How Long to Watch “Weeds”?

Nancy Botwin lives in a nice suburban home, with two nice suburban kids – unfortunately, her nice suburban husband, Judah, just died, so the only way Nancy can make ends meet is by selling pot to Soccer Dads in her nice suburban neighborhood. This nice suburb just got a whole lot nicer!, Produced for cable's Showtime service, the half-hour Weeds starred Mary-Louise Parker as suburban housewife Nancy Botwin, whose comfy, affluent existence was shattered by the unexpected death of her husband. With no other readily available source of income, Nancy decided to service an ever-growing consumer demand -- by selling marijuana to other white-bread suburbanites. Purchasing her pot from streetwise dealer Conrad Shepard (Romany Malco) and his aunt, supplier Heylia James (Tonye Patano), Nancy set up her new business enterprise using a bakery as a front, with the assistance of city councilman Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon) -- all the while keeping her activities a secret from her snooty, traditionalist best friend, PTA president Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins). Also in the cast were Alexander Gould and Hunter Parrish as Nancy's sons, Shane and Silas; Justin Kirk as her overgrown-slacker brother-in-law, Andy; Andy Milder as Celia's feeble husband, Dean Hodes; Allie Grant as the Hodes' overweight daughter, Isabelle; and Martin Donovan as Peter, a single dad whom Nancy fell for -- and who turned out to be a DEA agent. The series' ironic theme music was the Womenfolk's "Little Boxes," a satiric paean to split-level conformity. One of those series invariably described as "smart and sexy" by in-the-know critics, the Golden Globe-winning Weeds debuted August 7, 2005.