Let’s begin with the best moment of the episode: Nancy’s frank discussion with Lisa and Silas. It was a feminine version of last week’s brutal goat slaughter. All of the Lisa-haters must have loved watching her squirm like some inept soap opera schemer who’s been caught in the act. Ultimately it was Silas, not Nancy, who sabotaged the partnership. What is it with Silas? He always wants women more than they want him–Quinn, Megan, Tara, and now Lisa. Perhaps it’s the curse of the dopey hot guy.

Shane is having better luck with the ladies now that he’s the toast of junior high. I didn’t know that mysterious bullies could have groupies and be at the center of class rumors. Then again, it’s been a while since I was that age. He’d better not abandon his BFF, Isabelle, now that he’s the big man on campus. I was disappointed that Nancy’s heart-to-heart with her son was more of a lecture than a conversation. Shane’s old enough to give someone a prison-style beating, which means that he’s too old to hide under a blanket when things get awkward.

I’m still unhappy with Celia’s drastic personality change, but it looks like Ms. Hodes will reclaim her wit and sharp tongue very soon. Thank goodness, because I totally reached my limit after the second bloody sneeze. Was anyone else ready to give up on Celia for the rest of the season? Back in Agrestic she was a magnificent beyotch. In Ren Mar, she’s been a blubbering, toothless drug addict. I’m ready for Celia to get her spirit back. The same goes for our sad buddy, Doug. No one should compare themselves to Andrew Ridgeley; it’s too depressing.

After last week’s hook-up, most of you predicted that Esteban would be a danger to Nancy. Now it seems that Cesar regards “reckless” Nancy as the liability in the relationship. I’m officially adopting Cesar as the show’s new Heylia. He’s wise, funny, and capable of sizing up his colleagues’ weaknesses. To be fair, the couple’s quiet moment at Ren Mar was surprisingly sweet. I didn’t realize that the relationship had progressed beyond spankings and scratch marks. Is this as close to normal as Nancy can get?

My favorite lines of the night:

• “Cesar is Alfred.” Esteban, on his status as Tijuana’s Batman.
• “Rad’s gonna be 17…sooner than you think.” Nancy, laying the smack down on Lisa
• “I can be back later with Cheetos and malt balls if you want to get high and listen to my cry tape.” Doug

Next week–the gang has an intervention for Celia, Maria Mermex reconnects with Doug, and Nancy takes some “unconventional medicine.”

Source: TVSquad

In this episode Nancy and Esteban struggle to fit each other into their busy schedules. Why? of course for various contexts based on the theme and flow of this the very compelling story. In another twist, Nancy, a prime figure in the episode has discovered some very interesting perspectives of some people who matters so much in her life, in-fact it’s her own flesh and blood and she is worried and concerned. She has found out that Shane has some very new fantasies and Silas’s has already got a new girlfriend. As such Nancy is forced to have a talk with both of her sons.

As Nancy worries about her sons,Celia grows more desperate to keep her binge healthy. A twist in how Silas continues his relationship with Lisa is very interesting since they onset making decisions which include expansion of the offers available at her cheese shop. On the same perspective of radical decisions, Andy and Doug search for Doug’s new love in Mexico where they are confronted by El Coyote. Shane, a very all of character is becoming an attraction to the opposite sex at school.

The videos of Weeds S04E09 are available via Torrent and Videostic and You Tube.com The ‘Weeds’ plot is based and is centered on a widowed housewife from a savvy and rich California suburb. She grows to who becomes an upper-middle-class marijuana dealer to make ends meet. This is typical of the challenging life that requires many to eke so as to make ends meet. ‘Weeds’ is an example of people travailing through self help plans to make life worth living. Most of ‘weeds’ olive versions are from third party streamers and the video of this exciting series ‘weeds season 4 episodes 8’ is no exception. You catch and enjoy it. The video is interesting, clear and quite a hit on Youtube.com and other streaming channels online.

