| Season Number: | 4 |
| Bgcolour: |
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| Network: | Showtime |
| Num Episodes: | 13 |
| Episode List: | List of Weeds episodes |
On November 5, 2007, Showtime ordered 13 new episodes for a fourth season of Weeds.[1] It started on Monday, June 16, 2008 and concluded on Monday, September 15, 2008.[2]
The season opener "Mother Thinks the Birds Are After Her"[3] was the last episode with "Little Boxes" as the theme song until season eight. The opening credits of subsequent episodes, after a recap of previous episodes, begin with a video title card unique to each episode. Each title card also has a prop or part of the setting that refers to a plot element in the episode.
Silas and Shane are aged 17 and 13 respectively. However, Silas turns 18 at the end of the season.
Having lost both her Agrestic grow house and her residence in fires, Nancy relocates her family to the fictional California town of Ren Mar, near the Tijuana-San Diego border.[4] The Botwin family move in with Andy and Judah's father Lenny (Albert Brooks) in Ren Mar, and Guillermo hires Nancy to smuggle in illegal drugs from Mexico.
Celia is in jail due to being the official lessee of Nancy's grow house, and she bargains to spy on Nancy for the DEA in exchange for her release. Guillermo's men catch Celia spying, but Nancy convinces them to spare Celia's life by claiming she was her partner. Andy enters a coyote partnership with Doug, who has recently moved to Ren Mar to evade questions about Agrestic's finances. Doug falls for an undocumented woman he names "Mermex" after witnessing her unsuccessful attempt to enter the United States. Using his coyote enterprise, Doug locates Mermex and gets her into California; however, Mermex is repelled by Doug's nature and falls in love with Andy. Scorned, Doug turns Mermex in to immigration. Isabelle is unenthusiastic about moving in with Dean in Detroit, and she pesters Celia to let her stay in Ren Mar. Silas sets up a grow room in the rear of a gourmet cheese shop owned by a neighbor, Lisa (Julie Bowen), an attractive woman in her thirties. Despite knowing that Silas is underage, Lisa becomes intimate with him, but reveals to Silas that her interests in him are just financial and physical. Heartbroken, Silas spurns her advances and ends their business relationship. Shane attacks the most popular boy at school without provocation in order to acquire a fearsome reputation. He also attracts the admiring attention of two classmates, Simone and Harmony, with whom he loses his virginity in a threesome. Simone and Harmony later help Shane sell weed at the school.
Guillermo's boss, whose identity is unknown to Nancy, has her open a maternity store. Nancy believes it is solely for money laundering until she finds a tunnel entrance in the back room. Though she is initially told it is for transporting marijuana, Nancy later learns that the tunnel is also used to transport other things, including guns and women. Unable to accept the human trafficking operation, Nancy becomes an informant for DEA Captain Roy Till, even though she has begun a sexual relationship with Guillermo's crime boss, who is revealed as Esteban Reyes (Demián Bichir), the mayor of Tijuana. The resulting DEA raid and shootout ends with most of the Mexican drug runners, including Guillermo, arrested.
While working at Nancy's store, Celia begins abusing the readily-available drugs. Isabelle and Dean stage an intervention, which spurs Celia to enter rehab and make amends to her family. Dean insists that Celia locate and make amends with their oldest daughter, Quinn, who departed during the show's inaugural episode for a Mexican boarding school named Casa Reforma. Newly graduated, Quinn and her boyfriend, Rodolfo, drug Celia and hold her hostage in order to extract a $200,000 ransom.
Following the DEA raid, Esteban's lieutenant, Cesar (Enrique Castillo) obtains a report about the raid from a mole in the DEA. As a result, Till's partner/lover, Agent Schlatter, is brutally tortured and mutilated by Esteban's cartel until he gives up Nancy's name. Upon learning that Nancy had alerted the DEA to his tunnel, Esteban captures Nancy and intends to have her killed. In a final attempt to save her life, Nancy hands Esteban an ultrasound and reveals that she is pregnant with his child.
Romany Malco, Tonye Patano, and Indigo do not return, with their characters' whereabouts unknown after the fire in Majestic. Patano returns as Heylia for a four-episode arc in season seven, and Malco returns as Conrad for one episode in season eight.
See also: List of Weeds episodes.