The hapless Ms. Botwin

Weeds Season 3 airs tonight. I'll be watching, especially after the cliffhanger ending of Season 2. I've said that I thought Weeds is fairly radical in that its premise is basically about a bad mother (JC, your idea has been pre-empted somewhat). It's not that Nancy doesn't care for and love her kids (she does) or try (again, she does). She simply fails at being a good parent most of the time. And that is interesting, especially since she is a single mother. Even more interesting because she is white, rich and looks like Mary Louise-Parker.

I do take issue with the show occasionally, but I think it does push the boundaries -- and I'm not talking about Showtime/profanity/nudity/dark comedy/"look, a white, suburban woman is selling drugs" boundaries. The show raises questions about motherhood, parenting, maternal instincts. It questions the depiction we so often see of the struggling, yet competent, ultimately unselfish mother. Nancy doesn't always tell her kids where she is, she doesn't stress the value of education, she doesn't set boundaries, she leaves a lot of the parenting up to equally incompetent figures such as her brother-in-law Andy, she makes poor decisions, she says she must sell drugs to provide for her family and keep up their lifestyle, but then she splurges on luxury gifts for herself, she's unpredictable and unreliable. Most of the time she is trying, but Nancy also straight-up gives up sometimes. She is deeply flawed, and thus comes across more as a real and complicated person. There are very few characters on the show that I actually like, yet in this case, that's kind of what makes the show interesting.

So I was very excited to read a short review in the N.Y. Times this morning titled, "Is Motherhood Noble Work? Not in the World of 'Weeds.'" This article pretty much summed up what I've been thinking and saying all along. I feel vindicated (though no one was questioning my observations, maybe supported is a better word) and offer this up as further proof that I feel I should be writing for the entertainment section of a newspaper. If I was still in college, I would write a whole essay on this, with concrete examples from episodes elucidating these insights. Maybe I still will. In the meantime, I will be tuning in to see how Nancy is going to get out of the mess she's in.