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What a fabulous (mostly*) episode! I think the quality in any given week is directly proportional to the amount of Nancy/Andy overlapping dialogue in the episode. I mean, even without him giving Nancy what for, which at this point feels a little repetitive, it's still amazing to watch. You can see their whole history in every word.
What actually happens is that Cesar, Andy and Nancy head down to the TJ to see if they can get Esteban out of jail and/or figure out why he's in there. The reason Andy is with this is to beg Nancy for Bubbeh's engagement ring that Judah gave Nancy, which of course Nancy's not interested in giving up, especially since Andy's been dating Audra for exactly one day. They spend all day hanging around the soul-killing DMV-like Mexican jail offices, fighting about the nature of love, truth, and Nancy's terrible choices... Then, by the time they get answers, learn that he's actually been free for a few hours.
*(Dean is menacing Celia -- who has dyed her hair brown and is dressing like a Nancy Botwin Halloween costume, down to the iced lattes she always used to slurp -- in blackface for some reason, which sends her first deal with Ignacio sideways, and he shows up at her house dressed like El Perro Insano, and that Asian laundry lady comes running in with like a gong, bowing at people and going pee-pee in their Coke, and Sanjay shows up with eight dicks in him, and there's an Eskimo in a parka with a fish on a spear. It's all very droll.)
It's lockdown at Casa Reyes, so the Brady Bunch has to make its own fun. In this case that means Adelita inviting some popped-collar douchebags over to smoke heroin and gang-rape her. Silas and Shane watch this disinterestedly but when it starts getting serious, they go into action. Silas fronts on the guys, but it's Shane's Perro Insano training that sends them screaming.
Back home, it turns out the whole jail/release thing was Pilar's doing, presumably because she felt threatened by his growing support as an independent. Luckily, that also means that Nancy's drug kingpin husband is in cahoots with the woman she's trying to have murdered, which adds just the spice a marriage needs. If you are bugfuck crazy like Nancy is.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why vlogger Sean Crespo thinks Weeds should take a sci-fi turn in No Prior Knowledge!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The credits take the form this week of a fake policeman, his badge and gun, his minty fresh gum, at the end of a long hard day. But this is the beginning of that day: Nancy, drinking wine on the couch and telling Shane she's been drinking all night, not that it's helping. He asks why, and she says, "Because that's what I do when my husband... God it feels weird to say that... I'm drinking because they took him away in handcuffs." And the second they did, he stopped being scary and he stopped being useful. And Nancy can only love you if you're one or the other. He was both, now he's neither, and she's saddled with him nonetheless.
Shane asks for which of his many crimes they took Esteban away, and puts forth the idea that Pilar set the whole thing up. As usual, he's thinking more clearly than anybody. "I don't know, Shane! They just... Took him away." Shane notes that it's about fucking time, and she watches him slurp his cereal. "Ever wish you go back to right after Dad died, and do things differently?" She assures him, with a dead look in her eyes, that she tries not to think about it. Which is how they got here. She smiles instead of crying, and answers a call from Cesar, who has located Esteban in Tijuana. She heads off again, and Shane asks if she should be driving. "Probably not," she giggles: Put that on the list.
When Isabel shows up at Celia's awesome condo with coffee, she's greeted by a horrible mess: Celia is dressed like Nancy, sucking on one of her It's A Grind iced lattes. Remember when Agrestic burned down and all the people were on fire? That was so awesome. Celia informs her daughter that she's on top, and staying on top this time: "Like Nancy. I'm gonna out-Nancy Nancy." With the long brown hair and the ruffly lavender top under a leather jacket, Isabel thinks she looks like a prostitute. I just think she looks scary as hell, so at least she's got that part down.
"Nancy had the right idea. Life is not about making good choices in order to get good things. Life is about admitting what you want and not being afraid to take it." If that's how Nancy's life looks from the outside, I can see her point. Celia brandishes a big wad of cash in Isabel's face and informs her daughter that she is quote "off to swap this cheddar for some heady nuggets" and then "perhaps eat a salad" and get her "Sapphic freak on." Isabel admits that this time, she threw up all the way into her nose. "Throwing up is slimming down," Celia sing-songs in a way that might make you think that's a thing human beings say.
Isabel tells her there's a detective downstairs asking about her: black guy, brown fedora, leather jacket. She says the guy said Celia's name, flashed a badge. "Maybe he thinks you're turning tricks?" Celia admits that possibility, hilariously. "Well, have fun with the whole Nancy envy. And the drug deal. And the taking and the wanting, and the not being afraid." Celia hands her another line about "no consequences, no regrets," and Isabel calls her attention to her figure in that dress. Celia corrects herself: one regret. "One big-haired, big-boned, big-loudmouthed regret." Which is the icing on the cake, as far as Isabel is concerned, because child abuse is just another fucking bullet in the gun if you look at it right.
