By Jon Hiltz
Here at Marijuana.com, we love what we do, but there’s no denying that some stories are much more enjoyable to cover than others.
This week we had the awesome task to review one of the upcoming cannabis television series that will be pioneering weed across the airwaves. The show is called Mary+Jane and is about two young women who start an ambitious marijuana delivery service in Los Angeles.
Mary+Jane is executive produced by Snoop Dogg and is being considered as one of the heavy hitters on the MTV schedule despite the fact that more than likely, you have not yet heard of the actors in the show.
The pilot episode begins very quickly and wastes no time to introduce main characters Paige and Jordan, and gets into what they do. Within the first two minutes, the audience gets a sense of their personalities and that they run a weed delivery service, sometimes legal, sometimes not so much.
The show pulls no punches in the dialogue department as the two characters have conversations about sex that would’ve given censors a heart attack 20 years ago. Couple that with the fact that they’re regularly getting high and even talking about the strain they’re smoking, Mary+Jane acts as a testament to how far we’ve come in regards to mainstream acceptance of the cannabis lifestyle.
The show is a single-camera comedy in the same shooting style as other series that include Modern Family, Arrested Development, and a long list of others, and it clearly works for them. The first episode had a strong plot that set the foundation for the characters, their friends and their enemies. Some of the character stereotypes such as the hipsters are a little over-the-top but not so much that it turns the viewer off.
The best thing about the show is that it’s not overly about marijuana. The creators have found a good balance between character development and plot development. Make no mistake that weed is always there in some capacity whether it be the discussions they have about their business, the clients that they deliver to or even when they are smoking it themselves. But it has the good sense not to focus on just the MJ to leverage a much larger audience than just cannabis lovers.
In the end, Mary+Jane looks like a winner, and that is promising. With so many shows about weed coming to TV in the near future, the hope from the cannabis community is that pot gets portrayed in a different light other than the traditional stoner stereotypes that have dominated entertainment during the prohibition years. We recommend you check out the premiere episode, September 5th on MTV.
