'WEEDS' RETURNS EVEN MORE WACKED OUT.

Byline: DAVID KRONKE

>TV CRITIC

When we last saw Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), "Weeds'" sweet yet none-too-guileless pot-dealing anti-heroine, last season, her husband -- and protection from the law was dead, and she had a half-dozen automatic weapons from two separate angry gangs trained on her.

Four episodes into the third season, poor Nancy's situation may be even worse. But the show itself has stepped up its gallows humor.

It has evolved from a wan satire of suburban angst -- something novelist Richard Yates had pretty much perfectly nailed nearly a half-century ago -- into gangster farce, as well as both a "Catch-22" and an "Elmer Gantry" for the 21st century.

Without her DEA-agent husband to protect her, it's pretty much open season on Nancy: Gangs want her marijuana; busybody neighbor Celia (Elizabeth Perkins) knows her secret and is hellbent to lord it over her; and she's forced to take a job under Sullivan Groff (Matthew Modine), the head of a "values-based community" named Majestic aiming to co-opt the infrastructure of Agrestic, Nancy and Celia's suburban purgatory, for its own serpentine schemes.

Agrestic's corruptly clueless city council, however, scarcely seems to mind.

Meanwhile, her brother Andy (Justin Kirk) is discovering that the Army, in need of recruits for the war with Iraq, is willing to induct just about any eight-toed reprobate, himself included, for motivations that might give a patriot pause.

Aside from occasionally inspired one-liners -- there's one this season referring to a "morning-after pill for dogs, the Arf-U-486" -- "Weeds" hasn't exactly been subtle in its parody. But now, the show, created and executive-produced by Jenji Kohan, has elevated its game a smidgen to encompass a truly crazy social satire.

True, there's still condescension toward some of its targets -- one hopes Groff's blatant hypocrisy will yield something more interesting -- and the show still seems incapable of separating its inspired ideas from its chaff (it jettisoned Zooey Deschanel's on-the-lam loon too readily, while Kevin Nealon's drearily doltish Doug is clearly in it for the long haul).

Nonetheless, this third season is the first in which the initial clump of episodes seems to have truly embraced a go-for-broke lunacy, where there's more on the show's mind than simply mocking suburbia and its discontents.

And Parker, taking it all in with wittily wary wide eyes, remains a charming moral center in a world where, as Yeats declared, the center cannot hold.

David Kronke, [phone]

[e-mail] www.insidesocal.com/tv/

WEEDS - Three stars

>What: Pot-dealing widow Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) is digging herself in deep as season three begins.

>Where: Showtime.

>When: 10 and 11:05 tonight; also 10 and 10:30 p.m. Tuesday.

>In a nutshell: Parker remains an amusing center in an expanding social satire.

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Photo:

Mary-Louise Parker and Hunter Parrish star in Showtime's "Weeds," which returns for its third season with more outrageous humor and situations in the life of a pot-dealing suburban mom and her neighbors.