News Views Blog

parking lot 2

Springsteen fan tailgating. Giants Stadium, Summer 2003.

christmas in connecticut

Journalist Elizabeth Lane is one of the country’s most famous food writer. In her columns, she describes herself as a hard working farm woman, taking care of her children and being an excellent cook. But this is all lies. In reality she is an umarried New Yorker who can’t even boil an egg. The recipes come from her good friend Felix. The owner of the magazine she works for has decided that a heroic sailor will spend his christmas on *her* farm. Miss Lane knows that her career is over if the truth comes out, but what can she do?

lake dead

horror movie

rab ne bana di jodi review

Movie Review: Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi; Star Cast: SRK, Anushka sharma, Vinay Pathak, Kajol, Rani, Preity Zinta, Priyanka and Others; Director: Aditya Chopra; Rating: ***

Destiny plays a cruel joke on an extremely enthusiastic young girl Taani (Anushka) as she loses her fiancé and his family in a road accident on the eve of her marriage. Her father, a retired professor, on his death bed requests her to marry his old favorite student, Surinder Shahani (SRK). Taani obeys his last wish and thus begins the start of this extraordinary love story between an otherwise ordinary jodi.

The shy, somewhat geeky Surinder has already fallen for Taani since the first time he has seen her but alls his hopes crash when Taani tells him the day they arrive at his house that she won’t be able to give him any love as that’s one feeling she has lost forever with the sudden turn of events in her life. The rest of the film is about how Suri transforms himself into a very hep flirtatious dude Raj to win her love using a dancing school as a platform for his antics. He is well aided with his childhood buddy Bobby (Pathak) who brings on the physical transformation in him. But what happens is Taani who is unaware of Raj being Suri himself ends up falling in love with Raj. Suri is now again in a fix but then he finally decides to take a bold step

Rab Ne has been definitely amongst the most awaited films of 2008 and there have been great expectations riding on it especially because it is Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge maker Aditya Chopra’s comeback film after a long gap of 8 years. The script has its moments and master craftsman Adi keeps you engaged initially with some really beautifully handled moments between SRK and Anushka. But as SRK’s character’s transformation comes in the grip slowly loosens and you start feeling restless with the pace slumping down considerably. What follows is a criss-cross between some really well penned and executed scenes and some really drab moments with badly placed songs acting as speed breakers. But Adi’s terrific dialogues deserve a special applause for touching the right chords.

Shah Rukh Khan is simply superb as first the shy Suri and then the flamboyant, full of energy, Raj. Newcomer Anushka gets a really well etched character to perform and it despite being her first film, she comes across an absolute natural. Vinay Pathak is fun and provides good comic relief.

Music of the film is good but the problem is apart from a very well tuned and picturised Haule Haule number, the rest songs appear wrongly placed. The picturisation of the number featuring Kajol, Preity Zinta, Bipasha Basu, Lara Dutta and Rani is mind blowing but again it coming at a wrong juncture doesn’t really make it work.

All in all, the film has the capacity to do very well in the North and the overseas but elsewhere the film won’t be anywhere near Adi’s earlier two works in terms of business.

Ashlee Simpson and Pete Wentz Welcome Baby Boy

Ashlee Simpson and husband Pete Wentz have welcomed their first child, a boy.

Bronx Mowgli Wentz - who weighed 7 lbs, 11 oz, and was 20.5 inches long - was born Thursday night, a spokesperson for the couple confirms to Usmagazine.com.

“Proud new parents Pete Wentz and Ashlee Simpson-Wentz welcomed new son, Bronx Mowgli Wentz, late this evening,” the rep tells Us. “Ashlee, Pete and baby Bronx are all healthy and happy, and thank everyone for their well wishes!”

Look back at Ashlee Simpson’s baby bump.

Us Weekly first broke the news that Simpson, 24, and Wentz, 29, were expecting in April.

“Carrying a child is the most inspiring, emotional, amazing experience of my life,” Simpson wrote on her MySpace page. “My weight and my pant size are the absolute last thing I am concerned about. I am only concerned with having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby.”

During her pregnancy, Wentz — whom she wed in May — doted on her, often fetching her No. 1 craving: green olives.

He said she wanted “green olives on everything! You always have to be ready.”

See what other pregnant stars snacked on.

As her due date neared, Wentz said Simpson couldn’t wait to give birth.

“She’s excited, she’s anxious… I think she wants it to be over,” he recently said on Ryan Seacrest’s KIIS-FM radio show. “She just wants to not be pregnant any more. She wants to have it because it’s, like, a struggle to go up and down the stairs … going out in public’s insane.”

(As for the baby’s name, Bronx, Wentz said his goal was to make sure his kid would have a moniker that would work as either “a rock star or a senator.” What do these famous baby names mean?)

No doubt Ashlee’s sister Jessica Simpson is thrilled: In September, she said she couldn’t wait to be an aunt.

Play Us’ Guess the Simpson Sister quiz.

“I’m going to spoil the kid rotten, that’s for sure,” she said. “I think my sister’s going to be pretty strict, actually, because she’s been so good throughout her pregnancy.”

