(Warning: spoilers ahead!)
Nancy Botwin's dark little world has seriously gone all to hell in a Mexican hand-woven handbasket. Dios mio!, it seems another lifetime that Mrs. Botwin was just your run of the mill soccer mom with an illegal side business. Those days look positively Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm considering what's currently going on in Nancy's world.
Pilar has firmly established that she's holding all the cards and cannot be stopped. As a gift, she sends Nancy a massage therapist to help her relax. "You're a warrior -- like the boss. Very similar, locked up in all the same places. Armored and ready for battle," the masseuse coos to Nancy while working on her knots. When Senora Reyes comes out to the patio post massage, she finds her husband having coffee with Pilar. "We've always been a great team," Pilar says fondly of Esteban. "We have come to an understanding," Esteban qualifies. Pilar can admit when she's made a mistake. The pollsters have spoken; Esteban will win and Nancy as his wife is good for his image -- as long as she stays in the background. Like tonight at a fundraiser over at Pilar's -- "you will come for thirty minutes, get a headache, and leave." Esteban begs Nancy's forgiveness. He had two choices - go to prison for life or play Pilar's game. "What would you have me do?" he asks her.
Celia is drinking screwdrivers from a pitcher, sitting in a storage locker. We see her dumping frozen orange juice into the pitcher, then vodka, then stirring with a knife. This is the week's 420 Moment. Doug comes to see her as per their conversation on the phone last week, to help her out by letting her unload the pot on him. However, being Doug, he puts his foot in his mouth a few hundred times and Celia, being Celia, realizes that she's been played. There was no cop. Doug and Dean were on to her, and got back at her by making her paranoid. She re-dedicates herself to selling drugs, but realizes now she lacks the one thing that made Nancy a success at it -- a team.
Back at Casa Reyes, Adelita begs Silas to come up to her bedroom, where she lies in bed looking like death warmed over. Half her body has gone numb and she's vomiting. ¡Qué sorpresa! - turns out the perfect daughter is a junkie. "I am a recreational user!" she declares before begging Silas to shoot her up before he leaves the room.
Andy has gifted Dr. Audra with a brand new hybrid by selling off his beloved car, General Lee, and a few other of his more expensive toys. He's also hung an engagement ring by a ribbon on the dashboard mirror. As he's in the middle of proposing to Audra, her phone rings and it's a freaked out Silas begging her to come to Casa Reyes for yet another runthrough of her Hippocratic Oath. Audra is thrilled: "Someone else get shot?" (Is it me, or is she beginning to look like a bit of an ambulance chaser? This stuff turns her on a bit too much.)
Once she finds out about Adelita's heroin addiction, Nancy is shocked but can't help but gloat a little bit. Esteban, it's clear by now, considers her two sons little better than street punks. Meanwhile his daughter, the product of expensive European schooling, speaking three languages, beautiful and smart, is strung out. Audra and Nancy arrange to have her sent to a rehab center in Arizona.
As we bid a fond farewell to these characters until next season, Celia has assembled her team and finally feels bulletproof. Doug, Dean, Ignacio, Isabelle, and Sanjay will all be her support staff and split the profits with her. She's ready to start all over again. Celia's like a cockroach - you can't kill her. She takes a licking and keeps on ticking. I can almost see her with a spin off series of her own.
The newly engaged Audra and Andy return home to find Gil, the crazy anti-abortionist crusader, camped out in the living room with a crossbow. Andy takes one look, turns tail, and runs, proving Nancy's earlier statement to him ("Men are weak") completely correct.
The season ends with Pilar's party. Esteban is schmoozing with supporters while Nancy sits glassy-eyed in a corner. Shane and Silas are there as well, Shane throwing back the vino. They're worried about their mom, even as Shane calls her "the Teflon warrior." Silas fears her luck will eventually run out. Earlier, Nancy had decided she was not going to become a piece on Pilar's chessboard and directed Guillermo to rub her out, pronto.
After her obligatory thirty minutes at the party, Nancy gets up to leave. Pilar walks her out for a private poolside chat. It turns out that Guillermo, like everyone else, is on her payroll. "I admire the cojones -- next time you might want to pick someone who doesn't work for me and who isn't still mad at you for ratting him out," she advises. Nancy goes all mama bear on her - don't you touch my children, I'll kill you myself. But Pilar plans on having the last laugh. "Esteban needs you and the baby for photos but Silas and Shane -- they are, what's the word? Extraneous. We don't need them to complete our pretty pictures." For the sake of the final scene of the series I won't tell you what happens next, but let's just say that it's pineapple upside down cake time.
Weeds airs on Showtime Monday nights at 10PM.
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Holly Cara Price: Weeds, Episode 5 Recap
This episode ends with a major decision on Nancy's part to take back control. Sort of...
It looks like Shane "The Mallet" Botwin is on his way to serious sociopathy after righteously offing the despicable Pilar -- and there's more to that "masseuse" than meets the eye, otherwise there'd be no reason to cast the formidable Rachel Ticotin in that part. Moreover, now that Esteban's boss lady is apparently deceased, does anyone else have the goods on him and who stands to take over for her?
See you all next season!
And one of the show's trademarks has always been the crazy cliffhanger ending - I come to dread the last 45 seconds of each show, wondering what fresh hell is going to happen to Nancy today. And the season finales have, without exception, been jaw-dropping moments when you can tell in an instant that the entire premise and structure of the show will completely change when it comes back the next year. Knowing all this, expecting it to happen, I was still absolutely floored by the ending of this episode.
Wow. Like, crazy-go-nuts wow.