By Hipolito Navarrete, Managing Editor/Publisher
“Disjointed,” the new comedy offering at Netflix about the cannabis culture is innovative, funny, socially relevant, irreverent and rough to explain, not for children, young adults or teenagers, and some adults, that is for sure, and what happens in this dispensary, doesn’t ever seem to stay in the dispensary. This is not a show about pot, it is about the social changes we are living now, and the way an outsider community struggles to become part of the mainstream, or struggles to maintain its culture as it becomes part of the mainstream.
Although the elements that are used to tell this story and the stories of the characters is somewhat jumbled and “trippy” to say the least, it is a fun attempt at bringing the audience from a spectator to a place of empathy as they make the effort to help us feel what the characters feel. The veteran with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Carter, finally finds a refuge through the use of cannabis, because it allows him to face the demons he already wrestles with in a way that he can handle it. There is the Asian stoner, Jenny, a young woman who fled the pressures of academia and family through her marijuana family. The pressures are different now, but she faces her most difficult secret, with the help of her cannabis friend, to a terrible but honest outcome.
There has always been the medicinal bent to this herb which is addressed but not delved into. Then there is the stoner couple that somehow manages to keep a home and a relationship based, as one of the later episodes showed, on true love and their love of the feeling marijuana gives them. They give us a glimpse into the dangerous disconnect that “weed” can have on an otherwise productive person, that same episode will reveal shocking facts about both Dabby and Dank. They are the folks we are always warned about, the ones who are now “lost” and loving it and the show does sanitize their existence, it is a comedy after all.
“Disjointed” is described on its imdb page this way: “Cannabis legend Ruth Whitefeather Feldman employs her newly graduated son and a team of young “budtenders” to help run her Los Angeles marijuana dispensary.” Disjointed has released 10 out of 20 episodes now on Netflix.
