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Nancy takes a while to figure out where they're going, in their little van, but eventually decides on Canada. Why? Because it's the opposite direction from Mexico. She spends the first half of the episode in that likeable haze from last week, so that's the level she's processing at. But they get stopped at the border and -- since Stevie Ray doesn't have a birth certificate -- turned back.
But it's not just Stevie who's a problem. Silas is, of course, totally not interested in running away -- not to mention the only one who doesn't buy Nancy's standard flight mode -- and threatens to strike out on his own. As usual, he is wonderful and heartbreaking and brings out the best in Nancy and everybody else, but ultimately, after everybody has a good cry, he decides to stick with it. And Shane... well, Nancy can't even pull it together to parent him past smacking him in the face a few times, so they just sort of détente for now.
Everybody gets rid of their phones once the FBI gives Nancy a call, and we learn Esteban is also being hounded by them. And the fact that Nancy's got Stevie is, of course, a huge issue. But the arbitrary nature of these Esteban scenes means presumably that nothing will actually happen there for at least four episodes, probably eight.
Andy keeps trying to get Nancy to open up about the murder, and when she's won't he just starts supplying strangers with marriage advice. Of course, Andy also is a genius and knows all about living off the grid and being sneaky, so he keeps throwing out various rules for their new lifestyle, and in short order and after a meeting with the super-bizarre teen Chinaman, the whole family has ritually died and been rechristened the possibly-Jewish Newmans: Nathalie, Randy, Mike and Shawn, and baby Avi.
Nathalie continues to be a fairly awesome person if still not a particularly stellar parent, which is altogether nice; Mike's wounded moral compass shows no signs of getting annoying yet, which shows you how far we've come; Randy remains Randy, and Shawn's slow-burn to not being crazy anymore is fun to watch. All in all, it seems to be a Weeds worth watching this year, funny and affectionate and committed to the idea of telling a different story every chapter. The magic seems to be holding, for now.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Andy won't leave Nancy alone about where they're going; nobody understands that Nancy is being as straightforward as she can possibly be when she says "North" or "Destination: Away from where we were." When her parents got sick she just ran, it didn't matter that she went to ballet school, she could have gone anyway. When Judah died she went crazy and it didn't matter how, exactly, she was just going. When it was time to burn down Agrestic she just ran, it didn't matter where they were going. And so on. She runs at least as often as random acts of violence save her ass.
As Nancy (poorly) scrapes the road off the van's windshield -- it's shaped like a mallet; it'll never get completely clean -- Andy changes the subject to the horrific murder she witnessed the other day. "Did she scream? Was there lots of blood? Are you totally freaked that the fruit of your loins is a killer fruit?" Nancy's not really into talking about that either. Andy picks up her ringing cell phone and asks if she'd prefer to talk about Audra, whom he terms the "love of [his] life," which earns him a hilarious, if harsh, snort from Nancy.
He whines about that as he shows her the phone -- Esteban's left like eight messages -- but it's clear what she means: Audra wasn't the love of Andy's life because Andy's not really old enough to love or have a life ("Be the baby!") and even if he could, she considers it an open secret anyway that it certainly wouldn't be anybody but her. She is not wrong but damn, Nancy Pants. You gotta at least pretend boys have feelings.
Inside the convenience store Shane's looking for news of his big murder, but so far nothing. Silas is still schizing out about how Shane malleted a lady in the head, and hopes against hope that maybe she didn't really die. Shane snorts just like his mother and says it's possible, but only before the part where Nancy turned the key on the automatic pool cover and confined Pilar to a watery grave.
Back out at the pumps, Andy's gotten himself into an Aha Moment with a lady named Deb, whose fiancé is a seasonal logger and has perhaps grown distant. "If he's off felling and swamping six months a year, that's a message: He's not ready." Nancy shouts at him to change Stevie Ray, whipping the entire bundle of diapers at his chest, and stalks off to finally listen to the messages from her husband. They are predictable: He wants to know where she is, when she'll be back, and where his son is. She gets, I think, confirmation of Pilar's death, although we don't hear it. Which means she's fucked. She hangs up on voicemail, and mourns a little also, I think, for her third marriage.