Andy's manic again, jumping out in front of the car as Nancy's driver is pulling away. She tells the driver he's not an idiot, he's her... There's not a word anymore: He's just an idiot. He jumps into the car beside her, babbling about how he chased the car down, and explains that he's buzzing on anticipation, he's a man with a mission, he's the man with the plan. She rolls her eyes and he goes on: "What could that plan be, she asks herself. Intrigued, yes, perhaps even captivated by the..." She finally tells him to STFU with a very mean face, and he chills out. He tries to start again, and she calls him a child yakking in her ear; when he says he's having a major event in his life she asks if he's "going to Candy Mountain."
When he complains that it's always about her, she freaks out and says that yes, this one time she's not just being selfish and horrible. It really is about her. Not that he cares, not that he noticed enough to ask -- "Why so serious?" she says, which is amazing considering the rate at which people are turning into other people these days -- and he points out that something is always bothering her.
"My husband... God, that sounds weird," she says, and he agrees, "Is being held somewhere by somebody, for some reason, and I don't know if I'm ever gonna see him again. I kinda don't even know if my children are safe. Kinda don't know what's happening in my life. So I don't give a shit about your... shenanigans." He notes that she's having a problem of some caliber, but says that "shenanigans" is a bit rough. Plus, she's Nancy: she's going to be fine.
"Sorry I shenaniganned your major life event," she says, having pulled it together, but now he won't tell her what it is, because he feels stupid. "I'm going to Candy Mountain. You're right." She needles him affectionately until he finally spills his news. Number one, he's going to ask Alanis to marry him; number two, he wants the engagement ring that Judah gave her, which was an heirloom from Bubbeh. She looks at him like he just stabbed her in the gut, which is what he just did.
Silas complains to Adelita about not getting to leave the Reyes compound, and she informs him it's on Nancy's orders. "I was going to go jogging," he whines, and she looks at him like that's stupid. He claims it clears his mind, and she laughs: "Of what?" She smiles like the Joker and tells him to chill out and be less serious about everything. "Since I can't leave, some friends are coming over for a little party. Join us, hang out, loosen up. 'Clear your mind.'" He's excited, but just in case you were thinking her friends weren't going to be jetset prep dicks, she tells him to change his clothes.
Cesar tells Nancy to wait in the jailhouse while he looks for Esteban, reminding her that "the 'local color' isn't white." She acquiesces, and Andy shows up with a pile of magazines: Siempre Mujer, TV y Novelas and something called Women's You-Niverse from July 1974. Dude, the whole world is Nancy's youniverse. "I Was Frigid, Now Hear Me Roar," she reads from the cover. "A Diet That Makes You Grow Younger." "Is Bisexuality Thinkable?" When you put it like that, 30 years have not really improved us by like leaps and bounds.
He bugs her about the ring some more and she continues to flip through the magazine. "Are You Truly In Love," she reads, and he immediately swears that he is, but she laughs and says it's the title of a quiz in the magazine. He whines that she doesn't even wear the ring, and she says Judah gave it to her; Andy points out that Esteban gave her a new one.
This is the first day she's even been allowed to look at Judah in any real way, and question her life from there to here. "Husband" only sounds weird because that's Judah's word. And she could handle it when Esteban was Esteban Reyes, but now that he's gone and maybe dead and can't offer any of the things he used to offer, it started sounding weird again. So it's really bad timing for the ring thing, today in particular, which obviously makes it great timing, because she A) is remarried to someone she loves and B) has been wearing widow's weeds for five seasons now. So the question isn't really whether or not she's willing to let Andy be more than The Baby, or even whether she would change history for her kids: it's which ring she wants to wear. Any day before now, the question would be even more complicated. Today, she actually has room to consider it.
Cesar appears and says they have to go to the sixth floor, but first they need a number, and Nancy's bored so she hands him part of a wad of cash to buy a better number. He takes the larger remainder, and vanishes again, and Andy says they should take the love quiz in the magazine to determine who gets the ring. Nancy points out that quizzes are bullshit and that it's 1974 anyway, and Andy says that the criteria for amor are eternal, and maybe she's just balking because she can't handle the fact that his love for Audra is like a red rose. So she starts. 1) When you are away from your love, and you think of him, do you feel: A) Joyful B) Sad C) Lonely or D) Horny. Andy stares at her, because all of the above all of the time.
