Meet Nancy Botwin: recently widowed mother of two and, as she puts it, the biggest pot-dealing game in the private community of Agrestic, California. Her oldest son, Silas, is a walking hormone with a mile-wide brat streak running right down the center of him. The youngest, Shane, is a weird little fucker, made all the weirder by the fact that he was out jogging with his dad when the old man keeled over from a heart attack. Nancy didn't have a job when she was married because she didn't have to, and after Judah died, she didn't really have the means to support her family in the way they were accustomed (i.e., cleaning lady, swimming pool, giant house in a gated community), so what choice did she have but to start selling weed? But I'm getting ahead of myself...
"Little boxes made of ticky-tacky..." Easily the most burrow-into-your-brain opening credits music on TV, at least until John From Cincinnati came along. Our first glimpse of Nancy is at Agrestic Elementary, where she's speaking at a meeting of the PTA, which also doubles as the Agrestic Gossipy Housewives Association. While Nancy and PTA president Celia "Fuckin' Awesome" Hodes are having a forcibly pleasant argument about whether all soft drinks should be removed from the vending machines or just the "sugary ones" ("our figure-watching daughters need their diet soda" is Celia's argument), the collected women snakily assess Nancy and how she's holding up in the face of her hubby's death, and in particular how much money she was or wasn't left with. After Celia strong-arms the committee into a vote, the women file out, which is when Nancy finally catches that they're whispering about her. The one covers by saying how great Nancy's purse is, and thing we know, Nancy's extolling the virtues of said purse (it's a knockoff) to her weed supplier. And Heylia James deserves her own paragraph, so...
Heylia and her crew are in her kitchen measuring out the weed and bagging it up while Nancy talks about what an awesome fake her bag is. Heylia, of course, spots the faulty stitching on it right away. I love Heylia, honestly, but especially in the early going the sassy-black-truth-tellin'-mama act was laid on a bit thick. In the span of about three seconds she goes from calling Nancy a "dumb-ass white bitch" to asking who wants some cornbread. The cornbread leads to some Atkins talk that was already dated when this episode first aired. Heylia's nephew Conrad walks in and kind of ham-handedly plows into a position paper on how white-collar crime is punished (or not punished) differently than poor black folk selling weed. It's a consistent theme throughout the series, and it's usually handled quite a bit more deftly than right here.
Nancy takes a look at the filled Ziploc bag meant for her and says it looks a little small. Cue the record scratch because OH NO SHE DID NOT. "Bitch," says Heylia, neck all a-swivel, "I can eyeball an ounce from outer space with my glasses cracked." He plops the bag into the scale and it's perfect. "You never question Heylia's eyeballing," says Conrad. "That's the Rain Man of weed right there." My favorite thing about Heylia is on full display right now: her incredulity at Nancy for presuming she knows shit about anything, much less a dirty business like weed, and her chuckling respect for the woman, because there she goes doing it anyway. And both attitudes are present at all times. Nancy apologizes with a smile and calls herself a "bitch-ass...bitch." Everyone has a good laugh at that. Nancy does think she deserves some respect, though, for being the number one game in Agrestic. "Drugs sell themselves, biscuit," snarks Heylia, in one of the pilot's signature lines. "You ain't shit." Nancy pays for her weed (with a pretty yellow ribbon around the stack of bills) and rushes off. Heylia asks what's the big rush ("Dr. Phil ain't on 'til four"), and Nancy says she's late for Shane's appointment with his grief counselor. Heylia's face gets serious and she apologizes for being flip. As Nancy leaves, and Conrad practically leaps up to see her out, Vaneeta exposits about the whole "dad dies while jogging with the kid" thing. But I already mentioned that.
Conrad walks Nancy out, asking if she's okay. "We do business, not personal," says Nancy, distancing herself. There's a little song-and-dance wherein it's revealed that Nancy was referred to Conrad and Heylia by her brother-in-law Andy. Conrad tells her to drive safe, and by "drive" he means "make out with" and by "safe" he means "me." Nancy doesn't pick up on it.
