Weeds: Season Eight for Showtime Series
by Trevor Kimball, November 11, 2011
There's been quite a bit of talk about Showtime's Weeds ending after the show's seventh season on the air, particularly in light of the show's most recent ratings. The show started out the season okay but the numbers quickly dropped. Season seven closed with just a 0.3 rating in the 18-49 demo and 556,000 viewers.
Total viewership is what counts most to the pay-for-view channel and apparently season seven's was good enough to get Weeds renewed for another round of 13 episodes.
Here's the Showtime press release:
SHOWTIME(R) LOADS UP ANOTHER HIT OF WEEDS
Network Greenlights Eighth Season for 2012 debut
LOS ANGELES, CA – (November 10, 2011) – SHOWTIME is packing another hit of its highest-rated comedy series WEEDS, picking up an eighth season. Thirteen new episodes will go into production in 2012.
Weeds should have been...
renewed, of course.
cancelled!
Created by Emmy(R) Award winner Jenji Kohan and produced by Lionsgate, WEEDS has been honored with multiple Emmy(R) and Golden Globe(R) Award nominations and wins over the course of its seven seasons on air. Viewers have watched and marveled as Nancy Botwin (series star Mary-Louise Parker in her Golden Globe(R) Award-winning performance) has progressed from a suburban widow who turns to selling nickel bags to make ends meet for her family to a full-fledged marijuana queenpin.
Last season jumped ahead three years and picked up with Nancy finishing a stint in federal prison. Her brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) and sons, Silas (Hunter Parrish) and Shane (Alexander Gould) – with Doug (Kevin Nealon) in tow — were camped out in Copenhagen during her incarceration. They were all reunited in New York City where Nancy re-launched her pot business, worked at a hedge fund, fought off competition, and fought for custody of her son, little Stevie, from her sister Jill (special guest star Jennifer Jason Leigh). The season finale, which aired in September, showed the family dining together, happily residing at a Connecticut estate. But when a lone gunman fired a fateful bullet, viewers were left to wonder which of our beloved Botwins was the target, setting the stage for another audacious season.
What do you think? Are you glad to hear that Weeds has been renewed or should it have been cancelled instead? Are you still watching? How long should this show continue?
Image courtesy Showtime.
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Yea no kidding, you people are nuts! Weeds is hands down my favorite show and I actually keep up with it. I also have watched literally every episode from the very beginning and it is true that they kinda got off course and changed the show but I feel it still has a great deal of potential to getting back to their old ways and becoming a great show all over again.
I love Weeds! I wish they would bring Celia back. She kept me entertained.
I have watched every single episode of Weeds, first run since the very beginning. I look forward to seeing where they are going to take things each year. I agree, they rather veered off course a bit there the last couple of years. But that doesn't mean the show was bad per se, just that I think they forgot where they got their audience from for a time. They have a chance to really make it great. The new house, new oppertunities, a chance to really start over, but with some new characters mixed in. This whole "fatal shot" thing,… Read more »
No way! Weeds is a great show and they should continue with it!
Tha Critic
I got enough of seeing it on TV Guide. Throw in the towel.
OMG!! Let this show die already!! Oh, wait a minute, it already died. Over and over again. This show has been awful since Nancy burned down Agrestic. The only good thing that has happened since then was the apparent head shot on Nancy to end the last season. I had really hoped that that bullet was meant for her and that it had hit home so we wouldn't have to suffer through this crap anymore. How is it that a great show like The United States of Tara gets cancelled and this crap goes on and on and on?
Jeremy Rynek
Well I agree they shouldn't have canceled the united states of Tara, but they still have just taken the show in different directions. It started out with a widow selling pot help her family and we're seeing where it goes from there. Granted the show hasn't been top notch the last couple seasons, but still, let's just see where they take it.