7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
After serving 3 years in the joint, the onetime suburban soccer mom is making a fresh start in New York City and going back to doing what she does best - selling pot. But when some old friends return, they could send everything up in flames.
Starring: Mary-Louise Parker, Alexander Gould, Justin Kirk, Kevin Nealon, Hunter ParrishCrime | 100% |
Dark humor | 72% |
Comedy | 54% |
Drama | 10% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
That famous ad with the egg and the portentous narrator declaiming, “This is your brain. . .This is your brain on drugs” seemed to suggest that even dabbling with illicit substances would wreak havoc with the user’s cerebral cortex and higher intellectual functions, leaving things. . .well, scrambled. That certainly hasn’t been the case with the Botwin family, whose seven year trek through the wild and wacky world of marijuana dealing has been documented in Weeds, one of Showtime’s signature series. While the Botwins frequently (in fact, usually) do incredibly stupid things, they almost always do them with clever little bons mots at the veritable tips of their tongues, essaying a sort of hyper-verbal reality that is distinctly at odds with most people’s experiences with ultra-laid back stoners who can more often than not barely utter a word in their catatonic buzzed trance states. Weeds has been a really fun series for almost all of its run, despite its penchant for family dysfunction and frequent melodrama wrapped up in a sort of cheeky wry humor that offers people talking and acting like very few real folks, stoned out of their minds or otherwise, ever do. Weeds offers a sort of heightened reality that may not exactly accurately reflect the world of the stoner, or perhaps more relevantly the dealer, but which in its own weird little way, is frequently sardonically amusing when taken with a large dose of salt and/or THC. Highlighted by a winning performance by Mary Louise Parker as matriarch and über-dealer Nancy Botwin, Weeds doesn’t exactly break any new ground in its seventh season, but it continues to ply the waters of a family in disarray, focusing for the most part on the up and down roller coaster ride between Nancy and her older son Silas (Hunter Parrish). Silas’ increasing quasi-Oedipus complex has him both emulating and competing with his mother, leading to the season’s climactic build up and yet another cliffhanger ending. It may be same old, same old for longtime Weeds fans, but the fact remains that the series is almost inerrantly good natured and manages to overcome some of its seemingly built in fault lines.
Weeds Season Seven is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and Showtime with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. In terms of niche cable television series, Weeds may never quite climb to the top of the heap, but it offers a consistently sharp and appealing image that looks especially nice in this New York City set season. The series tends to be just a tad soft in its interior, dimly lit, sequences, where shadow detail becomes somewhat murky, but a lot of the exterior sequences in this season pop quite nicely. Fine detail is quite appealing in the series' ubiquitous close-ups and the image is generally very sharp and precise looking.
As I mentioned in my review of Weeds: Season Six, few would think of a series like Weeds as needing a DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 (yes, 7.1) mix, but that's what's here, needed or not. The 7.1 mix may in fact be a bit of overkill, especially considering the series' rather small scale sonic ambitions, ones which play out typically in smaller dialogue moments that typically feature just two or three characters at a time. The soundtrack really comes alive, and in fact nicely utilizes the surrounds, in some ambient environmental effects as well as the series' continued use of well chosen source cues. Fidelity is expectedly excellent, with some surprising dynamic range (get ready for the last sound effect of the season, which is startling, to say the least).
Weeds: Season Seven is actually a good deal better than it has any right to be. The series has traveled down this road several times before, and there's really nothing much new here, and yet the series still manages to be fun and frequently very entertaining. The cast is a fine tuned machine at this point in the series, which perfectly pitched performances, and the writing still offers the same wry sensibility that made the series a hit seven years ago. With the usual good array of supplements, and excellent video and audio, Weeds: Season Seven is Recommended.
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