Weeds - Season 1

I guess Showtime has a thing for good shows with one-word titles starring sympathetic criminals. Weeds is about a woman in the suburbs who has resorted to dealing pot to keep her family afloat after her husband unexpectedly died. It's usually pretty funny, although the primary appeal of it to me is the story and main character, named Nancy, played excellently by the extremely cute Mary-Louise Parker. It seems like the only actual difference in definition between "comedy" and "drama" in television is that the former is 30 minutes while the latter is an hour, because this feels pretty much the same as a lot of those shows, just shorter and funny more often.

While she's dealing, Nancy has to keep her children under control as well, with both situations causing problems. Her younger son, Shane, is good-natured but frequently gets in trouble for acting out. The older one, Silas, mostly gets involved with girls and drugs, and is kind of a dick. As far as the show goes, they both provide fine family conundrums for Nancy, but at least Shane is humorous once in a while. Helping out with the business and also giving the kids some usually specious advice, brother-in-law Andy is probably my favorite character. I wasn't sure about him at first, but he's consistently the most entertaining guy in the room even if he's not the greatest person. The drug side of the show is usually more interesting, as she deals with expanding her business, running into competitors, and keeping the whole thing a secret, which she's really not good at. The plot's definitely more gripping than I expected going in, and the season ends on a terrific cliffhanger.