Originally this was going to be a review, which to some extent it is, but I would probably lean a little bit more towards rant if I’m totally honest.
Doug: I want to stay here, in Agrestic
Dana: It’s RE-grestic now
Doug: Well that’s just RE-tarded
I finally finished the episodes of weeds I taped and had backed up for so very long, I had kind of lost any desire to watch weeds halfway through this season becasue I sort of didn’t feel like it anymore, but eventually it got the better of me and I decided to just finish the season off.
Now, I believe in the past I’ve complained about the shift in the story since season 4, and the fact that it’s taken this wild turn from it’s original premise as a show about dealing in the suburbs. And, no actually screw that, I stick by it.
The complete fanboys of the series claim that the “fans enjoy the change of scenery every season” – and I hate it when people claim to know what the all ‘fans’ like or want. I would class myself as a fan of this show, and ‘change of scenery’ is not what I would call it’s strongest point. Sure, they do it a lot, but that doesn’t make it good.
The Botwins are constantly on the run, and it doesn’t do the story that much good. They introduce characters, make you think they could be wonderful regulars with interesting storylines, then turn around and say “Scratch that, we’re never going to see those people ever again” and sometimes all this can happen in one episode. I remember seeing reports on the internet about how they were introducing a lesbian couple to the show and how great it was, oh you mean the lesbian couple who really had not that much to do with the main characters and whose screen time added up to a few minutes if you added it all up, before they were never heard of again? Yeah, that really doesn’t count, and I’ve seen it happen with countless characters.
Their whole constantly moving thing leads to things happening that seem like foreshadowing to a predicament they are going to find themselves in, but then ends up being a dead end because they’ll be in a different state by next week. Case in point: when Andy develops a new hash drink for them to sell at the local bar, and steals some meth and secretly puts it in, and then it ended up leading to absolutely nothing at all, they could have just… not bothered with the drink storyline at all because it had no effect in the grand scheme of things, they could have just let them sell the godamned hash and used the extra time to do something useful.
And for a while I thought maybe it was wrong of me to hate the show for moving out of the gated community and onto other things, especially after I did a bit of research today and saw a few peoples arguments about how it was good that they had moved and not only focused on people in the suburbs. BUT I DON’T CARE, because at the end of the day this show had a premise for the first few seasons that was actually good, but then decided to just completely change what the show was about, hell, I can barely remember the last time Nancy actually sold any weed! The introduction of hash this season was nice, but at the end of the day it really didn’t take up as much of the show as it should have, it was almost as if it was an afterthought, like “oh yeah we should put some hash in there so that the show is still sort of about weeds, but only tiny references to it because we wouldn’t want to distract from the same storyline where Nancy tells the rest of the family they’re on the run again”
I know they’ll never return to Agrestic, it’s a sad fact I faced long ago, but I just wish they would handle the whole being on the run format a little better. I’m sick of it feeling like the show is never really going anywhere, because the characters start something and then cut their ties within an episode or two.
So I’ve said a lot about what I hate about it, but when I got in and watched episodes more regularly and closer together, I did end up liking it a bit more again. It really is quite good when it wants to be, but It doesn’t excuse the fact that it’s completely turned to shit in the last few years.
