An Airbrushed History of "Weeds'" Nancy Botwin

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Think Pieces | Comments (22)

In a little less than a month, Showtime will premiere the 7th season of what was once a nifty suburban satire. The 7th season ad promo looks like this:

The bondage is a new twist on the ad campaign, but the blemish-free flesh is not. In fact, she looks a little more natural in chains than she has in previous campaigns, which have gone to lengths to make her more like a Betty Boop cartoon than an actual human being.

But it works. I’ve given up on the show more times than Lindsay Lohan has given up blow, but I always return, ever curious to see if Nancy Botwin will redeem herself as a person. She doesn’t. But maybe it’s too much to ask of her to be a good person; it’s a very patriarchal view. We don’t ask that of Walt White. We just ask that he get what needs to be done to support his family, even if it means endangering those very same people in his efforts to knock off a few assholes. The difference is that Walt White uses a science degree, and Nancy Botwin uses her legs. This season she has to use those legs to get herself out of prison after taking the fall for a murder her borderline homicidal son committed. I have a feeling she’ll succeed.

I will almost certainly make a habit of giving up on the show after every episode. But it’s sequences like the sex scene with Zach Morris in season six that will continue to pull me back in. Plus, I feel like I need to help support the airbrush artist responsible for all the “Weeds” promos. He or she does great work, although it hardly seems that necessary when this is your starting point.

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MmmmmmmmmmmmhhhhhmmmmmmmmmBoy did I log in just in time- she's simply delicious!

Posted by: Tony at May 10, 2011 12:45 PM

How long are her legs in that last picture?

Posted by: Carrie at May 10, 2011 12:47 PM

I love that video where she gets a spanking in the limon.

Posted by: maka at May 10, 2011 12:53 PM

god damnit I meant limo

Posted by: maka at May 10, 2011 12:53 PM

I've had a giant girl crush on her for years. I need to catch up on that Weeds craziness.

Posted by: Dorothy Snarker at May 10, 2011 12:58 PM

I'm OK with the fact that Nancy is a terrible, terrible person, who also happens to be quite hot-and-sexy.

Posted by: Meander at May 10, 2011 12:58 PM

I'm having serious problems with Nancy's character arc. In bending Nancy around from season to season, Kohan has created huge problems in continuity, not to mention the devolution of the suburban satire that was the show's primary draw through the first two seasons.

These posters make it very difficult for me to believe that the show is created/executive produced by a woman, or ever had anything to do with any sort of female empowerment or atypical subversion of women's traditional roles.

Posted by: Jerry at May 10, 2011 1:06 PM

At the beginning she was just a nice normal person caught up in a crazy world. Now she's just another one of the crazies.

I miss Conrad.

I do keep it in my Netflix queue. The posters are fun to look at as I scroll by.

Posted by: Socrates_Johnson at May 10, 2011 1:10 PM

Nancy, I am coming after your family. I know about your drug shenanigans and I'm going to the authorities. There is nothing you can do to stop------WHOA you move fast! . . . ooh, bendy . . . no, that's my elbow . . . get the high heels . . . don't worry, I'll buy a new bed . . . wait, slow down, no-no-no----aaaaaand I'm done.

Posted by: Kballs at May 10, 2011 1:12 PM

Taking the fall for the murder is the first unselfish thing she has done. Nancy Botwin is not a good person. She never has been and she never will be. If you are waiting for a redemption you are going to be very disappointed. I'll be disappointed if they give her redemption.

The Feds know who she is, I don't think she is going to escape this one. Although decking her out in chains like an escape artist is a nice touch for the marketing.

I still really like the series but I hope this is the ending. Although it should have ended on the freeze frame of her face at the end of last season. I think they are going to be hard pressed to outdo that finale. The visuals, performance, music, and tone was absolutely perfect.

Posted by: TylerDFC at May 10, 2011 1:19 PM

She is very very hot. I would do many many dirty things to and/or with her. That said, I have season 3 sitting on a shelf and can't bring myself to get back into the show because of the awful character.

The comparison of her to Walter White is somewhat unfair I think. Both of their initially well-intentioned drug plans have caused harm to those they were first sacrificing their ideals for. Walt's character is simply more compelling in his transformation. He was dying. The news of this was timed perfectly with his learning of a very quick (and to his chemist's eye a very easy) way to the money he needed to make sure his family would want for nothing in his absence.

Nancy Botwin began as simply a lazy over privileged housewife who needed to support her family. Get a fucking job. I know, her kids and other extenuating circumstances have left her too far past the point of no return but there's never really been a reason to have sympathy for her. She not only doesn't have the intelligence of Walter White. She doesn't have the intelligence of a high school student. Every move she makes is blindly reactionary and without so much as a thought past ten minutes into the future.

Back to Walt, he's made a ton of mistakes that have sent him on a road to becoming much further from his former self than Nancy could ever dream
of yet it's an intriguing transformation. His character is compelling and well written. He's a mysterious contradiction to himself whereas Nancy Botwin is simply...simple.

