Weeds: "Messy" Review

Note: Full spoilers for the Weeds: Season 8 premiere follow.

I wonder how many mock Tweets we might see tonight saying, "Holy balls! Someone shot my aunt! Seriously!" (A visual joke I thought was pretty awesome)

We’ve reviewed Weeds off and on here at IGN through the years. There wasn't quite enough interest of late to continue weekly reviews, but now that we know Season 8 is indeed the final one for the show, I thought a season premiere review was appropriate – and certainly I’ll be reviewing the finale. And we’ll see if perhaps some reviews might pop up in-between…

I know plenty of people who haven’t really liked this show for several seasons, though personally, I still enjoy it. It’s not as strong as it was in the early years, certainly, but I still find it continually entertaining. The opening credits of the season premiere, bringing back “Little Boxes,” were wonderful, showing us, via animation, the history of the show. If nothing else, I have been impressed at how Weeds has reinvented itself over and over, changing settings and scenarios in a way few other shows have ever dared.

As for the premiere itself, it was a solid one. Nancy being the one to get shot was a good choice – the reveal of her with the blood running down her face was suitably shocking and I kind of love that she has now managed the Beatrix Kiddo-like feat of surviving a bullet in the head (come on – she’s obviously going to survive). I was sure that if someone was shot and killed, it would be Jill (I figured the regulars were safe and one of the kids would be too cruel), but Nancy herself being shot simply makes sense – as Shane and Silas noted later, discussing the semi-inevitability of something like this happening. The one funny thing about Nancy being in a coma though was that Mary-Louise Parker had so little to do after the first few minutes, literally just laying there. I'm guessing that'll change next week though.

Nancy Botwin: Human Target

This being the final season (even if they didn’t know 100% when they began filming), I’m not too surprised to see Andy’s feelings for Nancy rise up again – especially given the circumstances. And his scene with the chaplain/rabbi was a really good one, as he talked about his confusion, especially about what he’d do with his life without Nancy. And in the meantime, he's screwing Jill again, because, well, she'll have sex with him and Nancy's never been willing to go there. Oh, Andy...

The scene with Doug feeling up and peaking down the shirt of a comatose Nancy was pretty freaking gross. Yeah, Doug is Doug, but that was a pretty nasty place to go with a guy painted more as a lovable loser than, you know, a potential rapist – the fact that he was interrupted as he began to undo her clothes made it seem like he might doing more than Jenji Kohan intended… though hell, maybe she did intend it!

Another scene that just fell flat for me were the idiot cops showing up at the Botwins. They simply felt too cartoonish (Shane having to chastise them for standing in Nancy’s blood?!), on the heels of the already-goofy elderly neighbors.

However, the end reveal of just who it was that shot Nancy was a lot of fun. We’d already had Silas and Shane take us down memory lane, naming a ton of characters from the past who would have vendettas against Nancy. But no, I didn’t think of Tim Scottson, the son of the late DEA agent Peter Scottson. Yeah, they kind of had to do those quick flashbacks so we'd know who he was, given Daryl Sabara (Spy Kids) is so much older and bigger now, but the realization of who he was in the show’s history was quite a nice way to bring up events from Weeds’ history as we heard towards the end – in a season I would expect will continue to delve into Nancy’s past.

Oh, and two specific jokes I want to note: I have snarked quite a bit about the overabundance of the word vagina on every other comedy series this past year. Well, call me a hypocrite, because I laughed a lot at the whole “vaginal weight” bit – look, adding the word “weight” makes it a different thing!

Lastly, as a Jew who eats cheeseburgers and has had my share of Christmas trees, I appreciated Andy remarking that perhaps Nancy did finish converting to Judaism if she does those things.

Source : ign[dot]com