Weeds

I chose to watch the show "Weeds." I had never seen the show before, but had heard from multiple people that it was good. Watching without sound gave me a pretty good impression of the characters and their relationships, but I was not able to fully grasp the plot.

When watching without sound, I first noticed the way the characters were dressed. The show started in what was obviously a school for young children with crayon drawings on the walls. Two women who were dressed in expensive looking provocative clothing were presenting to a group of similarly dressed women. The audience was obviously showing favoritism to one of the presenters over the other. They were then obviously talking about one of the women because they were huddled together and glancing in her direction. I thought they were talking way a disapproving way about her purse - maybe saying it was cheap. The exchange between the main character and these women seemed strained.

Then the scene changed and the main character, who was a white woman, was in a kitchen where a group of African American people of different genders and ages were filling baggies with marijuana. She seemed comfortable with these people even though they were not well dressed, and she was. She was again talking about the purse, and I thought that she was telling these people that the women at the meeting had talked badly of the purse. I thought at this point that maybe she was a poor teacher and that she lived with these people, but needed to appear professional in order to fit in at her school.

Then, however, she was in an expensive home where two boys were watching television and a Hispanic lady was cooking dinner. She was standing in the kitchen asking the boys some questions, and they were looking at each other in an accusatory fashion and talking. I assumed they were in some kind of trouble and were telling on each other. The woman appeared upset, and the older woman, who I assumed was her mother, simply crossed herself - praying for these people.

Seeing the show again with the sound turned on made me see that I was right about this woman's feelings towards the other characters, but wrong about the situations. In the beginning she and another parent were presenting about whether or not sugary drinks should be sold rom school vending machines. All of the women sided with the other lady because she clearly held more power. The women were talking about her purse, but they were wondering how she had afforded it because her husband had died.

In the next scene, the woman was buying drugs from the people who were sorting them, and there was a kind of comfortable bickering going on. She was shooing them the purse and saying it was a fake designer purse but that it was undetectable. They were pointing out the flaws.

The third scene was in the woman's home. The two boys were her children who had broken a window, but they were actually trying not to say what had happened rather than telling on each other. The older woman was her housekeeper. There was quite a bit of tension in the house because her husband had recently died while jogging with her son.


I think that I would have made more correct assumptions if I had watched a familiar show with a familiar plot and characters, but without knowing anything about the show, I was making assumptions based on physical appearance and body language alone. It is interesting that situations can be so easily misconstrued when dialogue is absent.