Weeds 7.10 ‘System Overhead’ review: refreshing old plots

“You’re a lawyer in training, right? So you’re good at arguing; manipulating people. But you’re probably 10 years—? Out of braces. And I’m pretty sure you haven’t tried to raise three sons… You have no clue what you’re getting into.” – Nancy

This season of Weeds has been one of the best so far. Last episode was a pretty well written piece where we received some answers and were left hanging with even more questions, as is the series’ style.

To put things bluntly and get right to it, Emma slept with Silas not to long ago and episode nine finished with all of the furniture being nailed to the ceiling and the Botwin’s being left out to dry. Immediately Silas and Andy deduce that Emma, the gothic, supposedly of age, friend-with-benefits to the eldest Botwin son was behind it all.

Silas’ acting and lines in this episode was somewhat stale but it didn’t matter because of the genius of Andy’s spot-on portrayal of the severely disappointed fifth wheel. While it was upsetting to see “The Brain” – the computer where all of the customer information was stored for the drug business – stolen; and cleverly, the phone numbers switched to Pouncy House’s line, my heart sank when Andy’s dreams were clearly crushed as “they stole the Copenhagen wheel.”

Most of the episode followed Andy more closely than usual as he confronts Emma about the stunt at (nail)gunpoint. Nancy even took a back seat even though she ends up finally pulling through and fixing some problems instead of just starting them… Even though we still love her mischief-causing ways.

Surprisingly, Doug was not as at all annoying this episode which is a nice change of pace from his role in the past six seasons. His banter was witty, and his comedic relief was clever. I am convinced though, that this all would have been moot were it not for Jolene Waite (Karen Strassman) who plays a somewhat uptight and prudish representative from the SEC.

Nancy and Emma have a pleasant face-off where Botwin tells the chick how it is and how it’s going to play out. As this is happening no doubt adrenaline is pumping through you because you just want her to slap the girl for everything. Emma’s character to me doesn’t seem “real.” The fact that Silas with his strong desire to be a successful businessman wouldn’t compromise it for anything and to believe that he would persue (much less sleep with) an irritating, sassy youngen’ with way too much mascara like Emma is a pretty big stretch.

What’s interesting about this season is that it feels like we’re back to the “old” Weeds again, in a very good way. The first couple seasons followed Nancy and Andy as problems happened to them and they were forced to improvise and come up with a solution. Though in the beginning Nancy was inexperienced at best and was often calling favors in to help her out of stick situations. Now it seems her and after this episode, Andy’s characters have evolved and matured to the point where they are quite capable of solving their own problems. It’s a nice refurbish on the way things used to be, in my opinion.

It will be interesting to see how the 11th episode will pan out with the tension with the SEC and the police hot on the trail of both the Botwin’s and Pouncy House’s businesses.