And you know, it is sad. Considering how many obstacles they overcame in their rocky relationship, when you think about it: The lion cage, the raping, the constant threat of murder, Shane getting shot, the time they confined her so they could steal the child from her womb, accidental trafficking in child prostitutes, that time they did shamanic drugs and barfed all over the place, that time his daughter OD'd on heroin. Cesar, with the little fishies tickling his toes. Forcing Sucio to bathe. You can't say they never tried. They tried harder than most. I think Nancy totally gets to snort at the idea of Audra mattering.
Anyway, Nancy's ready to go and is not interested in letting Andy finish his little convo with the logging wife, so she just starts driving away with the van door open, honking at him like they're headed to Pittsburgh with Zooey Deschanel. "So you gotta say, Hey, what does Deb want for Deb? Do you have e-mail, Deb? ...You deserve everything good! Keep strong, sister!" Andy, he's a helper. (Also strangely interested in dangerous-job reality shows this week, for some reason.)
Andy jumps in, and then about five minutes into the drive Nancy realizes that they totally just foursquared their location by paying with a card. She nearly starts crying and/or punching anybody in reach, and Andy says they just need to hit a CostCo or something and max out all the cards at once, as close to this last purchase as possible. Good call. "Now or never. Max out the cards, snap 'em, and drive like fuck so we're nowhere near this place." Nancy likes that idea, clings to it like a little fishie on the toes, but then misses the exit. She nearly loses it, right there, and everybody gets scared. Last time she was like this it was the punishment light and she was alone. She's still alone.
"What's the matter? They open the pool cover?" Nancy shoots Shane a look for telling Silas her part in all this, and can't say out loud that Pilar is definitely dead. Silas meanwhile feels like it's definitely necessary to turn back at this point: "We can explain it. He's a juvenile. We don't have to throw everything away. It was a mistake, self-defense..." Shane opens up his bonkers mouth and goes, "It wasn't a mistake. She never even saw it coming!"
Silas, still in the Bargaining phase of mourning for essentially everything, starts pulling out every excuse, and between the two of them Nancy and Shane shoot them down: No witnesses, but there was a security camera, and so forth. Finally Nancy goes into that teacher voice she so rarely uses: "We can't go back, okay? ...My days were numbered anyway. As were yours, because you all have the bad fortune of being related to me. So we can't go back. We... Can't." She snaps the radio on, and Silas...
Man, this is really his episode. He is a fucking heartbreaker the entire time. It's worth watching this episode just to watch him go, he's that good. This good at being wonderful. I'm not sure where Shane ends up but Silas is the man he's going to be. She burnt him strong. So he yells and turns the radio off again and refuses to contribute to the cash stash. "No! I'm not ruining my life because of him. He made the mistake. No one's looking for me." Silas loves his life. His mother can't imagine it. Nancy gets full-on pissed this time, and pulls off.
"You're right, Silas. No one's looking for you. They will be looking for you, if they can't find me." It's not the words, it's the tone; Andy takes a warning tone and tries to calm her down, but it's too late. And the more she talks the more ashamed she gets.
"No. He's old enough to decide for himself. I'm not gonna drag you along with me. Just know, if you get out now, it's not like you're gonna be able to live a normal life. You're still gonna have to run for... I don't know how long. You might have a better shot going solo. So you decide. You're gonna be a lone wolf, or you're gonna go with the pack."
Shane howls. Somehow his mother does not bash him in his fruitpunch mouth.
"I will ask you as your mother, who wants you to live, that you never go back to Ren Mar. Or anywhere, really, in the San Diego area. Or Mexico. Probably not Los Angeles..." She can't even look him in the eye. He refuses to start crying, and when he takes off his seat belt she can't even take it. And when he slams the door closed again, and Stevie starts to cry, he produces a huge wad of cash Lupita gave him. "Oh," Nancy's impressed. "Wow, Lupita. That was nice." Silas closes his eyes and cries and doesn't know how to feel and hates the fact that he's not leaving just as much as he would have hated leaving.
