flobadob, ickle Weeds

Part of the reason why I’m a huge fan of Weeds (asides from Mary Louise Parker, assorted other hotties, the music and the amazing dark humour) is that I feel that I don’t have to worry about it stagnating. The idea of a suburban mother dealing drugs isn’t exactly run of the mill (although it isn’t completely original either), but the idea could have gotten old eventually. Weeds is constantly broadening its scope however, creating new (and bigger) scenarios, which remain just this side of plausible. I always love it when shows experiment in this way (like with Buffy’s season six and the fourth season of House), and even if it doesn’t always work brilliantly I can still appreciate what the creators were trying to do, and I feel the same way about the fourth season of Weeds.

The main thing that I missed from earlier seasons (even more than Conrad and Heylia I think) was the theme tune. I love Little Boxes, and I’m still searching for some of the covers used in seasons two and three. As a result I absolutely loved Nancy’s throwaway line about Shane becoming a doctor or a lawyer or a business executive, because it’s clearly a reference to the song’s lyrics.

Nancy, the main character, always seems to find a new utterlyfuckingfabulous guy who seems to just get her perfectly. I had thought that perhaps there’d be a romance between her and Guillermo since they had this really nice relationship, but that seems to have been a red herring- or maybe fictional Guillermo, like the Guillermo who plays him, prefers the menfolk. Instead Nancy starts a relationship with the Mayor of Tijuana, Esteban. Nancy’s record with guys does kind of remind me of Dagny- just in that someone perfectly suited to her at any given time seems to turn up right on cue, and is then superseded at the appropriate time, and from then on Nancy doesn’t seem to think about her previous lovers much. The main difference though is that I don’t think that Nancy would have ever left her husband Judas (occasionally portrayed by the luscious Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the relationship only ended because he died. In fact it was his death that prompted her to start dealing; she wanted to keep her children (and herself) in the style to which they had become accustomed. Nancy clearly can’t help feeling betrayed by Judah, and this season investigated her issues surrounding this more closely which was really interesting.

Nancy truly is one of my favourite fictional characters of all time. Mary Louise Parker being gorgeous and a truly great actress doesn’t hurt either. One of the main reasons for my love of Nancy is her raw emotional honesty. There was a wonderful moment in season two or three where she tearily proclaimed that although she loves her family sometimes she really wishes that she didn’t have them, and could just be completely free. I think that this was followed up really well in season four- not only with her starting to fall apart even more (and misdirecting her anger at Judah), but with her sons becoming increasingly angry at her not being around for them.

I did really love the interaction between Guillermo and Nancy at the beginning of the season, and I was kind of sad to lose it, even if we did get the interesting relationship with Esteban. I suppose it makes sense that Guillermo and Nancy would end up hating each other, but I was really hoping that they’d make up. After Nancy went over his head to Esteban, in order to buy some of the pot that was being smuggled into the maternity wear shop she was working in as a front via a tunnel to Mexico, their relationship changed. I guess that Guillermo felt that he could no longer trust her, and also that he had to be more wary of her because she was becoming a bit more of a major player. I loved angry, defeated Guillermo a whole lot. Perhaps this is what prompts him to start smuggling people, and not in the nice Way of Andy. Nancy seeing the scared young girl that he brings through the tunnel is really the beginning of the end.

The situation escalates when Nancy gets curious about the boxes coming through the tunnel, and Guillermo refuses to explain what’s in them so she tips over a box. She responds intelligently to the pile of guns she discovers which, “huh, that’s not pot”. Guillermo sarcastically replies that it’s a tunnel to (from?) Mexico (which by the way should not be as believable as it is), “there’s not a magical weed-only sign at the entrance”. I did really love that tunnel; it just seemed like something straight out of a fantasy book (especially The Tunnel I suppose, with lovely illustrations by Anthony Browne).

I did quite like Esteban simply as a character, and at least he had good excuses for leaving after sex, “I have a breakfast meeting in another country” works pretty well I think. Nancy assuring him that she wasn’t trying to get out of sex seemed a little redundant, I think it was pretty obvious that she wouldn’t want to. However I also think that it was pretty clear that she did not wholeheartedly trust him, but when he asked point blank she lied to him- perhaps out of wishful thinking, perhaps out of fear. This leads to her taking a lot of peyote to cure her headache, which seems like a classic example of over-medication. I thought that the whole peyote sequence, especially the scene of them tripping, was rather cliché sadly.

