Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Hit TV Series Weeds From Showtime Reviewed

By Alexis Snow

One of the best and funniest tv shows of the last ten years would have to be Weeds. The show is one of many in the trend that defined television for the last decade: Realism. Weeds definitely belongs on your queue the next time you log into your TV and movie download service.

This trend towards realism began with shows like Survivor, which wound up really killing fictional shows in the ratings. See, sitcoms and dramas became incredibly formulaic and predictable. You always knew the punchline of every joke before it came: I get it, the dad likes watching football and the wacky neighbor wants to date his daughter.

Along came reality television. Say what you will about it, but it did make some changes. TV producers found that viewers really responded better to more realistic scenarios, more real people. Even if reality shows are staged, even if they can be crass and artless, the fact remains that they use real human emotions and drama to build the whole package, even if that real drama is sometimes twisted around in editing to seem more extreme than it really is.

The first show to adapt and survive in this new television climate was The Sopranos. Twenty years ago, it could have just been some mafia show. See, in Goodfellas, the characters worry about the business, but on The Sopranos, the characters worry about business as well as family, personal finances, their relations with their friends, sex, health, psychological well being and so on. You know, everything we have to worry about in real life.

Weeds follows a suburban widow and her two sons as they deal with family issues and... The family business. It follows Sopranos in a way, in that the family business is... Well, she's a weed dealer. She sells pot to all of the local yuppie potheads. A constant source of humor is the fact that she doesn't always fit in with the shallow vapid people of her neighborhood, being a weed dealer amidst investment bankers and soccer moms.

The show is really defined by some great characters. The Candyman is one of the best. She's actually a female character, codenamed the Candyman. She runs a bakery that specializes in marijuana goodies. She's also a fitness nut, refusing to sell to anyone who doesn't promise to exercise and burn off the extra calories provided by her brownies and cupcakes.

When you watch the show, you have two big plot threads to root on: First of all, she has to keep her family in order and make sure her children are safe and happy, and secondly, she wants to keep building her weed empire to eventually become the primary provider of primo stuff in her sprawling suburban community.

Be warned, it's addictive. Like Lost or The Sopranos, you can't just watch one or two episodes. Each season is structured as a single story separated into chapters by each episode, so if you're going to download one, you may as well download a dozen or you'll find yourself waiting for hours between episodes to see what happens next. - 40727

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