"Weeds" Creator Discovers Suburban Ecstasy

Could television be falling a little for the suburbs? The Baltimore Sun's Stephen Kiehl thinks he notices an appreciation for suburbia cropping up in the second season of "Weeds," Showtime's dark comedy about a suburban widow who turns to drug dealing to keep her family afloat. He even gets the show's creator, Jenji Kohan, to admit to a little suburb-envy when she's on location. "They're clean and they're safe and the gardens are very well-manicured," says Kohan, who lives in L.A. Given the antiseptic surroundings, people in the suburbs have to work harder to make life interesting, Kohan goes on to say, "and they do." (And not only by dealing pot, one assumes.)

While Kohan's admission is a kick in itself (up there with a "Weeds" writer's news last year that he'd never inhaled), it's not the warming trend Kiehl has in mind. What Kiehl detects in the new "Weeds" episodes is a sense of community imposed on suburbanites by their neighbors. In the suburbs, in other words, you don't pick your friends, but are forced to befriend your neighbors.