will take Andy seriously. Of course that doesn\u2019t work out, but still.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen Nancy has a third son with a scary Mexican gangster, it\u2019s Andy to whom she runs for help—she\u2019s pissed Esteban Reyes (Demian Bichir) off a LOT (like, if not for the baby, she would have been executed already kind of pissed off). She thinks that her having the baby in the US, with a US birth certificate, will help protect them. She even puts Andy\u2019s name on the baby\u2019s birth certificate as the father, <\/span>without his consent<\/span><\/i>. Andy says okay fine, you want me to be his father, I\u2019ll be his father\u2026but that means I will BE his father, and that means more than a name on a piece of paper. Scary baby daddy is NOT pleased to walk in on a bris to find his son being circumcised and given a Hebrew name, but oh well. <\/span><\/p>\nFor a little while, there\u2019s weird domesticity in the Botwin household. She can even stand up to Esteban briefly on Andy\u2019s behalf (though that\u2019s more about her being right at Esteban than anything else, even though she knows what she’s saying is true)—\u201cThat pendejo sticks around. He fights for what he loves. He\u2019s not a coward.\u201d Andy\u2019s there for the diaper changing, the feeding, all that. He\u2019s even there to save Nancy from potential mastitis—the two of them are out for dinner and she didn\u2019t pump enough breast milk before leaving the house. First you tell the guy who\u2019s in love with you that it\u2019s never going to happen, and then you drag him into the ladies\u2019 room and make him suck the milk out of you so your engorged breasts get some relief. Look, I\u2019ve been there, it\u2019s not comfortable. But that\u2019s a hell of a boundary to push.<\/span><\/p>\nShowtime\/Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAndy and Women<\/h2>\n One thing about Andy Botwin that\u2019s a repeating problem is his questionable taste in women.\u00a0<\/span>I have no idea who or what Justin Kirk sleeps with in real life. I don\u2019t care, and it\u2019s none of my business. As Bobby and Prior he was gay, and he was very good at it. Andy Botwin is straight to the point where vaginas are practically a religion for him, and he\u2019s very good at that.<\/span><\/p>\nAndy Botwin is one of those blessed guys who can find something desirable about almost anyone—or at least make her feel that way. And he\u2019s a really good listener, and he\u2019s got the big bedroom eyes with the nine feet of eyelashes working for him. So he\u2019s got zero trouble scoring with pretty much whoever\u2026unfortunately, with his hedonistic lifestyle, most of those women do him more harm than good. He doesn\u2019t seem to learn anything from the women who turn out to be bad ideas either, apart from fleeing them—he says more than once that fleeing is a particular skill of his.<\/span><\/p>\nShowtime\/Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nEnter Dr. Audra (Alanis Morrissette). Out of all the Andy-women, Audra is the one it really broke my heart for him to lose. Audra was the OB\/GYN who delivered baby Stevie. When Andy first tries to date her, she gives him a chance, but then decides that she doesn\u2019t need a manchild in her life (also one, she says, who is still hung up on Nancy). She\u2019s nice about it, but the gauntlet is thrown down. Andy rises to the challenge. He wins her over and they are delightful and adorable.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen Nancy takes the kids and moves south to marry her baby daddy, Andy and Audra and their amazing sex life have a brief idyll together. She even moves in with him to avoid a bunch of Fundamentalist protesters who harass her at her clinic (no pressure, separate bedrooms if she wants—which she doesn\u2019t), and he cooks every night, and has philosophies like, \u201cIf you don\u2019t climax, the terrorists win.\u201d Bless.<\/span><\/p>\nAndy plans to propose to Audra, and he wants to give her the ring that his grandfather gave his grandmother, his father gave his mother, and his brother gave Nancy. It\u2019s a family heirloom, and besides, he\u2019s a man on a budget. And in order to get the ring, he has to go south to get it from Nancy. She pushes back on it, but eventually relents. When Nancy makes the comment that men are weak, Andy responds, \u201cI\u2019m not. I\u2019m fucken steel,\u201d and Nancy actually says she agrees with him\u2026though she follows that up with \u201cand you\u2019re getting married,\u201d so I can\u2019t be sure she means the first half of that any more than she does the second. <\/span><\/p>\nI honestly