Source: Thaindian

Why did I find that hokey ending, with Esteban silently embracing Nancy on her porch with lampshade cut outs of little sailboats creating silhouettes, so sweet? We all know the relationship won’t end well but I couldn’t help it!

In this episode, “Little Boats,” Nancy and Esteban’s ship takes on water, Shane’s little dinghy runs aground, Silas and Lisa’s ship sails, Doug needs a tug boat out of depression, and we see a man overboard which in this case was a woman overboard and that woman is Celia!

Is anyone finding the Celia as a drug addict story line amusing? Please, let me know because not only is drug addiction not all that funny to watch, worse than that, it’s not sexy! Sloppy, dopey Celia is grating on my very last nerve. If we have to watch her pathetically throw herself at folks she should be pathetically throwing herself at Nancy who is by far the hottest thing on the show! Do drugs make you blind as well as stupid?

As of late Nancy and Esteban spend time standing each other up and not in a good way but in a canceling dates on each other way, sort of like ships passing in the night. Their schedules and commitments, OK, mostly his, keep them in a carousel of disappointment. His latest promise is a boat trip to a romantic lobster dinner. The clock ticks on when the date will be canceled.

As for Celia, she’s making maternity store customers pay only in cash so that she can pilfer it to support her new cocaine habit. She’s sneezing blood on any poor soul that happens to be around when her nose tickles including Isabelle. Yuck. It all begs the question, when is 14 year old Isabelle going to take charge of this mess? She’s the sanest person of the bunch and it’s no coincidence she’s a lesbian. Heh. Seriously, Isabelle at this point would be better off being an orphan.

Celia begs for drugs then sneezes blood on the hole-in-the-floor guard while he’s eating! (Yes, it’s as gross as you think.) Later when he’s in the bathroom she races down the tunnel like a lunatic, cash in hand and tissue shoved up each bloody nostril, with the delusion that a mound of drugs or a dealer waits on the other side? OK, that scene was actually funny! She’s caught and turned back by some dude working down there and he’s not amused.

Nancy’s called in and wants to pretend the incident never happened but the whole thing is recorded on close circuit video. Videotape and it-never-happened are antonyms in this modern world. Silly Nancy.

Cesar shows Esteban the tape of crazy Celia and warns Esteban that his swoon for Nancy is going to put him in jeopardy and that Nancy’s dangerous. Esteban affectionately calls her reckless. True, but reckless can get you killed just as quickly as dangerous.

Speaking of reckless, that’s Nancy’s parenting style. OK, maybe not reckless more like non-existent. But finally she’s forced to get her maternal on! Being dateless in the evenings and disenchanted with retail during the day she actually tunes into the home front for a change and is alarmed by what’s going down, or rather what’s popping up with both of her sons.

She figures out that Silas has a thing for hot aged Brie after she sees him moving his plants to the cheese shop. So, she pays a visit to Lisa and Silas at the store and reminds Lisa that her little Rad will grow up to be 17 sooner than Lisa knows and that Nancy thinks Rad’s awfully cute and may hit on him in a few years. This shock therapy seems to hit Lisa in her libido and we learn later that she’s cooling off the fling thing with Silas.

Nancy also learns from Andy, after he finds the book with the nude pictures in it, that Shane has been using her as part of his nighttime and early morning pleasure routine. In one of the best scenes of the show in recent memory Nancy, wine glass in hand, individually confronts each of her Oedipus inspired sons but gives both generally the same Freudian speech.

Shane spends the talk mortified with a blanket over his head. Nancy has no real moral authority to say much to either kid but still you know, it’s a sex talk with your mother about your mother being the focal point of your sex life. Ouch.

In good news for Shane, his smash in the face lunch tray trick has made him the psycho-bad-ass on campus and with that comes the perk of sexually active 14-year-old girls writing his name on the stomachs in worship. Maybe life is looking up.

As for Andy and Doug, Andy is being heralded as a hero in the Mexican border town and there’s a velvet portrait of him hanging in the local bar. His notoriety almost got him revenge killed when the coyote he shot reappeared to shoot him back. Luckily, someone threw a bottle at the guy’s head.

