Note: This post contains spoilers for Seasons 4 and 5. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

If TV is fantasy, what if the vision offered weren’t one of escape, but self-destruction?

I love Weeds. A while back, I wrote on how I felt it was part of a trend on modern TV that has seen shows trade stock narratives and characters for much more ambiguous, unsettling ones (Sopranos, The Wire, Lost etc.) . I used my standard argument – that in the face of the postmodern collapse of fixed values, the only option left was to wallow in the non-judgemental ambiguity of it all and let the viewers pick their poison – an argument I’m now sick of, largely because I think it’s a simplistic cop-out response to, well, anything.

But having watched the first couple of shows from this season, I’ve been thinking about the Botwins again, specifically in how unlikeable Nancy has become (hello smoking, drinking, sushi-eating pregnant woman!) and also how she so soundly unsettles the relationship between the viewer and the subject on TV. To wit, how do you get behind someone who’s such an asshole and is so seemingly bent on self-destruction?

One might say that Nancy is an anti-hero/ine – but I think that misses what makes her so intriguing. A more interesting take is the idea that, after a spate of mainstream critiques of normalcy and suburbia, sympathising with the anti-hero/heroine doesn’t simply offer a fantasy of escape from the mundane and homogeneous maze we live in now. Instead, we get a fantasy of self-destruction and self-negation – the catharsis here is not temporarily letting your hair down; rather, it’s jumping off a cliff and throwing the whole pointless mess away.

Regular, flawed people (like Nancy) are just like us and lead boring unfulfilling lives until they/you shake them up, and when they/you do, they/you’ll be in drug deals (and get hurt), be in car chases and drive-bys (and get hurt), have romances (and get hurt) and, just before you die, you get to have sex with Mary-Louise Parker (and then get hurt). Woah. I have no idea how that last one got in there.

But my point is that instead of just focusing on a hero (whom we empathise with) or an anti-hero (through whom we live out the fantasies of things we can’t actually do), Weeds makes it impossible to separate the two sides, forcing us as viewers to empathise with someone we ultimately don’t like. And what’s more ‘postmodern’ or whatever than hating the things inside yourself that you have no control over? What could be more emblematic of contemporary North America than doing things you know are wrong (smoking, drinking heavily, buying sweathshop goods, driving ’cause it’s easier) but then doing them anyway because they’re easier and feel better? What does Zizek always say about late capitalism? It beckons us to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.

Which is why, despite the cries of of “Weeds sucks now”, I still love the show.

I think the other fascinating thing about Weeds is what it does with American narratives of race. But I’m trying to keep the blog tight and easier to read, so I’ll put that in a separate post later.