Weeds Season 1 | 
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Buy New: $14.99
Rating:  141 reviews
Sales Rank: 1710
Media: Video On Demand
ASIN: B000JOAKC0
Release Date: August 12, 2008
Episode: 1
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 136 more reviews...
 Showtime is dealing out some Weeds April 20, 2006
A. G. Corwin (St. Louis, MO)
131 out of 137 found this review helpful
If a show is dark, funny, subversive, and controversial, you know its on HBO or SHOWTIME, the only channels bold enough to have produced shows that network TV would run away from. Weeds is exactly one of those shows. A comedy about a young suburbanite mother with two kids who turns to dealing pot after her husband dies, Weeds flies directly in the face of the conventional comedy. That's what makes it such a good show. Weeds has already been picked up for a second season, so this show will be around for a while!
Nancy Botwin (Golden Globe winner Mary-Louise Parker) has a normal life as a housewife in the LA suburb of Agrestic. She has a nice husband and two wonderful kids and a slacker brother-in-law named Andy(Justin Kirk). When her husband dies suddenly, Nancy needs a way to come up with a steady income so she can support her family. So she turns to dealing pot, and becomes the pied piper to the pot smoking denizens of Agrestic, including her accountant, Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon). So how can you be a full time dealer and mother without getting busted, without your brother-in-law horning in on the action, and how can you lecture your kids when you break the law to support them? This show explores the humor in these predicaments as well as the drama in the 10-episode First Season.
The acting in Weeds is superb. Parker was wonderful in West Wing and is even better here, and Elizabeth Perkins makes a great comeback with her role as Nancy's frenemy Celia Hodes. Kevin Nealon is hysterical as Doug, reminding people how good a comedian he really is when not starring in bad material. Like other Showtime hits, this show not only explores Nancy's life and loves, but develops dramatic arcs for the lives of the other main characters, giving the show much more depth and range.
The complete first season on 2 discs contains all 10 first season episodes with a run time of 283 minutes. There are 6 cast and crew commentaries, and several featurettes including "Smoky Snippets" and "Smoke and Mirrors: Original Marijuana Mockumentary." It is in 2.0 and 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio. Check out their website for more info. Reeommended.
A.G. Corwin
St.Louis, MO
Breaking new ground June 25, 2006
Douglas F. Olena (Springfield, MO USA)
54 out of 95 found this review helpful
I have seen most of the episodes twice. Its been a long time since I spent any extended time in California. I am familiar with most of the legislative changes there, but not the social practices associated with those laws. However "Weeds" has for the most part renewed my fascination with this world.
I am convinced that though the Weeds scenario shows some of the very real aspects of public, social life, it also has some glaring weaknesses. This may be purely imaginitive on my part, maybe even paranoid, but it is hard to imagine how in such a generally repressive legal environment, where the federal police persist in their quest to destroy the marijuana-smoking elements in our society, these people can exist with impunity. Again, this may just be paranoid.
I know that tens of millions of Americans smoke pot every year. But it seems the Weeds cast live in a world where the oppressive bureaucracy does not exist, or exists peripherally to their reality. I know there is some paranoia in the cast's activity, but, I am having a really hard time imagining their being so untouched by the law.
On the other hand, these white middle-American citizens are not under suspicion, they are not profiled, even though they smoke the majority of pot in the nation. I am impatient to see how all this turns out in 5, 10 or 20 years, as well as the the next season of Weeds. The drug war will come to an end and I hope it will be sooner rather than later, so the characters of any real version of Weeds will not live in paranoia any more.
The show is a hoot. There are many real world situations and moral quandaries resolved like ordinary people would resolve them. It is a great show and I look forward to the next season.
 Wait for the widescreen version August 12, 2006
heavy liquid (Planet Earth)
25 out of 37 found this review helpful
I would have loved to have purchased this to support a great show, but I'm extremely disappointed that they saw fit to release it in pan-and-scan. I will wait for a re-release of the DVD or a HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disc of the series.
No Stems, No Seeds July 26, 2006
B. Merritt (WWW.FILMREVIEWSTEW.COM, Pacific Grove, California United States)
23 out of 28 found this review helpful
WEEDS is a complicated series currently airing on the cable network SHOWTIME, the same corp. that brought us DEAD LIKE ME and other controversial storylines. And WEEDS certainly is wonderfully bizarre.