While Andy’s reputation soars Doug is depressed at not finding his MerMex and for being a big loser and merely Andy’s sidekick. The bartender of the Mexican bar is going to try to find Doug’s Maria but he’s doing it for El Andy not for Doug.

The episode concludes with Nancy doing the mundane (laundry) having had a tough week and then being sweetly surprised by Esteban seated on the back porch, bodyguards in tow, bringing with him his little boats spinning around. I was shocked I cared.

So where’s this going with Esteban? Are they the new Mr. and Mrs. Drug King and Queen Pin? Will Celia’s intervention bring positive results? Will Silas’s main cheese stick around for his 18th birthday?

This week’s episode “Little Boats” had less to do with the sappy two minute ending that saw Nancy cuddle up to her new man as an illumination machine danced on the walls and everything to do with Oedipus. For those who do not know Freud’s work or have not read any of the trilogy then you would not have enjoyed all of the subtle allusions to them in this episode. It was genius, subtle hilarity overlaid with obvious di*% and fart jokes credited to the No. 1 coyote in the land, El Andy.

El Andy’s trip through Mexico has won him status with those most treasured Spanish citizens: Pancho Villa, Zapata, Julio Caesar Chavez and now there is El Andy. The former ‘transportation engineer,’ ‘El Coyote,’ lost his followers due to beating and raping them, but now El Doug and El Andy have a loyal following and they cannot be stopped. –That is unless the Mermex isn’t found soon, Doug is getting depressed and Nealon’s value is getting soggy.

Back to Oedipus… Shane has been ‘indulging’ in adult activities for some time now at the expense of his mother’s 1980s nude body, but once again it was El Andy to the rescue to stop his nephew from going overboard with the pleasure.

The scene where Nancy addressed both of her male children about their complexes was hilarious. The split-screen and similar looking shots made it look like she was talking to the two sons individually, but when Silas finally got up to reveal that he was sitting adjacent to Shane made the whole scene jump back into real time and come together a cohesive and brilliantly written segment.

Celia on the other hand is a coke whore. Plain and simple, there is nothing brilliant or really entertaining about her other than her general “bats**t” insanity and the occasional misplaced collagen injection, but her storyline with a soccer-loving dealer and a lesbian daughter is getting tedious and time spent on this plot is best kept to a minimum. But there is a chance that they are bringing back Mr. Dean Hodes, and he was always a happy addition to the story when he, Doug and Andy got together, so perhaps the next few weeks will reopen that chapter in this the latest installment of the weird world of Weeds.

I expected something more at this point in the season, but it looks like things are set up for a better episode next week. Don’t give up, Weeds fans!

Shane gave the incest fantasies a break this week and returned to his former awesomeness. Since he views school as a prison, it made sense to behave like an inmate on his first day inside. I’m much more comfortable with this version of Shane–mouthing off to his Mom, commiserating with Isabelle, demonstrating his intellectual superiority, etc. Last week’s flea-scratching was too much for me, and I’m glad that the writers gave us a week off. Isabelle and Shane have never had a bad scene together, and I’m glad that they’ve finally reunited in Ren Mar. Don’t mess with the classics.

Although Elizabeth Perkins did an admirable job with what she was given, I didn’t find her soccer-shoe stupor all that funny. It’s like watching someone get drunk when you’re sober; it does nothing for you, and it’s a little annoying. Celia hasn’t fit into the Ren Mar world as well as the other Agrestic characters have. Her only good scenes this season have been with Till, Nancy, and Doug. I’d rather see her interact with the core group than catch more glimpses of her retail career. The new Ren Mar and Tijuana characters, on the other hand, are delightful. Cesar has had some funny moments lately, and I was a bit sad to say goodbye to Davenport.

