Weeds: Season 8

Whenever a show runs for enough seasons - six? seven? - and has passed its prime in the process, the importance of the entire final season almost pales in comparison to the importance of the final episode alone. Most long-running shows have seen their share of peaks and valleys, but ultimately, it's those final thirty or sixty minutes that need to leave an audience with a sense of closure and finality. I don't remember every detail of the final season of Entourage, for example, but I recall on a nearly itemized basis just how stupid its finale was. And since the whole final season - well, the whole show, even, was pretty stupid, that says a lot. In another vein, Six Feet Under was a decent show, but one of the only scenes that has stayed with me until now, just a few months after seeing the whole thing, is the series-ending montage. Finales can elevate or bury entire final seasons. The ending to Big Love felt incredibly lame, and the show suffers in hindsight because of it; 30 Rock went out as strong as it ever was, and as such, the show feels all the more solid in hindsight.

All of this is to say that, even though the first eleven episodes of Season 8 of Weeds were kind of a meandering mess - much like so many other seasons of the show - none of that mattered once the finale began; a great finale would have elevated the season, and even the entire series, just by virtue of providing the right finish to an often-shaky story. And likewise, a collection of gibberish would have only served to accentuate just how lost and unfocused the once-sharp satire had become over the years. With the legacy of the season and series partially hanging in the balance, Weeds ended its final season with an episode that turned out to be pretty indicative of both the best and worst the show had to offer. It was jarring and sloppily-paced and tried to be too clever and included a few too many pointless elements, but it was also sweet and endearing and funny and family-focused. Here's the very simple and pleasant closing scene, which I assure you, spoils absolutely nothing about the show:

The family, with Nancy literally at its center, just smoking a joint. Perfect in its simplicity and earnestness. And Rilo Kiley! What an unexpected treat from the ten-years-old portion of my iTunes library!

So, that's curtains for Weeds, which at 102 episodes currently holds the record for "longest-running scripted premium cable series." We've got nothing left to do here but talk about its legacy, and it's a legacy of inconsistency. You can pretty easily cut Weeds up into four distinct eras, each with a different tone. In its original form, Weeds was a show about the banality and absurdity of upper-class suburbia. Then for Seasons 4 and 5 it became a Mexican soap opera of sorts, trading in its social commentary chops for drug cartel melodrama. (This was my least-favorite era of Weeds.) Season 6 was basically one long road trip, with the Botwins on the run and slumming it heavily. (This was my favorite season of Weeds.) And then in its final two seasons it became sort of a half-empty echo of its original form, taking place in the Northeast instead of Southern California while never quite re-finding its roots. Ultimately it was far from the best show on TV, even at its best, and it never produced any memorable characters or moments like so many other so-so shows that rise to the occasion in a few key areas. But it was enjoyable enough throughout, and I'm glad I watched it in its entirety - even if I wasn't always glad while doing so at times.