WEEDS “Cats! Cats! Cats!” Season 7 Episode 9 – The thing you can glean from this bizarre episode of Weeds is that the show has not changed, and cannot change, where Nancy is concerned. So at the end of last week’s episode, a variety of problems rose up: Nancy’s pyromaniac girlfriend from prison was making out with her, threatening her boss whom Nancy was also making out with while a delivery of weed came to the house, all under the watchful ears of the SEC, who’d tapped Nancy. So the question was: how could Nancy possibly get out of this one?
Quite easily, it would seem. Adrian Quinn left to an island starting with B, Nancy burned down his place and pretended to put the blame on her girlfriend, who fled the Vermont without a peep. Then just as the SEC guy picked up the phone to call the DEA and send Nancy back to prison, Doug pops in randomly espousing a bunch of jargon about some hokey charges. It could have been funnier, and there was an element of satire (“We do not fuck around in the SEC!”) but it was just so gimmicky, had zero stakes to it, and above all else it was frustrating to see Nancy basically hit the restart button for the umpteenth time.
What was not frustrating was the plotlines with Shane and Silas. Michelle Trachtenberg’s guest appearance as a breakaway from the rival drug gang was certainly better than her super low key introduction last week. It was all so nicely played: Silas flirting with her and even though his decision to show her all of the inner workings of his drug operation was a bit stupid, Hunter Parrish sold his character’s infatuation with Emma and has sold his eagerness to run the business himself, without interference or help from Nancy. I for one bought it; Shane trying to help his mother by illegally downloading files of the Pouncy House drug gang; Silas finding the files; Shane getting arrested; Nancy realizing that Shane has not returned home and finally Shane running down to his shop and finding a farewell balloon in place of his operation’s computer brain, dropping the files to reveal a photograph of Emma labelled Boss.
It was a slick, twisty, adventurous subplot which was far superior than the main action involving Nancy. That the writers can come out with a subplot like this, with that quality writing and development is both hopeful and incredibly baffling: why, if they can do this, do they still insist on hitting that reset button?
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