Weeds on Showtime: #808

The name of Showtime's "Weeds" episode 8 of season 8 is “Five Miles from Yetzer Hara.” (“Yetzer hara” is Hebrew for evil. The rabbi explains to Nancy that God places us equidistant from good and evil, and we must choose.)

I’m changing the name to “From Better to Worse.” Things were getting better on Weeds, but now they are getting worse. The opening Ticky-Tacky song should clue you in that things are not going well. Each week the rendition of the song is angrier, louder, more raucous.  

Nancy did so well at her new job as a rep for a pharmaceutical company—she received a whole new, very large, territory. It is going to require her to be away from home for two weeks at a time. She doesn’t like having to be away from her young son, little Stevie.   

Her dilemma is solved when a doctor’s receptionist offers to buy all her samples of generic adderall—it’s called “speed” by users. She then resells them to the local college kids for $10 a pill. At first Nancy refuses, but it’s not long before she gives in to temptation. She got out of dealing weed; but now she’s dealing prescription drugs. She’s also back to lying. She tells her boss that her car with all her samples inside was stolen. (He gives her mores samples.) She’s also back to partying. We see her dancing wildly at a frat party.

And there’s more of Nancy being bad. She seduces the rabbi. I don’t think she takes rejection well. His refusal to do the nasty on short acquaintance only made her totally determined to have her way with him. It’s unclear what Nancy feels, but the rabbi is obviously falling in love with her.

Jill learns that she is not pregnant. She’s starting menopause early. Her messed up hormones resulted in a false positive on the pregnancy test. Andy is angry at her because she knew three weeks ago that she was not pregnant.  Andy was all psyched up about fatherhood and he is very disappointed. Jill tells Andy, “What do you want—crying babies or screaming orgasms?” This is my “when-you-put-it-that-way-the-answer-seems-obvious” moment of the week. But it turns out that Andy chooses babies, and he and Jill break up.

Shane is working with crocked cops. When the cops impound cars, they sometimes “lose the paperwork.” They are selling the cars. Shane is shocked, but then the cops hand him his cut. Now Shane is back to loving his job.

Doug is scamming—getting funds by claiming to be running a homeless shelter. He needs to get some people living at his shelter. No shelter clients, no more money. Worse yet, he could be charged with fraud. He attempts to persuade a feisty homeless woman to move into his shelter; she finds his pleas annoying and sticks him with a pen knife. But Doug has a work-around. He swipes some of Nancy’s medical marijuana pills, grinds them up, and sprinkles the resulting powder in a sandwich. The woman eats it, and apparently is blissed-out enough for Doug to transport her to the shelter. Crisis averted.

Silas is unhappy about marijuana being made into pills. I guess he is just a traditionalist.  The marijuana mystique is lost if you just swallow a pill. The ritual is part of the high; a pill is ticky-tacky. I have a feeling that Silas is going to go extra-legal real soon.   

Everyone on Weeds has fallen from the straight and narrow, except maybe little Stevie.  But he’s only five.  Maybe he’ll be next and we’ll see him dealing illicit Twinkies to his kindergarten classmates.

I found this picture at http://weedsconfessions.tumblr.com