New credit sequence! Equals: a shot of the border crossing into Mexico, the words "Weeds" and "Created by Jenji Kohan" on green traffic signs. I guess I'm okay with taking a break from novelty versions of "Little Boxes." Not okay with? LACK OF CONRAD.
We open on Nancy, putting on lipstick and wearing a completely ridiculous cheesecake outfit-- a flouncy pink and black mini-dress. Is it me or is her "numbed by grief and pain" starting to shade into "slightly retarded?" She finds what she takes to be an ancient hair dryer and starts to dry her hair. Except vibrations don't really do the job. Don't do that kind of job, I mean. Which is to say that they do an entirely other kind of job, the kind you really don't want to think of Bubbie's needing done.
She makes her way to the hallway where Shane tells her Silas is watering his pot plants in the bathroom. They both bust in there to find Silas holding some shears and sporting a very becoming new haircut. "Becoming" -- I'm talking like a Bubbie who maybe needs a, ahem, job done. Nancy tells Silas to get the plants out of the house; "We don't shit where we eat. Or...eat where we shit. Either way. Words of wisdom." She's worried about Len -- who Shane tells her wants to be called Lenny. She leaves ("To buy a bed-skirt" she says), Shane wants to come, there's some to-do about Shane knowing what a bed-skirt is, and Shane tells Silas to "suck my dick." Nancy, ever the mature one, says, "You just told your brother to suck your dick. Gross."
Nancy, Andy, and Lenny in the kitchen. Lenny tells them he'll drop the subject of what they're running from if they give him three hundred dollars. Nancy does and he leaves. She turns to Andy and tells him she's doing something potentially illegal today. He looks at her dress and wonders what sort of illegal. She tells him she doesn't know, but it's for Guillermo, who Andy reminds her is a psychotic gangster. She tells him its work, and to keep his cell phone in case she needs him to get anything at the supermarket. "What like a rape kit?" Oh, that's dark. She leaves and he mumbles about her having a good day at "the office."
Prison. Celia's harried public defender tells her that the charges won't stick, giving her a moment of relief, before Celia realizes that the defender thinks she's a different woman with a different case (something about an Escalade being driven into a convenience store). She finally digs out Celia's files and tells her she's not going anywhere soon. Celia can't believe she poses more of a threat than Escalade lady, and the defender points out: "Anti-drug crusader caught with a grow house? You're fucked like a stray dog in Chinatown."
Nancy pulls into a large garage and gets out of the car to a number of cat calls. Guillermo immediately goes over to her car and smashes her taillight. He tells her to go get it fixed in Mexico and then spits a bunch of confusing, landmark-based directions at Nancy -- "Look for the beer-can-horse-head-thing on the side"; she just wants to plug the address into her GPS. They speak two different languages, get it? Except, of course, for when they speak the same one: cash money. Guillermo waves two bundles of cash -- ten thousand dollars -- at Nancy and she sashays over to him to grab at it, but he says that it's cash-on-delivery only. She does her white lady pout and gets in the car. He tells her they got her a little present, and one of his cronies leans in and sticks a bobble-head Jesus on her dash. Nancy's eyes go wide as she tries to protest that she "doesn't do this kind of thing," but Guillermo tells her it brings good luck. Nancy sighs and Guillermo says that it'll all go fine; all she needs to do is "act like how you act" -- and it's true, Nancy is rather a savant at this drug dealing business. Nancy leans out the window a bit and asks Guillermo what she's really doing. Guillermo says that "the money doesn't like when you ask questions." She buckles up and declares she's off to Mexico, "Viva Zapata."
Back at the ancestral Botwin homestead, Lenny is leaving Silas and Shane in charge of grandma while he goes to the track. He goes over their duties with them, changing diapers and rolling her in the afternoon and all that. The boys look nonplussed, a state that only worsens as their grandfather tells "Klaus" -- "uh, Silas" Silas responds -- to stay out of his things if they ever want to handle their "shmeckes" again. I'm going to need to dig out my Yiddish-to-English phrase book soon. More yadda yadda-ing from Lenny as he makes his way out the door; even great-grandma's living corpse is tired of it. She makes what sounds like a death rattle, and Lenny assures the boys that it's just a sound she makes sometimes. He pauses at the door and tells the boys to tell their Uncle Andy that he'll need to reimburse him (Lenny) for whatever food he eats at the house and that he (Andy) still owes $20,000. That's a new plot point, I guess! Scene ends with a squirty poop noise, and Silas leaving Shane to deal with it. I'm going to venture an opinion on that one and say it is not a plot point.
