Highs and Lows: Weeds Wraps Up

On Sunday, July 1^st Weeds returned to Showtime for its eighth and final season, revealing the target of the sniper’s bullet from last season’s cliffhanger ending.  I will include absolutely NO SPOILERS in this article, but I will say the season is off to a strong start.  I hope the show’s producers, writers, and creator Jenji Kohan can continue to build together a resolution for The Widow Botwin and her brood.  I’m sad to see the show go but like most Weeds fans still watching I’m a bit relieved as well.  This moment probably should have happened four or even five years ago when the show spectacularly jumped the shark.

Just a few moths ago I wrote an article on the value of networks allowing creative series with promise survive to a reasonable, six seasons and a movie number of episodes without the constant threat of ratings.  (There’s also the added monetary incentive of syndication, which I neglected to consider.) But Weeds has me thinking about the flipside.  When a series that started high has noticeably declined in ratings and quality, what should a network do?  What about their dedicated fans?  It’s a delicate balancing act.  Some, like Heroes, get pulled rather quickly, while others (more often comedies) drag on and on, becoming pale imitations of their earlier incarnations.  The obvious example here is Scrubs. And it truly pains me to even think of what was done to that show.

Full disclosure:  I’m a relative newcomer to Weeds and I had the luxury of catching up quickly through past seasons.  I don’t know which is worse, getting hooked on a show that loses it’s charm over years of waiting for new episodes or watching the show decline just as you’ve fallen in love with it.  I’ve experienced both and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.  My favorite television show remains 24, and I will defend it to the death, even though I certainly recognize that it too ran out of steam midway through its own eight year run.  Even though I continued to watch each week, at some low points it became a chore to sit through.  Though I did not watch it during its original run, I’ve heard similar complaints about Lost.

Weeds was a huge success for Showtime, but Nancy and the gang have long overstayed their welcome, and it pains me to write it, but I think everyone can recognize the truth.  I don’t want to speak for all the show’s fans, but I am sure the majority of us would have preferred a strong finale earlier on rather than sit through three painfully uneven seasons.  Whoever decided Nancy should get pregnant and have a new baby (which is the death knell of most great sitcoms) should have been fired and their treatment burned.  Because the baby did indeed mark a precipitous downfall in turns of both ratings and storylines where the plot began to feel more like a series of gimmicks (Watch the Botwins on the lam! Watch Andy and Nancy discuss their sexual tension again…and again!) than a thought-out, overarching story arc.  The show began to regain its mojo near the end of season six and decided to revisit familiar characters in seven, but by then it was too late.  The damage was done.  The show was barely renewed for this outing and while I’m not complaining about another go-around, I am concerned that Kohan and the show runners are out of ideas.

While I understand this premiere episode, and by extension this article, will not be accessible for people without Showtime, I think there is a larger point to be made.  Weeds is important for TV viewers because it establishes a precedent.  Since the boom of original premium cable dramas and sitcoms in the past decade, Kohan’s show is the first, or more likely the most watched cable show to even entertain this question of quality vs quantity.  Most HBO and Showtime shows die early from low ratings and exorbitant costs (think Rome) or else they tend to leave at the top of their game (The Sopranos) since this kind of attention to quality was, ostensibly, what subscribers were paying for.  This suggests a trend:  that premium cable is not as premium or exclusive as it might have been pre-Netflix.   I’ll be interested to see what direction Girls takes over the course of its run, especially considering that it has garnered the same type of buzz Weeds first enjoyed back in 2005.

So when the bell does finally tolls for Weeds, whatever the outcome, I must give credit where it’s due. Despite the frustrations, Kohan and Co. have given us one of the best TV comedies to grace the airwaves in a long time.

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