Lisa’s plan to store Silas’ pot at Cheese Gotta Have It destroyed any good will that I had for her. What a terrible idea! On the surface it’s no worse than the notion of a tunnel between a Tijuana garage and a San Ysidro Maternity World, but we’re talking about varying levels of intelligence here. One venture involves the mayor of Tijuana, and the other involves a woman who named her son Rad and smokes the Cheez Whiz of marijuana. I wonder which group will be more successful?

What did you think of El Andy and Doug’s first border crossing? It was funny in the usual Doug-and-Andy way, but I wish more time had been given to Nancy and Esteban’s growing relationship. I keep reading that Esteban is meant to be more of a serious love interest, not a fling. Nancy’s candor with Esteban during lunch was the first indication that the mayor is more than just a hot disciplinarian. There’s always a chance that this is simply another aspect of her addiction to danger, though. In a refreshing moment of self-awareness, she admitted that she hates it when things are calm. Perhaps she can only handle relationships that are filled with drama. If that’s the case, then a goat-killing drug kingpin is a perfect match for her. Still, I have to believe that the scratch marks on her back are a bad sign for the future.

My favorite lines of the night:

• “You’re allowing criminals into our business!” –Ignacio, to Celia
• “Sometimes you eat the bear; sometimes the bear eats you.” Cesar, in a shout-out to season one’s “You Can’t Miss the Bear.”
• “If only life were a Judd Apatow movie where geeks ruled the world. But it’s not, so let’s just suck it up.” –Isabelle

Next week–Nancy deals with Silas’ MILF, Celia goes nuts (more so), and the coyote tracks down El Andy.

Between playing contractor and, let’s face it, parent, Shane now added student to the list. It was his first day at a new school, and sensing his mother’s inherent hypocrisy, he had to inquire why he was being forced to go while his brother, Silas, was off at the cheese shop all day. ”Give it a chance,” Nancy pleaded. ”A chance for what, more emotional scarring?” Shane asked. Nancy tried to explain: ”You’re our one shot at legitimacy,” to which he cracked, ”No, I’m not. I’m very corrupt. I’m a contractor!” Needless to say, no amount of kiddie persuasion was going to budge Nancy from this one lapse into responsibility. After all, she reasoned, he was the only one with a shot at becoming a doctor, lawyer, or business executive.

Cesar foiled her kid-ferrying plans by showing up at the door, and Shane, thinking he was a subcontractor, went into another of his minor tizzies. Cesar made little effort to correct the miscommunication, saying only, ”He would like to see you.” (”He,” meaning Esteban. ”You,” meaning Nancy.) And so the three of them piled into a limo and drove off to school.

”Great,” said Shane as the car pulled into the school parking lot. ”Getting dropped off in a limo with Mexican plates. So much for flying under the radar.” Nancy attributed his incessant whining to ”first-day jitters.” Fortunately, Cesar was on hand to offer some manly advice: ”Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you.” Would Shane end up the bully or the victim? He didn’t care to find out. ”Can’t I do drug things with you guys?” he asked, ever the little entrepreneur. Cesar could do nothing but glare, and then told Nancy, ”He’s going to get his ass kicked.” Her response? ”He’s used to it.”

Meanwhile, at a local motel Isabelle was trying to kick her mom’s ass into gear. Celia, looped on pills and looking more and more like a good candidate for A&E’s Intervention, could barely get out of bed. When awakened out of her stupor, she lunged at Isabelle and grabbed her daughter’s neck. ”Jail reflex,” she downplayed. Isabelle let it go, hoping Celia could get out of her clothes from the night before, get into the shower, and get on the road to school, where it was also Isabelle’s first day. ”Isn’t there a bus or something?” Celia mumbled. ”Maybe I’ll walk,” Isabelle responded.

“I Am the Table” was full of early Weeds references and clever quirks completely legitimizing season four’s renovation. All that was missing was a high tech pot house with a crucifix as a light fixture, but it looks like the cheese house is the new pot house and Silas is going into business with his new ‘friend.’