Celia shows up at a lucha match with a giant purse full of money. Ignacio's giving autographs and, she can smell, has triumphed. "El Perro Insano always triumphs!" Ignacio yells, to much appreciation, and a cute little white nerd points out that he was actually defeated by El Doctor on two separate occasions. Ignacio responds by ripping up his tarjeta in his face and howling, of course, so everybody cheers and the kid is whatever and Celia's like, "EXCUSE ME HOW DO I DO OUR DRUG DEAL?" He tells her to leave the money and take the weed, duh, and she realizes that its beauty lies in its simplicity, but then notices a black guy in a fedora with a police badge, and panics. She runs off, and Ignacio screams all manner of threats at her, but I was more worried about the cop guy, who looks totally weird, like the cop guy from 7th Heaven that now plays the school counselor on The Secret Life Of Imaginary Unrealistic People. Which thought made me feel weird, but then he's obviously a plant in this Isabel Plan, so I got the shivers thinking it was Doug in blackface, but then I was like, "No way, not even this show." And then I just felt guilty for going there.
Question 27. Is friendship, in matters of true love: 1) Overblown, 2) Fundamental, 3) A waste of time, or 4) A bonus. He goes, "Glad you asked that!" And she tells him to stop giving speeches every time, because it's frickin' multiple choice. "There are certain nuances that merit examination..." he begins, and she's like, "Here we go. This." He asks if she and Esteban aren't friends, and she says they sort of are -- they sort of are -- but it's not really something that comes up. "Because I think it's fundamental!" Andy crows, which disgusts her because that was one of the choices. I never thought about that, but Nancy and multiple choice is like a terrible idea. "I choose A, but only to fuck with C!"
They talk about fun times, watching movies together, and she calls him a lamoid, essentially, and he says without those things it's just about sex. "It's always just about sex with you," she points out to much whining, and then nails it on the first try: That he spent a couple days banging this chick, and now assumes that they are in love and have to get married so he can finally be a man. Instead of realizing how retarded that sounds, he agrees, and she's grossed out. "Jesus, Andy. You just... I mean, you're not in love with this person." He doesn't disagree. "What if this is my shot for a nice, normal life? With a doctor? And a family of my own?"
Which is number one on the list of things that completely suck about boys, and something most guys never outgrow. Did you see that movie (500) Days Of Summer? Two vastly different films depending on who you're talking to. If you asked a sane person about it, they would say it's about an immature, slightly gay dude who tries to force every woman into an impossible romantic box that they can't possibly inhabit in order to prove something about himself. If you ask a boy, he will tell you that it's about a girl who's almost perfect, but turns out to be a whore and a bitch.
Boys like Andy fall in love a million times a day, because they have no idea what love actually is. They think love is sitting around doodling your name on their notebooks a hundred times and doing weird magical spells and making stupid annoying scenes to prove their love. They think love is conquest and perfection and dancing in the plaza and wonderful coincidences, and it's waiting around every magical corner and one day they will find it in that split second that they're not obsessively looking for it, like some kind of trick being played on them by God, but that's just romance.
Love tears you apart like a lion. Love is the difference between fair Rosaline and deadly Juliet, or Clementine before and after. It isn't something you look for and it's certainly not something you beg for, because it roars into your life like a hurricane and rips you open and puts you back together slightly better. Which is not something those boys can contemplate without shitting themselves, because they're perfect the way they are, so they mumble creepily to themselves about how you don't get it/are heartless/a whore/a bitch for not giving in to their dream fantasies of what connecting to another person is like, which really just amounts to giving them a way to connect to themselves. There is nothing as gross as realizing you're the six-foot mirror to a door inside somebody else. There is no burden so heavy as the selfish, twisted, imaginary, self-obsessed love of a squealing romantic, or the screaming burning way it goes sour when they don't get what they want. It makes me want to vomit.
Celia chooses this moment to call Nancy for help: she's gotten cornered at a payphone and the weird-looking cop is getting closer. Nancy offers to hang up on her, but she's intrigued by Celia's insane story of drinking too many lattes and getting chased by the cops. "Just tell me! Where do I hide out when the heat is on? Home, a motel? Mexico?" Nancy says that Mexico, at the moment, is not recommended. "I'm not going back in the slammer!" Celia howls, and Nancy asks her if she considers friendship a fundamental part of true love. "If you want my help, answer the fucking question." She can't, she's busy, the cop is getting closer. "Wrong answer. Have fun in jail." Nancy hangs up, and Celia runs off into a parking lot looking ever more insane. Cesar takes them up to the 11th floor, where Esteban is now being held for questioning.
