Weeds Intro

This video was the introduction to Weeds for the first 2 seasons. The video doesn't introduce any characters and it's not your typical montage of clips from the season. The intro simply introduces us to the town of Agrestic, where the Botwins live.

Agrestic is a fictional suburb of Los Angeles, where everyone is upper middle class, works out, drinks coffee, has a respectable job, drives an SUV, etc. It's funny to think of adults as wanting to fit in. It sounds so high school, but that desire to feel "normal" lasts a life time for some people. In fact, I can think of several towns that are just like Agrestic. Well maybe the intro is slightly exagerated. It's like conformity on steroids actually, but you get the point.

I might go as far as saying that Agrestic represents middle to upper-middle class America in general. If you listen to the lyrics, one of the lines reads "and the people in the houses all went to the university, where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same." I think that's a fairly accurate statement. You go to college and you're expected to graduate, get a good job, buy a home, start a family, put your kids in good schools blah blah blah. For an individualistic society, I think Americans have a generally narrow view of success. I like to feel that we've moved passed the whole white-picket fence ideal of society from the 1950's and 1960's (when this some was written) but based on towns like Agrestic, I'd say many people haven't.

The intro even comments on the smaller trends of modern day society. When all the business men are shown coming out of the"It's a Grind" coffee shop, who didn't instantly think of Starbucks? Maybe its just me, because I used to work there. But seriously, there are places where 2 Starbucks will be right across the street from each other and still do great business. We're obsessed.

Then there's the comment on America's obsession with body image. We see it when all the guys are running outside in the same workout gear. In another version of the intro they show the housewives out running too.

Then there's the Range Rovers, commenting on our obsession with luxury SUV's and America's addiction to oil...I could go on forever. Several of these trends will be addressed in actual epsiodes.

Anyway, my favorite part of the intro is the end when we see the shadow of a marijuana leaf on the sidewalk. It reminds me that although people may look the same on the outside, we all have our secrets. Obviously we're not all drug dealers like Nancy, but things do tend to get interesting behind closed doors.