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larly partake on screen, drags a bit, but has some nice moments and presents a somewhat realistic glimpse into a counterculture world most people never encounter. Fonda is smoking again in Peace, Love, & Misunderstanding (2011), a generational comedy that also stars Keener as the uptight daughter of Fonda’s marijuana-growing 1960s-era matriarch character. It seems the two became estranged when Fonda sold weed at her daughter’s wedding, and little has changed when the mother is reunited with her daughter and granddaughters years later, after the daughter’s divorce. Blake Lively is the pot-smoking protagonist who propels the action in Oliver Stone’s marijuana-themed drama, Savages (2012). Although it bears little resemblance to the reality of the American cannabis world, Savages does show a gruesome glimpse into the havoc prohibition has wreaked south of the border. For pure entertainment value, though, this tense drama about a pair of U.S. pot growers whose shared girlfriend is kidnapped by a Mexican cartel delivers right up until the end—but I won’t give that away.
Marijuana in Your Living Room: Toking on Television
Weed is just part of everyday life for • Fiona Gallagher (Emmy Rossom) and
Mary Jane’s role on the small screen has definitely evolved since its reefer-madness low during the 1980s and 1990s. Back then, the government actually paid television shows to put antidrug messaging into their plotlines. The results were embarrassing, preachy propaganda pieces that now command the ridicule they so deserve. For instance, then-First Lady Nancy Reagan made a “very special” appearance on the hit TV show Diff’rent Strokes in 1983 to help spread her “Just Say No” message. That episode spawned a host of other “very special” episodes on other family shows like Full House, Family Ties and Growing Pains. Everyone’s favorite cartoon characters even got in on the act of teaching America’s kids all the “wonderful ways to say no” during a 1990 once-in
a-lifetime collaborative effort that accomplished the impossible and featured Disney characters romping around with Looney Tunes characters, Muppet Babies and other revered animated figures, all in the name of keeping kids off “drugs.” And in that era, the drug discussion always started with demonizing marijuana. Nowadays, it’s far more common to see marijuana use portrayed realistically as a normal part of life—as it is for millions of real cannabis consumers, whether for medicinal or recreational use. It may seem like cable shows are leading the charge, but the networks have been on board all along. In 1997, Murphy Brown’s then-scandalous use of marijuana to treat her cancer outraged DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine. Lots of other shows have dealt with it in a neutral or positive light through the years, including Roseanne, Home Improvement, Parenthood, Glee and How I Met Your Mother. To be sure, the number of television shows that make marijuana the primary or even secondary focus are far fewer in number than movies that do so. Nonetheless, there are some good ones, and others in which marijuana is regularly part of the background:
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other characters in Showtime’s Shameless. Mags Bennett (Emmy winner Margo Martindale) oversees a huge illegal weed empire in the FX series Justified (2010–2015). Gemma Teller (Katey Sagal) regularly indulges for medicinal and recreational reasons in FX’s Sons of Anarchy (2008–2015). Female leads Karen and Marcy (Natascha McElhone and Pamela Adlon) toke up in Showtime’s Californication (2007–2014), as do a host of other characters, male and female. It’s fairly common for women tosmoke marijuana throughout the course of AMC’s Mad Men (2007–2015). In Season 1, Rosemarie DeWitt plays lead character Don Draper’s pot-smoking Greenwich Village beatnik girlfriend. In later seasons, Draper (Jon Hamm) also
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