SMOKING GRASS AND STAYING CRASS.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

`WEEDS,'' Showtime's very arch new comedy from Jenji Kohan, sister of ``Will & Grace'' co-creator David Kohan, plays less like a satire of the suburbs than direct character assassination.

The series' title sequence tips its hand early, with shots of sanitized streets of anonymously similar homes, as Malvina Reynolds' lyrics about ``little boxes on the hillside/made out of ticky tacky'' plays on the soundtrack. ``Weeds' '' world is quickly established as one of relentless gossips, hyper-competitive kids' soccer leagues, pious, humor-challenged parents and unhappy couples desperately gargling away the bad taste in their mouths that life has left them.

Even the name of the fictional Southern California town in which the action takes place - Agrestic - is a terribly unsubtle comment on the hostility ostensibly simmering beneath the community's surface. When one character declares, ``There's not enough pot in the world to get those people to forget where they live,'' that point has long been made. There's not enough pot in the world, in fact, to get viewers to forget how awful this series finds its characters.

Except, of course, for Mary-Louise Parker, who stars as Nancy, a widowed mom subsidizing her lifestyle by dealing marijuana to her neighbors. She's depicted as a benign den mother to her clientele - she refuses to peddle her wares to kids and protects baked customers from their worst impulses. Nancy's urban suppliers, likewise, are depicted as soulful and pragmatic counterpoints to her soul- and brain-dead patrons.

Elizabeth Perkins co-stars as Celia, a contemptuous, martini-quaffing busybody whose treatment of her young, overweight daughter makes Tea Leoni's character in ``Spanglish'' seem almost rational. Kevin Nealon plays Nancy's accountant/customer, a City Councilman who tells fellow council members, ``We'll discuss this at the next meeting - you bring the vodka.'' In episode four, Justin Kirk, Parker's co-star in HBO's ``Angels in America,'' joins the cast as Nancy's ne'er-do-well brother, a trope of every water-treading storyteller: the charismatic loser.

In five episodes made available for review, only one scene was actually funny - when Nancy visits a ``medical marijuana'' outlet run by a motor-mouthed hipster clearly less interested in serving glaucoma and cancer patients than profiting off of those with doctor's prescriptions as fake as kids' get-out-of-gym-class notes. His product goes by exotic monikers: Nealon's character asks, ``Any more 'Stephen Hawking'? I want to be wheeled out of here.''

As bad as much of this is, Parker leavens it with an understated charm and a light touch that ameliorates the series' pervasive heavy-handedness. All one can do is hope her character moves into a neighborhood immune to the contemptuous glare of TV producers.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

WEEDS - Two stars

What: Suburban satire starring Mary-Louise Parker as a widowed mom selling marijuana to her neighbors.

Where: Showtime.

When: 11 p.m. Sunday; also 10 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

In a nutshell: Showtime executives must've been high to find this show funny.

CAPTION(S):

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Photo:

Suburban mom Mary-Louise Parker makes a little extra money dealing pot in Showtime's ``Weeds.''