“Weeds” — He Taught Me How To Drive By
Hey, it’s Conrad!
This show is dangerously close to falling off my radar. What was once thought of as simply a string of uneven episodes is now edging close to being more of an epidemic problem for the series as a whole. The decisions they made during the latter half of the second season suggested the writers were interested in sacrificing ease for drama and reality for comedy. This I appreciated. There are too many shows to count that do the opposite. Now, I can’t get through an episode without the characters making the single most obvious decision for every problem that arises — unless of course it’s Nancy inexplicably nailing Matthew Modine’s real-estate kingpin for reasons that are as mysterious as they are unsettling. More after the break…
Talk about lack of focus. Sometimes I wonder if the people making this show are even watching it. Say what you will about audience testing, but there has to be some value put on the notion of beefing up those aspects that people respond to and cutting out the stuff that elicits little more than a collective, “meh.”
Here’s a quick list of my wants and do-not-wants:
- I want more Shane and Isabella at school
- I want more Paul F. Tompkins
- I want more Andy
- I do not want Andy to find himself only tangentially linked to everything else in the series.
- I want more Conrad.
- I do not want more gang wars (that actually speaks to a bigger, social concern I have)
- I do not want Paul Feig slumming in directing Weeds episodes when he could be doing more episodes of Mad Men.
- I want characters to make rational reactions. This does not mean the reactions need to be the correct ones, but should at least reflect a sense that the person in an actual human being and not a puppet propped up by some guy who wrote a New Adventures of Old Chirstine spec.
- I want the show to be funnier.
- I do not want the show to be funnier if it means having to ever see Mary-Kate Olsen again.
- I desperately want Zooey Daschanel (back)
I will say, so as to not appear like a total wet blanket, that the idea of U-Turn being laid in a hot-tub at his wake is pretty brilliant. Too bad it happened about thirty seconds into the episode.
Am I the only one about to bail? Thoughts?