Mary-Louise Parker (THE WEST WING) stars as Nancy Botwin, a recent widow with two children and a cash flow problem. She lives in the fictitious town of Agrestic in Anywhere Suburbia, America. In fact, the shows lead-in goes through great pains to show us how common an area she and her family live in. This is vital since most of today's drug culture tends to live right under our proverbial noses. And the drug, as the title intends, is marijuana, often considered shameful by some to be considered "illegal" while others throw tantrums about its gateway significance. But Nancy has to feed her family and she'll do whatever it takes to ensure their survival.
In the midst of this seemingly benign town we have a troop of old and new pot smokers. The older generation is exhibited by none other than Kevin Nealon (ANGER MANAGEMENT) whose character, Doug Wilson, is a bored and immature accountant. Self-centered and completely useless in terms of assisting his neighbors, his character is absolutely fantastic. You could easily picture him still in high school if it weren't for his extremely receding hairline and the family minivan he drives. The newer generation is brought to light by Nancy Botwin's brother-in-law, Andy, played by the excellent Justin Kirk (FLANNEL PAJAMAS, 2006). He has no direction in life and is now firmly entrenched in Nancy's home. His failings at life are mirrored through his careless attitudes toward women or growing in any meaningful way. But once in a while -- just occasionally -- he'll make a remark of wonderful profoundness that blows Nancy away. He also is a much needed father-figure (although a VERY screwed up one) for Nancy's two boys, Shane (Alexander Gould, FINDING NEMO) and Silas (Hunter Parrish, RV). It is Silas, the high schooler, whom we get to see experiment with the emerging drug culture that surrounds his household. Although initially unaware of his mother's "business", he quickly reveals to the viewer that he's "not stupid" about what's happening under his own roof.
Nancy's friends are a mixed bag. Celia (Elizabeth Perkins, BIG), is a member of the PTA, has a child who suffers with being overweight, and recently found out her husband had an affair with the local, and beautiful, Asian tennis instructor. As the series progresses, we learn that Celia has breast cancer and this comes as devastating news for someone so infatuated with one's appearance (as seen through the mother-daughter relationships). The Shepard's, a black family that live in a "bad part of town", act as Nancy's suppliers of the green leaf. They battle finances versus keeping their business strictly business whenever Nancy comes around (which fluctuates as her business expands and contracts).
The wonderful thing about this series is that it puts a mess of moral material in the viewer's lap. What is wrong with marijuana when Percocet and other heavy narcotics are readily available via a doctor's prescription? Is it wrong for a person to support their family by dealing in something as shady as drug trafficking? Can a woman be both a loving and compassionate mother while at the same time selling something potentially addicting? Is it hypocritical for someone to sell "the stuff" while at the same time punishing their kids when they catch them doing some of it? Quite a moral quagmire, I'd say.
The other thing that makes this series work is it's sexy. Mary-Louise Parker has that ...something about her that makes her both a respectable looking woman and just a tad slutty. She's a sexual being who struggles with life in the shadow of her husband's death and has to decide what's best for her, her kids, and her husband's memory; most times these things are in direct opposition of each other. Elizabeth Perkins mirrors much of Parker's character in that she too has that respectable/slutty look but also some uppityness ...until her cancer rears up. Then she becomes more introspective and the slut takes over, for a while.
The series producers also put in a deaf and sexually promiscuous girlfriend for Nancy's son, Silas. This added an entirely new dimension to Silas' character as he's forced to grow-up without a father to guide him through this teenage sexual minefield and he finds solace with the deaf girl's household more than with his own whenever internal family problems arise.
This first season took about two episodes to get rolling, but once it did there was no stopping it. You really need to open your mind to the possibilities surrounding this show. It's not JUST about drugs. It's about the people that are shoved into this niche group for the sake of survival, and it's captivating to watch how their flawed lives intermingle. Pot smoker or not, these characters are headed for interesting days. Season two has already been purchased by SHOWTIME, which would indicate WEED might be picking up speed and continue smokin' for some time.
Double Standards Displayed on TV July 4, 2006
S. Tettey (Amherst, MA USA)
16 out of 106 found this review helpful
I have to admit this show is good, but one does have to step back and say to oneself: if the main character wasn't white this show wouldn't work. She would have been hauled off to jail already.
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