Weeds has a very strange character arc.

[gordoooo_z@hachyderm.io]

Weeds has a very strange character arc. Nancy certainly overcomes obstacles, but she doesn't become more heroic as a result. Each time she bares a bit more of herself, and it reveals a more complex fleshed out human, which is very believable, but not necessarily more likable. Clearly the show runners are aware of this, whether by design, or if it just became apparent along the way, and they decided to lean into it.

It doesn't make the show any worse. Depending how you look at things, it might even make it better. Kinda depends if you're an early seasons purist and you just like the goofy side of the show, or if you're in it for the story arc. The first time around, I stopped following around the time Esteban came in. I might've been to young to parse the behaviour; I don't know. That, or maybe I just wasn't into the tonal shift of the show during that season at the time.

Anyway, I'm glad I'm making it through it now. If anything, because Kevin Nealon somehow sticks around to the end, and that guy is fucking hilarious (though it turns out he's even funnier out of character; his appearances on Conna O'Brien Needs a Friend kill, especially in video form. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up "Kevin O'Nealon straw bit" and "Kevin O'Nealon Conan tears").

[winterschon@mastodon.bsd.cafe]

@gordoooo_z With this show it's important to recognize that during the mid-2000s the sheer tenacity and refusal to bend to the societal expectations of her husband's death was practically unheard of in reality and in HBO media. It is visually dated, but that's inevitable.

Part of her refusal is due to her innate personality, but so much is done out of absolute exhaustion and desperation mixed with a deep seated sadness and sense of the system failing her decades of efforts as a 'stay at home' mother — ostensibly she did everything right (much like Catherine Zeta-Jones' character in Traffic (similar time period as well), where she was faced with arguably greater potential for failure, or prison, assassination from the rival cartel and her dead husband's cartel employers - or perhaps accepting homelessness instead, losing everything.

Back to Weeds, Nancy is inherently imperfect, like all people, though she represents so many (too many) personifications of women's struggles from that era. Three women from my social group back then went through very similar events, including narco topics not limited to the name of that show. Desperation makes some mothers turn into a lioness they never knew existed within... and that is how I see Nancy's character evolution. FWIW, my friends got out of that life eventually, finally able to raise their children safely.

Cultural sentiments of the era nearly required comedy to be sprinkled in as needed, but the show is more than its sum, it's a statement on the systemic failures then-normative American family culture and marriage/gender-role adversity.

So who is this "SoCal basic-bitch never-criminal turned ruthless murderer and international trafficker"? The script draws from the real life experiences of Griselda Blanco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griselda_Blanco featured in the documentary "Cocaine Cowboys II: Hustlin' With the Godmother"), and later echoes strongly in the more recent TV series "Ozark" with Laura Linney ("..married couple who moves their family to the Lake of the Ozarks to continue their work laundering money for a Mexican drug cartel. ((she too rises in the ranks of the syndicate, orders assassinations, a modality of cold ruthlessness which she never considered herself capable))).

I can go on and on with this topic. Media aside, breakouts like this are an often unfortunate reality for women who are required to operate outside of their polished veneers, pushed past regular life's normal limits.

Looking back, doesn't everyone wonder what could have been with slightly different inputs and outputs; those turning points during periods of strife and a threatened existence?