Well, that was an odd little episode. Remember all the gangbanging stuff that went down last week? It more or less simmered down into an interlude about relationships.
While we're on the topic of relationships, I must offer a sincere mea culpa to you, my readers. Last week, for reasons I'll spare you, I committed the cardinal TV Watch sin: I did not watch carefully. To clarify, it was Heylia who ordered the drive-by that deep-impacted Marvin's booty. Thinking (as I did) that the Tres Seis were the culprits, U-Turn then retaliated against the Latino crew with a counter-drive-by. Should the two crews continue to spar, Heylia will come out ahead. But that's apparently moot for the time being. Instead, this episode we were treated to a class in Gangsta 101, a WASPy party, Andy in his tighty whities, and Mary-Kate Olsen — without her twin! Where to begin?
How about with the most bizarre, delightfully breezy turn of events: angry U-Turn going all sensei on Nancy. This yielded some awesome banter between the two, as well as a most excellent pearl of street wisdom: ''Thug means never having to say you're sorry.'' Which, when you think about it, is sort of true. U-Turn decided Nancy had the makings of a fine lieutenant — in the light of Marvin's ineptitude and the fact that the mom still has some discernible ethics, unlike his other colleagues. (Nonetheless, Nancy was called out, somewhat discreetly, on her dubious parenting skills. Och aye, poor Shane.) We saw U-Turn become a bit of a Mr. Softy in that boxing ring and at Heylia and Conrad's new farm operation, where he coached the awkward Nancy on proper strong-arming techniques. (Once more! With feeling!) This gave Mary-Louise Parker a plum opportunity to show off her physical-comedy chops, but I'd ultimately give credit to Page Kennedy (U-Turn) for carrying those scenes with colossal charisma and deadpan delivery.
The nicer new U-Turn seemed to have Nancy fooled too, until he reminded her who was boss by, you know, choking her. That set us up to cheer on the dude's sudden demise. But I gotta be honest with you — I'm gonna miss that cranky mofo and his tendency to oscillate from legitimately scary to slyly funny. At the same time, it was so gratifying to see teddy-bearish Marvin show some cojones at last. Killing his tormentor with his bare hands? Nice touch. Interestingly, it was here that the Weeds brain trust nailed that old tone I'd missed so much, by seamlessly transforming this dark turn of events into a goofy spoof of action-movie death scenes. Brett Ratner should be so good.
NEXT: Michelle Tanner gone wild!
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