 

Madonna and Guy Ritchie file a very modern divorce

It is of course sad that Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s relationship should end in divorce after 7½ years - the couple have three children: her daughter Lourdes, 12, their son Rocco, 8, and David, 3, who was adopted from Malawi in 2006. But it also goes to show that Madonna, despite being a glo-bal superstar worth £300m, remains a perfect mirror for her female fan base - by which I mean those of us who have liked her since she sprang on the scene in the mid1980s in cheap lace and rosary beads, with a wink in one eye and a steely glint in the other.

(Quick recap for our younger readers: pre-Madonna, being a young woman who was explicit about what she wanted, and being seen to work hard to get there, was simply not done. You had to shrug and little-me and self-deprecate, preferably while wearing a scrubbed face, giant specs and some sort of hideous sackcloth. PostMadonna, no girl is embarrassed about voicing ambition, or about going haring after it with all guns blazing. Her influence and achievements are hard to overstate.)

Unusually for a celebrity, Madonna’s private life seems real, and thus provokes empathy rather than derision. This may be because it so closely echoes that of lesser mortals. She does what we do, for the reasons we do it. She did it two decades ago, by being pert and batting her eye-lashes at anything that moved, and - rather remarkably - she’s still doing it now, by getting divorced.

Unlike her male counterparts, whose entire life trajectory seems to involve going from badly behaved, priapic rock star to really old, slightly tragic badly behaved, priapic rock star, Madonna has evolved in a recognisably human and very female fashion.
Times Archive, 1985: Madonna’s flirt rock phenomenon comes under fire

American feminists accuse the brazen 26-year-old superstar of setting the cause of women back years

Despite the millions and the sold-out stadiums and the awards and the deification, she remains one of us, buffeted in similar ways by the vagaries of children and relationships, finding it hard to juggle work and home and ambition and wifehood despite being a squillionaire superstar.

Compare and contrast with, say, Victoria Beckham: even though Madonna is considerably older, richer, more successful and more globally famous, her tribulations are resonant in a way that Posh’s could never be.

Never mind the enduring brilliance of Madonna’s self-created “brand” or the many reinventions of her stage persona, fabulous though they are. The real appeal is in the twists her life has taken, and the way they always seem to echo the experiences of “ordinary” women.

Take this latest instal-ment. The divorce rate may be falling nationally, but the number of older people - especially women - seeking an end to their unhappy marriage is on the up. Madonna is in the same boat as many of the women who cheered her first Top of the Pops appearance in 1984.

The soon-to-be-former Mrs Ritchie remains the zeitgeist queen, a one-woman barometer of where women are at. To mix metaphors, it’s as if she’s the digital image and we’re the pixels.

We may not prance around on stage aged 50, looking freakishly toned and wearing tiny leotards, but, like Madonna, many of us were bad girls in our twenties, good girls (and mothers) in our thirties and divorced at some point in the following decade or two.

Madonna did all of this with knobs on, as befitted her status. She was thrillingly bad, like when she took off all her clothes and hung out in lesbian leather bars for her brilliantly subversive book Sex - brilliant because, having made a career out of cheerfully inclusive, equal-opportunities sluttishness, so that every lardy middle American thought he was in with a chance, she suddenly revealed herself to be so comprehensively and terrifyingly sexually knowing that every male commentator in the US and Europe felt she’d “gone too far”.

Really, all she’d done was show her enormous fan base what a woman in control of her sexuality looked like, and shocked them to the core by suggesting it perhaps wasn’t quite as cute as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman - a heroic act for which we should all be thankful, and which is still a welcome corrective to the hundreds of little wan-nabe starlets writhing on a TV screen near you in a depressing, male-scripted parody of sexiness.

Having scared men into anxious detumescence for a little while, Madonna then became reassuringly “normal”. She had her first child, Lourdes, by a man with whom she didn’t stay, Carlos Leon, adding single motherhood to her bow (though she and Leon remained on good terms). Eventually she got married, like you do.

The party was at Skibo castle, which is a pop star’s grand version of a marquee in your parents’ back garden - that is to say, traditional and old-fashioned, with stiff flower arrangements and linen napkins.

She became a devoted Anglophile, claiming to like bitter and sprinkling her speech with bits of cockney: again, she was doing what women do, especially in the first flush of a new relationship, which is to love everything about their boyfriend and adopt it as their own - see sudden newfound passions for West Ham or random bands or hiking.

She had another baby, Rocco, and took to hosting shoots and weekend house parties at her Wiltshire country house, Ashcombe, which had once belonged to Cecil Beaton. Granted, she probably had armies of staff and three nannies on call 24/7 and perhaps never knew the drudgey exhaustion that comes from caring for young children, but still. Her fans from back in the 1980s were going through similar motions, relatively new to both marriage and motherhood, not entirely comfortable yet with hanging up their clubbing clothes, feeling as though they were playing at being grown-up.

Madonna, with her wholesome, moralistic children’s books and demure little dresses, made all of us feel a bit better about domesticity: she seemed awfully keen on it, ‘‘which gave the rest of us hope.

Aside from anything else, she made it seem glamorous and satisfying.

It was comforting to us to see that just as we were asking ourselves all of those tricky questions about trading in a fun-filled youth for motherhood and fidelity and early nights, Madonna had already embraced them all. Nigella Lawson is, rightly, credited for glamorising domestic life, but Madonna has arguably played an equally large part for women of my generation.