The prep school dicks are all popped collars and insouciance, harassing Silas about how he's not even from Malibu and went to school at Agrestic High. They discuss the merits of public school, and Adelita at least tries to be cool, but the boys say half the reason she was in private school was so she wouldn't have to deal with "public dick." The cuter one takes off with her to go be smarmy somewhere else, and the other guy offers Silas some... Heroin.
"What is the glue that holds your relationships together for life?" Nancy answers, without looking at the answers, that it's Elmer's. Andy points out that this is glib, and that in fact "love" is a better answer, because "true love can overcome any problem." Gross. She points out that his entire life is a fairytale, and they're both getting angrier and angrier, because while he's using his Audra obsession against her, it's also rubbing painfully up against her newfound ambivalence toward Jailbird Esteban, and her responses are understandably getting more and more infantilizing, and they're both edging out further and further on their respective limbs just to keep traction, so it's getting nastier all the time.
Andy says that Audra makes him feel like every other woman was wrong, a mistake -- the bored elevator women are intrigued -- and he asks if she feels that way about Judah. Nancy points out that there are different loves and different marriages, and you can't rank them. She's right. She's right about all of it, of course, but Andy's not hearing her: there are as many ways to be in love as there are people to be in love with. But from his direction, he's a hammer so everything looks like the same kind of nail. The nails that look more like Nancy -- or in Mags' case, look more like the opportunity to screw his brother and thus screw Nancy -- are more attractive, but they're still just nails. Romance.
Cesar speaks up, and the whole crowded elevator listens to him: "I've been married for 27 years. We have three beautiful children, and a deep abiding love. But our glue is made from sharing, connecting, communicating. And I never bring my work home." Andy loves it, because that's how he feels. Or to be more specific, how he would like to feel, once he leapfrogs over all the messy living that got Cesar there, and uses Audra to transform himself.
Ignacio gets on the elevator of Celia's condo, still wearing his dog mask, and looks down at a smoking housewife from central casting with curlers in her hair and a Pomeranian on a leash. At Celia's door, he smashes through eventually, crying because it hurt so bad, and then grabs the bowling bag full of cash and runs off.
Nancy and Cesar are dealing with a gay admin on the 11th floor now, who responds to her screaming with a maddening calm and an ironic, pissy "Learn the fucking language." She keeps going, demanding Esteban, demanding this and that, and he's like, "Yeah, keep speaking to me in English. It's obviously getting you somewhere." She demands somebody who speaks English, and he pushes some more of her buttons, and finally Cesar carries her away from him -- sticking her tongue out like a demon at this point -- and putting her down. Cesar threatens the guy meanly, and he gives him a heaping helping of 'tude as well, and it's "Free Goat" levels of amazing/viscerally frustrating. Maybe "Punishment Light" even. They have nailed bureaucracy once again. This is the best episode of the season, I think.
Nancy asks Andy if he ever thinks about going back and doing things differently, and Andy says right now he'd like to time travel to 1974: "What To Wear To An Orgy," he reads. "Apparently the presence of underwear signals your desired level of participation." She's grateful to have moved on from the lame quiz, but saying so signals her desired level of participation, so he goes back to it. This one is rough, if '70s-inflected: what fuels the search for true love? A) Passion. B) The need for sex. C) Emotional and financial support. D) The basic human need to feel connected, and leave the prison of alone-ness.
Which is what Esteban comes down to. Answer this one and you win everything. The fact that it's a trick question doesn't even matter. Just go. Boyhood romance is repugnant, but you've done worse in your time. Stop thinking like a hammer.
Silas opens a bottle of wine and watches the dicks laugh and snuggle Adelita's unconscious self. Shane's like, "Those fucking dicks are still here?" Shane says they smoked heroin, but makes sure Shane understands that he is drug-free, except for pot. And the wine he's drinking. Shane watches them prepare to gang-rape their sister and points out that they suck. Silas has a point too: "She kinda sucks."
Shane worries about her two sisters in France, who presumably could also show up with douchebags in tow at any time. Silas slides a glass of wine over to Shane and they toast, to "This thing we're doing now, here, in this ridiculous place." Shane thanks him for not leaving, and he jokes that he's leaving tomorrow, laughing. The boys have her shirt off now. Shane asks if they should do anything, because she is truly out of it, and Old Silas rears his head: "Apparently these are the guys her dad wants her to fuck, so..."