Esteban also adds a whole series of interesting questions to the series too, as it transpires that he’s the boss of Guillermo’s cartel. Is it acceptable to sell, or facilitate the selling of, drugs if it allows you to build schools and hospitals? If drugs are ok, are guns too? If it’s alright to do so for these lofty aims, how about if it’s merely to provide for your family, as Nancy does (or at least initially did)? Weeds is no longer primarily a dark comedy about drugs, and I seriously love it for that. It really started to tackle these serious questions which it mostly side stepped in earlier seasons, and I’m glad that it introduces the topic of trafficking of women. There are things that Nancy was prepared to accept as a trade off for relative security, but it becomes clear that she’s incapable of living with herself as a person who facilitates that. I think that maybe she would be prepared to deal with it theoretically, but having to actually see those girls is what decided it for her.

Selling Guillermo and the others out to the cops I’m sure completely ended the fun relationship between Nancy and Guillermo. Nancy (and the audience) only caught a brief glimpse of the angry, bloodied up Guillermo at the police station- and seeing him like that just seemed wrong. It’s definitely difficult to reconcile with the idea that such a fun character deserves such a fate, I suppose the point is that there is no easy answer and that Nancy really doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing.

I love Kevin Nealon. Or, no, maybe I just love Doug... especially when he was pretending to be a gung-ho racist so he could join the Minutemen as a cover for he and Andy’s Coyote racket. Nah, I think that I do actually love Kevin Nealon and his ridiculous face. But I definitely love Doug too, and his social awkwardness. Nobody pays attention to him, everyone loves Andy instead- even when he’s pining over his Mermex nobody pays attention to him unless his whining is communicated through the intermediary. Andy as a Coyote was seriously hilarious, he got to wear ridiculous outfits and proclaim loftily that his people ate matzo when they (we?) wandered the desert. He also apologised for the lack of manna he had to offer due to global warming, or possibly the fact that God is dead. He then got excited about being a better Coyote than Moses (because people smuggling is God’s work, yo). When Davenport eventually said goodbye I was snickering to myself for no reason other than the fact that he was obsessed with Iowa (hence his name) and Goodbye Iowa is the name of a Buffy episode. At least I’m easily amused.

Doug was really quite a cunt of a Coyote, in contrast to Andy who seemed to really want to provide a pleasant, safe service (although of course Andy had the horrible experience of crossing the border when Nancy had to leave him in the Mexican desert after a pick up went a bit haywire, which Doug didn’t). When the Minuteman demanded that Doug hand over one of the illegals, he quickly forced Andy to hand over the jubilant guy who hugged him, on the grounds that he’s annoying. Nancy and Doug do have some brilliant interaction too, they tend to just talk at each other at cross purposes, and while Nancy is often as rude as possible to him in an effort to get him to go away Doug stubbornly stays put and displays all his woes because he has utterly no shame. It also turns out that Doug is a huge fan of daddy issues, as long as that means that the age difference works in his favour. He really is a bastard. I suppose that partly explains why he is seriously awful at selling himself to Maria/anyone.

Andy ranting about AIDS was great, he was muttering darkly about how it ruined everyone’s fun, and even though he got laid all the time he had to wear a condom. C’est terrible, indeed. (Although not when he was with that Israeli chick if you recall, as she had a penchant for strap-ons. And, you know what, I think the scene where Maria accosted Andy while he was having a shower displayed his very nice arse, so I can kind of see where she was coming from.) Due to the fact that I love Andy so much I couldn’t help loving the Maria/Andy turn that events seemed to be unsubtly taking. Doug pretended to be dealing fine with Andy’s admission that he’d slept with Maria (twice, but during the same session, so really once) because he’s a complete cunt. He dealt with the break up in basically the worst way possible- he called immigration on her! In the season finale I really did think that he was about to commit suicide, but luckily it turned out that he’s just got an asphyxiation fetish. Phew!

