I was a relatively late entry into the Weeds audience; I marathoned through the first five seasons a few summers ago, and I started season six in real time. I’m pretty sure I didn’t always “do” Weeds fandom in the prescribed way; “oh, Shane is such a psycho,” my people are fond of saying. “Oh, Shane is charming,” I’ve before said. More so back in the day, but I will admit with no shame that I once said that, were I to somehow have a son, I’d be content if he was a perhaps less-violent version of baby Shane (Alexander Gould). I mean, some of the tendencies were bad, but I like morbid, analytical kids. I think that’s what I was getting at, maybe.
Yeah. I was doing it wrong. I don’t care.
Another way I differ from at least some of my people who enjoy Weeds is that I have never, ever shipped Nancy/Andy. Nope. Despite the fact that Andy’s (Justin Kirk) lingering sexual attraction toward Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) is presumably why he stuck around for all of these years, or part of why, I never wanted them to actually act on it. In the second-to-last episode, I almost screamed and reached for the remote control when they had sex. I just couldn’t bring myself to want it, because I feel like I’ve gotten to know these people reasonably well over the seasons and in my humble opinion, it would be an absolutely terrible idea for them to actually have a thing. It was an absolutely terrible idea for Andy to hang around like he did all that time in a lot of ways.
But then again, Weeds is a show that is just a series of adventures started by people acting on their absolutely terrible ideas. One terrible idea after another. For eight seasons. Nancy has terrible ideas. The whole show is founded on one of Nancy’s terrible (well-intentioned but terrible) ideas. Andy has terrible ideas. Silas (Hunter Parrish) has terrible ideas, Shane has terrible ideas. Doug (Kevin Nealon) has terrible ideas, everyone who walks in and out of their lives has terrible ideas.
And they were all building to a finish. A series finale that… honestly took me by surprise at first. Weeds has done plenty of so-and-so-many-month time jumps in its run, but this series finale was sort of the surprise Epitaphs, a decade into the future. Sort of a weedpocalyptic future, if you will. Everything that is revealed to be is the result of previous terrible ideas (and a few decent ones) and these people, because they are realistic, have… not really learned their lessons. Some of them have, of course, but not all.
Nancy? Nancy didn’t learn anything leading up to this penultimate glimpse of the weedpocalypse. Not really. She seemed to have a relatively decent relationship with her youngest son Stevie (Mateus Ward all of a sudden), but she got along with Shane and Silas better when they were younger, too. She had apparently married Rabbi Bloom (David Julian Hirsh) at some point, because what does Nancy do? She marries people. And what happens to the people she marries? Well, they die. So Rabbi Bloom died in a… bear-related car accident? Kind of noteworthy considering the bear motif that’s existed throughout the show, but also not really particularly noteworthy. It’s the weedpocalypse, so now weed is legal and Nancy’s running weed cafes every which way; she’s successful, she’s getting on in years now, but nobody ages in television time jumps, not really.
Besides, it’s the future. Everyone’s talking on tiny transparent cell phones and typing on keyboards that are just glowing lights on tables. Allusions were made to elective beauty things, and I’m pretty sure they just meant that she was still dressing sexy and streaking her hair, but I always assume that means welp it’s the future, let’s all get plastic surgery!! Even though that would be a whole different story.
Shane, bless his heart, barges into the house with his detective buddy (Michael Harney) and two… well, they never said, but I’m pretty sure they were supposed to be hookers. With a mustache that I just giggled at, ranting about everything anyone else says, drinking out of a flask. Shane, buddy, you made a lot of bad choices. And it made my heart sad, because I’d always wanted a future for Shane where he was all analytical and cunning and whatnot, but this was a future for the Shane who just made wrong turns. Which he did. A lot.
Silas seems maybe to have made some decent choices. After having reconciled with his first love, Megan (Shosannah Stern), in the prior episode, we see that said reconciliation has lasted into marriage and a daughter. Silas is still growing weed, because it’s what he loves, but it’s legal now, so it’s totally cool. And weed cigarettes are called Puff Dragons, which just made my heart giggle. Megan is super, super bitter at Nancy, but Silas isn’t; he’s pretty zen about it, and he tries to give his mom advice that she needs.
“Nancy’s problem is that she’s never realized it’s not all about her,” one of my people observed at the end of Silas’ monologue in which he declared that nope, it wasn’t all about her. And the weedpocalypse illustrated that rather nicely, actually.
Andy seems to have made some pretty good choices, actually. He’s got a daughter, too, though one we never meet, and the arrangement sounded sort of like the plot I wanted out of Friends With Kids; he has a restaurant and a renovated house (my dear Isabelle apparently got a sex change, which is… not the future I’d predicted for her in the slightest, but okay, power to, and did his drywall). And it’s his turn to have things to say to Nancy that are mature and what she needs to hear. He’s learned lessons, and he’s finally not going back on them just because she smiles convincingly.
Doug has made absolutely terrible choices that are… still somehow lucrative. As the head of what seems to be a motivational program/cult, he’s getting to fly the b.s. flag every which way like only he can. I’ve never had any feelings about Doug as a character, so I’m not going into it. At all.
And all of these people are back together for the first time in howeverlong, and in a way it was a Sopranos thing of feeling like something was going to explode at any minute, actually. It turned out okay (Stevie’s decision not to commit to his faith was interesting, as was the speech he gave, mostly because he said a lot of things with adolescent wisdom that could reflect on other characters well) and nothing terrible happened. Nothing earthshakingly fantastic happened either.
I don’t know what I wanted. I probably would have been comfy with Nancy dying, actually. But it’s not what I wanted consciously. I don’t know what I wanted, and I don’t know if I necessarily am jumping about what we were given. But I’m not… angry, I guess. I’m just going “okay, well, that happened.”
Oh, and it happened with a Rilo Kiley song at the end. The same Rilo Kiley song from the very first episode. That’s perfect.
–your fangirl heroine.