The guys start kissing her in that gross trust-fundy way that's more about each other, and Silas finally springs into action, pulling their smacked-out asses off the couch. They get a little weird, but then Shane grabs one of them and threatens in Spanish to fuck him up the ass with his knife, so they run away. Silas is impressed.
The results of the quiz are as follows: Andy, with an 89%, understands what love is and is in true love. Nancy laughs that they can't count his orgy fixation against him at this point, or in 1974. "Nancybot," on the other hands, gets a 62%. She's disappointed. He pats her knee sweetly and says she still has the chance to reexamine her priorities and understanding of love and make a positive change in your life. "Or I could kill myself," she says boredly, and he comforts her that it's just a silly meaningless quiz, which she points out is obviously true, and he pulls that boy move of how he's special and truly in love, the exception to the cartoon rule, and she's like, "You're in love. For the moment." He acts like she's raining on his parade.
"I know you. This is what you do. You love to be loved, you pull all this love in, you build it all up in your head, and when it gets too close, you run." He gets pissed, and says he just wants the ring, not the "brilliant insight" that comes with it. She feels a little guilty, and says his name, and he realizes she's not giving the ring up. Awesomely: "Wow. You cannot get it together to treat me like somebody you actually care about."
Which is true, but not the point. I mean, it's the point, but not the point of this Andy-centric speech. Which if you recall is about the engagement ring she received from the father of her two sons, whom she is still mourning, which Andy would like for one of his fantasy schemes. Andy, if you recall, being the person who spent her dead husband's fortune on toys sometime in the last month and now wants to play house with Alanis Morissette. Just because he's being a jackass doesn't make it less true, though: "You are a fucking coward. You think that all this crazy shit you get into makes you brave. But you're fucking terrified of being ordinary."
"I would love to be ordinary," she says with tears in her eyes, thinking of Jill Price-Gray. "I would love to be back in Agrestic, waiting for Judah to come home." The town she burned to the ground, literally, while waiting for him to come home. And the house. "Yeah. I made sacrifices for my family. Fine." Andy points out that she sacrificed her family, instead. She's not kicking back watching Shane at soccer practice, exactly. "No, because you fucked that up. Don't sit here and tell me you want to be someone else when you do fuck-all to change what's going on." He's got her in tears when Cesar comes to get her. Holy crap, that was amazing.
The detective is less than helpful. Nancy starts screaming about how it's only four o'clock, and how can they be closing on top of the computer systems being down, and she screams over and over, "Tell me where he is! Tell me where he is!" until the guy finally relents, of course, and figures out that... Esteban Reyes was released four hours ago. She stands, speechless and gaping at Cesar, before going into total meltdown and attacking the guy with her purse. I wish they would put her in Mexican jail.
Celia's on the phone with Doug -- everything she owns, including herself, piled against the condo door -- begging him to take the pot off her hands. "No, I would not suck your dick," she spits, and over at Dean's Isabel asks Doug to kindly refrain from asking her mother to blow him. He whines that otherwise she would have known something was up, and asks Dean -- or "Dark & Lovely," as he calls him -- to corroborate. Because yeah, Dean Hodes is in blackface for some reason, and starts talking about how the "white women" have been sweatin' him all day, so he wants to go "hit a hot spot" and "turn it loose" while he's still dressed like a scary monster, sweating skin and putting on Lip Venom. Sometimes this show goes full retard before you can even blink. Isabel says, and I fervently hope she's right, that he will probably be murdered.
Nancy comes home to Shane enjoying a glass of wine, which he assures her is not a joke, and Andy (back to friend-not-parent mode) joins him. Where's Silas? Holding their sister's hair back while she pukes. "I get five feet in the door and shits already falling apart," Nancy says tiredly, and Shane drunkenly points at the TV, where there's a big announcement happening. Andy assumes that he's talking about the wedding he's planning for tomorrow, but no: Esteban Reyes, standing at a podium with Pilar Zuazo, back on the ticket. Guess his independent showing scared her, so now -- as Nancy says -- she's "pulled him back in."
Nancy sits down, narrowing her eyes at Pilar, but when Shane asks if Andy's really getting married, Nancy realizes she doesn't care anymore. About any of it. Would she go back and change anything? Would she take the new ring off, and put the other one back on? Not now. Not now that Esteban's useful and scary again; back on top and staying on top, standing to the woman she's going to murder: "Yes he is. He's using my ring, with my blessing," she says, without taking her eyes off the screen. They clink their glasses. Nancy congratulates her man.
Check out the online Weeds webisode series University of Andy starring Justin Kirk.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see why vlogger Sean Crespo thinks Weeds should take a sci-fi turn in No Prior Knowledge!