Now, aged 50 and with little left to prove, she’s readying herself to go solo - like so many women for whom domestic bliss left a great deal to be desired, and who, postchildren, postproperty and financially secure, get the distinct feeling that marriage is overrated and that they’d be happier baling out and pottering about on their own.As is often the case, divorce at a later age, for Madonna, isn’t theimpromptu version of divorce from one’s youth: by all accounts, the Ritchies have tried hard to make their marriage work, to reach compromises and to come up with solutions that would be least damaging to their family life. However, their attempts - which are rumoured to have included mouthing “empowering”, loving words at each other, such as “macho” and “goddess” (a technique that seems so demented and juvenile that I very much hope the rumour is baseless) - have failed.

Madonna has reputedly hired the redoubtable Fiona Shackleton, who has represented the Prince of Wales and, more recently, Sir Paul McCart-ney. Friends of the couple say the split is as amicable as splits can be, and that Ritchie is expected to behave in a gentlemanly fashion: the antiHeather Mills, if you like.

The separation, long rumoured, was confirmed last Wednesday in a joint statement issued through Madonna’s spokeswoman, Liz Rosenberg. “Madonna and Guy Ritchie have agreed to divorce after 7½ years of marriage, their representatives confirmed today. They have both requested that the media maintain respect for their family at this difficult time.”

The gossip mill had been in overdrive since last summer. Guy found his wife too controlling, apparently (which is a bit like Mrs Khan suddenly noticing that Genghis had a wee aggressive streak); she was said to be keen on adopting more children, unlike him; he allegedly found it hard to deal with her continuing success while his own star had been on the wane for years; he wasn’t as devoted to Kabbalah, a bonkers-seeming celebrity offshoot of Judaism, as she was; etc etc. And he wasn’t as famous as her: he would always be Mr Madonna, which can hardly have come as a massive surprise, but which must still have rankled.

According to reports, the point at which the Ritchie marriage became irredeemably doomed was three years ago, on Madonna’s 47th birthday, when she fell off her horse and sustained serious injuries - shebroke four ribs, her collarbone, her scapula and a knuckle in her left hand, and later called the accident “the most painful event of my life”.

A “family friend” quoted last week said Madonna expected her husband to drop everything to be by her side. Ritchie, though, “approached the whole thing in what [Madonna] called ‘a very British way’: instead of smothering her with sympathy, he said, ‘Come on, darling, you’re a tough bird - you’ll be back on the horse in no time’”.

Americans aren’t good at being told to buck up at the best of times; a spoilt American pop star was never going to take well to being asked to grin and bear it.

Ritchie is British enough to cringe at the idea of making an unnecessary fuss about anything; his wife is American enough to see brisk, British admonitions about pulling oneself together as signs of monstrous cal-lousness and disengagement. Madonna was apparently so incensed by Ritchie’s apparent lack of sympathy that she told him their marriage was a mistake, and that he was not her “soulmate” after all.

Horses aside, what it boils down to, if you believe the rumours - which I do, because some of them come from close to the source - is that Madonna, and Madonna’s needs and Madonna’s desires, had an emasculating effect on her husband; that she noticed, didn’t find it especially attractive and agreed that enough was enough.

This is the story of many a modern divorce: forget infidelity or arguments over money - what kills many marriages today is the erosion of roles that had been clearly demarcated for centuries. It’s not just that Madonna is perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist when it comes to middle-aged women. It’s more that, in an Everywoman double whammy, her relationship has failed for particularly zeitgeisty and resonant reasons, which will be familiar to many “ordinary” couples.

It goes like this. Youmeet each other. You’re doing well; things are going swimmingly at work for both of you; you feel like equals (when Ritchie met Madonna, he was a hot young director, whose film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was a worldwide success, and of whom great things were expected).

Fast forward a few years and add children, and sooner or later one of you will get to the point where they can’t shake off the feeling that their star is on the wane while their spouse’s continues to rise. (Ritchie’s subsequent movies were increasingly poorly received; Swept Away, starring Madonna as a rich, spoilt social-ite “tamed” and humiliated by a sailor, came in for particular ridicule, though Ritchie probably rather liked the plot.)

Worse, the wife knows who she is (she’s Madonna!), she’s good at her job, she knows what she wants and she’s not really in the business of playing doormats to soothe wounded male egos. Aside from anything else, she’s busy.

As the months and years pass, her husband’s lack of success - and,sure as eggs is eggs, growing self-pity - do not elicit cooing sympathy, but irritation. The more irritation she displays, the more emasculated he becomes. And the more emasculated he becomes, the more irritated she feels.

It’s an unoriginal vicious circle, one that is played out in tens of thousands of homes every day, because this whole scenario is one of the side effects of the whole working-women debate - never mind what going out to work does to children: it also does extraordinary, and underreported, things to marriages. Even if you’re Madonna.

Ritchie, meanwhile, is a geezer - an artificially created, public-school-educated geezer, but a geezer none the less, if only by osmosis. (Though I wonder what his wife thought when she first realised that he wasn’t really some East End sexy gangster type but the stepson of a baronet. She may have felt a bit swizzed.)

He is a bloke. The thing about blokes is that blokeishness is all they can do: they operate in really only one register. Their requirements arefew and not complex: respect, which is to say admiration, tops the list, not just from colleagues or the world at large, but also from the missus.

For men, respect is usually measured by professional success: lose professional success and respect becomes thin on the ground. People may really like the way you’re so sweet with your children, but in Geezer World, sweetness doesn’t really boost self-esteem.