Andy tells Doug off for calling immigration on Maria, and points out that all his waffling about code breaking is bollocks since Doug had an affair with Celia when she was still married to his best friend Dean. Doug’s childish response is to accuse Andy of being in love with Nancy. They both act like complete five year olds most of the time they’re around each other, and I lurve (with sloppy kisses aplenty) them for it. Andy struggles desperately for a good reason for why he puts up with Nancy and all her crap, and fails spectacularly. I really love the idea of Andy being in love with Nancy, I think it’s been set up pretty well. First of all he’s fit into the family pretty well, and acts as a replacement for his older brother Judah. With him loosely taking on the husband/father role it’s easy to think of something developing between them, plus they’re obviously really comfortable around each other and Andy has a real no-nonsense attitude to sex (he bought Nancy a vibrator as a mourning gift of sorts). Andy clearly thinks that she’s a hottie (cos he has eyes, yo), and Nancy has really started to appreciate him and consider him a good person. Plus there was that brilliant moment early in the season where they paid homage to one of the great television clichés and started making out as a ploy to distract the cop from searching the car and finding all the drugs they were smuggling (the last part is mildly less cliché). (Xander once tried to enact this with Buffy when they snuck into The Initiative, and she had to explain that that doesn’t actually work in real life. I think Weeds proved Buffy wrong, as so many before have done too.)

There was a great scene in the finale where Andy barged into the bathroom while she was having a bath, and is clearly perving on her (he complements her breasts) and she doesn’t care (she thanks him for the compliment), just wants him to shut the door so the boys don’t wander in. She’s prone to go somewhat insane in season finales, so I was wondering if she was going to snap and jump Andy (I could seriously totally see that happening) but sadly that didn’t happen, still the stress of the situation with Esteban next season might lead to so Nandy goodness (please, please, please), or so I can hope. I think that they honestly have one of my favourite television relationships of all time, no exaggeration. I think it was a testament in part to how bone tired she was, but she also clearly thinks that it’s normal to have her brother-in-law add water and bubble bath to the bath which she’s already in. She also completely broke down and finally poured everything out to someone, which I think must have been very cathartic. Perhaps it was with Andy’s input that she came up with her grand plan?

We also got the return of Celia, which I think wasn’t strictly necessary but was nice- especially because it gave more of a sense of continuation with the previous seasons. She quickly became a coke addict, which was pretty fucking funny actually. Isabelle’s intervention was awesome, and not just because Celia got tied up. Crazy Celia is definitely one of my favourite flavours of Celia, and I’m glad that her general insanity had a positive effect: Isabelle is hardcore! She’s learnt enough from her mother’s bitchiness to make the most powerful threat: “If you don’t deal with this, I will call your mother”. As a result Celia ends up in rehab, and the pilot she met was hilarious- especially the way he told her that he’d been a pilot for seventeen years so of course he was good at sneaking drugs past security. He also argues that rehab is no fun sober, so they might as well get fucked up. Celia gets poetic about how much she loves the little moment just before a hit, and he responds with “I like the moment when it goes up your nose”. That pilot was really pretty skanky, especially with his tale of jamming cocaine up his urethra in order to fuck the 57 year old flight attendant. Nice. Celia was actually able to clean herself up, and be a positive influence on the pilot, but was quickly chucked out of rehab for not being able to afford it. It was a pretty horrible thing to do, but it’s realistic. Effective rehabilitation seems to only be available for those who can afford it. Although it probably didn’t make her feel much better, Celia’s second group (full of crack addicts this time) seemed a lot funnier.

Celia’s apologies once she left rehab were hysterical. At least she finally apologised to Isabelle for some of the shit she put her through, and her little speech about vagina power and loving the ladies had me in stitches. Her apologies to her ex-husband, Dean, were possibly even better though- basically along the line of: I’m sorry I married you, I’m sorry that you’re so ugly, I’m sorry that you’re so sexually unappealing that I always had to imagine somebody else... He sent her off to apologise to their eldest daughter Quinn, who hadn’t been seen since the beginning of the show, and had barely even been mentioned- I really thought that she’d been forgotten. I’m so glad that she’s back, I adored rebellious Quinn way back when. I’m hoping that there might be a return of the Silas and Quinn romance in season five too... Maybe there really could be, since Silas develops a plan to buy a plot of land in Mexico. It turns out that Quinn is still a total bitch, she actually drugs Celia and takes her hostage in a bid to blackmail her father. See, Weeds is constantly full of surprises!