don\u2019t know if the next thing would happen without his recent Nancy-exposure to weaken his resolve, but it always seemed a bit of a stretch to me, for all his talk about fleeing—Andy and Audra get home, engaged and happy, and are confronted by Gayle the Fundamentalist protester, holding a loaded crossbow at Audra. They\u2019re there about two seconds before Andy nosedives out of the room, leaving his fiancee alone with the terrorist and his crossbow. And that\u2019s a thing I always have trouble with, not only because I expect better from Andy, but frankly because I expect crazier from Andy. Truly, I would have found it more in character for him to have done something like fling himself at Gayle and take a crossbow bolt in the shoulder in the process. For all his talk about fleeing, Andy is a guy with balls. But he\u2019s also stronger with Nancy there to support his backbone, positively or negatively, and it\u2019s not until she gets there to provide distraction (and make off with his larger car) that he is able to charge Gayle, and the two of them take the terrorist down.<\/span><\/p>\nShowtime\/Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWould Audra have been able to forgive him his moment of weakness if it had been anyone else on the planet who showed up to be the other half of his tag team? Maybe. Lord knows she\u2019s rightfully pissed, telling Andy over and over that he might as well just leave with Nancy. Nancy, who is simply not capable of releasing him, defends what a great guy he is, and then, as if suddenly reminded, suggests that yeah, maybe he should leave with her and the kids. Was it a test before he failed it? Who knows. But when he says he might as well go since Audra says there\u2019s no chance of fixing things with her, and she tells him he was supposed to have stayed and fought for her, then there\u2019s definitely no chance of fixing things with her. End of Chapter Audra.<\/span><\/p>\nThe other woman that\u2019s a big deal in Andy Botwin\u2019s life is Nancy\u2019s older sister, Jill. Jill and Andy initially hook up over a few drinks and bonding over how much Nancy sucks. We don\u2019t see Jill again for a while, and then she\u2019s the other side in the tug-of-war over Nancy\u2019s son Stevie, but eventually (Season 8) it is Andy who comes up with the compromise that works for this weird family for a little while. The sisters get a stalemate, Stevie gets two moms, and everyone gets to share a big house in Connecticut.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis would all be great, except karma from Nancy\u2019s past follows her in the form of a .22 calibre slug to the head. In a strange way, this is actually good for the whole family, and especially Andy. The time Nancy spends in the hospital is time away from her toxic life, and everyone learns how to live without her being the sun around which everyone has this insane orbit. Andy and Jill reconnect (up against the wall of Nancy\u2019s hospital room, in fact) and are real parents to Stevie, and Jill\u2019s obnoxious twin girls. It\u2019s certainly possible that Jill is at least partially a Nancy substitute, but they legitimately enjoy each other, have terrific sex, and Andy truly cherishes this normal family dynamic. When Jill goes off to have dinner with her visiting ex-husband and Andy gets psyched out by the twins telling him Mom has flings all the time and then goes home, Andy\u2019s freaked that he\u2019s going to lose his family. His impulsive nature hasn\u2019t mellowed with the passage of time\u2026he follows them to the restaurant and distracts Jill\u2026up against the wall of the ladies\u2019 room. Not just sex, he insists. They have something more. Even the twins\u2019 dad (and these girls can be real brats when they want to) tells them to listen to Andy, before he stops trying with them and takes off back to India.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen Nancy comes home, she\u2019s a third wheel in this domestic scene, including trying to find ways to parent Stevie that fit into his routine\u2026and let\u2019s face it, Jill is not exactly generous when it comes to sharing him. And proximity to Nancy makes Andy start questioning the life he had just begun to feel secure in. He reflexively does her bidding, which pisses Jill off, which makes her passive-aggressively act out at Nancy, and when he calls Jill out on it, she feels that he\u2019s betraying their family and tells him they\u2019re done. It\u2019s about five minutes after that when he gets hit on by the coach of the girls\u2019 roller derby team—and hey, Jill broke up with him, right? And of course, later that afternoon Jill decides she