TV Tonight: Weeds

Weeds is starting its fourth season tonight by burning the show's whole premise to the ground. This is definitely not the same show where latte-sipping Nancy Botwin got into small-time drug slinging to hold on to her lifestyle after her husband's death. All of that is gone now: the luxury, the lattes, and even the relatively innocent Nancy who just happened to get caught up in something way over her head.

I know many of you are just catching up on earlier seasons, so I'll save any discussion of the specifics of season four — I've seen the first two episodes — till after the jump. If you're ready for a few details on the new season, just read more.

When the season starts, Nancy and the rest of the Botwin clan are headed for the border, where Judah and Andy's father lives and where Nancy realizes she can probably make some money by working in cahoots with Guillermo, the drug trafficker and recipient of Nancy's "brick dance" in season three. Meanwhile, back in the burning-to-the-ground Agrestic, Celia finds herself in jail taking all the heat for Nancy's growhouse — with no help from Doug or Dean, naturally.

Season four has a few major absences. Cosmetically, the "Little Boxes" theme song is gone after the first episode, as are the opening credits (which, like Agrestic itself, go up in smoke in the premiere). Harder to take is the loss of Conrad and Heylia, who were such an important part of the show's tone in the first couple of seasons. Without them, the whole show feels darker and gloomier. In fact, the feel of the "brick dance" episode is a good reference overall: Nancy's no longer an innocent but a wiling partner in crime who keeps digging a deeper and deeper pit for herself and her family.

I admire the show's producers for trying to literally burn everything down and start fresh for the fourth season, but after the first two episodes, I'm not sure how successful the experiment will be. Albert Brooks is a welcome addition as Nancy's surly father-in-law, but the material dealing with his aging mother mostly falls flat. Still, Weeds does a cliffhanger better than any other show on television, and the final two minutes of the second episode — the final episode Showtime sent me — brought back some of the magic. I'm definitely not ready to give up on Nancy Botwin yet.

Weeds starts at 10 p.m. EDT and PDT tonight. Here's a little taste of the season:

Photo courtesy of Showtime