Poor, poor (beloved) Shane. He really went through the wringer this season. Weeds has never really shied away from dealing with the travails of adolescence (Uncle Andy became a hero to young Shane when he paid a hooker to cheer Shane up with his first handjob), but I think season four took it to another level. The Botwins have to leave Majestic/Agrestic after Nancy sets the whole town on fire, and end up in Ren Mar at Judah’s grandmother’s (or Bubbie’s) house. It’s here that Shane discovers a load of blurry, artsy photos of his mother in next to nothing (bar a silver bowler hat). It’s not initially clear whether Shane knows that they’re pictures of his mother, but the audience knows it right away due to some wonderful, and subtle, setting up- having Andy talking to Nancy about Judah showing him the pictures. Isabel points out to Shane that these pictures are of his mother, and yet he carries on wanking over them. There was a hilariously awkward moment when Isabel and Shane were arguing over the pictures and Nancy walked in and just flopped herself onto the bed all sore from being spanked too much by Esteban (I loved how much she liked being spanked, by the way). She practically flashed the kids without being aware (as I suppose you aren’t around people you’re that comfortable around), which was just wince-worthy given the circumstances! Andy eventually discovers Shane’s masturbation material, and forces Nancy to have an incredibly awkward conversation with her younger son. It was television gold, with Shane trying to have the entire conversation from under a blanket. I’m glad that I can trust American cable to keep the wacky incest a-comin’ (literally).

Nancy also had to have a very awkward conversation with Silas (and the way that the two scenes were intercut was fabulous) when she discovered his dalliance with the cheese lady. Their first explicit scene together was beautifully shot (and I’m certain that the crucifix shape was explicitly chosen), and ridiculously hot. When Nancy catches them Lisa tries to appease her by claiming that she’ll look after Silas because she too is a mom. Nancy has always been pretty cool about Silas’ sex life, but she just flips at this: “You’re fucking my 17 year old!” and indeed why the fuck would Nancy applaud her? The creepy little smile on Nancy’s face when she points out that Lisa’s little boy will be seventeen sooner than she thinks was absolute perfection. This little boy, Rad, was initially a very annoying character because he seemed too perky and happy. With a little character evolution making him seem a tad evil I grew to like him a lot more though. I love Silas, I don’t think that that point can be over-emphasised. Couple (or quad-/multi-ruple) that with the fact that I love cheese, weed and people mocking cheese wiz, and you might have a reasonable understanding of how much I loved Silas and Lisa’s plan to use the cheese shop as a grow-house, and then to sell people the weed in sandwiches. They get at least one fabulously irritating hippy client insisting that her weed be unsullied by meat products, but the best customer had to have been the confused bloke who honestly wanted a cheese sandwich- and they had to back pedal and snatch the sandwich back from him by pretending to be fattist.

Lisa and Silas initially seemed to have quite a sweet relationship, and Silas seemed to make an effort to get on with Rad (the way to her heart, as with Nancy’s, is clearly through her son(s)). Of course she actually gets mistaken for Silas’ mother, which is understandable given the age difference. I was really glad that Silas joked about that (albeit incredibly bitterly) instead of freaking out. I think he matured a lot this season, man I love Silas. She ended up breaking up with him to “protect” him (classic television cliché really), which led to some wonderful scenes of a mopey Silas being all raw and broken. They sort of sporadically got back together- at least until her son tipped off his father, who busted in and photographed them together in a bid to get custody.

Luckily, or perhaps not very luckily really, Shane gets over his Oedipal fixation when he starts his new school and gets two fangirls. They're total party girls by teen standards, Nancy refers to them as the “two pierced strangers”. I loved that these two girls wanted to photograph everything, it seemed very realistic. Shane totally manages to beat these typical troubled teens with his tales of familial woe as well, which I suppose is what makes him so attractive to them. They certainly made organising a threesome seem like far too much effort, or perhaps that was only because they seemed really excessively dumb. Silas was abso-fucking-lutely useless at giving Shane advice about sex, and didn’t seem at all troubled that he was fourteen year old brother was being dragged into group sex.

I absolutely adored all the interaction between Shane and Nancy after she found out about him having sex. Her first reaction in fact was “Oh, fuck you Judah!”, she just has all this anger about him ‘abandoning’ her and therefore not being there to help her deal with their sons, as well as the fact that his death is what set her on this drug dealing path and thus not being a very good mother all of the time. She even tries to hit Shane in her frustration, and also calls the girls sluts, which I don’t think she actually means- she’s just angry and defeated. Shane is pretty angry too, he demands that she stop pretending to be a mom. Nancy desperately cries out “What did I do?” and Silas calmly wanders past and points out “you had boys”. He doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with the situation at all, and it isn’t necessarily anything terrible- I think Nancy’s reaction is more about the fact that she realises that she’s got no idea what’s happening in Shane’s life. I also think that she doesn’t want him to be “grown up” because that means that she hasn’t momentarily neglected him- it’s basically too late for her to be a proper mother to him again now.

