Weeds - Season 5

This is not a movie. It's actually a soap opera of the best kind. As a DVD watcher, I am a season behind the live broadcasts.

Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) is a modern heroine who survived widowhood and began supporting her two boys with a career in the marijuana growing and distribution industry. Her deceased husband, Judah, remains a constant point of reference throughout the story as her sons grow up and she moves on into relationships with other men. Judah's brother, Andy (Justin Kirk) lives with Nancy and the boys. Nancy life has moved through many sagas and involvements with drug world characters, but this season she is pregnant with the lovechild of Esteban. Also the Mayor of Tijuana, he is a dangerous, controlling man who also has a lot a charm. Andy loves Nancy, but he is unable to capture her heart. Fortunately, he becomes smitten with Audra, a doctor played by Alanis Morrisette. They happen to be one of the best matched couples ever. Nancy's sons, Silas and Shane do not escape the dark influences in their impressionable lives. Kevin Nealon and Elizabeth Perkins and a few others add new levels of craziness to the storyline. These people are all terribly flawed. This makes the show a slice of life that feels very real in its outrageousness.

The DVDs include entertaining extra features, such as University of Andy. I am a huge Andy fan and guess that many of the other female viewers would be less interested in the show without him. He loves women and means well, but has pretty poor follow-through. "If you give her all of you, she won't want more of you" is a typical Andy truism.

There is also another feature, Crazy Love Guide to Dysfunctional Relationships in Weeds. The wisdom about Nancy is that she wants to be taken care of and yet she doesn't need to be taken care of. Her youngest son, Shane, calls her the teflon warrior.

Another feature is a History of Weed, beginning with the year 2727 BC when cannabis was used as medicine in China. By 500 AD it turned up in Europe. Supposedly, Columbus brought it to the new world in 1492 and Jamestown colony law stated that all settlers in the year 1619 were required to grow cannabis. George Washington's primary crop in 1797 at Mount Vernon was cannabis. By 1880, Turkish smoking parlors opened all over the US northeast. Henry Ford's first Model T vehicle in 1908 was made with hemp plastic and ran on hemp ethanol. Federal law banned marijuana in 1937, but the US military used it as a truth serum in 1942. By 1965 one million Americans had tried marijuana and by 1972 that figure was up to 24 million. In the 1980s, supposedly someone was arrested for a cannabis violation every 38 seconds. Proposition 215 in California legalized medical marijuana in 1996. Marijuana is now America's top cash crop, earning 36 billion yearly.

I am not sure about the accuracy of all these statistics, but for anyone who questions why an entire television series is devoted to the substance, these facts add a lot of weight to the argument.