STAY OFF THE GRASS

Suburban Pot-Sales Comedy 'Weeds' Should Be Pulled Up By The Roots

"Weeds" Goes To Pot Pretty Quickly.

The Showtime comedy (debuting tonight at 11) about a suburban mom
(Mary-Louise Parker) who sells marijuana to support her family wants to
scandalize you with pure snark.

Blow away the smoke and you find a treacly sitcom that owes more to the
outtakes of "Desperate Housewives" and "Harper Valley PTA."

Parker stars as Nancy Botwin, a recent widow. Her husband apparently
dropped dead one day. She's left alone to raise Silas (Hunter Parrish), a
15-year-old anxious to lose his virginity, and Shane (Alexander Gould), a
misfit 8-year-old with a penchant for falling from skylights (don't ask).

Nancy is a halo short of sainthood. In the opening scene, this concerned
PTA parent tries to get the school to ban the selling of colas. Her
sometime nemesis Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) insists they can't ban the diet
colas - what will all the overweight 11-year-old girls drink?

OK, Nancy sells pot - but not to schoolkids, she tells one dealer. Still,
that doesn't stop Nancy from passing on baggies to adults at her son's
soccer game or after his karate class.

Whether Nancy has considered networking her considerable contacts in
suburbia for help in getting a legitimate job remains unanswered.

In the best example of "Weeds' " gross heavy-handness, Nancy's suppliers
are an African-American family, a mother and her three grown children. All
their dialogue is written in Sass, a language cribbed by writers who
apparently grew up believing the '70s sitcom "Good Times" was a
documentary. These characters jive so much they wouldn't make it on a UPN
sitcom. Despite their pot operation, they are perfect in every other way,
loving and devoted to each other. They make the only functional family unit
in the town. Meanwhile, the white folks are adulterous, lying louts who
moved away from "Dawson's Creek" and are still unable to process their
feelings.

Comparisons to ABC's "Desperate Housewives" are impossible to avoid. In
several shots, you'd swear the Showtime cameramen must have sneaked onto
Wisteria Lane. Coupled with Perkins acting as if her internal bitch-o-meter
was set to Edie on steroids, you have a show that could be a spinoff.

Not a good spinoff, mind you.

The second episode kills whatever little buzz existed by focusing on the
family members all grieving over one loss or another: the father, a
girlfriend or income. It's a mopefest that only will give you the munchies.
But "Weeds" is a show that wouldn't be funny even if you were stoned.