[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiMqzVeftww[/youtube]
What can I say? I’m enamored, enthralled, and entranced by Mary-Louise Parker. Hotness on a stick. Contrasting Nancy Botwin’s slouching grace with the pent-up anxieties of Type-A control freaks, Salon.com’s Heather Havrilesky gives us her typically offbeat slant on Weeds, Season 4. Her sharp intro to this week’s column reminds us that female writers continue to deliver some of the smartest and freshest humor found anywhere.
…therein lies the paradox of American upward mobility: The higher you climb, the thinner the air gets, until you can barely breathe. You become like Julianne Moore in “Safe,” suffering from a nervous breakdown when the delivery guys bring a black couch instead of the white one she ordered. You become the kind of hothouse flower who only feels comfortable in perfectly calibrated, beautiful spaces, the kind of person who’s never satisfied and can’t play nicely with others.
…the truth is I could watch 10 or 12 episodes of “Weeds” in a row, simply to follow Nancy around, slurping on her adult-size sippy cup, cocking her head and trying to figure out a good angle on whatever messed-up situation she’s in at the moment. She’s a hero to our inner teenagers, and we want her to get rich, damn it, rich as royalty! Let’s show the world that irresponsible, lackadaisical mothers are just as entitled to big piles of cash as the tightly wound, obsessive-compulsive workaholics who more typically acquire them.
Though I’d go a step further and suggest that slacking off is damn hard work in its own way, it’s still a killer premise: Uptight manic-obsessiveness makes you a jerkwad; suave chillin-mellowness makes you awesome. Deceptively droll, but there’s deeper meaning in the full context of Havrilesky’s piece. Two prevailing combative attitudes of American politics, culture, and style, reduced to their fundamental essence: Asshole vs. Badass. Who do we want to be?