Prison. We open on a woman who a) sort of looks like a trannie and b) I honestly did not recognize for a moment. Then we cut to Doug and Isabelle doing the plexiglass phone thing bullshitting happily about an all-you-can-eat fish restaurant. Mystery-woman finally pipes up: "You fuckers. You ratted on me" and I realize that this woman? Is Celia. Celia, completely and totally chola-d up: pencilled-in brows, lined lips, curling-iron-barrel curls and all. She tells Doug and Isabelle that her cellmate "Cheetah" has suggested she become her special girl. Doug brushes her off and tells her that she's safer in jail than out; the community is outraged that she was such a hypocrite. So outraged that they spray-painted "hypocrite" on the charred remains of her house. How Bush-era-retarded of them. Isabelle pretends to have a heart, and remarks that her mother really does look scared; a warden comes over and ends the conversation. Celia gets taken away, begging them to help, saying she doesn't want to be anyone's special girl.
The border. Nancy drives up to what is apparently the beer-can-horse-head place, but I don't see any beer-can-horse-head and, honestly, I feel a little robbed. The set-up is "auto repair" and so Nancy gets out of the car and tells the three men -- two sweaty and greasy, one older and put together -- sitting in there that "Yo quiero uno brake light para....this car?" No reaction. She asks "Hable English?" and the put-together guy gets up and tells her to just spit it out. So she does, saying that Guillermo sent her to get her brake light fixed. The guy remarks on her hybrid, and she babbles about saving fossil fuels and Iraqi children. She glances at an SUV off to the side that is completely taken apart and asks what happened to it. The man replies, "broken tail light." Nancy asks if they can just make sure, when replacing her taillight to just put everything back where it's supposed to go (she's still under warranty, see) and then asks if while they're in there, they can overwrite that thing that prevents her from using her GPS while driving. The man replies, "That's illegal." The men start speaking in Spanish, wondering what Guillermo was thinking sending her. One of them declares that Guillermo thinks with his dick. Nancy grabs her purse and a reusable bag from the backseat -- "just doing my part for the environment" she declares of the bag, in the process completely skewering what I know to be a fairly useless (in the larger sense) fad (the reusable bags) but which I cannot stop feeling totally self-righteous about participating in -- and asks for directions to the nearest pharmacy. The two mechanics start squabbling, each wanting to direct her to their respective cousin's pharmacies. The put-together man takes her by the elbow and directs her to a third option, and they shut the doors behind her.
Andy and Silas are in the van bitching about Lenny and tending their plants. Silas confronts Andy about Lenny's claim that Andy owes him twenty thousand. Andy tells Silas he's better off without a dad, raises the bong to his lips, and then takes the hurtful comment back.
Mexico. Nancy glows all pink and white in the dusty, earth tone streets. She has a bad case of White Lady Tourette's, shouting out "Hola!" in that terrible accent of hers every chance she gets. She returns to the shop to find herself being charged $30 for the light. She is annoyed and enunciates "Guillermo" in response to being asked to pay. But pay she does; the man takes her bag of pharmaceuticals and puts it in the trunk, underneath the spare tire trap door. She asks what she does and he tells her to go home.
Border crossing. Nancy waits in traffic, a sign indicates that the waiting time to cross the border is two hours. Folks are hawking wares, weaving in and out of the cars. Nancy wants a Diet Coke, but all the man at her window has is a Jarritos. Mmmm. I love Jarritos. Nancy asks if he has a diet Jarritos. He does not. She spots another vendor with what appear to be lattes, but she doesn't have anything less than a fifty. She decides to buy a guitar from her Jarritos man -- asking specifically for a red one, in order to get change for the latte. Just me, or does this scene read a little Twin Peaks-y?