The second requisite for blokes is feeling desirable, in every sense: a geezer is nothing if he can’t pull birds (wife included). But the wife who no longer especially respects him may find it hard to muster up urgent sexual desire, especially if he’s wandering about looking all Eeyorish and glum and exudingfailure; and, of course, if his wife is Madonna, I expect the prospect of other birds is more trouble than it’s worth.

The third necessity is food and drink - geezers are a bit like plants. The food needs to be normal, unfortunately for Ritchie, who strikes one as a cottage-pie man whose wife follows a strict macrobiotic diet. The drink needs to be plentiful, and the drinking should preferably be carried out in all-male group sessions. (Perhaps this is why Madonna and Ritchie bought their local pub, the Punchbowl, in the spring.)

As I say, simple requirements - but ones that are, for the Ritchies as for many modern couples, almost wholly incompatible with the realities of everyday life. Women no longer have the time - or the inclination, necessarily - to soothe the troubled, self-pitying male brow. It sounds a callous thing to say, but for working women there isn’t much incentive: it’s not as if you want them to chuck you a tenner or take you out for a slap-up dinner or buy you a pretty dress, because you can do all of those things for yourself.

As love fades, the realisation that it might be an awful lot easier to do it for yourself becomes overwhelming; the gloomy, slightly broken husband becomes surplus to requirements. And then you call your lawyer.

Women equate sexiness with success, unless they are especially charitable. The lure of the alpha male is still strong: marrying an alpha, packed to the gills with confidence and self-belief as Ritchie used to be, and watching him turn into a beta, and then a gamma, and then go plummeting towards omega-hood, is more than many women can take.

Madonna’s marriage has gone wrong for all the modern reasons, which is apt, because she is all the aspects of modern womanhood rolled into one. You do slightly get the feeling that there is no hope for modern marriage, because if she, with all her determination and resourcefulness and loathing of failure, can’t manage to make hers work, then there is little hope for the rest of us.

But then perhaps modern marriage is old-fashioned already and needs reinventing. Celebrity divorces certainly do, and I have opti-mistically high hopes about the Ritchies on this front: they seem real enough, human enough, to understand that the three-ring circus, with incredible flying insults and paparazzi dangling from trapezes, is not especially edifying or indeed healthy.

It would be nice if, as has been suggested, the dissolution of the Ritchie union didn’t make it to court and a settlement was privately agreed. Neither Madonna nor Ritchie seems a hysterical type, and they must both have mourned the demise of their marriage over the past few months: the wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth part is presumably over already.

All that remains is for them to go forward, in as elegant a fashion as possible, and for Madonna to begin to incarnate the mantra by which so many women now live: I have children, I have a house, I have work and I am free. She’s going to be a great ambassadress.

Source: 

 

Amitabh thanks fans

After being treated at the Lilavati hospital in Mumbai for a week, Bollywood megastar Big B was discharged on Friday. While thousands of fans thronged to catch a glimpse of the star and to wish him well, Big B himself appeared miffed with the media. The latest entrant to the blogging world, Bachchan wrote about his fans. “Your love overwhelms me. Your concern for my well being humbles me. I owe so much to you,” said Big B.

But Big B took a dig at the media as well and said: “There is a muted silence outside. No one says a word, except the media. They clamour and scream for that exclusive shot, invading the sanctity of the ambulance. They would never understand the sensitivity of the situation.” He added: “Media is an added hindrance to a smooth, quick emergent ride to Nanavati. If they had their way they would ideally want to be seated on the stretcher with me and have me answering questions - ‘What would be the celebrations sir and will you be inviting Shah Rukh’?”

The Big B also explained his ailment and said it was intestinal obstruction. Either twisted or stuck or compressed and not functional.He said he was admitted in the same room 1101 where his mother was in for almost two years before she died in December last year. In pain, he shut his eyes and recalled his letter to her in 1948, ma..aap jaldi wapas aa jao. Mujhe aap ki bahut yaad aati hai. Mere pet mein dard ho raha hai! (Ma..come back soon. I remember you a lot. I have pain in my stomach).

Describing what happened to him in the early hours of his birthday last week, he said he woke up in pain at around 2.30 am and thought it was due to generous eats over dinner. “But, when the discomfort persisted, I tried to walk it over and not disturb the family. Since there was no relief, I called in my doctor and the medication administered had no effect. There was concern on the doctor’s face and a look of ‘I knew it’ on Jaya’s face. For the past few months, she has had instincts that something will go wrong with my health,” Bachchan wrote.

Bachchan said a painting in his office reflects the image of when he lay in the ICU during his Coolie accident and on occasion he has joked about it to visitors as a moment in his second home. “May be I should stop saying that. It’s turning out to be true!!” he added.

Source:

Aamir and the media the 180 degree turn

The transformation is amazing. Aamir Khan was known as one of the most reclusive stars in Bollywood - he shunned film magazines, rarely gave interviews and was generally unavailable.

This year, he appeared on the cover of a film magazine, granted interviews to all and sundry for a film that didn’t even star him (nephew Imran Khan’s debut film “Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na”),  and is now of the most media savvy stars in the country.

Take Monday, for example. A day after his directorial venture “Taare Zameen Par” was chosen as India’s entry to the Oscars, Aamir addressed a press conference, seeking suggestions from the media on how to promote the film to the Academy. He asked for their support and talked about everything from SRK to Raj Thackeray. All of it, with a smile on his face and twinkle in his eyes.