Shane’s description of sex was priceless too, “Confusing. Brisk. Messy. I don’t know. My mom hit me.” Isabel is exasperated with him, “Have I taught you nothing? Tell them what they want to hear, then do what you want”. Listening to Isabel and Shane talking about their mothers, respectively a drug addict and a drug dealer, is pretty funny, but honestly they do have messed up lives. Silas is such an idiot a lot of the time too, he refuses to give Shane weed (even though, as Shane points out, he was happy to give him a condom), but Shane’s a child genius and more than capable of stealing drugs which aren’t hidden very well.

Silas, now having just turned eighteen, develops a plan to buy a pot of land in Mexico to grow on, but he insists that he won’t get bogged down in the hectic lifestyle. It sounds like someone wanting to get out of the rat race and settle down in the country, not a teenager. The whole reason Nancy started dealing was so she could maintain a relatively stress-free life, and remain close to her family instead of always being away. Instead she ended up almost addicted to danger and drama, and getting into more and more extreme situations. It seems as if Silas is becoming the new Nancy really. Nancy was always trying to keep Silas away from the drugs, and she failed. Now Silas is intent on keeping Shane away (telling him the only thing he can do to help the family is to go to school), but Shane's determined on getting in on the action. It’s not hard to see why, since the allure helps to make him popular and ‘cool’. By the end of the episode he’s already selling drugs, with his two fangirls standing by.

I knew that Captain Till was gay. Why else would he have that weird karaoke fetish? His interaction with his partner made me suspect that that’s who he was involved with. Till just seemed to enjoy bossing him around too much, and his partner was definitely deferring in a very mocking way. When Nancy was talking to someone (unseen) about Guillermo I knew that it was Captain Till too. I loved the detail of her fiddling exasperatedly with the Rubik’s cube too, her inability to solve it seemed poignant (although I’m sure I’d never be able to do one). As a direct result of Nancy and all her demands Captain Till’s partner (in both senses) Phil, gets brutally tortured. It was shocking to see Cesar being so cruel, I suppose the point is that although many of these characters (especially Guillermo) seem pretty fun, they are dangerous, and essentially bad, people. I loved Roy’s response to Phil’s (messy) death, he basically went completely crazy- in exactly the same way that he was mocking Nancy for when she was getting all over-protective of her family. He literally chucked Dean out of the office and went around making wild threats, and scaring Nancy quite a bit. (FYI, I really don’t think that Nancy was dressed appropriately for a police interview, unless she was hoping to flash her way out of the problem- but she’s collaborating with Till and, er, he’s kinda gay. Maybe it was to give the appearance that she’d coquetted her way out of the charges?)

I adored Nancy’s terrible Spanish, but she actually improved quite a lot over the season. Weeds and Dexter are both definitely making me want to learn Spanish, and the fact that (continental) American Spanish sounds much nicer than Spanish Spanish definitely gives it more appeal. I occasionally feel that I’m learning a little something from television, at least Weeds taught me how to say ‘dangerous’ en Español. Nancy is also a character with a great respect for baths, that’s why she demanded her own bathroom in the Ren Mar house. Man, I seriously miss baths. I’m honestly considering checking myself into a love motel just so I can enjoy a bath...

I’m still not sure what Nancy’s migraines were about, perhaps they were just a stress headache or a plot device to lead to the peyote. I suppose it could also be leading up to the idea that she’s simply going crazy, after all she does start hallucinating Guillermo’s “cousin” in the sea. On the other hand that delusion might simply have been caused by tiredness and stress, it’s well established by the show that a sleepy Nancy is a crazy Nancy. Or are migraines symptoms of pregnancy? I've never heard it, but I suppose it's plausible.

I was really happy to see the return of Sanjay and Clinique, and of course their giant Evil Baby. Sanjay is such a fun, and funny, character with some really great lines, for example “I do what I’m told by men with semi-automatic weapons, I’m a total bottom that way”. Sanjay is by no means the only imminently quotable character, I could easily get extremely quote-happy when discussing this show. When Phil was trying to go undercover in the maternity store Sanjay immediately realised that “that man hearts cock”, and it turns out that not only does he have an astute gay-dar, but a finely tuned cop-dar too: he quickly comes to the conclusion that Phil must be an undercover cop (even if he’s only joking his logic is excellent). I also loved the way that Sanjay had obviously grown fairly comfortable with the men and their guns, he prissily rolls his eyes at them instead of cowering in terror. It was nice to see Debra Christofferson (Lilah in Carnivale) appearing in Weeds too, and apparently she’s going to be in an upcoming episode of Bones too, although it was hard to recognise her without her beard! I seem to be noticing a few Carnivale actors around the place these days...