It's not that Weeds isn't enjoyable. I just really really hate Ma Botwin. And for fuck's sake, take that damned straw out of your mouth and put the stupid coffee down! Every time she takes a sip from that straw I want to scream.

Posted by: Paultera at May 10, 2011 1:25 PM

TylerDFC, I agree 100%. End it there, with her son having just killed that Mexican bitch, and its open-ended like the Sopranos. We don't know what happened, but we hope she survives. Unfortunately, she lives, and does what? They should have ended it there, go out with a big bang!

Posted by: EJ at May 10, 2011 1:39 PM

She's got a really annoying face. I think it's the smirk. It bugs me.

Also I can't forget Amy Gardener. I'm very bitter.

Posted by: Figgy at May 10, 2011 1:45 PM

But yeah, I'd totally hit that.

Posted by: Figgy at May 10, 2011 1:46 PM

I confess this is a show I simply do not get. Mrs. Frob has attempted to get me into it several times. I made a game effort of going through the first season at one point. What I found at the end of that effort (and in watching segments over her shoulder since) is that I don't feel enough sense of identity with so many completely morally ambivalent characters. I understand that's part of the point, I really do, but sheesh...it's gruelling keeping up with the fickle hatred and vice in this show.

It was also hard to feel any sense of investment in the suspense, because awful thing builds up over time, blammo crazy shit happens, and everybody moves on. Many shows do this, but here it's almost as if the characters have no memory or ability to process what has proceeded, because if they did, they would all be batshit insane.

I will acknowledge that Parker is all kinds of hot, photoshop or not.

-Frob

Posted by: frobme at May 10, 2011 2:41 PM

I really really REALLY wanted Esteban to kill Nancy last season. Nothing torturous, just a bullet to the left eye or something.

Also, and I know it's perverted and never going to happen, but I really want her to bang Uncle Andy.

Posted by: TheEmpress at May 10, 2011 5:13 PM

I stopped watching after Agrestic burned to the ground. That was a perfect ending. But I do love the ad campaigns, especially the pin-up pictures. She's perfect for that.

At this point, TheEmpress, I imagine Andy deserves a little Botwin bonin'.

Posted by: RobP at May 10, 2011 5:49 PM

Where is her belly button? Are they flaws now? Because if I can narrow my criticism to the one little thing in the middle, maybe I won't notice the area around it.

*lifts up shirt*

Stupid hole! I hate you!

Posted by: Lauren at May 10, 2011 6:05 PM

nancy is a horrible, horrible person and....i just can't seem to look away. god, i hate her.

the series should have ended after season 3 but last year would have been good too. i wonder what parker thinks of this crazy sociopath she has to play.

Posted by: splinter at May 10, 2011 6:11 PM

a difference between breaking bad and weeds is when watching breaking bad, you are supposed to feel uncomfortable and troubled by the flawed and doomed Walt White. There is a morality play at work and White is constantly tormented by his fall, whereas in the loathsome Weeds, we're supposed to be cheering Miss Botwin on in her narcissistic psychopath flip adventures. We're supposed to be laughing but it just made me sick. I stopped watching long ago and it is one of the few shows that makes me wonder about this anything goes kind of storytelling

Posted by: idleprimate at May 11, 2011 5:52 AM

Until now I hadn't seen the snake poster. Wow.

But yah, I don't watch the show for all the reasons listed above.

Posted by: Brenton at May 12, 2011 10:12 AM

I recently started watching it on Netflix and REALLY, REALLY enjoyed Seasons 1-3. However, as Season 4 went on, I find that I am growing an IMMENSE dislike for the protagonist Nancy Botwin. I liked her very much in the first season till about the 3rd. Then, I saw her as this kind of woman that was just looking for a way to keep her family together, their house and everything else after her husband died. But now, she is just so annoying and plain irritating. She tries to play this "oh, why me? why meeeee???" crap when she gets into trouble yet she KEEPS MAKING THE SAME BONEHEADED decisions time and time again. It's like she has ZERO thought process. She just jumps into things and then regrets later EVERYTIME.

I get that no parent is perfect but watching her parent her kids makes me just want to puke. From the first season, episode after episode, watching her lose control of her kids gradually is just sickening.

Another thing that bothers me is how the writers just let her skate through trouble every time. In fact, any scene that is supposed to involve tension hardly gets me tense anymore. I'm just like ">_> here we go again...watch how she somehow does NOT get seen, caught, arrested, shot or killed".

Season 4 and onward also showed me just how much of a selfish and narcissistic bitch she really is. I get the whole "boo hoo....my husband has died, i can't pay my mortgage etc etc". Ever heard of a JOB??

Finally, in my opinion, The burning of Agrestic by that wannabe philosopher gangster (i use that term loosely) felt so tacky, unnecessary and was what killed the show. I wish the show had just stayed in the 'burbs and explored more storylines instead of this moving around shit they are doing now.

Posted by: Mark at June 16, 2011 7:20 PM

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An Airbrushed History of "Weeds'" Nancy Botwin

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