Another point for Nancy. Little wasp-eggs in your head. Not free enough to run away and not trapped enough to break out, just like Guillermo or Conrad or anybody else. It's the way she feels, all the time. Caught between the love of his life, loving it just as it was getting started, and the love of all of them.
At the superstore Andy's so excited -- "Total roaming, gypsy-style shenanigans, mad play from the ladies in strange new towns, strange new beds" -- that Silas can barely stand him. They put on hats to hide from the cameras, and Silas finally asks the only real question you should ever ask, when it's Nancy: "Who, exactly, is after us?"
The bear. Just like every time.
Andy doesn't know, can't know what it really entails, isn't really in this for the truth anyway, so he's just like, "Your Mom has a better handle on that," and fills up the carts: Phones, batteries, giftcards of all kinds to burn through the credit cards faster. It's just like Nova Scotia in '89, he says: "I'll be frank... This is my wheelhouse. I'm the king of off-grid living." There's a creepy goth girl with vamp bites in her neck and a bunch of Hot Topic bling working the register; she can't give them more than $80 cash back but because Silas is beautiful she closes the line and rings up everything separately. Silas asks her about the bites in her neck, and she's horrible some more and flirts with Silas and hisses hilariously at Andy, who finds her and her interest in Silas quite entertaining indeed, and they're done.
Driving away from the big-box Shane says some unnecessary thing that's not even that snotty, but it's the last straw for old Nancy, so she pulls over yet again and drags him out to a rest stop to, I guess, attempt to parent for the first time. Andy and Silas watch from the car, hands on chins. "Well, he bludgeoned a woman to death with a mallet. He should be chastised."
Since Shane doesn't seem to understand the actual moral issue here, Nancy tries to explain in a more pragmatic way why murder is not okay; like this one, for e.g., it was in fact dangerous and foolish, and now the whole family is paying for it. Shane finds this ungrateful: "I saved your ass. I saved all our asses." Nancy slaps him upside the head, and the peanut gallery quietly goes ooooh shit.
Nancy realizes that perhaps she shares some of the blame: "Do you even hear yourself? You're a kid. You're supposed to be out playing baseball, not clubbing people to death. I'm the mother, I decide who gets clubbed. I do the clubbing, not you." When he's 18, or better yet 21, he can take whatever sporting good he desires, club whomever he likes, go to prison for the rest of his life. But for now it's kid stuff: "Video games, broken curfews, Peeps in the microwave." She wants him to love his life; he's been sad for so long and hasn't even started yet. He needs to learn it, before it's gone.
On final analysis, Pilar Zuazo was her problem, not Shane's or anybody else's. She played the game and lost. She counted on Guillermo and it almost ended up costing her Shane and Silas. "Am I grounded?" Shane snarks, and she smacks him again before making him empty his pockets: It's all candy. She takes it all away, parenting by hops, and eats some of it herself. If she can't get him to mourn the loss of his own childhood, then what is really the problem? Silas spent the first four seasons fighting her on this one, and eventually -- the night she drove to Mexico -- she realized he was right.
He niggles her down, little by little: "I'm glad it was done. Not by you." He nearly smiles at that, and she swats his behind, telling him to never murder again. They've reached as much of an agreement as they possibly can, and he's always been precocious. And anyway, what to do about it now? He knows what he did. The Feelings will come. Meanwhile, Nancy could have figured it out, as scary as it got, but Shane beat her to the solution. And what a solution it was! She got to leave everything behind, start her fifth -- by my count -- brand new life, built just to her specifications. Her boys.
Time for Uncle Andy's Guide To Living Off The Grid, Step I: Kill your old identity. The Botwins, Andy explains, are dead. No contacting friends, no contacting family. Silas points out that they have neither, but Shane is still fond of Isabel. Nancy says no way can he call Isabel, for obvious reasons, and she's more than willing to promise the same of Celia. I miss Celia in theory, because she is awesome, but I do think this is the most respectfully toxic way to say goodbye to her: With fear, and a little hate. With love for her toxicity. I'm sure Doug will find a way back onto the show, irritatingly, so I guess there's still a chance for Isabel to come back. Anyway, Step II: New identities.