Speaking of new ‘friends,’ Nancy and Esteban finally let out their beasts (literally in the case of the white lion) and scratched the crap out of each other in a wild and primal love making scene. Silas got the short end of the stick with no sex and just cheese whiz pot this week, but people are still talking about last week’s ‘oral presentation’ so he’s not that far behind. And who can forget the new Moses? Andy Botwin is the craziest and most wonderful Jewish coyote ever to illegally — or legally, since he technically has the blessing of the border patrol — cross the Mexican border.

Actor Justin Kirk has got Andy down to a science. He has evolved from a pot-smoking AWOL enlistee to a manna provider to the less fortunate ‘backboners’ of the USA. Doug, aka Kevin Nealon and he have this incredible chemistry that allows them to be completely separate from the rest of the story, but still carry enough weight to be one of the main attractions of the show.

Other, lesser storylines, such as Celia and her new uppers, are the slackers of the week. Watching her nap on a prosthetic belly and then rob the maternity shop is not of the same caliber as Andy moving his immigrants to some place less “rapey.” Shane and Isabelle, a normally obnoxious and forgettable twosome, even rank higher than Celia this week, because referencing Judd Apatow as an inspiration to loser kids everywhere was enough to make me giggle, but then a solid lunch tray ass-kicking was the cherry on the middle school cake.

Overall it was a successful episode in that it provided enough material to take to the very liberal lunchroom cooler and chat about. There was intrigue, near murder, some wild sex and of course, weed. The show has hit the middle of the season stride and hopefully the writers will keep up the momentum and bring the show through to its year four finale and prove itself worthy of another couple of weeds-filled years.

She faces off tough drug dealers, Latin American drug lords, the police and her pesky neighbors. But this season she showing more of her sexuality, including a steamy sex scene with Demián Bichir, known as Mexico’s George Clooney.

“My girlfriend, she’s a great fan of Weeds,” Bichir told E! Entertainment. “When she heard that I had this audition for that, she told me, ‘You know what? This is it. This is one of the greatest shows ever!’” Bichir played the mayor of Tijuana, who becomes involved with Botwin. “They told me that these characters might get involved with each other and get some relationship going on there,” the 45-year-old Bichir says. “Then when I watched the past seasons, I realized how open it was.”

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As for the Clooney comparisons. “You know,” Bichir says, “it’s fine with me, because I think George Clooney is one of the greatest actors. I guess it’s better than being called the Homer Simpson of Mexico.”

Critics may never call Parker classically beautiful, but she possesses a worldly endearing sexuality, a distinctive voice and delicate features. As Nancy Botwin on the show, Parker struggles with the sudden death of her husband and agonizes over how she’ll support and raise two young boys on her own. Without any discernible career skills, the widow Botwin finds good paying work as the local pot dealer in the pristine, new LA suburb known as Agrestic.

There’s definitely a double meaning when this girl puts on her Mary Janes, according to the show’s Web site. For her efforts on the series, she’s already snared a Golden Globe. “I think she enjoys the adrenaline of it, and I think she’s grown to enjoy it,” Parker says of her character’s descent into drug dealing. “I don’t think she necessarily knew that about herself but I don’t think she’s the most rational person, you know? I think she is a bit reckless, and I think she isn’t someone who thinks ahead.”

The show was never meant to be a flat-out comedy, and if you look at the pilot, that isn’t really what it is. “I don’t know how to approach anything as a straight-out comedy or a straight-out drama. It’s just life as life, and sometimes it tips one way darker than the other. I think that it does have the potential to go pretty dark. I think, actually, within that darkness is where a lot of great comedy is born of that,” she says

JUSTIN KIRK plays creepy Andy Botwin on ” Weeds” and has also starred in “Angels in America.” “Weeds” airs Mondays on Showtime — there are just four episodes left this season. Also he is looking for work, if you are hiring.

You wrapped shooting in July. So what the heck are you doing?

Well, I trucked out to New York for a while, went up to Cape Cod and saw a friend’s play, who was one of the writers on “Weeds.” You know — trying to get a job. Why is that so funny?

Um, it’s true, right?