wants him back and is irked that he slept with someone else so soon, though she quickly sleeps with their roommate Doug (Kevin Nealon) to even out the score. It bears mentioning, by the way, Roller Derby Girl provides what I think is a keen bit of insight into Andy Botwin\u2019s character when she tells him, \u201cLook, I can\u2019t speak as to why those other women whip off their clothes for you, but I can tell you why I did\u2026cause you never shut up about the women in your life. I mean, most guys just talk about themselves. You talk about <\/span>them<\/span><\/i>. I guess maybe those other women, like me, maybe they just wanted someone to talk about them as much as you talk about Jill and Nancy.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nShowtime\/Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAndy and Jill may be iffy about getting back together, but whoops! Jill\u2019s pregnant. Andy has to wrap his brain around that, and his own daddy issues. The scene in which he comes to the realisation that no, he\u2019s not his father, and he genuinely wants to <\/span>be<\/span><\/i> a father, is a joy to behold. Only, whoops again! Jill isn\u2019t pregnant—it\u2019s early menopause. Which is rough for any woman to deal with, and especially for one who thinks her baby daddy is going to leave her without the biological tie. The time she spends keeping the pregnancy a secret is time Andy spends bonding with her daughters, imagining his own actual progeny, practising his dadding (we knew you had it in you, Andy Botwin) is wonderful. Even Nancy is positive that he\u2019ll stick when Jill tells him the truth, and there\u2019s a brief shining moment when they\u2019re contemplating countries they could adopt a baby from\u2026but no, it\u2019s that classic scenario of a man pushing 40, suddenly feeling the need to reproduce his own DNA. Andy, Andy, Andy. In those 20 seconds of screen time, you almost lost all your points with me\u2026sorry, but I find the whole \u201cI love you until you can\u2019t bear my babies\u201d way unattractive. Yes, she didn\u2019t help matters by lying to him about it for a few weeks. Yes, there\u2019s still the Nancy thing. Exit Jill.<\/span><\/p>\nRebound plus an impulsive nature can get you into trouble\u2026at least, it can make you find yourself suddenly married to the 22-year-old waitress you just met in the diner. You do this because you\u2019re afraid of male menopause and she seems like the personification of everything that isn\u2019t Nancy, plus she gave you extra blueberries. That doesn\u2019t work out either. Joanna the waitress (Aubrey Dollar) is a little <\/span>too<\/span><\/i> young—to her, making the marriage official means updating her Facebook status and introducing Andy to the roommates he didn\u2019t know she had. I don\u2019t think they even manage to consummate the marriage before his bride tells him that she has no interest in having kids for another ten years, and she married Andy because he reminded her of her dad.<\/span><\/p>\nAndy and Philosophy<\/h2>\n \u201cLife is just blah, blah, blah. You hope for blah. And sometimes you find it. But mostly it is blah. And waiting for blah. And hoping you are right about the blahs you made and then just when you think you have the whole blah damned thing figured out and you are surrounded by the ones you blah death shows up. And blah blah blah.\u201d Some of my favourite Andy moments are the ones where he ruminates to no one in particular about life, the universe and everything—along with this fantastic philosophical monologue about karma, reincarnation,<\/a> and why women are constantly throwing themselves at him.<\/span><\/p>\nAndy Botwin isn\u2019t a loser. Andy Botwin is an idealist. He loves the idea of Nancy, though even he knows that the reality of her is a hot mess who doesn\u2019t love him back and never will (need, yes—love, no). Throughout this whole thing, Andy has had a thing about going to Copenhagen. Copenhagen is, for some reason, Andy Botwin\u2019s Shangri-La, his Mecca, his Disneyland. At the end of Season 6, Nancy goes to jail, and he finally gets to take the two older boys and go. When Season 7 picks up three years later, Andy and the lads are settled in Denmark. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019d say they are living their best lives, but Silas has a successful modelling career, Shane (Alexander Gould) is doing puppetry and a hot older woman, and Andy is running tours and selling a bicycle gadget he invented called the \u201cCopenhagen Wheel\u201d (it\u2019s actually a real thing). When word comes across the ocean that Nancy has gotten out of prison early, Shane insists on going home—she went to jail for the crime he committed, after all. There\u2019s a bit of emotional tug-of-war for Andy\u2026should he stay in this place he likes, being free, or does he go back to the Nancy crazy train? Telling himself that it\u2019s all about supervising Shane (sigh), they all pack up and head back to the states.