overnights

Weeds: Like Romeo and Juliet

Weeds

Ducks and Tigers
Season 5 Episode 11

Last night’s Weeds was straight out of Shakespeare, even more so than usual. And it was all about … love. Andy’s in love; Nancy’s in love; Silas is falling in love; Celia is embarking on some sort of revenge-driven, experimental affair; and Doug and Dean are … not in love love, but kinda, sorta together in their own increasingly idiotic way.

“The newlyweds are boring,” Silas declares while the new family is playing bocce ball on the lawn. Nancy, beating her son’s halfhearted attempts, is affectionately congratulated by Esteban, before both of them say, “thank you for marrying me.” Ew. The newlywed thing is annoying, at least in the first half of the episode, in which a whole bunch of appalling behavior on Esteban’s part goes unremarked on by Nancy. First: The stepsister, Adelita, is in town. But Esteban forgot to tell them his daughter was coming. (When did he tell them she existed?) Also, he forgot to tell his daughter he was married. We’re pretty sure the old Nancy would’ve said something, but the new one fails to question Esteban when his smoking-hot teenage daughter — she’s the one Silas is falling in love with — suddenly appears, only speaking up when she finds Lupita feeding the baby formula, on Esteban’s orders: “I’m breastfeeding, you know that,” she says.

Breastfeeding is for peasants, says Esteban. And it’ll transfer toxins from Nancy’s hard-living body to baby Stevie Ray, says Adelita. Still, Nancy’s temper stays repressed. She makes a joke — “baby, boobie” — and snuggles into Esteban’s arms as they swing in the love seat on the back patio. Ew.

Back at the house, Uncle Andy is pulling all the stops to woo Dr. Alanis Morissette, and it’s working. And it’s way less annoying than the newlyweds. He has her on the couch, doing that thing he does so well, and says he’s cut his ties to Nancy. They are interrupted by a barrage of tomatoes on the window — the doctor’s anti-abortion stalker has followed them. “If you love something, throw a tomato at it,” jokes Andy before disappearing again under her skirt. “If you don’t climax, the terrorists win.” We’d say “Ew,” but we love everything Uncle Andy does.

Meanwhile, Celia has an admirer: the cheesy blonde she works for at I’m Pretty Cosmetics. So Celia takes Isabelle for a facial, pretending to be a new sweet Mommy, but hits her up for advice on being “lesbianic.” This causes Isabelle — whom we haven’t seen nearly enough of this season — to declare war on her mom. “You idiots want revenge on Mom, right?” she says to Doug and Dean, who are snoring on a couch, Dean with a bizarre drawing on his face. “Let’s do this right.” And we know she will.

There is one chink in the newlywed armor, sure to lead to domestic unrest: Nancy and Guillermo are in cahoots. Nancy wants Pilar dead and wants Guillermo, who’s still in jail, to arrange it. Guillermo’s counter: Get his case transferred to Mexico, where he can do a David Blaine and slide under doors, and he’ll help her out. So Nancy demands that Cesar blackmail the judge — but not kill him.

Everything screeches to a halt at episode’s end when Esteban is arrested by an army of Mexican police for tax evasion. Somewhere in this little chain of blackmail — from Pilar to Cesar to Nancy to Guillermo — something went wrong. Nancy watches her new, criminal husband being hauled away. Not exactly an ending Shakespeare would approve of, but the season isn’t over yet.

Weeds: Like Romeo and Juliet