But first, where are we going? Shane immediately starts plotting their route to Pittsburgh, of course, but Nancy vetoes that one yet again. Canada. Everybody hates that idea, and Nancy's like, "We killed someone very important, and we don't have Esteban to help us!" Silas points out that "we" did nothing, and that anyway they still don't know who's following them. Shane reminds everybody that Esteban will be looking for his namesake, his son, and Nancy reminds them that Stevie's also her son, not to mention their brother, and when Silas corrects her -- "half" -- she reminds him how petty that distinction is. I swear it's like the second she gets that latte straw in her mouth she becomes hilarious again. No wonder her pregnancy was such a bummer! She didn't have the Power Of The Straw.
Why Canada? Literally the farthest you can get from Pilar's body. Shane votes for Alaska or Argentina, two great pla
ces for murderers and war criminals and the criminally vacant, and Andy gets all excited about the Panama Canal, but Nancy says they're not going through Mexico. Although Alaska is still on the table. Am I wrong that you cannot drive to Alaska? Isn't the whole point that they're driving there? Flying to Alaska would be the same thing as flying to Hawaii or Japan, right? In terms of escape? Well, and anyway it doesn't matter because Andy got into a knife fight with a cannery foreman in a Kodiak salmon smokehouse. I'm getting kind of tired of Andy's Memories Of Living Off The Grid, to be perfectly honest.
Later, Silas wonders how they're supposed to buy anything in Canada, when they barely have any American money, and Nancy (chillin' with a Red Bull) is once again perfectly honest: "Not rebuilding yet. Still fleeing." He whines, she tells him to watch a DVD, and then before it starts they all talk along with the minivan's computer voice, telling them all of its many features; it's a funny little road-trip moment, totally banal and totally real.
At the border crossing, Nancy realizes that Andy is going to get weird on the lady because he's so weird, and she tells Silas to get in the back -- on pain of "respect and fear for your fucking mother?" -- but can't subsequently switch with Andy before the lady appears. They do a pretty good cover story for her, with funny little details, and Nancy does that cute flirty thing she does with strangers, and everything's going fine until the woman asks for Stevie (who is adorable) Ray's birth certificate. Of course, he doesn't have one thanks to his father, so they just sort of stare at her for awhile, and then give up the Canadian Dream as quickly as it came to them.
Later, Shane offers to "put the baby in a cooler, sedate him with cough syrup, tape it shut, put tiny air holes in the top," which is so low on the Shane-Psycho-Meter at this point they can barely roll their eyes at him. Meanwhile, Nancy's new FBI nemesis, Agent Lipschitz, has left a message politely threatening them not to cross any US borders, so they have to stick around regardless. Andy suddenly realizes all their phones are traceable, and there's an anthill moment, an ecstasy of fumbling and crushing, before they look at Shane: He takes out his SIM card, drops it in his beverage, and shrugs. "Much simpler, less destructive."
Hotel, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, where Silas is thinking about shaving his head. Shane goes into some little boy thing about how cool switchblades are -- "...flips out of a comb! Or maybe you should just get a comb that looks like a switchblade, so you don't accidentally cut yourself!" -- but somewhere between the annoying excitement of all tween boys and the creepiness lingering on the edges of his knife fascination, Silas jumps on him. They beat each other up -- "Don't make me go Pilar on your ass!" -- and Andy pulls them apart, telling Silas not to shave his head: "Chicks like something to grab on to." There's a hilarious moment where he starts looking for random channels to see if he can illustrate his point with Taxi Driver, and Silas is still pissed, but then Nancy comes out in a very awful wig: "Fake and hookery," actually, is Andy's description.
Andy decides it's time to pick new names. Nancy snips at her horrible multicolored hookery wig and complains about both Price and Botwin, the latter specifically because she hated always having to spell it. Andy gets grandiose -- "Meaningful. Metaphoric. Phoenix." -- but then quickly starts picking out porn-name sounding names. Shane says they need to pick stuff that already sounds like your name, so you'll answer to it. Like "Shane" will become "Shawn." Andy gives him a last name: Newman. Meaningful and metaphoric and of uncertain heritage. Maybe Jewish, maybe not.