The great thing about our gig is the season is extremely short. It’s hard to call nine months a hiatus.

You should be able to cram, like, five movies in that.

I told my agent last year I wanted eight, but I wouldn’t feel like a failure if we only got five. We did three.

Was all that work worth it?

It’s always worth it. I live on the soundstage. If I’m not there I don’t know who I am. That may not look that good in print. Please write that he said it in a theatrically hilarious voice. Honestly, I do like to work: I’m not married, I don’t have any kids.

I understand.

My current obsession is “Match Game.” When I went to the East Coast for a little over a week, I cleared my TiVo of everything except “Match Game.” So the first day I came back I had a marathon of 10 in a row.

So it’s not just all like Proust over there.

Yeah, sure, there’s plenty of Proust over here. Is that a snack?

What was the most recent nice thing you’ve actually done?

Well, I’m always really nice, like, I like talking to people who want to come up and talk about the show — um, about me really! I don’t understand how you couldn’t want someone to come up to you — like, “I don’t know you and I dig you!”

I was tested recently. I was flying back from New York, I had not slept much the night before, I was crashed out and the seat next to me was empty. And I felt a presence, and I thought it was the stewardess or something. This woman was next to my seat saying, “Are you Andy from ‘Weeds’?” I was like, ‘Do you want to come up when I’m up and about?’ Then I chatted with her and her boyfriend in baggage claim.

What are you most looking forward to this week?

I had a meeting last week about a job I would like. So that’d be nice if that happens! What may prove to be one of the best parts of the legacy of “Weeds” in my life, is I’ve gotten to meet a couple of my rock heroes. I found out that Bob Mould, from Hüsker Dü, is a “Weeds” fan, so I e-mailed him and went to his show and gave him Season 3. That was bizarre and cool. The most exciting thing I did was I hosted “Jonesy’s Jukebox,” on Indie 103.1 FM, because the Pistols were on tour. And I had the guys on from Redd Kross, another band I was a huge fan of. So Steve McDonald, I got a hold of him, and he brought his wife, Anna Waronker — and I’m having drinks with Steve tonight! So that’s pretty cool. Meeting my childhood rock heroes. Up next, Paul Stanley! Did you see the Gene Simmons sex tape?

NO!

It was definitely linked on Gawker. It was such a bizarre experience for my group of friends. It was like our Zapruder tape. We were e-mailing all night, all over the country. Some found it upsetting and depressing! I don’t look at things like that, in that manner. I was completely enthralled.

He’s magical.

Yeah. Though I don’t need Gene Simmons’ family jewels. He was a major figure in my youth. But like many reality shows I have a hard time. I think the reality-show format is brilliant, has endless possibilities. It’s documentary! But unfortunately it’s rarely executed well. So it becomes just a scripted show, but without actors. So “Match Game,” Gene Simmons’ sex tape, “Jonesy’s Jukebox,” that’s my life.

Other scholars might go back to Genesis - Adam and Eve in that ripe, green pleasure-palace, hungry enough to eat forbidden apples. And then there’s slightly more recent history: Allen Ginsberg extolled the virtues of marijuana in pulsing, desperate verse, and Leonard Michaels wrote short stories about Jews on New York City’s Lower East Side getting stoned with sweet-smiling shiksas and then devouring leftover kugel sent over by their own mothers.

So perhaps it should come as no surprise that Showtime’s series “Weeds,” a quasi-sitcom about an attractive, widowed suburbanite who sells marijuana in order to support her family and her addiction to iced lattes, is filled with Jews, half-Jews and attractive women married - or once married - to Jews.

Over its first three seasons, “Weeds,” more than any other show, has created Jewish characters that defy stereotype. Andy Botwin, the brother-in-law/partner-in-pot-dealing of our protagonist, Nancy, is a blue-eyed, fair-haired Jewish man with toned triceps and a fierce slacker wit. His only talent is his ability to create delightfully unkosher gourmet meals.

