We had our heart broken by a couple of shows this year, but surely our falling out of love with Weeds hurt more than, say, our disillusion with True Blood. For while True Blood stank of freshman self-deception -- of a show that didn't know what it was doing half the time, and having trouble defining itself as a result -- as Weeds: Season Four fell slowly, inexorably apart, we had the creepy, enraging sense of a show determined to destroy itself for no purpose. Removing the action from Agrestic, deepening the narcissism of the characters, introducing plotlines that promised more gravity than was ever delivered... this show seemed at times to be as self-destructive as its main character.
And more than anything else, we couldn't help but think that the actors deserved better -- particularly Mary-Louise Parker, who we love deeply and truly -- and yet whose appearance as Hedda Gabler on the Manhattan stage we are skipping this spring since, we're sure, she will probably remind us of Nancy Botwin, blithely ruining the lives of everyone around her, still sucking on that Starbucks like it wasn't no thing -- and never paying even half the price that Gabler winds up paying. Which, we think says something. True Blood may have been a mess, but it wasn't so infuriating that its persistent memory kept us from seeing something else entirely.
Hands Up: Who Still Likes "Weeds"?
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