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Weeds - The Complete First Season
Directors: Burr Steers, Lee Rose
Actor: Mary-Louise Parker
Rated: NR (Not Rated)
Retail Price (not our price): $29.98
Release Date: 2006-07-11
Theatrical Release Date: 2005-08-07
Studio: Lions Gate
Run Time: 283 minutes
Format: Array
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Discs: 2


Editorial Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):

1) Amazon.com
With its fantastic comedy series Weeds, cable network Showtime finally gave up its also-ran status to HBO and found itself with a controversial, buzz-worthy show that was as hilarious as it was dark, one about a truly desperate housewife. A recent widow with two growing sons, Nancy Botwin (Golden Globe winner Mary-Louise Parker) looks like a typical resident of the affluent Southern California suburb of Agrestic. She keeps a clean, upscale house (with the help of a live-in maid), attends PTA meetings, goes to her kids' soccer games, makes frequent stops at the local coffee franchise.... and sells marijuana in order to make it all possible. Left with no way to support herself after her beloved husband's fatal heart attack, Nancy turns herself into the "suburban baroness of bud," dealing to her neighbors in the area, with the help of her supplier Heylia (Tonye Patano) and point man Conrad (Romany Malco). Nancy's clients run from the local councilman (Kevin Nealon) to the just-barely-legal students at the local community college, but many in Agrestic are still in the dark as to how she keeps her family afloat, including her best friend, the sardonic Celia (Elizabeth Perkins), a wife and mother whose blistering, withering put-downs could make Dorothy Parker cringe in fear. But like many small-business owners, Nancy yearns for more success and cash, and like her workaholic neighbors, finds keeping a balance between work life and home life to be extremely precarious at best. While Desperate Housewives yearned to be a suburban satire with bite, Weeds was the real deal, skewering upper-middle class mores with a sharp eye, a keen wit, and a mostly forgiving heart. In episode after episode, the show's creative team (led by creator Jenji Kohan) pulled back the layers of Agrestic's superficiality to show what lies beneath the squeaky-clean exteriors and smiling faces; it turns out that hunger, fear, desire, and, yes, desperation aren't that far down. However, Weeds forsakes pulpiness and florid drama for biting yet affectionate humor--its heroine is a woman with sliding morals, but one you'll root for to the very end. The effervescent Parker, the only actress who can mix perkiness with morbidity in just the right amounts, anchored the show with her amazing turn as Nancy, who by the end of the first season had become a kind of soccer-mom version of Michael Corleone, entering a corrupt world with both trepidation and fascination--and totally enamored of the power it brought her. Also perfectly cast, Perkins found the role of a lifetime as the bitterly hilarious Celia, and entering the show in its fourth episode, Justin Kirk (Parker's co-star in Angels in America) proved to be a potent secret weapon as Nancy's brother-in-law Andy, a slacker who wasn't above peddling t-shirts to elementary school kids. As icky as these characters might appear on the surface, Weeds made them all immensely appealing and great company to be around. Don't say we didn't warn you: one hit and you'll be hooked on this show. The DVDs feature six episode commentaries with cast and crew, outtakes, original featurettes, a music video, and most enjoyably, Agrestic Herbal Recipes (for entertainment value only, we assume) and the "Smoke and Mirrors" marijuana mockumentary. --Mark Englehart

Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5

1) Nothing to identify with   [Rating: 3 out of 5]
Weeds has been vaguely disappointing to me for its two season run. Production-wise, the show ranks up there with the good HBO shows--there is good acting, excellent cast (mostly), and overall movie-quality production. Where the show disappoints, though, is in its overall plot and storylines; that is, the entire concept. Ultimately, the problem with Weeds lies in its main character, played by Mary-Louis Parker. Her problem--and I don't know if this is mostly the fault of the actress or the character--is that she is just too ditzy and stupid to be very compelling. Her life decisions are completely immature and done at the level of a teenage intellect. I just can't identify with her at all, and I don't really like her. I contrast this with some other shows with lead characters who also engage in controversial behavior; for example, Tony Soprano, Al Swearengin, Bill Henriksen, and Carrie Bradshaw from the Sopranos, Deadwood, Big Love, and Sex and the City respectively. All of these characters, like Parker's, were engaging in much behavior that was either unethical or downright sadistic and criminal, but there was something compelling about their roles and how they lived in their life circumstances. Each of them, the mobster, the saloon owner, and the polygamist, were dealing with situations in which they had been placed, that had their own codes, and there was something compelling and likable about each of them. They had contrasts which drew me in as a viewer. Parker's character is not near the level of these others. There is really nothing compelling or likable about her character. I think this indicates there is just something fundamentally wrong with the basic premise of this show, that prevents it from being at the level of the other mentioned shows. There is too much smoke in this show, too little substance

2) Funny, bold, and with a quirky appeal   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
It's mainly Mary-Louise Parker as the main character who makes this series so appealing, although I should also give credit to the woman playing Celia, the hard-talking cancer patient who makes life difficult for her husband and daughter.Parker shows the struggle of a widow who tries to make ends meet in the stultifying suburbs by selling pot. Her sons act out, her brother-in-law is a nuisance, her CPA helps her when he's not getting in the way, her suppliers have some very odd family dynamics, and rival sellers create other challenges.Whoever is choosing the songs for the ending credits is doing a superb job here, and the theme song about people being exactly the same and living in little boxes is absolutely perfect. If I were forced to live in the Agrestic homes, I'd be getting high too!

3) Great show!   [Rating: 4 out of 5]
I really like this show, I am not a fan of cable shows for some reason can't get into them but I had to watch this when I went to visit my brother and I am glad I did. The concept if kind of new and the characters are hilarious. The only reason I gave it four stars is that I cannot stand the opening song. Other than that I love it!

4) The 1st and best season   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I just got the 1st season of "Weeds" on DVD for X-mas, and re-watched all the episodes that I haven't seen since they first aired a couple of years ago. Seeing the 1st season again has confirmed my opinion that that 1st season is still the best season by far. Here we find Nancy Botwin, recently widowed, navigating the still-new world of illegal drug dealing, and trying to keep it a secret from her children and the Agrestic moral majority.Remember when you were a kid, and you picked up a big rock or log in your backyard and discovered the creepy crawly world hiding underneath? That's what "Weeds" does ... uncover what lies beneath the pretty surface of suburban life. What we discover is both funny and sad; failed marriages, cynical children, crooked local politics, and sexual peccadilloes. In the 1st season, the focus was really on the characters, all of whom, for all their quirks, are fairly easy to relate to. Even when tragedies strike, such as Celia's cancer, the series maintains a low-key charm to it. By season three, the lives of Nancy Botwin and Company have spiraled so out of control and reached such a feverish level of peril and dysfunction that the show has lost much of that low-key charm. Here's hoping that season 4 is able to regain some of it.

5) Best show on TV   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
Absolutely the best new show on TV, can't wait for the rest of the seasons.