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civil twilight lyrics

My confusion corner commuters are cursing the cold away
As December tries to dissemble the length of their working day
And they bite their mitts off to show me transfers, deposit change
and I can’t stop finding your face in their faces, all rearranged
and angry like you never were

And I ease us back into traffic
dusk comes on and I wonder why
I’m always remembering you
in civil twilight

for the most part I think about golfing and constantly calculate
all the seconds left in the minutes, and so on, etcetera
Or recite the names of provinces and Hollywood actors;
Oh, Ontario! Oh, Jennifer Jason Leigh!
This part of the day bewilders me

Streets slow down and ice over,
Dusk comes on and I struggle to stop,
To stop to stop thinking of you
In civil twilight

Hey, every other hour I pass that house,
Where you told me that you had to go
I wonder if the landlord has fixed the crack,
That I stared at, instead of staring back at you;

My chance to say something seemed so frequent
It wasn’t. Now I know I had plenty of time
Between the sunset and certified darkness
Dusk comes on and I follow the exhaust from emory up to the end

The civil twilight
The civil twilight
The civil twilight
The civil twilight

 

weeds season 4 episode 13

The following is an episode list for the Showtime dark comedy television series Weeds. The series began on August 8, 2005 and finished its first season on October 10, 2005. The second season finished on October 30, 2006, and the third season finished on November 19, 2007. The fourth season premiered on June 16, 2008 and concluded on September 15, 2008.

Series overview

Season		Episodes	Originally aired	DVD release date
	1	10	2005	July 11, 2006
	2	12	2006	July 24, 2007
	3	15	2007	June 3, 2008
	4	13	2008	TBA

Season 1: 2005

Title	Writer(s)	Director	Original air date	Episode
Housewife Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker) is widowed, and turns to dealing marijuana to support her two sons, while also attempting to keep up her image in the picturesque suburb of Agrestic. Meanwhile, her neighbor—PTA mother Celia Hodes (Elizabeth Perkins)—tries to catch her daughter Quinn (Haley Hudson) having sex with Nancy’s son Silas (Hunter Parrish).
Silas broods when he learns Celia sent Quinn to Mexico. Celia deals with Dean (Andy Milder)’s affair. Doug (Kevin Nealon) suggests Nancy start a business to cover her dealing. Heylia (Tonye Patano) is unsympathetic when Nancy runs short on cash. Shane (Alexander Gould) misses his deceased father (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).
Celia attempts to cure her daughter Isabelle (Allie Grant) of her weight problems. Silas makes a move on deaf girl, Megan (Shoshannah Stern). Nancy investigates the idea of marijuana-laced baked goods. Agrestic is stalked by a mountain lion, to Shane’s delight.
Nancy’s troublemaking brother-in-law Andy (Justin Kirk) comes to stay, igniting angered responses in Silas, Nancy, and the PTA. Celia, meanwhile, drops a bombshell to her husband.
Celia’s breast cancer gives her a new outlook on life. Shane gets in trouble at school when he tries to be different. Nancy, visiting Heylia for more pot, gets a reality check about her lifestyle. Andy gets arrested for possession.
Celia joins Nancy and Conrad (Romany Malco) for a night out on the town, to cure her jungle fever. Andy starts a dishonest relationship while attending MA. Lupita (Renee Victor) grows suspicious of Nancy, and begins investigating where she gets her money.
Shane has a new friend, but Andy is more interested in the boy’s mother. Celia goes into surgery, and receives a visit from her mother (Concetta Tomei). Nancy discovers a new world of customers at a local college, but in the process she makes an enemy.
Nancy attempts to deal with rival dealer Alejandro (Vincent Laresca). Shane bites another classmate’s foot in a karate competition. Doug, Andy and Lupita fight rodents and weed when Nancy and the boys go out of town. Celia flaunts her one night stand with Conrad to her husband.
While dealing with Sanjay (Maulik Pancholy), Nancy gets busted by a campus cop, but Heylia soon opens her eyes. Nancy’s new bakery opens. Silas finds a new family in Megan’s. Celia goes up against a determined PTA mom.
Heylia keeps Conrad away from Nancy. Celia is stunned by Isabelle’s latest new interest. Andy gets called into military service. Silas takes ecstasy, creating a revelatory argument between him and his mother. Heylia attempts to keep Conrad and Nancy apart, but they soon arrange a new business deal. Nancy finds a new man, Peter (Martin Donovan), who has a secret of his own.

