Author: Unknown
•2:44 PM
By Tina Rocha

For the last ten years, there's been a defining trend in fictional television: Realism. It started with reality television and influenced fictional television before long like Sopranos, and Weeds is definitely one of the funniest in this trend, and certainly belongs on your downloads queue the next time you pay a visit to your tv and movie download service.

This trend towards realism began with shows like Survivor, which wound up really killing fictional shows in the ratings. See, sitcoms and dramas became incredibly formulaic and predictable. You always knew the punchline of every joke before it came: I get it, the dad likes watching football and the wacky neighbor wants to date his daughter.

Along came reality television. Say what you will about it, but it did make some changes. TV producers found that viewers really responded better to more realistic scenarios, more real people. Even if reality shows are staged, even if they can be crass and artless, the fact remains that they use real human emotions and drama to build the whole package, even if that real drama is sometimes twisted around in editing to seem more extreme than it really is.

With fictional television, the first to really catch on was The Sopranos, which could have been just some mob show twenty years ago, but post-Survivor, it became much more, a show about a real character, Tony Soprano. In Goodfellas, all the characters have to worry about is mob stuff, who's gonna get whacked and so on. In Sopranos, Tony has to consider that, plus where is his daughter going for college? How does he deal with his own and his son's panic attacks? How does he make his wife happy? This was real life seeping into a fictional scenario.

Weeds follows the same trend, with a really funny concept: A suburban single mother makes ends meet by selling weed. It's part stoner humor, part crime story and part family drama, and very funny.

The show is really defined by some great characters. The Candyman is one of the best. She's actually a female character, codenamed the Candyman. She runs a bakery that specializes in marijuana goodies. She's also a fitness nut, refusing to sell to anyone who doesn't promise to exercise and burn off the extra calories provided by her brownies and cupcakes.

As you watch this suburban mom try to keep control of her situation, you'll find yourself rooting for her to really succeed with her marijuana dealership just as much as you'll be rooting for her to maintain her family situation. Think Roseanne meets Sopranos meets Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and that's almost, but not quite, what the show's all about.

Be warned, it's addictive. Like Lost or The Sopranos, you can't just watch one or two episodes. Each season is structured as a single story separated into chapters by each episode, so if you're going to download one, you may as well download a dozen or you'll find yourself waiting for hours between episodes to see what happens next.

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