‘Weeds’ Goes Up in Smoke

It turns out Nancy Botwin started the fires in Southern California. Or, rather, her “gangster,� Guillermo, the Mexican dealer who protected her against U-Turn and last week torched the grove field of the bikers — the ones who beat Silas two weeks ago — for a sweet 50 percent of her profits. High temperatures and dry winds did the rest, and soon the citizens of Majestic were fleeing their little boxes on the hillside for a safe house resembling the Louisiana Superdome, except, as Doug Wilson sang, “everyone is white and middle-class.�

“That’s what happens when you make a deal with the Devil,� Conrad told her before crouching in their near-empty grow house and asking, “Nancy, what are you going to do if it all burns down, your house, your suburb?�

And burn down it did. The glorious marijuana plants (in a decidedly purple plume of smoke), the stolen church cross, the ticky-tacky houses in which our suburban fantasies have been playing out these past fifteen weeks. Not, though, before the DEA and the hunky Agrestic-slash-Majestic fire department stormed the crew’s grow house, setting up plenty of drama for next season, in which Nancy will be either behind bars or working for the DEA (we predict the latter).

“Weird things start happening when these Santa Ana winds start blowing into town,� Andy said last episode, sparking these final two weeks of blazing, in which Shane continued into crazydom, (passing on messages from his dead father like, “why haven’t you taken better care of us, Uncle Andy?� and “he likes the new way you do your hair, Mom�); Silas got over Mary-Kate Olsen (after she followed the Lord into a burning house, landing herself in the hospital and on national television); Celia hired that “slimy, crooked accountant with no scruples� Doug Wilson to help launder all her dirty cash; Andy put family before the hot biker chick, ditching her in the car wash with some harsh words (“If he touches my family again, I’ll kill him. Okay, just know in your heart that his actions are unacceptable�); and Nancy, well, Nancy, it would appear, chose family over her totally hot lover, Conrad.

What are you going to do without your suburb and your house, Nancy? “Well, I guess I’m going to have to go,� she told Conrad, with a wily half-smile. And as the fires raged, our heroine rode off into the sunset on a stolen Segway. —Emma Pearse