SMOLDERING FRUSTRATIONS IN SUBURBIA SPARK UP IN SHOWTIME'S SUPERB 'WEEDS'

Weeds: Original series. Starring Mary-Louise Parker, Elizabeth
Perkins, and Kevin Nealon. Created and produced by Jenji Kohan.
Special preview 11 p.m. Sunday; multiple broadcasts 10 p.m. Monday,
Wednesday and Friday. Showtime.

In the world of television, sometimes being an "also ran" isn't such
a bad thing. Showtime, a.k.a. "not-HBO," may not have "The Sopranos"
or the late, lamented "Six Feet Under," but that's finally making the
cable network try harder and, in the case of the new series "Weeds,"
smarter and funnier as well.

Developed by Jenji Kohan, whose brother was one of the creators of
"Will & Grace," "Weeds" is the story of life in the peacefully perfect
California suburb of Agrestic, where morality is absolutely anything
but absolute. Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) is a recently widowed
soccer mom who makes ends meet by dealing pot. Her best friend, Celia
(Elizabeth Perkins), may not be anyone's idea of best-friend material,
but at least she more or less tells it like it is, while the other
moms in Agrestic whisper behind Nancy's back and wonder how she's able
to afford expensive accessories and her tastefully decorated house.

One of Nancy's regular customers, Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), is on
the city council. His son is a junior league drug dealer and the new
boy toy for a wealthy older man. Nancy's younger son, Shane (Alexander
Gould), is both wise beyond his years and a sad, broken-hearted little
boy who keeps watching old family videos in an attempt to cope with
his dad's death. Her older son, Silas (Hunter Parrish), is 16 and
desperate to have sex with his girlfriend, who is also Celia's older
daughter. Celia's younger daughter is named Isabelle, but Celia calls
the chubby child "Isa-belly" and secretly switches laxatives for her
secret chocolate stash to "clean her out." Allison Janney makes a
cameo appearance in the fifth episode as a giddy lawyer. A case of
Coca-Cola falls out of a passing plane and into Celia's living room.
Celia looks around the wreckage and announces to her cheating husband
that she has a serious health problem.

Ambiguity is at the comic and intellectual heart of "Weeds," and
that's one of the reasons the show works so well. It's also why it's
so much a product of contemporary television. In a sense, Kohan, like
most talented TV show creators today, owes a huge debt to Norman Lear.
Archie Bunker was a hateful bigot whom the world came to love in spite
of himself. But where Lear's characters had to be bigger than life to
win the audience's affection in spite of their moral flaws or, in the
case of "Maude," their insufferable self-righteousness, better shows
today are daring to offer moral ambiguity in more realistic,
everyday-life garb. It's one thing to accomplish that in dramatic
series such as "The Sopranos" or FX's "Rescue Me," but how do you do
that in a comic series without hitting the rim shot button with every
joke?

Kohan knows the answer, and it begins with some of the most
intelligent writing this side of "Arrested Development." As out-there
as many of the above-mentioned plot and character points may seem,
they are all presented within a subtly drawn and very realistic
context. This is not "Desperate Housewives" with a few more articles
of clothing, or even "Sex and the City" with blunts. Nancy is a
credibly loving mom who is very devoted to her kids, believes soft
drinks should be replaced by bottled water and fruit juices in the
school cafeteria, and will not sell her baggy-packaged product to
kids. Celia Hodes may seem unforgivable as she derides her younger
daughter and ships the older one off to a Mexican reform school ("casa
reforma," as she puts it), but she is a woman whose entire life has
been a disappointment. Over drinks with the young tennis pro with whom
her husband has been having it on, she confesses she married Dean
because she thought he would be rich and powerful. Instead, she says,
he's just a "midlevel -- hole, and that makes me Mrs. Midlevel -- hole."

It's a funny line, but maybe not so much when she adds, "I don't like
dealing with things. I much prefer to pretend they don't exist."

The first five episodes sparkle with zingers, but they never call
attention to themselves as if they are standard sitcom punch lines.
Councilman Wilson's kid, Josh, hits Nancy up to replenish his stash
because there's a new movie at the mall and his supply "hasn't gone
this fast since 'The Passion of the Christ.' "

"I thought that was a religious film," Nancy says.

"Religious my ass," Josh replies. "It's a straight-up snuff
film."

"Weeds" may indeed be the best-written new show of the year so far,
but the performances are superb as well, beginning with Parker and
Perkins. Long considered one of our best and most underappreciated
actresses, Parker has often had trouble finding the right screen or TV
vehicles. Her recurring role on "The West Wing," as a feminist
lobbyist and Josh's sometime girlfriend, didn't begin to give her room
to stretch or to show how much she could add to a character with a
quiet look or subtle delivery. She has that here and uses it to bring
all the quiet shading of Nancy's character to full bloom.

And where has Perkins been? Her career has been far too sporadic, with
nice turns early on in films like "Big" and more recently in "28
Days." But there's been little that gives her the chance to show the
full range of her dramatic and comedic skills as "Weeds" does.
Watching her work, it often seems the only actress who could hold the
screen with her is Mary-Louise Parker, and vice versa.

The secondary roles are equally well cast, with Nealon doing a funny-
goofy but perfectly acceptable throw-away as the stoned civil servant,
young Gould (the voice of Nemo in "Finding Nemo") doing a sweet and
smart-alecky turn as young Shane, and Renee Victor turning
stereotyping inside out as the housekeeper Lupita.

The show gets added depth from the other side of Nancy's life, from
the African American family of dope dealers, headed by Heylia James
(Tonye Patano), who live in an edgy part of Los Angeles. Nancy becomes
a different person as soon as she walks into Heylia's overpopulated
kitchen. Where her demeanor in Agrestic is always somewhat guarded,
not just because of her vocation but because of the subtle treachery
of suburban life, in Heylia's kitchen, she can be herself. Our first
meeting of Heylia and her family includes a viciously funny riff on
African American stereotyping, which is probably somewhat necessary
since one of the major plot points here is that Nancy buys her supply
from a family of African American dealers.

By the way, in case you're one of those TV watchers who likes to
enhance viewing by inhaling, put the weed down for this one: It's so
smart, you'll miss half the jokes.