"Newman, like, Alfred E.? Or Paul?" Like Randy, which rhymes with Andy, which is Andy's new name: Randy Newman. Nancy picks Nathalie, spelling out the silent "h," and then, anxious not to completely erase themselves, calls Stevie "Avi." Still named for his father. "Not that you know your name yet, but you will. I love that you sleep all the time. I know a mother's not supposed to say that, but I do." She's out of it. I guess Nathalie is out of it. (I miss Lacey most of all, I think.) Silas, nothing rhymes with Silas, so he picks Mike. The Newman family.
Over dinner they all call themselves their new names, making virtue or at least diversion out of necessity; Shawn calls his mother Nathalie and she corrects him back down to Mom. Randy gathers up all the old ID's and ATM and library cards, everything with the old names, to get rid of them. Mike finds it the hardest to give up his license; it took him three times to pass the written test. Nathalie isn't unsympathetic -- "Mike, honey" -- but he's being stubborn. It's the love of his life, you see. What he's leaving behind.
"What you'll need, Mike, is Mike Newman's driver's license. Which could be a Class A, D, or M. Meaning Mike's license will allow him to drive trucks, and buses, and motorcycles! Which Silas Botwin's pussy license does not. You want to be an ice-road trucker, or not?"
One dumb racist joke later, they have the name and location of a fake ID guy in town. Cute pictures for the whole family, and then Randy and Mike head out to a lovely little suburban house, white siding black shutters, bicycle bell on the door. A little old lady answers and after a moment of confusion conducts them back through the house to "the Chinaman," who is her teenage son. Who is crazy looking, and after some paranoia and generally enjoyable weirdness, they pay him the balance in Hooters giftcards. It's all very strange and cute and old school.
Randy says Kaddish over a trash barrel and one by one sends the Botwins on their way, along with their IDs.
"Shane Gregory Botwin... A likable boy, with sadness in his soul. Confused, frustrated, impulsive. We mourn Shane Gregory Botwin, and say Baruch haba to Shawn Oliver Newman. May you live to see your dreams fulfilled. This is a driver's license, so you should probably learn to drive now."
She weeps, watching her sons die. Watching them be born.
"Silas Andrew Botwin, firstborn son. A green thumb. An open and willing heart. The best parts of you will carry forward. The rest we do commit to fire. And shit howdy to Mike T. Newman, no one knows what the T stands for. Mazel Tov. Here you go."
He looks at her and her heart swells; he was so kind and so generous, to the new men and the boys they left behind. Surely Nancy Price Botwin deserves an elegy at least as lovely. But you can see in his eyes she won't get it.
"Nancy Price Botwin... Farewell, Pants. And all that you were. You had many pockets."
That's it. She's disappointed; she knows she deserves nothing more and probably something less than that.
The truth is that he doesn't have the words.
"And warm, wonderful welcome to Nathalie Newman, silent H. Dancer, mother, lover of the open road."
Or maybe she just hasn't changed at all.
They gather hands around the burning garbage of their lives and interrupt his final prayer, heading back to the car. (Randy allows as how they're not a minyan anyway so it doesn't really count; even their rituals are off the grid.) She'll throw confetti and hope desperately for them all. They'll head back, joking about Mike's second thoughts now that they're out of Hooters giftcards; down in California Lipschitz is harassing Esteban about his missing wife, and the death of Pilar Zuazo on American soil. Soon he'll send Cesar after them, once again; he'll try to get his son back and protect them all from the FBI. I don't think it will work.
But first, Nathalie Newman would like to say a Kaddish prayer of her own. "Um... The Newmans will succeed where the Botwins failed. They will live a normal life. They will find jobs. They will... Go to school. They will have hobbies. They will live a quiet, under-the-radar life. The Newmans will be a family."
Love of her life burns away. Nathalie almost breaks down. Dancer, mother. They don't even know what she's trying to say. She barely knows what she's trying to say; she's never said it before. Lover of the open road. Nancy Price Botwin Reyes will stay dead this time. She deserves nothing less.
Discuss this episode in our forums, then see what vlogger Sean Crespo thinks of Weeds when he has No Prior Knowledge!
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