At the homestead, Nancy has to interrogate her boys as to who broke the skylight in the guest room. Shane did, when he fell through it while spying on Silas and his girlfriend Quinn (Celia's daughter, though we find that out later). Lupita, the cleaning lady, says she told Shane to get down, but Shane says he couldn't hear her. Silas says the "deaf girl on Dewey St. could hear her," which is a throwaway line that will become more important later on this season. Shane says the girl's not deaf, there's just something wrong with her tongue. Silas says from what he's heard, there's nothing wrong with her tongue, heh-heh-heh. Shane doesn't know what that means, and Nancy's trying to keep Silas and Quinn from illuminating him when her pager goes off. "Neighborhood watch thing," Nancy lies as she takes off. The second she's gone, Silas and Quinn scurry into the nearest bedroom to get nasty, and Lupita blesses herself. She and Shane get to watching their bear-hunting TV show.
Nancy's no sooner in her car than she's startled by the clean-cut, headphones-wearing, alarmingly appealing teen boy in her back seat. Josh! It's Josh Wilson, and this is tragically his only appearance in the entire series as Justin Chatwin left to film War of the Worlds soon after and never returned. I'm going to venture a guess and say "bad call," though admittedly not from the perspective of his bank account. Anyway, Josh is fucking awesome and he's here to buy weed. Nancy's simultaneously annoyed and amused by Josh, who says he needs the herb bad because his usual dealer's on a yoga retreat. A couple references to watching Winged Migration and The Passion of the Christ while stoned haven't aged all that well (POTC as a "snuff film" has become especially well-worn territory), but Chatwin's so charismatic he sells it anyway. Nancy makes him promise to obey the rules: stay away from Nancy's customers, don't deal to kids, though "kids" is one hell of a gray area considering Josh is in high school himself. "If they're too young to bleed, they're too young for weed," Josh deadpans. "No grass on the field, no grass will they yield." Nancy calls him a poet (Josh: "You know it.") and offers him a ride back, but Josh figures the suburban streets of Agrestic are safe to walk at night. Do you see the irony?? DO YOU???
The day at the soccer field, Nancy relaxes on the sidelines while the fine people of Agrestic time-lapse their way up to her and make their surreptitious transactions. No better place to get baked than the kids' soccer game, I say. Poor Shane is spaced out on the field, getting run over by his teammates. Celia joins Nancy and starts bitching about her youngest daughter, Isabelle, and how she's just not able to lose any weight. Isabelle's, like, eleven, by the way. And speaking of Isabelle, I'm not weecapping season 2 (Wing Chun gets that honor, though I'll be back for season 3), which means I miss the entire Huskaroos era, which is such a shame. That fake TV ad is maybe the funniest thing this show's ever done. Anyway, Celia calls Isabelle over and says she's like to see more running, and she calls her "Isabelly," which still makes me laugh. Celia keeps bitching to Nancy about how awful it is that her girls take after her husband, while Nancy graciously declines to smack her in the mouth. Celia notes that Shane is bleeding, and we see him lick the blood off his knee, which naturally causes his teammates to freak out and point at him. Nancy tends to Shane's boo-boo while Celia continues to give unsolicited parenting advice, until Doug Wilson shows up, looking to buy. Celia bitches to Doug that his son Josh (I'd almost forgotten Josh was Doug's kid -- that means they can bring him back to the show at any time, HINT) is over by the playground selling weed. Nancy uses a catalog as cover to pass Doug his stash (Celia's unaware of Nancy's ancillary business), but she has to forcefully shoo him away when he tries to pay her right out in the open. Celia's annoyed she can't sic the cops on Josh (Nancy's quick to point out that he'd drop whatever he had on him at the first sight of a uniform) and tells Nancy that they found a ten-year-old with weed in his lunchbox last week. Nancy nearly chokes.
On the soccer bench, Shane's busy being weird and having a giant fruit punch stain on his mouth. One of the other kids rags on him, calling him "lipstick" and then "vampire." Shane evenly asks which one is it, lipstick or vampire. The bratty towhead offers a new one: "orphan boy." OOOH! Shane throws a full can of soda at this kid, and when he goes to chase him, Nancy totally sticks her leg out and trips him. Because she is awesome. Shane keeps running, though, and hides under the bleachers where Silas and Quinn are lazily plotting out where and how they're going to be able to Do It, especially under Celia's watchful eye. Quinn says her mom is so controlling, she bought one of those nanny-can teddy bears to monitor Isabelle's eating. Shane is freaked because he merely grazed the towhead, to which Silas starts goofing that, "You can't miss the bear!" Which is a reference to that bear-hunting show they were watching before. They geek out about the show for a bit, and Quinn thinks they're both dorks.
