Chronic analysis

OK. So the moms of the community, embodied by Mrs. B's friend, the blonde bitchy mom, represent the sterilized, contained, conformist construction of family and suburban life that the Spiegel article says was recreated and enforced through 1950s television programming. She obsessively tries to keep the people around her to conform to white hetero-normative, nuclear family based standards. From our point of view, we can speculate that the early television experience helped to ingrain into suburban white conscienceness such standards, to the point where we actively try to replicate them. She uses gossip, coercion, spying, and plays on other people's insecurities to achieve these goals. The "not under your roof" metaphor that she uses with Mrs. B (a can't remember the main character's first name) reflects the ways in which suburban architecture was meant to enforce white conservative family values, and the vague lines in such a community that separate private from public spheres. The black family represents a transgression of these white conservative values, as they are a family who engages in an illegal activity. While they're position outside of the conforminty of the white suburb that Mrs. B comes from paints them as "immoral and criminal" in the eyes of the white suburbanites, they also reside outside the pressures and stresses that living in such a suburb and maintainging a "good" image can present, which is why Mrs. B goes to them for emotional support at the end of the episode. Their "blackness" is a haven for the main character, as she is noticably relieved to not have to act the way she does with all the PTA moms. The transgression in this episode, weed dealing, reveals a great deal of interesting social commentary on the split selves of pulbicness and privateness, and ways in which different racial and class groups have to present themselves to their families and peers.
Sorry, I had to get that all out of the way first. This show is fascinating and wonderfully written, and I just bought the first season, so I'm excited to continue it. Also, sorry I missed class on friday, I'm sure you all missed me :)
So the television in this show perfectly illustrates the type of "ellectronically sterile" versions of reality that TV presents to the suburban home. The boys watch a show about hunting bears, which cathartically presents a sort of rugged, ruthless masculinity to the boys who watch it, lets them experience a different type of cultural experience while still residing under the domesticated roof of the suburbs. The show's catharsis mirror's the actual show of "weeds" catharsis, as us as viewers get to watch particularily illicit themes without actually meeting drug dealers and users. I think the "premium" channel that hosts the show allows it to adress themes which would not be approvable by regular cable's standards because regular television is still rooted in the tradition that Spiegel describes, meant to enforce and maintain certain identity constructions.

I must include this little antecdote, which is probably somewhat incrimination. I live on 24th street, in a house with 9 other SC students. We are the onle students living on our block, the rest of it is mostly latino families. There is a group of teenage boys that live on this block, and they use our backyard, namely our little garage, as a place to smoke pot, probably because it is the only place they wouldn't get caught. We never told them to not do it, and don't really mind, and they offer to smoke us out if we ever are around. So today I joined them in a little, um, conversation, on my way out to buy the Weeds first season. They were talking about a pool that they go to, and I asked which pool it was.
"Is it a public pool?" I asked, to whicht hey laughed and said no. "Oh, then it's one of your friends' pools?"
When I said this they laughed even harder, and I was a little confused.
"No man, it's probably one of your friends pools," onbe of them said to me, and they all burst into more laughter. Oh, I get it. Fair enough.
Anyway, the racial and class differences that this show explores really reminded me of that little exchange.