The fifth season of Weeds picks up less than a second after the fourth season left off – with Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise-Parker), suburban-drug-dealer/mom-turned-Mexican-gangster-girlfriend, about to be shot for telling the DEA about a cross-border drug tunnel. And possibly pregnant with his (the gangster’s) child.
Meanwhile, Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), an obnoxious pseudo-friend of Nancy’s, has been kidnapped by her estranged daughter Quinn and her boyfriend, who are holding her for ransom. It’s not going well. People have to like you to pay $40,000 for you to keep your body parts attached.
And while Nancy, wiping blood-of-murdered-henchmen off her purse, is sitting in a mall and presumably wondering when her life got so life-or-death, her kids (Silas, Shane), accountant (Doug), and brother-in-law-who-wants-to-do-her (Andy) are getting stoned together and talking about setting up business in a national park.
Until they find out she’s pregnant, which goes something like this:
ANDY: We should flee your Mexican mafia boyfriend! Also I love you.
NANCY: We can’t flee the mafia. There’s one growing in my uterus.
And while those weren’t exactly her words, it wasn’t far off. Perhaps in trying to lighten the mood after seasons which have gotten progressively darker, the blunt humour was everywhere in the episode, and fell just short of being actually funny. Nancy drinks slushies. The kids are dealers. Nancy’s dead husband’s brother wants to sleep with her. There is a random flash mob and vague references to the ways people are killed in The Godfather (and any other mob movie, for that matter). Funny, but not really funny.
The entire thing left me with the vague feeling of “what the hell?” followed closely by wondering why it wasn’t a double episode. I’m also not sure why a flash mob and creepy stalker was a striking way to end it (The Teamster is watching you”). It wasn’t a particularly bad start, and did set up a few things (everyone but Nancy skipping camp for the forest or her half-sister’s), but if I didn’t already like the show I’m not sure I’d keep watching.