<\/span><\/p>\nShowtime\/Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSeason 7 is all about Andy and soul searching. He takes up with a polyamorous artist named Maxeen (Lindsay Sloane)—I think he\u2019s more into her husband Charles than he is into her. He has the sex with Maxeen, but it\u2019s Charles (much older, dying of pancreatic cancer, and wanting his young wife to be happy) it seems like he wants to spend time with. He met Maxeen when she had hired Silas to walk around a party in a plastic bubble, which suddenly had the air sucked out of it. Andy, thinking Silas was going to suffocate, slashed the plastic with a knife from the buffet table, freed Silas, and knocked Maxeen\u2019s socks off. She said that in showing that \u201cexhibit\u201d all over the world, Andy is the first person who ever acted, ever came to the aid of the man in the bubble. To Andy, there was no question in taking action. See what I mean when I said I had trouble buying him running out on Audra like that? Andy has no problem whatsoever taking action\u2026when Nancy is far away from the equation. Eventually Andy has to break up with the couple after a scare where he has to resuscitate Charles (David Clennon). It\u2019s too close to his own grandmother, he says, who lay there in her bed waiting to die while life went on around her. \u201cI didn\u2019t flee,\u201d he says of his poly life with the couple, \u201cI passed.\u201d Exactly. <\/span><\/p>\nThis whole thing is enough of a come-to-Jesus for Andy that he doesn\u2019t want anything to do with the pot business anymore. He wants to do the thing with his Copenhagen wheel and his bike shop, and he wants to do it for real. It always pisses me off that the only reason anyone in the family is willing to support him in this is because his business is a front for the \u201creal\u201d one, the pot one. No one in the family wants to acknowledge growth in any of them\u2026and really, it\u2019s only Nancy who is still the same as she was in the beginning. If anything, she\u2019s even more Nancy than she was at the top of the show. Andy and the boys have grown, and it is frustrating how they still strive for her approval.<\/span><\/p>\nFurther Andy-rebellion happens in the form of Bill Sussman. Bill Sussman is what happens when everyone goes to an exclusive club in the Hamptons in search of rich people to soak for a week, and the open bar introduces Andy to his first Long Island iced tea<\/strong>\u2026and his second, third, and fourth (we\u2019ve all been there, Andy—those things are yummy and deadly). Bill is the persona Andy puts on to schmooze the wealthy potential clients, and winds up proving the whole \u201cin wine there is truth\u201d theory (well, not wine, but every other liquor on the planet that goes into a LI iced tea). Bill doesn\u2019t want to be at Nancy\u2019s beck and call. Bill is aggressive, and frankly, kind of an asshole\u2026the anti-Andy. \u201cI have a lot to learn from someone like Bill. Doing it his way, refusing to take no for an answer, cause that\u2019s how he got his fortune\u2026Andy Botwin sleeps on an air mattress, has to borrow money from a kid to start a business that\u2019s about to go belly-up, and is obsessed with a woman who\u2019s a self-centred, heartless sociopath.\u201d Of course later, from the depths of his hangover, he welcomes the return of being Andy Botwin. It\u2019s not like he hadn\u2019t said similar to Nancy before\u2026and she didn\u2019t take Bill any more seriously than she did Andy. <\/span><\/p>\nAt the same time, however, Charles finally dies of his cancer, and Andy realises that there are more important things in the world than selling dope and family drama. Silas goes with him to the funeral and points out that a thing Andy has in common with the deceased is that the only thing that\u2019s important to him is the happiness of the people he loves. He\u2019s right. <\/span><\/p>\nAndy and Nancy<\/h2>\n Okay, we had to get here some time. You\u2019ve probably gleaned by now that I am not a Nancy Botwin fan. I don\u2019t remember when exactly she lost me, but the more my love for Andy grew, the more I disliked her for not appreciating him. For all his talk about fleeing, the one person he won\u2019t flee from, for better or worse, is Nancy. Is he really in love with her? She tells him no, it\u2019s just him wanting something he can\u2019t have. Still, she doesn\u2019t want Andy herself, but she doesn\u2019t want anyone else to have him either. She wants to keep him on the hook forever.