Doug Wilson, meanwhile, is in his minivan, partaking of his herb. Nancy finds him and calls him an idiot for smoking out in the open where people like Celia could see him. "You're on the goddamn City Council," she lectures. Doug thinks Celia is a total bitch and says her husband is banging his tennis pro. "She love him long time," he says, which earns a well-deserved groan from yours truly. Nancy makes up for it by saying the girl's from Anaheim, not Bankok. "She can't shoot tennis balls out of her twat." No, says Doug, but she did shove a tennis reacket handle up Dean's asshole last week. Set and match! We learn that Doug (and Dean too, I assume) was friends with Judah, and then Nancy gets paid. Back at her van, Josh makes the mistake of approaching her with some snarky remark or another, and for his trouble he gets grabbed by his collar and read the riot act for selling to kids. He's not at all apologetic about it ("they all want it and they cry if you say no") and says he'll sell to whoever he wants. At which point Nancy grabs him by his face and shoves him into the side of her Range Rover. A real inelegant kind of shove, I loved it. Josh is a little shaken but recovers in time to point out that she can't exactly rat him out to his dad (getting baked in the van, as Nancy just saw), and he insincerely promises never to sell to Shane. "You're just a kid," Nancy realizes. "And you're a hypocrite," says Josh, as he decries the pot-dealing mom preaching to keep kids off drugs. No more than the beer vendor opposing underage drinking, I could argue, but the kid has a point. He slinks off as Shane, Silas, and Quinn approach. Inside the car, Quinn leans over to Nancy and asks if she and Silas can have sex in Nancy's house.
Cut to the Botwin rooftop, as Nancy multi-tasks: she's trying to have a hip, mature "you sure you're ready" talk with Quinn (who is fully prepared to use Nancy's reticence at being the heavy against her) all while scanning the neighborhood with binoculars. I'm not sure what Nancy's intended purpose is with the binoculars, but it makes it awfully convenient when Quinn spies Josh in the backyard Jacuzzi of the neighborhood closeted sugar daddy. Quinn's all up on the Agrestic gossip (she even knows about her dad and the tennis pro), but she didn't know Josh was gay. Nancy takes a look just in time to see Josh making out with the guy. Advantage: Botwin. thing we know, Nancy's barging into Sugar Daddy's house, where Josh is jumping up on the bed in his underwear. All that charm and a hustler too, eh Josh? Nancy gets him in an arm lock and makes him promise to stop selling to kids or he rats him out to his dad. Here's hoping all of Nancy's problems end up having a scary homo secret to exploit, am I right?
Later on, Nancy and Celia are chatting over martinis, trying to figure out how to handle their children's burgeoning sexual relationship. Nancy hasn't told Celia any of what Quinn's told her, but Celia's eternal suspicion of everyone in her life serves her well in this regard. She gives Nancy a nanny-cam/teddy bear (hers?) to use to spy on Silas. Nancy says she trusts her kid, which Celia finds patently ridiculous. She makes Nancy promise to at least not allow Silas and Quinn to have sex under her roof, which Nancy does. Celia says she doesn't want her daughter to become "some little slut...like that deaf girl on Dewey Street who gave fellatio to Dennis Kling." To review: everyone in Agrestic (except Nancy) knows everyone else's business (except Nancy's). The kids show up with pizza, and when Quinn sees the bear, she fakely asks if she can have it. And Celia who doesn't know they know what it is, enthusiastically lets her.
The day, Shane gets the jump on the towhead and his cronies and attacks them with a super-soaker full of pink paint. Elsewhere, Nancy walks in on Silas and Quinn, post-coital in the guest room. "Don't you see?" spaces Quinn as she gestures to the missing skylight window, "we're not under your roof. I'd say something about Quinn, but Celia's got me covered in about two minutes, so I'll hold off. Having finally had her fill of crap she can't control, Nancy shows up on Heylia's doorstep and collapses, crying, onto Conrad's shoulder. Conrad calls for Heylia to cute a slice of pie, "the white lady's having a time over here." Heylia, offscreen, yells that she can fix her own damn pie, "slave days is over." This gets a laugh out of Nancy, in between the heaving sobs. Aw.
And finally, Celia hooks up the nanny-cam bear to the TV so she can see what her trollop of a daughter has been up to. But the video she sees is of Dean getting a tennis racket shoved up his ass by the tennis pro. Then, the video cuts out to Quinn, in her room, flipping her mom the bird and mouthing "fuck you!" Hit it, Celia: "That little cunt." Mmm hmm. "I should have had an abortion," she finishes, and downs the rest of her manhattan. Say good-bye to Quinn, everyone!