I did mention that I love Nancy, right? Well I loved her even more than usual when she was getting really fucking stressed out and seemed to be almost breaking down (but desperately attempting to hold it all together) when she was dobbing Guillermo in. It was also decidedly in character for her to be fussing about her family at this point, after all they’re the reason she started dealing drugs in the first place. I adored the scene of her and Esteban dancing, intercut with the DEA agents rounding up Guillermo and the others. Nancy just seemed so powerful. It was also revealed that Esteban had put a stop to the girls being smuggled through the hole, and so she could have (sort of) continued being a fairly benign drug dealer. However, I’m not sure that she could have because she’d know that Guillermo had already tried to do it, and that he might very well be carrying on doing it. Plus, I think she was freaking out about the guns too, and really everything! Nancy was acting all lovey-dovey and almost saccharine, but in reality she had just betrayed Esteban. Esteban did a similar-ish thing too, I positively adored the scene in which he seemingly wholeheartedly thanked and congratulated Captain Till and the other DEA agents for seizing his drugs.

Esteban is basically pretty dumb though. I didn’t want him to clock that Nancy had betrayed him because I love her, but he must have been really blinded by love to refuse to believe it for so long despite all the evidence. Eventually he can’t help but believe it, and demands her presence. I reckon that she could at least try to get out of the meeting since it’s Silas’ birthday, but she goes. The scene where she tries to order Silas a gift basket using her car phone was honestly heart breaking, she doesn’t know what to say to him (“Dear Silas, thanks for raising yourself these past eighteen years, you’ve done a great job”), and almost breaks down to the disembodied voice of the woman on the other end of the phone. She places all this importance on this birthday present (semi-seriously fretting that she won’t make it through the night), and although presents can be important symbols I think that Silas would have vastly preferred her presence.

The cliff-hanger of the episode involves her revealing to Esteban that she’s pregnant. I’m not really sure where the show’s going with this- I can believe that she attempted to get pregnant as insurance, since she did marry Peter the DEA agent as insurance not all that long ago. However, it seems awfully convenient. It is possible that it’s a lie of course. Also it doesn’t necessarily safeguard her safety, although it seems like a reasonably good ploy. I’m sure that Esteban would still want to punish her somehow though, even if he wouldn’t harm the (supposed) mother of his child especially while she's still pregnant with said child, her other children might be fair game. I think it was incredibly calculated and cold (therefore, yay) of her to claim that the unborn child feels like a boy. She’s clearly playing off the fact that he has a gaggle of daughters, and the assumption that he must yearn for a son and heir. If she’s right, however, then he kind of deserves to be played like that.

In conclusion I really enjoyed this season of Weeds, and I’m hardly surprised by that since I’ve rarely been disappointed by it. It’s hard to not miss things (especially characters) from the previous seasons, but I can cope with that since that lack represents a large part of what I like about the show. Instead of allowing scenarios and characters to stagnate and get dull, the show moves on quickly- and I’d rather it err on the zippy side. Characters have often danced in and out as needed (just like in The West Wing, and it’s no surprise to see Sven Jorgen-Eriksson in the crowd that Christopher Misiano is one of the Weeds directors), and the fact that Sanjay and even Quinn came back this season suggests that the other old characters are unlikely to be entirely forgotten. There should be change, and it’s good to see Shane and Silas growing up- even if this means a loss of the innocence that they (especially Shane) brought to the show. The show also got an opportunity to seriously tackle some issues which it had previously dealt with mostly comedically, or simply not at all, which was definitely wonderful. There were times when it didn’t necessarily work, and I think that the cliff-hanger could have been handled better. I’m very excited about what’s coming next though, and I hope that Guillermo and Nancy somehow get a chance to hash out their differences (probably just wishful thinking though), and that there’s some more exploration of the relationship between Nancy and Andy. And, of course, that the show continues to make me laugh loudly and delightedly, because that’s clearly the most important thing.