumbling wall between Nancy's home and work life came down with a mighty thud in a finale that left us with a quasi-kidnapped Shane, a busted Silas and a very dead Peter. There are, to quote Shane's genius commencement speech, "motherfucking snakes on the motherfucking plane" that is Agrestic.

Before beginning this review in earnest, let us take a moment to mourn the passing of Peter. No one really cared about Peter. It was never clear if Nancy really did or not, and frankly, it seems like the writers had backed themselves into a corner so they off-ed him. This is all well and good in that it shows us just how far Heylia is willing to go in her wheeling and dealing, but the TV landscape is now without Hal Hartley regular Martin Donovan. Sigh.

Alright, moment over. On with the review.