Season 2: 2006

Title	Writer(s)	Director	Original air date	Episode
After an eye-opening car accident, Celia turns to the city council for help and is ignored by Doug, so she makes the decision to run for Doug’s seat. Nancy attempts to break things off with Peter once she discovers he is an agent of the DEA, while also trying to maintain her family unity. Sanjay takes matters into his own hands when Nancy needs money. Andy attempts to get into Rabbinical school so that he doesn’t get shipped off to Iraq.
Nancy breaks it off with Peter. Celia’s family desert her as the election campaign continues. Megan gets into Princeton University. Andy, Doug, and Nancy attend a pot expo, where Nancy buys a plant and Andy finds a way into Rabbinical school. Meanwhile, Conrad searches for financing on his own. Peter tells Nancy that he knows she is a dealer.
While Nancy is trying to figure out what to do with Peter she comes home to plumbing problems because Shane was masturbating into socks and flushing them in the toilet. Celia enrolls Isabelle in fat boot camp and ends up getting sucked into it herself. Heylia has a suitor in Joseph (Ron Canada), a Nation of Islam preacher. Silas goes to desperate lengths to keep Megan in Agrestic, including poking a hole in a condom. Peter secretly marries Nancy so that he cannot be forced to testify against her, and she will trust him enough to date him. Nancy, under the guidance of Conrad, buys a grow house.
Isabelle is offered a job as a plus-size kids model to Celia’s dismay. Dean gets laid off. Both Silas and Shane come to crossroads in life: Silas when Megan gets some unexpected news; and Shane when Andy decides to get him a “happy ending” massage. Heylia is asked out on a date. The grow house develops, thanks to Conrad’s connections and Nancy’s new false identity, but is soon threatened by territorial mobsters.
Silas and Megan tell her father about the pregnancy with disastrous consequences. Nancy and her neighbors engage in a turf war and Nancy uses her marital connection to the DEA to clear out the neighborhood. Shane starts fitting in at school, but gets into trouble when he starts talking about the happy ending massage he got courtesy of his uncle Andy. Heylia prepares for her date with Joseph.
Nancy and Conrad fear their grow house has been raided by the DEA, but all remains mysteriously untouched among the surrounding rubble. Celia’s antics get her kicked off the set of Isabelle’s “Huskaroo” commercial. Isabelle and Dean create an account with Doug to keep the modeling money safe from Celia, but Celia finds out. Vaneeta (Indigo) ruins Heylia’s dinner with Joseph. Nancy tricks Conrad and Peter into meeting each other.
Andy loses two toes to a stray dog Doug found on the street. Meanwhile, Nancy juggles coping with Andy’s accident, as Silas’s grades plummet and Shane’s crush on Gretchen (Eden Sher) takes a new turn. Celia savors a three vote victory in the city Council elections thanks to a balloting error. Considering his new handicap, Andy reconsiders his role at the Rabbinical school, subsequently upsetting Yael (Meital Dohan). Celia announces the city’s new drug-free policy.
It’s harvest time. Nancy and Conrad make their first sale—to Snoop Dogg, who writes a song about their high quality product. Everything looks good, until Peter lets Nancy know that the DEA has got to make a bust. Heylia learns of Conrad’s betrayal, but buys some of his new weed.
Nancy faces pressure from Peter to get out of the business. The DEA visit Heylia’s house, and Peter is surprised as his bust goes awry. Shane has an encounter with Gretchen. Nancy and Conrad install a safe, and Doug heckles Celia at a City Council meeting but makes truce afterwards. Silas and Shane celebrate their dad’s birthday with Andy’s help.
Heylia is applying strong pressure on Nancy to alleviate police surveillance and return her business to normal. Nancy is overwhelmed and considers quitting to live a normal life with Peter. Doug and Celia consummate their relationship on her anniversary with Dean. Andy is paid a visit by his crazy ex-girlfriend Kat (Zooey Deschanel) from Alaska who wants him to return to their wild lifestyle.
After eavesdropping on Nancy and Conrad’s conversations, Peter stops playing nice and begins playing dirty. Nancy looks to other people in the business for help. Celia and Doug’s affair takes a turn towards the serious. Gretchen forms a dislike of Kat, who reveals her own secrets to Andy. And, now that she has been forced out of the business, Heylia formulates a plan with the Armenian drug lords to regain some ground.
Shane’s graduation takes a turn for the worse during his speech while Nancy and Conrad prepare to meet with Peter. Kat and Andy attempt to escape a bounty hunter, and Silas makes a defiant move. Nancy and Conrad find themselves in a sticky situation when they end up cornered with guns and gangsters surrounding them.

