Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Weeds Is A Showtime TV Hit Series About Selling Pot

By Alexis Snow

If there's been a defining trend for the last ten years, it has been the tendency towards realism in fictional television. Blame it on reality television, which really changed the landscape for all of television. Weeds is one of the funniest in this trend and definitely deserves a spot on your list next time you're downloading from your tv and movie download service.

The realism trend probably began with shows like Survivor. See, for a time, TV shows were becoming incredibly predictable. You always knew exactly what was gonna happen, you knew every punchline to every joke, it was just the same old stuff time and again, and people just didn't care anymore. It wasn't hard for shows like Survivor and Top Chef to steal viewers away by the thousands.

Reality television really changed things and it became clear that fictional television had to adapt to survive, as people had come to prefer the realism of those reality shows. Even if reality television can be artless, crass, and not as real as it pretends to be, it remains a fact that it showed real human emotion and unpredictable situations.

Anyways, after the revolution of reality TV, people like David Chase took the hint. Chase's Sopranos started a new wave in fictional television: Take the realism of reality TV and mix it with the strong storytelling of fictional television, and you have a show that is literally the best of both worlds. The Sopranos led to similar shows like LOST, House MD, and, of course, Weeds.

Weeds follows a suburban widow and her two sons as they deal with family issues and... The family business. It follows Sopranos in a way, in that the family business is... Well, she's a weed dealer. She sells pot to all of the local yuppie potheads. A constant source of humor is the fact that she doesn't always fit in with the shallow vapid people of her neighborhood, being a weed dealer amidst investment bankers and soccer moms.

The show is really defined by some great characters. The Candyman is one of the best. She's actually a female character, codenamed the Candyman. She runs a bakery that specializes in marijuana goodies. She's also a fitness nut, refusing to sell to anyone who doesn't promise to exercise and burn off the extra calories provided by her brownies and cupcakes.

The show follows two primary plot threads: One following the mother's journey in building her criminal empire, and one following her family issues and the local gossip. Watching how the two stories affect one another is always worth a laugh.

The show is quite addictive, of course. It's structured as such that each episode is only a chapter and each season is really a self contained story, so download a full season at a time and be ready to spend several hours a night catching up on what happens next. Don't worry, it's an incredibly rewarding show and each season is well worth the time it takes to sit down and watch it all in one or two sittings, just be fore warned that you WILL be sitting there watching half a season or a full season every single time you want to watch a single episode. Think of it like Lays potato chips: Betcha can't have just one. - 40730

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