Weeds will be an interesting study in television history. Or it will be completely forgotten. The first season was good if not great television. At some point in 2005 or 2006, my friends and I watched the entire first season of Weeds in a single afternoon during one of the Showtime free preview weekends. It was that good.

A suburban mother, selling weed. It was interesting and the characters were great. Breaking Bad was still a couple years away and a completely different show. I’ve spread out 100 half hours with the Botwins over the last seven or so years. The second and third seasons were also good, but I barely remember them. I don’t think I have seen a single episode of Weeds twice. The finale was the first episode I ever watched in its actual timeslot.

Knowing what I know, should I recommend the first season? After watching the first season you would watch the second and so on until they gave up. Despite all the short-comings, it was always enjoyable.

Sure, the show’s legacy turned into Mary Louise Parker sex scenes and there are worst things in the world than that. Probably the worst part about what Weeds turned into was that Andy, the best person and character on the show, continually got shit on. Silas’ insistence that growing weed was the only thing that made him happy was always a bit strange. I guess I enjoyed hanging out with those characters no matter what stupid thing they were doing.

As for the actual hour-long series finale … I understand the desire to see how these characters turned out. Jumping 10 years into the future after never once leaving the present was strange, but who cares? Its like when creator Jenji Kohan decided she wanted to just take the crew back to Agrestic in the penultimate episode. Does it make sense for the story? Well, don’t worry about that because Weeds doesn’t. The final few seasons were just moving these people around and trying to figure out how they could get into just enough trouble to maybe cause a conflict.

Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Alanis Morissette, Mary-Kate Olsen, Julie Bowen, Michelle Trachtenberg, Albert Brooks, Richard Dreyfuss, Zooey Deschanel and Martin Short all showed up with varying degrees of success. Some of them got naked and some of them got good lines. In the end, they were all gone and it was just the Botwins (plus Doug).

Its my viewing habit with Weeds that best explains the kind of show it was. Good enough in the beginning to watch for 5 straight hours, but after that, never good enough for me to actually find out what time or day it was on. In the end, I guess I’m glad I “stuck with it” to see how it all turned out. Now let us never speak of this again.

I hate this song. Except when Rise Against does it.

[Grab via Warming Glow]