Photo: Courtesy of Showtime
‘Weeds’: We Sit Shivah for Albert Brooks
This season, Weeds has done away with the opening song, and along with it, the little ticky-tacky boxes on a hillside. We wish they would bring back the endless domestic scenes — Nancy in the tub, spraying a dying plant; Heylia and Conrad in the kitchen, baking cookies and ruminating on the blah blah blah of life, that theme we so enjoyed last episode. This one played out like a confused adventure satire: Rush Hour 3 meets Bonnie and Clyde — especially the latter, it being more cruel than funny.
Celia, having been threatened with the orange uniform for not ably enough pursuing Guillermo Garcia Gomez on behalf of the Feds, gets dragged by the hair into Guillermo’s warehouse for spying. (The last time a connection of Nancy’s posed a threat, he washed up on shore.) With Bubby dead and gone (and shivah properly, if wanly, observed), Grandpa decides to sell the house and throw the Botwins to the lions in the process — until he discovers the softness of the real-estate market, Nancy’s stash of cash, and a con to keep him living well in Paris. (Farewell, Albert Brooks! How will this season limp on without you?)
Meanwhile, Nancy and Uncle Andy wait in the desert for burly Mexican police with big guns and duffel bags of marijuana. Nancy delivers these to Guillermo, along with a question: Where’s the SUV? She couldn’t fit both the weed and a passenger in her Prius, and so a deeply stoned Andy was left in the night, eventually wandering off in the direction of Iowa with a group of Mexicans. We only hope that the more people Nancy alienates, the sooner she’ll have to shepherd everyone back to Agrestic. But we’re guessing instead that it’s out with the hybrid, in with the gas guzzler. Next thing we know, Shane — perhaps TV’s most neglected, lovable preteen — will be hauling down to the tattoo parlor for a butt marking as inexplicable as the U-Turn sign Nancy got for herself last season. —Emma Pearse