SUMMER PRESS TOUR: Showtime's 'Weeds,' 'Dexter'

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Jul 15, 2007

4:30 AM

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Premium cable network sessions run the longest of all cable presentations, generally around three hours each for HBO and Showtime. Not certain why that is, it's just always been that way.

Just a few years ago, I looked forward to HBO sessions and sort of dreaded Showtime sessions for bad series and lousy one-shot movies. How the worm turns. While I don't dread HBO sessions, I look more forward to Showtime sessions because I'm more interested in Showtime series these days.

"Weeds" returns Aug. 13, paired with a new David Duchovny show, "Californication." "Weeds," the story of pot-dealing suburban mom Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker), has been gaining more and more of a following in its first two seasons on the air, particularly through people watching on DVD.

Season two ended with an episode called "Pittsburgh" in which Nancy's youngest son wanted the family to move to Pittsburgh. Kohan discussed the reason for that plot twist during a visit to the University of Pittsburgh last fall, and yesterday she said the Pittsburgh references will not abate.

"Shane's obsession continues," she said. "There will be more references, particularly in the latter half of the season."

Kohan also addressed a few of the possibilities she raised as potential plots in season three during her Pitt visit last fall:

-- Nancy's sister will not be seen this season.

-- The dead DEA agent's ex-wife will appear.

-- Doug's son, Josh (Justin Chatwin), will not return.

-- Celia's (Elizabeth Perkins) daughter Quinn will not be back.

During the press conference, Kohan and series star Mary Louise Parker were seated at opposite ends of the panel on stage, not surprising given Kohan's openness about their somewhat distant relationship, which she also discussed during her fall visit to Pit.

Kohan said the new season of "Weeds" explores Nancy and "the evolution of a gangster and owning what she does, getting comfortable in her role."

Clips from the new season show a take-charge Nancy, who's even bossing around Heylia (Tonye Patano).

"I think there are constant shifts in power and different opportunities present themselves," Kohan said. "She's learning a business. I think by her nature, Nancy will always dig herself into holes, but I think she's learning the ropes a little better and more what to do and how to handle situations."

Parker seems happy to have Nancy take more active role in what happens in her life.

"She's someone who's had to function in that world in spite of who she is," Parker said. "She has an underlying volcanic personality that's maybe not immediately evident when you see her because she's grieving [the death of her husband that led her into dealing pot] and it comes out in spurts. I think she can actually be really passive, and I think she was sort of buoyed here into this life. ... It's so incongruous to see this woman that looks this particular way sort of functioning well, you know, with the gangsters. I find it really interesting, actually."

New to the cast this season are Matthew Modine as a "Music Man"-like real estate developer who Nancy goes to work for and Mary-Kate Olsen as a Christian girl who romances Silas (Hunter Parrish) and smokes pot.

Kohan said being a committed Christian and pot smoker are not mutually exclusive.

"She's comfortable in her Christianity and comfortable in her recreational drug use," Kohan said. She added that the series won't mock religion, rather, it's "poking fun at the commerce of religion."

Drama "Dexter" (returning Sept. 30) returns with serial killer Dexter (Michael C. Hall) on a break from killing because he's had little opportunity. Dexter's nemesis, Sgt. Doakes (Erik King), is watching him like a hawk, his sister, Debra (Jennifer Carpenter), has moved in with him and his girlfriend, Rita (Murrysville native Julie Benz), suspects Dexter in framing her husband and sending him to jail.

Now, the body parts Dexter threw into the ocean have been found and FBI agent Frank Lundy (Keith Carradine) arrives to head up the search for the new serial killer, dubbed "the Bay Harbor Butcher."

"We decided to turn our biggest card up -- What happens if Dexter's bodies were discovered? -- and chart that course throughout the season," said executive producer Daniel Cerone.

But the heart of "Dexter" is the anti-hero lead character's humanity, despite his desire to kill only those who are murderers themselves. Though he denies having emotions, viewers saw in the first season that he feels more than he claims to feel.

"Pretty quickly in the beginning of the season, he's going to explore who he is," executive producer Clyde Phillips said. "He learns things about his past that heretofore had not been apparent to him as he more deeply excavates what he thought was the soil beneath him and learns about his father and his past and that key relationships in his life and what he thought was true perhaps wasn't so true. Combine with that an emerging sense of his own humanity, but you can't take him all the way there because then we don't have a show anymore. But the light will start shining in a little more on him."

Showtime previewed the 2008 Tracey Ullman comedy series "Tracey Ullman's State of the Union," which will feature the actress playing all sorts of characters, famous (Judi Dench, Victoria Beckham and Arianna Huffington among them) and unknown.

The network also announced a new comedy series "The United States of Tara" about a mother with multiple personality syndrome. Showtime Entertainment president Robert Greenblatt called it " 'Weeds' meets 'Sybil.'"