Season 3: 2007

Title	Writer(s)	Director	Original air date	Episode
“Doing the Backstroke“	Jenji Kohan	Craig Zisk	August 13, 2007	1	23
Celia acquires Nancy’s stash and devises a shocking way to “liquidate” the assets; Andy teams up with Alaskan bounty hunter Abumchuk to track down Shane and Kat; and Nancy finds her life falling apart at the grow house.
“A Pool and His Money“	Jenji Kohan	Craig Zisk	August 20, 2007	2	24
Nancy and Marvin (Fatso Fasano) fish the pot supply out of her pool, where Celia had dumped it, while U-Turn (Page Kennedy) holds Conrad hostage at gunpoint. As Nancy’s options decrease, she is forced to go back to a familiar face for help. Elsewhere, Silas and Shane attempt to get on with their lives; and Andy continues to avoid his military obligations.
“The Brick Dance“	Roberto Benabib	Lev L. Spiro	August 27, 2007	3	25
Nancy gathers Silas, Shane, Andy, and Lupita to brainstorm ways to come up with the money to pay off her debt to U-Turn. Celia meets with her divorce lawyer Arlene Cutter (Carrie Fisher), who recommends she start spending more quality time with daughter and cash cow Isabelle if she wants custody. Andy is finally forced into the U.S. Army.
“Shit Highway“	Roberto Benabib	Martha Coolidge	September 3, 2007	4	26
Nancy begins working for U-Turn and also gets a normal job. Meanwhile, Celia struggles to reconnect with Isabelle. Doug regains a seat on the corrupt City Council, now being courted by opportunistic developer Sullivan Groff (Matthew Modine). Andy faces tough training in the Army.
“Bill Sussman“	Rolin Jones	Craig Zisk	September 10, 2007	5	27
An AWOL Andy resurfaces in Agrestic. Heylia and Conrad deliberately start a gang war between U-Turn and the Mexican members of Guillermo’s (Guillermo Diaz) gang. Nancy finds herself caught up in the war through a chest of heroin and a drive-by shooting. Shane attends Majestic summer school and is assigned a murder mystery to solve. Silas proves he is skilled at the “family business” and Celia & Doug each want something in return from Sullivan for their vote.
“Grasshopper“	Devon K. Shepard	Perry Lang	September 17, 2007	6	28
Silas hits it off with a fundamentalist Christian (Mary-Kate Olsen) who has a penchant for pot; U-Turn drags Nancy to a showdown with Conrad and Heylia; Sullivan asks Nancy to host a cocktail party to bring together the town leaders of Agrestic and Majestic; and Shane attempts to find a way to break free of the Christian summer school.
“He Taught Me How to Drive By“	Matthew Salsberg	Paul Feig	September 24, 2007	7	29
In the wake of U-Turn’s death, Marvin takes control of the business. Marvin and Nancy confront the Mexicans and Nancy seeks to find a way to wipe her debt; Andy caters for a porn movie starring Lexington Steele. Sullivan asks Nancy to forge immigrant legalization documents for construction workers. Shane is seen as a blasphemous pariah at his religious summer school.
“The Two Mrs. Scottsons“	Rolin Jones	Craig Zisk	October 1, 2007	8	30
When Peter’s body is discovered, Nancy comes face-to-face with Peter’s other ex-wife Valerie (Brooke Smith); Celia takes a bold step with Sullivan; Andy gets more involved in the films he’s catering; Silas takes Tara on some errands; suspended from school, Shane bonds with Isabelle.
“Release the Hounds“	Blair Singer	Ernest R. Dickerson	October 8, 2007	9	31
Nancy is surprised when she finds herself befriending Valerie Scottson. Tara joins Sanjay and Andy in the business, and Silas is apprenticed to Conrad as a farmer. Meanwhile, Dean’s motorcycling bravado puts a kink in Celia’s plan for singlehood; and, as the Majestic-Agrestic referendum looms, Doug ups the stakes in his war with Sullivan.
“Roy Till Called“	Victoria Morrow	Craig Zisk	October 15, 2007	10	32
Nancy unexpectedly receives $119,000 in life insurance from the DEA from Peter’s death. The news upsets Valerie, who believes she ‘earned’ that money. Nancy soon finds herself torn between a moral obligation, and her own failing business. As Majestic merges with Agrestic, Doug scrambles to cover up the money he embezzled from Agrestic to put into the drug front, ‘Aguatecture’ (of which Heylia is the front person). Celia is forced to take care of the crippled Dean. And the love triangle between Nancy, Sullivan and Celia takes a turn.
“Cankles“	Christina Kiang Booth	Julie Ann Robinson	October 22, 2007	11	33
Valerie hires a private investigator to track Nancy’s every move. Doug and the Agrestic city council are sacked after the merge with Majestic. Celia begins to investigate Aguatecture. Shane installs a high-tech security system.
“The Dark Time“	Victoria Morrow	Ernest R. Dickerson	October 29, 2007	12	34
Celia attempts to extort money out of Nancy who in turn threatens to kill her. Afterwards, due to an impromptu inspection at Aguatecture, Nancy is forced to go to Celia and make a deal to use her home as a growhouse. Nancy and Conrad hook up.
“Risk“	Roberto Benabib, Matthew Salsberg & Rolin Jones	Paul Feig	November 5, 2007	13	35
Nancy makes a new business partner only to learn his supply isn’t quality. Celia settles into her new life of crime. Shane breaks the fourth wall talking to his dead father. Sullivan Groff considers moving on. And Nancy’s attempt to innocently break off her new partnership ends in violence for her family.
“Protection“	Roberto Benabib	Randy Zisk	November 12, 2007	14	36
When she realizes the need for ‘muscle’ behind her business, Nancy seeks aid from Guillermo, at a hefty price. Andy and Nancy attempt to discover the truth behind Shane’s conversations with Judah. Doug hides the Majestic cross, but Sullivan is out for blood. The DEA thermal scan of the Agrestic-Majestic reveals some interesting patterns. Guillermo makes his first strike on the bikers’ supply.
“Go“	Jenji Kohan	Craig Zisk	November 19, 2007	15	37
In the third-season finale, Agrestic residents flee an approaching wildfire and suspicious authorities question Celia and Sullivan. Also, Conrad, Heylia and Vaneeta leave their grow house, and Silas comes to a realization about Tara.

