Weeds & Breaking Bad

These are two remarkably similar shows, both on cable, and both continuing for several seasons.

 Weeds (Showtime).  Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker) is a widow living in Agrestic, California.  Her husband Judah, who had been the brains and breadwinner of the couple, abruptly died of a heart attack leaving her to raise their two sons Silas and Shane all by herself.  Apparently she has no high school diploma or college degree, or the slightest skills of any nature, as she delved right into the marijuana trade immediately and hasn’t looked back since.  I’ve just finished Season 3.

            Along with her children, there is also the city council’s goofball treasurer Doug Wilson (Kevin Nealon), Nancy’s BFF Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins), her husband Dean (Andy Milder) and Nancy’s brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk).  Her primary source of weed is a quasi-Jamaican criminal godmother Heylia (Tonye Patano) and her (son? Nephew?) Conrad (Romany Malco) who is the real genius in growing the weed and is consistently the man who makes it happen.  He reminds me a lot of Montel Williams.

            Naturally, even being able to grow a decent crop means little without the means to sell it off and make money, and when the money does come in (as it tends to do) then the challenge is how to launder it.   And when the operation grows impressive, that attracts not merely law enforcement attention – e.g. Peter Scottson, the “Agent Wonder Bread” corrupt DEA agent who marries Nancy but can’t win her heart – but also competing gangsters, be they Armenian, black (U-Turn and Marvin), hispanic (Guillermo) or biker/redneck.  Everyone wants a piece of the action, it seems, and even non-gangsters, when they learn of the operation, then try to charge for their silence. 

 Breaking Bad (AMC, the same people who bring us “Mad Men”).  Almost identical plot, but considerably darker, especially with no comic relief from characters like Nealon or Kirk to lighten the mood.  Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is a long-suffering, overworked and underpaid chemistry teacher from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who develops terminal lung cancer despite being a non-smoker.  When his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank (Dean Norris) alerts him to the vast cash made by crystal meth dealers, Walter rides along on a bust and realizes he can cook far better meth than these clowns.  He quickly corrals former student Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) into a 50/50 partnership, with Walter producing the finest, purest meth anyone’s ever seen, and Jesse taking care of sales and marketing.  They cook in a used camper out in the desert, and Walt insists that they wear yellow hazmat suits and gas masks.

            Of course, keeping this a secret from his ugly wife Skyler (Anna Gunn) and cerebral palsy-suffering teenage kid Walter Jr. (RJ Mitte – looking like Steve Martin’s long-lost love child) is a challenge.  By the end of Season 2, she’s left him, convinced that his secrecy is hiding an affair, not a lucrative crystal meth business.   Hank himself is beginning to suspect him at this point.  What saves Walter is that NO ONE can imagine this bald, super uncool high school chemistry teacher – who eventually code names himself “Heisenberg” - is a crystal meth cook.

            As in “Weeds”, the challenge is to hide the cash and account for its results: how can Walt explain how he pays for expensive chemotherapy without the help of his former university colleague?  And the other huge problem is how to deal with nasty competitors who either try to shake them down or put them out of business.  For his part, Walt gets progressively more ruthless and aggressive about expanding the business and begins losing his patience with would-be competitors and his scruples about fighting back.  If he has to be a killer to make this whole thing work, damn it, he’s facing terminal cancer and is not about to back down from what has to be done.  This freaks out Jesse, who considers himself just a sales and marketing guy – if a bit of an unusual industry he’s in – but not a killer at heart.

 Nancy doesn’t smoke any of the marijuana (though practically every else does – even Shane tries it) and Walt never samples his own product, but Jesse has tried it enough to be able sell his customers on its quality.  Neither show glorifies the drugs, but marijuana still comes off as pretty harmless and crystal meth as a recipe for rotten teeth and terrible hygiene. 

 Neither show goes into enough detail to explain HOW to grow marijuana or cook crystal meth.  The former involves growing lots of plants, some form of fertilizer in big white containers, and lots of lights.  The latter involves chemicals and equipment and a fair amount of occupational hazards (e.g. poison gas or explosions) if not done properly.  While neither marijuana nor its by-products prove the least bit dangerous, Walt has managed to make phosgene gas, ricin (from castor beans) and thermite, an intense  burning substance useful for cutting holes in big thick steel doors.  No one is going to be able to watch the shows and know enough to go into business for themselves.  The real kicker to both these shows is that they show how dangerous and unpleasant both businesses are not merely for meek souls such as Nancy Botwin or Walt White who might be inclined to enter them to make some extra cash and solve their financial problems (and exchange them for a whole host of much more dangerous ones), but also the hardcore criminals who frequently wind up dead.  Very dead. and in some particularly nasty ways.  Enjoy both, and be warned.