<\/span><\/p>\nShowtime\/Screenshot<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSeriously—we should all have someone in our lives who is as unconditionally devoted to us as Andy Botwin is to Nancy…though hopefully, we would be more appreciative of our Andys than she is of hers. He does illegal things for her. He defends her to her older sons, who probably would have walked out on her (to their own betterment) long ago, especially when her priority clearly becomes Stevie over them.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Botwin family is constantly on the run. And each time they land somewhere Andy could make a fresh start and have a real thing, it gets thwarted, and each time, that thwarting wouldn\u2019t matter if he were able to walk away from Nancy, only he can\u2019t. The repeated rounds of \u201cNancy, release me\u201d\/\u201cOkay Andy, I release you only really I don\u2019t because I don\u2019t want you to ever leave me because you\u2019re my emotional support human\u201d become increasingly frustrating and heartbreaking. When Nancy finally turns herself over to the feds (and Stevie over to her sister) as the only way to keep out of the hands of the Mexicans, she tells Andy to look after her sons and get them out of the country. And he does.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen everyone goes back to California, where the series started, Andy is snubbed by his old rabbinical school girlfriend and decides there is no God (remember?). Godless and empty inside, when Nancy takes him for a walk to the spot where her first husband, Andy\u2019s brother Judah, died, he tells her that\u2019s it. He\u2019s done. And something in his face must tell her to take him seriously this time, because she seduces him\u2026it\u2019s kind of a combination of hate-sex and closure-sex, him finishing with the least pleasurable-looking climax I have ever seen a man have. Then, without a word, he gets up and literally runs away from her (there\u2019s that fleeing he was talking about), as she screams at him not to leave.<\/span><\/p>\nPhoto: Michael Desmond\/Showtime<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe finale<\/a> is set many years later, at Stevie\u2019s bar mitzvah (it cracks me up that in place of his haftorah, Stevie tells the congregation that he isn\u2019t Jewish, he may not believe in God, and he wants to go to boarding school). Nancy hasn\u2019t heard from Andy all these years, and resigned herself to the idea that he isn\u2019t going to come, but surprise—he\u2019s not one to let his nephew down, and he\u2019s already there making breakfast. Nancy, whose most recent husband (she married Rabbi Dave) has died, same as all her husbands, makes a last ditch effort to get Emotional Support Andy back in her life. I think at this point, however, she knows it\u2019s futile, and releasing your loved ones is actually better. Andy has already taken for himself the last piece of advice he gives to her, and he\u2019s spent the whole series looking for it—\u201cTime for you to face yourself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAndy\u2019s eventual happy ending is far away from Nancy, as we all knew it would have to be. He\u2019s living in his father\u2019s old place (completely remodelled) and he\u2019s a dad (co-parenting, but not married to baby mommy—we never meet her, but we hear from Silas that they\u2019re friends) and he\u2019s a chef with his own place. I\u2019ll tell you, Andy\u2019s Place or whatever he calls it sounds like somewhere I want to go—more than that, it sounds like exactly what he needs, a place where he has total autonomy to cook whatever he wants, where he is the main character, not the supporting goofball sidekick in someone else\u2019s life. And I bet the food is terrific.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We know the basic premise of Jenji Kohan\u2019s Weeds, right? Widowed suburban mom makes ends meet by selling pot, becomes danger junkie, shenanigans ensue. The show is of course about Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker), the mom in question. I, however, always seem to go for the character actor sidekick of a show like this […] More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":280730,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94],"tags":[155,305],"yoast_head":"\nAndy Botwin and Weeds --- The Great (and Careful) Work Begins | TV Obsessive<\/title>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n \n \n \n \n \n\t \n\t \n\t \n