‘Weeds’ Season Finale Review: “It’s Time”

'Weeds' takes its biggest leap yet -- in faith and time -- in the series finale, "It's Time." We're 10 years in the future, eliminating the need to tie up loose ends because the show can just create new ones. But is it a clever way to wrap up seven seasons or a cop-out?

10 years in the future and Nancy, Silas, Doug, Guillermo, and the southern tobacco king are all sharing ownership of a chain of marijuana stores. Starbucks has put in a bid to buy out the entire business, but Nancy, with 51% ownership, is the lone holdout. Things are much different in the future -- phones are ridiculous and Tim is working for Nancy, but the best parts of these stories are the stuff we never got to see. Nancy married the rabbi and became Nancy Blum, but he carried on the dead husband tradition when his car careened off a cliff as he swerved to miss a bear in the road, leaving Nancy a widow once again.

As Stevie's Bar Mitzvah approaches we get updates on everyone's status: Silas is married to Megan and they have a baby, but Megan resents the way Nancy raised her own children. Shane is an oily cop still palling around with Woollett and shacking up with a new girlfriend (an awesome guest turn by Natasha Lyonne). Shane is now an alcoholic with a mustache, as if he needed any more reasons to be hated. Doug's cult has grown to epic proportions and the women of his group live to serve him every day, but he feels like he's missing something as he listens to the men around him discuss their sons, so he sends his cult members to kidnap his resentful gay son in an attempt to force his son to reconnect with him.

Dean even shows up for a brief appearance, telling us that Isabelle had a sex change operation and is now called "Bruce," and declaring his love for Nancy one last time. Guillermo shows up to the Bar Mitzvah party and tells Stevie that his father wasn't some respectable politician who was framed by a cartel, but that he was really the gangster who ran the cartel. This prompts Stevie to give one hell of a Bar Mitzvah speech as he decries the religions of the men who have acted as his fathers and asks that he be allowed to make his own choices. Nancy acquiesces and agrees to let him attend boarding school in Wisconsin, proving that maybe she has changed some over the years, realizing that having ultimate control over her sons will never result in anything good.

Andy is the last to show up for the Bar Mitzvah, undoubtedly due to the last time he and Nancy ever saw each other -- on the spot where her husband died in Regrestic, where they had sex and he left her for good. It was perhaps the show's finest moment, and Andy's finest hour. This show has always been about Nancy, but at its best a lot of it has been about Andy finding his way. Silas tells Nancy that Andy had a daughter named Leni with a girl named Annica (because of course) and they now platonically co-parent their daughter while Andy runs the restaurant he always wanted. He's happy. He's free. And he is both of these things because Nancy is no longer involved in his life. All of this makes it that much more painful when he eventually shows up to the Bar Mitzvah and gives Nancy the cordial shoulder.

When the two of them sit down to talk, Andy tells Nancy that it's time -- Stevie is leaving home, she's done her job, and now there's no one left to answer to but herself. She doesn't know how to be with herself, and maybe this is what she needs to truly make a positive change in her life. Silas is happy, without her. Andy is happy, without her. Stevie will be happy, without her. And it's not because they are without her, but because they were able to go out and be men on their own and fulfill their lives. Shane is the exception, but he's always been happy to let his mother cling to him because she was always the least overbearing with him.

But now the boys are gone, and Nancy is free, and maybe she can learn what it means to really live for herself -- not in the selfish way that endangered the people she loved because that was, in her mind, in their best interest. Now Nancy can just be who she is.

The final scene couldn't be more perfect, as Silas, Shane, Doug, and Nancy gather on the steps in the snow and share a joint. Nancy has never smoked pot, but now that she has no reason to abstain, she gives in to enjoy the moment as Rilo Kiley's "With Arms Outstretched" plays in its entirety -- a song about growing up and moving on, about being with the people you love, and what it means for a man to be a man. And that's what this finale was really about, too.