Weeds

So I spent this evening watching the Weeds marathon.  First of all, the word “weeds” here is a pun because it can also refer to mourning garments worn by widows, and Mary Louise Parker plays a widow in Weeds.  Such an obscure play on words will of course attract the ideal TV audience: pasty 19 year old boys who spend their weekends LARPing at Ye Weyrewolfe’s Donjonne.
     Weeds initially follows Showtime’s preffered show formula: a ridiculous premise (see Dead Like Me), incredibly bad and lazy writing (also Dead Like Me), actors who appear to have studied at the prestigious twitchy-n-mumbly school (Huff, again Dead Like Me), and a heapin’ helpin’ of sex and profanity (Huff, many superior programs on HBO).  The first episode also features a sass-talking black woman who dispenses folksy, profanity-laden wisdom and actually bakes cornbread onscreen.
     HOWEVER, it picks up very quickly.  Pryor Walter from Angels in America shows up as an inexplicably swishy in-law, the music is pretty good, surprisingly engaging guest-stars parade through consistently and the whole thing generally evens out.  The writers also wisely eliminate a back-talking Elijah Wood look-alike and ML Parker’s son’s semi-annoying girlfriend (they replace her with a rad deaf girl).  If you are one of the apparently few people who don’t find Marie Louise Parker annoying (I think she is totally super), you will probably actually like it.  Apparently Indigo from season 7 of Buffy is on it too, but I can’t figure out who she is so her role is likely minor (she may be the deaf girl).

PS - Also, now I'm watching Barbershop which has so far been hilarious and exceptionally briskly directed. Way funnier than Weeds actually.