Saturday, June 12, 2010

The TV Series Weeds From Showtime

By Tina Rocha

For the last ten years, there's been a defining trend in fictional television: Realism. It started with reality television and influenced fictional television before long like Sopranos, and Weeds is definitely one of the funniest in this trend, and certainly belongs on your downloads queue the next time you pay a visit to your tv and movie download service.

It began with reality television. See, for a time, fictional television had just plain gotten too darn formulaic. It always felt like you were just watching mindless television. It always came down to the same characters: The wacky neighbors, the football loving dads and their football widows, stories about the kid borrowing the car without asking and so on, and... It was just really predictable.

Reality television really changed things and it became clear that fictional television had to adapt to survive, as people had come to prefer the realism of those reality shows. Even if reality television can be artless, crass, and not as real as it pretends to be, it remains a fact that it showed real human emotion and unpredictable situations.

Anyways, after the revolution of reality TV, people like David Chase took the hint. Chase's Sopranos started a new wave in fictional television: Take the realism of reality TV and mix it with the strong storytelling of fictional television, and you have a show that is literally the best of both worlds. The Sopranos led to similar shows like LOST, House MD, and, of course, Weeds.

Weeds follows the same trend, with a really funny concept: A suburban single mother makes ends meet by selling weed. It's part stoner humor, part crime story and part family drama, and very funny.

The show is really defined by some great characters. The Candyman is one of the best. She's actually a female character, codenamed the Candyman. She runs a bakery that specializes in marijuana goodies. She's also a fitness nut, refusing to sell to anyone who doesn't promise to exercise and burn off the extra calories provided by her brownies and cupcakes.

As you watch this suburban mom try to keep control of her situation, you'll find yourself rooting for her to really succeed with her marijuana dealership just as much as you'll be rooting for her to maintain her family situation. Think Roseanne meets Sopranos meets Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and that's almost, but not quite, what the show's all about.

The show is quite addictive, of course. It's structured as such that each episode is only a chapter and each season is really a self contained story, so download a full season at a time and be ready to spend several hours a night catching up on what happens next. Don't worry, it's an incredibly rewarding show and each season is well worth the time it takes to sit down and watch it all in one or two sittings, just be fore warned that you WILL be sitting there watching half a season or a full season every single time you want to watch a single episode. Think of it like Lays potato chips: Betcha can't have just one.

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