Some time later, Nancy grabs her Jesus bobble head and tells him to chill out. She catches sight of an agent with a drug-sniffing dog, and gets tense. The dog makes his pass down her car as she watches. There's a split second where it seems he's pausing at her trunk, but he slides along to the car.
Still later -- it seems that watching Nancy Botwin being stuck in the long lines at the border crossing is nearly as tedious as sitting in those lines oneself! -- Nancy offers a little kid in the car to her some bagged nuts. He nods his head "yes" but his mom slaps him. Nancy flags down her guitar vendor and asks about bathrooms. There aren't any, so she chugs the last of her coffee, and gets in the back seat with the plastic cup. The kid in the car to her stares. She tells him to turn around and he shakes his head "no." She tells him to enjoy the show and proceeds to contort herself seemingly quite successfully, peeing neatly into the cup. Meanwhile, her magical future car is receiving a phone call from Shane. She climbs back into the front seat with a cup of urine. Oh please, don't let the whole "gun in the first act" hold for the introduction of pee in cups. Please, please, please. She answers Shane's call and it appears I have WORSE things to worry about than pee in cups; as Shane tells his mom about Celia being in jail, we watch him struggle with great-grandma's poopy diaper. He tells her that Celia's getting ready to rat them out. Nancy: "FUCK!" Shane declares, over speaker phone, that he thinks they should change their identities, as an agent approaches Nancy's window. She cuts him off and the agent reminds her to get her passport ready. Nancy: "FUCK!"
Cut to Nancy finally at the crossing, trying to explain why she has no passport with her -- "I didn't know!" -- why she was in Mexico -- getting a skin cream for her lovely, lovely skin -- and why she has urine in a cup in her car -- "..." The agent asks her to pop her trunk, takes a peek, and seems to send her along...that is, until he asks her to pull up to the second inspection area.
Ancestral Botwin homestead. Andy gets off the phone and declares, "Doug says everybody fingered Celia." "Wha-whaaa?" looks from Shane and Silas. Lenny comes back from the track, and Andy gives him a hard time for not winning anything. He pushes his buttons until Lenny launches into his "August 14, 1983" story. That's the day he picked a trifecta -- Kentucky Mistress, Lady's a Charm, Please Pass the Salt. And then it comes out: the story is that Lenny had this trio picked for months, asked Andy to go lay his bet, and Andy pocketed the money to buy a toy. Andy says that every other time, the horses lost. Lenny says that Andy stole the beauty of gambling from him, stole his "win big." They get back into the What Would Judah Do debate, raising their voices until Bubbie makes a noise. Shane calls their attention to it and Lenny does whatever it is you do to tracheotomy tubes to help someone speak. She says something that Andy interprets as being about Target. Lenny interprets her Yiddish for us all: "She said 'Kill me'."
Border. Nancy's having her bag of pharmaceuticals pawed through, her cup o' urine sniffed. She harasses the agent looking at her lipstick about whether she thinks there's a tiny immigrant in there. Finally an agent gleefully announces that he's "got this one" and then approaches Nancy asking why she has drugs in her car. She manages to repress the "wha whaaa?" look as he holds up her purse and reusable bag.
Guillermo's garage. Nancy tells them that the agents tore the car apart but couldn't find anything. "It's in the engine, right?" Guillermo plays dumb. He's pissed that they confiscated the inhalers -- they're expensive in the U.S. -- and then slams down the bobble-head Jesus in front of her, telling her that there's a camera in there. They wanted to see how she'd handle the border cops. He tells one of his cronies to "edit down a highlight reel." What do you want to bet that reel is going to be heavy on the "peeing into a cup" part of the day's narrative? Nancy is pissed that there are no drugs in the car; Guillermo asks her if she thinks the guys that flew planes into the World Trade Center hadn't practiced before. Yowza. Quite a comparison. He tosses her a wad of cash and tells her she's lucky she's getting half of what he promised; she lost his inhalers.
Prison. Celia has a nasty bruise on her cheek and tears streaming down her face and I am officially super-depressed over this storyline right now. Toll comes in to the plexiglass phone and they look at each other quietly for a moment. He holds a photo up to the window and tells her that he's starting to believe her. The photo? Is of Nancy and Guillermo as they watched Majestic burn. Crash to black.
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