Weeds

It remains one of the best.

Even as the show deals with serious issues--immigration, euthanasia--Weeds feels lighter and funnier in the new season.

Season four curiously picks up exactly where last season left off, providing little explanation for Shane's sudden growth spurt and the body mass indexes of several other characters, and the hurried pace of the season premiere, "Mother Thinks the Birds Are After Her," is a little disorienting, but the show finds its footing by the next episode.

Ditching the tired suburban backdrop might prove to be just the creative shake-up Weeds needs after an overly wacked-out season 3. [20 June 2008, p.60]

The wonderful Weeds is back for its fourth season at 10 p.m. Monday, as our deliriously delightful dope dealers decamp to a beach town by the Mexican border. As illicit activities go, they prove definitively that, on Showtime at least, a little wacky tobbacky is way more fun than the things they do in Diary that can't be described here.

Celia is facing some judgment of her own this season. Her not-entirely separate saga makes up the other half of Weeds‘ new start, such that the show is cleaved down its center, cutting awkwardly back and forth between Celia now imprisoned and Nancy fancy-free.

I think I comprise a third type--a wary Weeds fan who's happy it's back but hardly ecstatic.

Though it’s not a bad idea to shake up a show heading into its fourth year, the first few episodes of the new season feel joyless and off.