What's the Buzz?
In its second year, Weeds grows on you
If I ever hear that anyone in the sunny suburb of Agrestic is hiding a stranger in the basement, I'm done with
Weeds (Mondays at 10 pm/ET on Showtime).
But somehow I doubt that will happen. While the higher-profile Desperate Housewives stumbled creatively, its thematic sibling on pay cable has become a sharper, darker, funnier satire in its sophomore go-round.
Weeds' greatest asset remains Mary-Louise Parker as the alluringly dazed-and-confused widow Nancy Botwin, who provides for her kids by distributing marijuana to seemingly upstanding townsfolk (including Kevin Nealon as a carefree CPA and city councilman) and to various community-college students.
As last season ended, Nancy had just discovered that she's sleeping with the enemy: a likable single dad (Martin Donovan) who's also a DEA agent. The twists in this relationship, and how it affects her illicit trade, provide many terrific surprises in the weeks ahead.
Nancy's shocked panic evolves into something more calculated, while her business savvy improves as well. On the home front, though, she's still a mess, contending with a debauched brother-in-law (the hilarious Justin Kirk) who's hardly a role model for her two hormonally overstimulated adolescent sons.
As you might expect, Weeds has a natural tendency to overdo the drug and sex jokes while smugly moralizing about PTA hypocrisy and political apathy. But overall, there's enough to enjoy in Weeds that you could get a contact high just by tuning in.
A Flat Note
When the music stops, the movie dies. Lifetime's by-the-numbers biopic The Fantasia Barrino Story: Life Is Not a Fairy Tale (Saturday, 9 pm/ET) provides a cautionary story for any reality-show winner wishing to star in your life story, however uplifting, when your gift simply isn't for acting. Fantasia's inner fire, expressed effortlessly in song, is missing in this awkward self-impersonation. The film is so full of up-from-adversity clichés that if Simon Cowell were judging, he'd probably call it karaoke.
Survival Story
As each fall approaches, so do the 9/11 remembrances. Though time has passed, these eyewitness accounts of heroism, loss and survival — as in the History Channel's The Miracle of Stairway B (Monday, Aug. 14 at 8 pm/ET) — have lost none of their power. This terse oral history describes the ordeal of 14 people (mostly firefighters, plus an office worker with a bad leg) trapped under tons of debris in the North Tower of the World Trade Center as it collapsed on top of them. "I saw my funeral," says a firefighter. Their rescue was a rare beacon of hope on a dreadful day.
