The show weeds accounts for a very fun, but somewhat predictable show. Steven Johnson, the author of Everything Bad Is Good For You, he explains, “his theory of the Sleeper Curve as the single most important new force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe it is largely a force for good: enhancing our cognitive faculties, not dumbing them down”(12). This show Weeds neither proves nor disproves Johnson’s thesis about the sleeper curve. He believes, “that many television shows helps our minds to think more” (11). People who make television shows use different strategies to help us learn in a different way. Some strategies may be flashing arrows, multi-threading, or even social networks. The show does have some of the strategies to make you think, but it also has some that don’t make you think. It may make the show almost predictable in some ways, while in other ways, you are waiting on your toes.
I have been watching season two of Weeds, which is shown on Showtime. The main character in the show is Nancy Bowtin, a widow living in the suburbs, who takes up selling pot to support her family. She has two boys (Silas and Shane), her brother-in-law (Andy), and the maid all staying with her. Nancy and a group of her guy friends find different strategies to sell the most pot. They set up a small business in a neighborhood to cover up the grow house they decided to build inside. Now with help from Andy, Peter (DEA agent and Nancy’s new husband), Conrad (the pot grower), Doug (Nancy’s Accountant), and Sonja (who works in Nancy’s grow shop) the group goes out to sell and grow their own pot.
The more I watch the show, the more I feel that I can’t wait until the next episode comes on. In the essay, Spudding Out, by Barbara Ehrenreich he describes people as “couch potatoes.” The more I sit down and watch the show, I find myself sinking into the couch and craving for more. Johnson says, “Your mind is working and craving for more” Ehrenreich says, “It is because you want to do the activities that people do on television.” The show has my mind trying to fill in blanks of what might happen on the next episode.
In Johnson’s theory he believes, “Flashing arrows which help you predict what is going to come next, don’t really influence the show at all” (74). I have not found that many as I have been watching Weeds, but Johnson believes, “flashing arrows have grown correspondingly scarce” (74). It makes you think a little more for yourself if the music or different events don’t hint to what is going to happen next. In the episode “Must Find Toes,” Doug brings a dog into the grow house to play with. Andy, sitting on the chair talking to the others at the house, keeps stressing to Doug that he needs to get the dog out. Even Conrad pleads to him to take the dog out. When Doug explains how cute the dog is, the dog bites Andy’s foot, you just wait in anticipation with what is going to happen. If more music was involved while everyone was trying to figure out how to get the dog loose, then the results of his toes no longer existing would not be as shocking. You would just know that something was going to be wrong with him, and the viewer waits for it to happen and go onto the next scene. With Andy screaming and everyone yelling I thought that it was just for something to watch, and not that it would affect the plot.
Johnson believes, “the more complex the show is; the more you have to think”. “The narrative weaves together a collection of distinct strands- sometimes as many as ten” as Johnson explains multithreading (67). He also explains multithreading as, “Picking up one or two threads from previous episodes at the outset, and leaving one or two threads open at the end” (67) Weeds does not have a lot of multi-threading going on. The show Johnson explains as, “Filling in”, because it has the main story going on, while still having all the characters have their own problems continue to the next episode. In the episode “Bash” you have about four threads going on. They start off with Nancy and Conrad selling the pot. Another is Celia in the city council, and her problems with the family, Andy trying to stay out of the army, and then the last one is Nancy’s actual life with her kids. There’re other characters in and out of the show, but they don’t actually make a thread. An example might be Snoop Dog coming in to buy the pot off Nancy. Some episodes have a few more, while others have a few less.
This does prove that your mind does have to think, however some things might be predictable. In the episode, “Bash” Shane gives comments to Celia’s speeches. Just how he acts the viewer can tell that he know his mother sells pot. Nancy trying to hide her business and act like he doesn’t know she is a drug dealer. A lot of events lead to you knowing what is going to happen. It almost makes you want to quit watching it, and skip forward.
If the episode is not paid attention to or has not been keeping up with the whole series it would be hard to catch everything going on. Johnson describes, “Social Networks as many popular television dramas today feature dense webs of relationships that require focus and scrutiny on the part of the viewer just to figure out what’s happening on the screen.” (109) the audience might only get that Nancy’s a drug dealer in the episode, rather than she is doing it for money because her husband died. In the episodes the viewer might never know that she married the DEA agent so that he could not ever testify against her in court. Instead they might think she was just in love with the guy. This shows that all the characters relate in some way. They are all connected if they were put on a character map. Johnson believes, “it is good that your mind can start to see how things might be related in the show, and not just each character is on the episode for nothing.” Alessandra Stanley states in the New York Times Review, that Weeds is for “smart people.” She believes, “there’re two main characters and all the characters connect.” That shows Weeds has a good character map and social networks. She even refers to the show as “an old fashioned puzzle,” showing that it does make you think.
Even thought Weeds does not completely prove his theory, it still makes the watcher think in a different way. The town in the show is called Agrestic. Watching the show, and seeing the town name over and over made me think of what it meant. It means: something awkward and in the rural area. Then the introduction to the show has a lot of stereotypes. The houses all look the same, the kids, men, cars, and even the dogs. When people listen to the song it even says that everyone is the same in the rural area. I am sure everything is not the same, but it is what everyone thinks of people living in the suburbs.
So with Weeds having some of the qualities that Johnson thinks is a great television show, and others that are not so great, neither disproves or proves his theory. It does show that television makes your mind think in a different way while, still showing that watching television just makes you think of things you wish you could do. It may even make you lazier by just always wanting to sit and watch the show instead of getting up and doing something with exercise. Overall Weeds does fit into one of the television shows that he is talking about, but it has some points where you just don’t have to think at all.
Works Cited
Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good For You. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005.
Petraccami, and Sorapure Madeleine. Common Culture, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2007
Stanley, Alessandra. “Life in the Suburbs, Where the Grass Is a Little Greener.” The New York Times. 1 September 2006. 5 July 2009.
“Bash” Season Two Weeds. Jenji Kohan. Lionsgate, DVD, 2006
“Must Find Toes” Season Two Weeds. Jenji Kohan. Lionsgate, DVD, 2006
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