weeds

tv:  Weeds returned for its eighth and final season this past Sunday.  The show has undeniably not been its best, despite some great efforts in recent seasons, since it left Aggrestic at the end of the third season.  Despite that, this first episode did seem to show promise and shed light on the end of what has been a bizarre show.  (this will be all spoilers)
The episode picked up right where the end of season seven left off.  We get to see the gruesome outcome of the gunshot that was fired at Nancy as she was making her toast to the Botwin/Wilson/Price-Grey family.  Shot in the head, We see Nancy bloody and dazed and needing to be taken to the emergency room with her life hanging in the balance.
As Nancy gets put into a chemically induced coma the family reaction is as classically fucked up as anything one could expect from Weeds.  Silas and Shane discuss the many people who could be responsible for this. Shane also tells Silas about his enrollment in the police academy, which for the time being seems to be for real.  We also see Kevin Nealon, in classic Doug Wilson fashion, end up feeling up a comatose Nancy as he tries to get the crumbs of a well enjoyed snack off her body.  And of course Andy continues to do the wrong thing by sleeping with Nancy's sister and blaming it on emotional distress.
This plot development and typical Weeds hilarity is dealt with while addressing the coming end of the show.  Nancy herself says, once again in the glib voice of the show, "Doomsday is coming.  Not really,  but..... maybe".  Andy's run in with a hospital chaplain/rabbi forces asks the question that has plagued his character the entire series, which is whether or not he can change, and go from the impulsive, womanizing, pot smoking child he has been the entire series, to the man of the house his brother, and Nancy's former husband, was.
There are certainly plot points that will have to be dealt with that create a bit of intrigue.  Shane's new found desire to be a part of law enforcement certainly being at the top of the list.  As a known (by the viewers) murderer and sociopath, as well as son of a drug dealing family, his new path seems to be a rocky one at least.  Silas is surely going to be put in the cross hairs with the grow room his mother built him in the house that the police are now scouring while investigating Nancy's shooting.  And of course, what is the purpose of making Tim the shooter?  Tim being the son of Nancy's former husband and DEA agent, Peter Scottson, who was killed by a cartel to protect Nancy.
Weeds began its run ripping the lid off of suburbia and showing the world what was really going on in those squeaky clean communities in a way that was fresh and snarky.  It has come a long way from that.  And that long way is not necessarily for the better, but it has built a new and different world.  That world is filled with new questions.  Most of those questions deal with the two Botwin kids at this point.  Shane and Silas are running headstrong into a world that was built for them, not by choice, and has forced them to be men long before they were ready.  Despite the fact that this show has seemed to be all about Nancy, with her in a coma as the final season begins, the final season seems to be more about the men of the family:  Shane, Silas,  and Andy, and where their lives with Nancy will leave them looking into the future that exists beyond the show.  What started as a suburban critique, has now become a drug drama.  As doomsday approaches,  hopefully this can be done justice.