 Season 4: 2008

Title	Writer(s)	Director	Original air date	Episode
“Mother Thinks the Birds Are After Her“	Jenji Kohan	Craig Zisk	June 16, 2008	1	38
With the embers of Majestic and Agrestic smoldering in their rearview mirror, Nancy and family flee southbound to the border town of Ren Mar, California. Meanwhile, the DEA interrogates Doug, Dean and Sanjay, who all pin the entire grow operation on Celia. Back in Ren Mar, Andy confronts his father and new landlord Lenny.
“Lady’s a Charm“	Victoria Morrow	Craig Zisk	June 23, 2008	2	39
After settling her family in Ren Mar, Nancy turns her attention back to business. Later, Guillermo gives her a much-needed crash course in “running” across the border. Meanwhile, Celia gets further acquainted with life in prison. Lenny leaves Silas and Shane to care for Bubbie while he goes to the track. When Lenny returns, Andy confronts him about some family history.
“The Whole Blah Damn Thing“	Ron Fitzgerald	David Steinberg	June 30, 2008	3	40
Nancy makes her first successful smuggling run across the border with both drugs and human cargo. Meanwhile, Captain Till strikes a deal with Celia to get her out of jail. In return, she must gather evidence to incriminate Nancy and Guillermo. Back in Ren Mar, Andy tries to convince the family, including his father, to put Bubbie out of her misery.
“The Three Coolers“	Roberto Benabib	Paris Barclay	July 7, 2008	4	41
After Bubbie’s death, the entire Botwin family sits shiva (the Jewish period of mourning) for seven days. After shiva, Nancy is sent on a mission and takes Andy along with her. Now that shiva is over and Bubbie is gone, Lenny decides to sell the house. Meanwhile, Celia continues her flirtation with Captain Till, and Doug finds refuge with the Botwins.
“No Man Is Pudding“	Rolin Jones	Craig Zisk	July 14, 2008	5	42
Guillermo gives Nancy a new job and she soon finds working retail isn’t as mundane as it appears on the surface. Celia’s deal with Captain Till brings her dangerously close to the action. Meanwhile, having been left in the desert by Nancy, Andy finds himself with a pack of immigrants and a very unfriendly Coyote. Back at home, the boys battle an infestation of bees.
“Excellent Treasures“	Jenji Kohan	Julie Anne Robinson	July 21, 2008	6	43
Nancy follows the tunnel in the back of the maternity shop and sees something she shouldn’t at the other end. Dean takes a new job, leaving Isabelle to live with Celia. Meanwhile, Silas flirts with Lisa, and Doug falls in love with a vision of beauty who washes up on the beach.
“Yes I Can“	Matthew Salsberg	Scott Ellis	July 28, 2008	7	44
When Nancy is denied a share of the incoming pot by Guillermo, she decides to go over his head to Esteban. Celia discovers the cheap medication at Mexican pharmacies. Silas and Lisa (Julie Bowen) get intimate, while Shane discovers some shocking photos. Andy and Doug begin interviewing for their human smuggling operation.
“I Am the Table“	David Holstein & Brendan Kelly	Adam Bernstein	August 4, 2008	8	45
Esteban and Nancy’s spontaneous date ends in near violence. Andy and Doug successfully smuggle their first customer across the border. Silas reveals to Lisa that he grows pot, and she offers to let him do business in the back of her store. Celia develops an addiction, while Shane makes a strong first impression during his first day at a new school. Esteban and Nancy finally let their passion take control.
“Little Boats“	Ron Fitzgerald	Craig Zisk	August 11, 2008	9	46
Nancy and Esteban struggle to fit each other into their busy schedules. Having discovered Shane’s new fantasies and Silas’s new girlfriend, Nancy is forced to have a talk with both of her sons. Meanwhile, Celia grows more desperate to feed her binge. And Silas continues his relationship with Lisa as they begin to expand the offerings at her cheese shop. Andy and Doug search for Doug’s new love in Mexico where they are confronted by El Coyote. Meanwhile, Shane attracts the opposite sex at school.
“The Love Circle Overlap“	Victoria Morrow	Julie Anne Robinson	August 18, 2008	10	47
Nancy discovers the tunnel is being used for more than drugs. Esteban allays her fears and her nagging headache with a powerful remedy. Celia’s family stages an intervention, forcing her into rehab. Andy locates Maria and brings her across the border to an awaiting Doug. At home, Silas babysits, while Shane explores virgin territory with his two new girlfriends.
“Head Cheese“	Roberto Benabib, Rolin Jones & Matthew Salsberg	Craig Zisk	August 25, 2008	11	48
Nancy must deal with the aftermath of Shane’s exploits, her Ayahuasca trip, and more confrontation with Guillermo. Celia is forced to find a new, cheap, rehab facility. Doug and Maria struggle with their relationship and they both turn to Andy for help. Meanwhile, Silas’s “sandwich” business has grown too big, forcing him to turn to Nancy for help.
“‘Till We Meet Again“	Roberto Benabib, Rolin Jones & Matthew Salsberg	Michael Trim	September 8, 2008	12	49
A fed up Nancy squeals to the DEA to bust the tunnel while she plays it cool with Esteban. Embracing rehab, Celia sets out to make amends with her family. Andy succumbs to Maria’s advances, and later comes clean to Doug. Shane impresses his girlfriends with his drug scoring abilities.
“If You Work For a Living, Then Why Do You Kill Yourself Working?“	Jenji Kohan	Craig Zisk	September 15, 2008	13	50
In this season’s finale, the DEA brings Nancy in for questioning. Then she must explain things to Esteban. Celia travels deep into Mexico to make amends with estranged daughter Quinn. Meanwhile, Silas meets Lisa’s ex-husband and Doug finds a reason to live. Nancy makes a shocking revelation to Esteban.