Season two of Weeds came to an end last night in the forgotten corners of Sky One (double-bills at 11.30pm?) and considering I had not watched the debut outing, I found myself besotted with the inhabitants of Agrestic. With a running time of only half an hour, the suburban drugs import is an odd blend of farcical sitcom and thought-provoking drama. Mary Louise Parker is a stand-out as put-upon mum Nancy Botwin, the plot never gets stale or predictable and the jokes are first-rate. Me a fan? Oh – just a little bit.

In last night’s double-bill, many long-standing story-lines came together for what was an incredible cliff-hanger. It was actually quite a layered and complex affair, so where to start? How’s about with the easy stuff. Enjoying their illicit affair, Celia and Doug agreed to leave their partners. Celia came good on her promise and broke the news of her infidelity to an incredulous Dean who questioned “but Doug hates you.” Meeting up again, Celia found that Doug had failed to leave his wife and promptly stubbed a cigarette out on his hand in anger. Desperate to redeem herself, Celia returned to Dean pretending that she had been joking when she had left him, only for the mild mannered hubbie to unceremoniously boot her out of the family home. Celia returned to her motel, where she wallowed in self-pity accompanied by cigarettes and alcohol.

Having realised last week that she could never love DEA agent and husband of convenience Peter, Nancy found that she was no longer in a position of power. Crazed at the rejection, Peter ambushed Nancy and Conrad, smacking the latter with his gun and pinning him to the ground at gunpoint. He demanded that the drug dealers sell off their harvest and give him all of the money from the sale. Astonished at the violent interruption, a bewildered Nancy agreed.

Now in desperate need of a buyer, Nancy turned to Heylia but found herself rudely rejected by her former friend. Conrad believed that U-Turn could be a potential buyer and they approached him instead. After roughing up Conrad in a game of basketball, U-Turn agreed to the deal but the pair remained scared for their safety.

Nancy was facing a hard time at home as well, having to admit to youngest son Shane that she was a drug dealer. Explaining that marijuana production is “just like tomatoes”, the single mum had even worse luck with eldest son Silas who had run away from home. Breaking into his locked bedroom with an axe, Nancy found Silas’ room to be full of the ‘drug-free zone’ signs and cameras that Celia had installed throughout Agrestic. Touched by her son’s loyalty but worried about his stealing ways, she soon found that she was right to fret for someone else also knew.

Sozzled out of her social-climbing brain, a drunken Celia burst into Nancy’s home and wielding a gun, raged at her over her son’s crimes. Thankfully Celia only had one bullet and she accidentally shot it at a mounted glass cabinet. Disturbed by the intrusion, all problems had to be relegated to the background, as Nancy and Celia attended the graduation of their young children to high school.

True to form, the ceremony was a local scandal with Shane upsetting school officials with his speech: “If we picture Agrestic as an aeroplane; a grand soaring jet carrying us through the sky. I think you all need to understand, there are motherf**king snakes on this motherf**king plane.” The other children joined in with spontaneous swearing and soon the ceremony had deteriorated into noisy anarchy.

The chaos continued at the reception where Doug and Dean fought over Celia, and Shane’s girlfriend Gretchen grew jealous over his blatant crush on his uncle Andy’s girlfriend Kat (as played by the fantastic Zooey Deschanel.) On the run from an Eskimo bounty hunter (how I love the lunacy of Weeds), Kat had to make a fast escape from the party, but Andy refused to leave with her. Instead, Kat had to look elsewhere for company and Shane happily eloped with her. A rejected Gretchen bemoaned her loss to Andy, only for him and the Eskimo to launch a frantic pursuit of the odd couple.

Having left the graduation ceremony early, Nancy was back at the grow-house with Conrad ready to do the deal. And then it all kicked off when U-Turn and his sidekick refused to pay for the drugs and whipped out guns. Holding Nancy and Conrad at gunpoint, they demanded the drugs only to be interrupted by the Armenian drug gang also complete with their own firearms. The two gangs faced-off against one another as Nancy and Conrad looked on, confused and terrified.

The Armenians divulged that they had just murdered Peter, on the orders of Heylia, and were now looking to be repaid for this favour with the money from the deal. Discovering that U-Turn had brought no money, the Armenians rethought matters and demanded to be repaid in drugs. Nancy was horrified to learn that Peter had been killed and frantically sought to open the safe, with the marijuana inside.

Having worked the lock on the safe, things got even worse as Nancy found that all the drugs were gone. Calling Silas on his mobile, we found that the tear away had stolen the weed as a way of blackmailing his mother into allowing him to join her business. Silas had to bring an unexpected end to the conversation as an angry Celia, accompanied by a policeman marched menacingly towards him and his car boot full of drugs.

Left hanging on the other end of the line, Nancy was in serious trouble. With two sets of guns pointed straight at her, brandished by rival gangs demanding what she couldn’t give them, the single mum was at a terrible dead-end. And so the camera retreated, allowing us to absorb the horror of Nancy’s predicament as the credits began to roll.

What a fantastic cliff-hanger. How is Nancy going to get out of this one, and will I be able to make it until season three hits these shores? Weeds might be unpopular with Sky One – but I am a major new fan.