One of my favorite shows, Weeds, is coming back on Monday for season five.  Honestly, I’m not looking forward to it.  From the very start, the show has been darkly funny, but the emphasis was on the humor, twisted as it may be.  But last season it inverted itself, becoming only occasionally funny, but mainly pitch black in tone.  I can handle a fair amount of discomfort in my serialized TV, but I had trouble watching what these characters I liked were being put through.

But let’s back up for those who haven’t watched Weeds.  If you’ve never seen it, put Seasons 1-3 on your Netflix queue right now.  It’s not like there’s much of anything else worth watching during the summer, right?

Weeds is a family drama-comedy about the Botwins.  Mary-Louise Parker is off-the-charts amazing in the lead as Nancy Botwin, who becomes a pot dealer to support her family after her husband dies unexpectedly.  Parker is one of those actors who I always like — when she’s in a project, I immediately assume it will be good.  (If there was a way to do pick and choose, I would also highly recommend a compilation of West Wing episodes that featured her in a recurring guest role.)  What is interesting about Nancy is that she has become less and less conflicted about her occupation as the series has gone on, even as selling drugs has put her family in greater danger.  Nancy seems to have found her calling and she doesn’t want to give it up, which makes for a unique and compelling (though I fear ultimately tragic) character.

The rest of the supporting cast is also outstanding.  Justin Kirk is a marvel of unchecked crudeness as Nancy’s brother-in-law Andy.  The character is written so consistently and every un-PC comment is delivered with such innocence and even sweetness that you can’t help but love him even if when he is participating in foot fetish pornography or taking his underaged nephew for a happy ending at a massage parlor.  Did I mention this show is on Shotime and that it is definitely an R-rated affair?

The youngest Botwin child, Shane, will break your heart.  Alexander Gould is great in the role; you feel him struggling without success to gain some equilibrium in a chaotic world where the adult supervision is no help at all.  Two other actors, Kevin Nealon and Elizabeth Perkins, both have supporting roles that redefine them as actors.  Nealon is hilarious as Doug, the pot-smoking city councilman.  And Perkins is at once a villain and a victim as high-strung Celia Hodes.

It is a joy to watch such a great ensemble cast.  At least for Seasons 1-3.  And then there was Season 4.

For the first three seasons, the town of Agrestic was also a character.  The sterile, seething exurb was crucial to the satire and the story of Weeds.  The Botwins and friends had their counterpoint in Conrad James (Romany Malco) and Heylia James (Tonye Patano), who were the LA-based African-American suppliers for Nancy.  Despite being drug dealers themselves, Conrad and Heylia provided a moral balance that starkly contrasted Nancy’s flighty embrace of crime.  Their presence made it clearer that Nancy did have choices even if she didn’t want to pursue them.  Plus, they shared the viewers disbelief in the inability of the Botwins to make good decisions, even as they, like the rest of us, were pulling for them.

At the end of Season Three, Agrestic burned down.  And Nancy stopped buying from Heylia and Conrad.  So we started Season Four without two of the major anchors that kept this show from floating helplessly out to sea.  Agrestic was replaced by an unnamed seaside town where the Botwins went to hideout.  Heylia and Conrad were replaced by Mexican drug dealers, who never rose above being stock characters.  Even a multi-episode arc by Albert Brooks, which should have been a coup, felt mean-spirited and unsatisfying (and I feel about Albert Brooks much the way I do about Parker — I’ll watch anything he’s in).

For the entire season, every character seemed to be a different person.  There were flashes of the old Weeds, but mainly everyone just fell apart.  The writers seemed determined to destroy Celia (which was not fun to watch).  Doug went from being funny to psychotic and annoying.  Nancy no longer seemed like she cared about her family at all (except in one stunning, perfectly edited sequence where she confronts both her sons about their behavior and uses her hypocrisy to her heart-breaking advantage).  And most unfortunately, they gave Andy almost nothing of real interest to do.  And all of the horrible things that were slowly building throughout the season seemed to be coming true at the end.

So, now you understand why I’m not sure how I feel about Season 5 starting up.

Still, I’ve already got my season pass set up.  I’m ready for it.  Maybe like another of my favorite shows, Big Love, which made a quantum leap in quality in its latest season, Weeds will rediscover the love for these characters and give me a reason to pull for them again.  I don’t want a reboot.  Those always feel contrived to me.  The people who run Weeds need to work with what they’ve given themselves.  But I do want to feel again what I did before with this show, which was a heady mix of joy and pain and ultimately hope.