Weeds recap: Season 4, episode 11

“Head Cheese”

Shane and his goth girls are in the kitchen eating Pop Tarts for breakfast, while Nancy makes tea at the sink.

Nancy asks the girls if their parents are OK with them sleeping over at a boy’s house they’ve never met. “They’re totally cool with it,” one of the girls replies. Nancy says she wants to know more about their science project, which she imagines will tough on reproduction and disease, along with “volcanoes” and “wind.”

“What exactly happened last night?” Nancy asks. The words are barely out of her mouth when the girls split. Nancy asks Shane if they had sex. He’s 13, she says. That’s too soon. Shane tells her to quit pretending to be a mom. She’s overcome by anger, grabs a newspaper and starts spanking him with it.

Shane escapes just as Silas walks in. How did this happen?, Nancy wonders, looking miserable. “What did I do?” she asks. “You had boys,” Silas replies.

At Doug’s new place, Maria wakes up to find him sitting by the bed with coffee and breakfast. She sleeps like a corpse, he says, but she’s so beautiful. He unbuckles his pants. She’s horrified: “Senor Doug! What are you doing?” They need to get to know each other before having sex, she says. He must win her affection. OK, he says, but “Can I just see one boob?” She shakes her head.

On the Celia front, looks like Dean managed to get her into a swanky rehab center. They’re all in for a tough time — hell, really — the counselor says, but they’re in it together. Each person will have a rehab partner to keep them strong.

Nancy goes in to the maternity store, only to find the door locked. Sanjay opens it for her and she asks if it seems odd to him that they’re closed on a day when the entire outlet mall is having a sale. He tells her he just does what he’s told, especially by guys toting semi-automatic weapons.

In the back, Nancy finds Ignacio overseeing the transport of more mysterious boxes through the tunnel. He won’t tell her what’s inside. She moves toward one of the boxes. He says he’ll shoot her if she opens it. She calls his bluff and he shoots at the wall behind her. She looks shaken, but tips over one of the boxes anyway. “Whoops.” Dozens of guns fall out of the crate. Guillermo comes in and tells her not to be naive. She knew what the business was about.

Meanwhile, business is booming at Lisa’s cheese shop. Everyone’s ordering the head cheese sandwich, packed with Silas’ homegrown product. A fat guy gets rung up at the register. Lisa tells him it’s “two forty.” He tries to pay with a five dollar bill. “Two forty,” she says again, only then realizing he thinks it’s a real sandwich. She and Silas try to feed him a line about giving him the wrong thing, but he doesn’t go for it. Desperate, Lisa says they won’t sell the sandwich to him because he’s too fat.

At the rehab clinic, everyone’s buddied up with their partners except for Celia. Her guy, Barry, is missing. She finds him in his room with a bag of coke and a mirror. He can’t take rehab sober, he says. All the memories and feelings are a drag.He’s been in rehab a lot, it turns out, and he knows how to sneak drugs in because he’s a commercial airline pilot (scary!). Celia almost gives in when he offers her a snort of his stash. But then she goes all rehab convert on him and tries to take the drugs from him. Unfortunately, she has the bag of coke when the counselor busts in and Barry blames it all on her.

Doug and Andy take a walk on the boardwalk. Dough’s whining that Maria won’t put out. It was much easier to court women in the 70s, he says, ’cause he had a Camero then. Andy says maybe Doug should try talking to her. She’s an orphan, he says. They talked about that when they were driving back from the border.

Nancy goes to see Esteban. When she arrives, he’s just saying goodbye to a priest who thanks him for a tee time at Torrey Pines, a San Diego golf course. Nancy flirts with Esteban a little, then asks him to level with her about what’s coming through the tunnel. He’s vague, saying boxes come through the tunnel. She says guns, and girls like Guillermo’s “cousin” are coming through the tunnel. He neither confirms nor denies it, but points out that the business through the tunnel helps him build schools and hospitals, and it helps Nancy provide for her family.

When Nancy gets home, Silas has a business pitch for her. The cheese shop front is doing really well, he says, but he needs more space to grow. If Nancy stakes him, he’ll be able to expand the operation. She says no, pointing out they tried that before and it was a disaster. But Silas has anticipated that response. he says Lisa told him she’d say no. At that point Nancy relents and says she’ll consider it.

The next day it’s lunchtime and Shane is sitting with Isabelle. The goth girls sit together, a few tables away. As Shane and Isabelle eat, she explains Celia’s predicament and says Celia got her coke from Nancy. Isabelle suspects they’re both dealing it. Shane’s noncommittal about that. Isabelle asks if he plans to dump the goth chicks. He says no and motions them over. Like little automatons, they ask Isabelle if she “parties.” Depends on the party, she says.

Doug takes Maria for a walk and talk on the beach. As they walk, she learns that: A) He’s still married. B) He loves three of his four kids. C) He’s on the lam because he stole money from the city. She’s looking totally horrified and then he kicks over a kid’s sand castle. He yells at the kid about it and Maria looks sick to her stomach.

At the rehab center, it turns out Celia doesn’t get blamed for Barry’s coke after all. But just as he’s thanking her for her help, an administrator comes in and says she needs to talk to Celia privately. Apparently her insurance info isn’t accurate, by which they mean she has none and gave them a bogus policy number. The “good news”: The center isn’t abandoning her rehab plan. They found space for her in their sister facility for people in a lower income bracket. It’s across town.

Meantime, Andy drops by Doug’s to check in. Doug’s away and Maria says their relationship is not going well at all. She thinks he’s an awful man. In her eyes, you can see an attraction to Andy building. But Andy assures her Doug’s a good guy. It’ll be OK, he says. Just then, Doug arrives with a gift basket of lotions and body washes for Maria, along with a bed frame for his mattress. It’s for them, he says, suggestively banging the headboard against the wall. Maria cringes.

Celia’s new rehab center looks like it’s in the community rec room of a church basement. The crowd is tough. A tatted out white woman is telling a story about being basically raped with a mannequin leg in exchange for drugs. The counselor pronounces Celia’s name “Chee-lia.” When she corrects him, he tells her to lose the attitude.

At the end of the day, Nancy clears out the register at the store and goes to put the cash in the safe. Guillermo’s in the back, bringing out a bunch of young girls. “Is she buying us?” one of them asks in Spanish. Nancy doesn’t understand, but their innocence and their scared eyes make her nervous.

The next day, she arranges to Nancy meets someone in the park. She lounges on a bench and works on a Rubik’s Cube. The person she’s meeting arrives and she says a few words: “Guillermo Garcia Gomez.” The camera pans to her companion: Roy Till, the DEA agent.