Andy’s brother - Nancy’s deceased husband, Judah, who we see in dream sequences and in home movies - is played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the muscle-bound heartthrob who captured the loins of Katherine Heigl and plenty of American women in his role as Denny Duquette on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.” Then there’s Dean Hodes, a Jewish lawyer more interested in getting stoned than in making money. As we learn in one episode, he is anatomically very well endowed.

In its first three seasons, “Weeds” did well at mining Jewish issues for humor, while keeping the humor aimed away from the Jews themselves. Last season, in one of television’s greatest religious-zealot/drug-dealer interactions, a Christian schoolteacher offers condolences on the death of Nancy’s husband. Nancy, misunderstanding her use of the word “passing,” replies, “Yeah, most people thought he was Italian.”

Best of all was a subplot in which Andy, after drunkenly signing up for the military, is forced to attend yeshiva in order to avoid a trip to Iraq. While at yeshiva, he falls for Yael, a young Israeli who works in the admissions office, and who finds nothing in the Talmud to bar her from indulging in a sex act illegal in many states for many years.

These characters are exciting because they both play on and contradict our expectations about Jewish types. They are not old yiddlers munching gefilte fish, or nebbished-out neurotic nerds (like Larry David), or money-hungry misanthropes (like Larry David). Instead, the Jews on “Weeds” come from a contemporary Jewish America in which some Jews have blue eyes, some yeshiva employees are into S&M and some Semitic men have large penises.

All of which is why it is so disappointing that the show’s fourth season, which premiered in early June, has introduced a totally uninteresting Jewish character who lives up to every negative stereotype there is about Jews.

The first episode of the new season begins with Nancy and her brood on the run. She has recently committed arson and is in danger of exposure as a drug dealer. In a panic, she takes her clan to hide out at “Bubbe’s house.” Bubbe is Judah and Andy’s grandmother. Nancy’s relationship with Judah’s family, we learn, has always been fraught; the family members boycotted her wedding, and they worry that her children look like gentiles.

On arrival, Nancy is greeted by a disturbing sight: Bubbe is unconscious and hooked to a feeding tube. Caring for Bubbe is Judah’s father, Lenny (played by Albert Brooks), a degenerate gambler who refers to Nancy as “Not-Francie” - Francie being the Jewish ophthalmologist whom Judah was supposed to have married. Lenny greets his prodigal outlaw in-laws coldly, until Nancy lets it slip that they’re on the run. “Well that, at least,” Lenny explains, “I can wrap my head around.”

Call me a blasphemer, but I don’t think Brooks has done anything right since his 1985 film “Lost in America,” and his “Weeds” cameo only offers more proof. His Lenny seems to fit the well-worn mold of a goy-hating, cash-worshipping Jewish father. He refers to his grandson Silas as Klaus, and blames the kid’s eczema on Nancy’s watering down of the gene pool. He remarks on the inappropriateness of Nancy arriving at his home smelling of gasoline (remember, she is an arsonist) and eating German food (picked up at a highway rest stop, at the suggestion of Andy).

These jokes are cheap and, more offensively, not funny. At the episode’s end, Lenny allows the family to stay on - not out of generosity, but from what it seems is apparently another stereotypical Jewish trait: the duty to take on other people’s burdens, then make them feel guilty about it. In the next episode, he actually requests financial compensation.

What irks me about Lenny is not that he is a creep and a jerk - the world is filled with Jewish creeps and jerks, and it would be unfair to ask that all Jewish characters have redeeming qualities - but that his creepiness and his jerkiness seem directly tied to his Jewishness. (When Lenny plays Bubbe’s concentration camp numbers in the lottery, it’s hard not to see it as reiterating the stereotype that Jews exploit their tragedies for financial gain.)

No, I’m not a representative of the Anti-Defamation League. I care more that this otherwise excellent show - which seemed in its first few seasons able to mine Jewishness for legitimately funny and original material - has descended into such cliché. Still, there is hope. As of the fourth episode, Lenny’s character has been eased out of “Weeds.” Maybe the show’s writers were also sick of him.

Source: Haaretz