Weeds:
Season 5 DVD Review

DVD Release Date: Jan. 19
Creator: Jenji Kohan
Starring: Mary-Louis Parker, Kevin Nealon, Justin Kirk, Elizabeth Perkins
Studio/Length: Lions Gate Television. 286 minutes

Dynamic fixture of TV comedy continues to grow

The sly creative energy that crackles through every season of Weeds gives the series a light, easygoing veneer, the sense that it’s in no particular rush to get anywhere. But as a matter of craft and sheer endurance, it has proven itself one of the canniest shows on the air. Early this season, the characters seemed to be tangled in the past—Nancy uses a pregnancy to ward off certain execution by drug lord Esteban, Celia is kidnapped by fickle revolutionaries (including her long-lost daughter), and Andy declares his love for Nancy a little too emphatically. But, just like that, in a startling midseason turnaround, the show jumps forward six months into a newly invigorated world of political intrigue and prickly irreverence that has become its finest mode.

Weeds proved in its fifth season just how keen it is to evolve, most boldly in the journey of Shane, Nancy’s doe-eyed youngest son, who has grown into a bizarre, ominous adolescent worthy of Noah Baumbach. The show hums at such an agreeable register that it’s easy to overlook its ingenuity, but the new ground forged each season is cause for esteem.

Watch the Weeds Season 5 trailer: