Weeds and Rape

[Trigger and spoiler warning]

I'm a big fan of Weeds. It's a fun and silly show about a suburban housewife turned drug dealer. Okay, it's about as fun and silly a show as that can be. There are the occasional murders, as that type of thing is, I assume, a fairly common occurrence in the drug business. Murder victims on the show are, generally speaking, drug dealers and the odd dirty cop here and there: You know, bad people. Because the show is ostensibly a comedy.

As I said, I am a big fan, but show is not without its problems. I'm not going to go into them all here, but I will point out the one that's relevant to the post: At least once a season there's a rape joke thrown in somewhere.

Five seasons in Nancy Botwin (played by the always brilliant Mary-Louise Parker) is no longer a suburban housewife turned drug dealer. She's moved on to different things, and in last season's climax it was revealed that she was pregnant with her Mexican drug-lord boyfriend's baby. After that things took a decidedly dark turn on the show, for reasons I'm not going to go into. Let me just say it really doesn't matter to the discussion here.

Somewhere early this season Nancy, still pregnant, was raped by Esteban, her Mexican drug-lord boyfriend. It was out of the blue, and turned the already dark season five decidedly black. What the fuck was that all about? I don't know. It was a profoundly disturbing moment, and completely out of place in our fun and silly little show. You may want to argue that point, but don't.

Because in last night's episode Nancy and Esteban got married.

And it saddens and angers me that the whole rapist-and-victim-find-true-love-and-get-married meme has played out again.

Discuss.

(See also.)