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TV: Weeds escalation

Timeline of Weeds (Hulu) criminal escalations.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD. This entire document is a huge spoiler list.

Does this show escalate slower or faster than Breaking Bad does?

Season 1

E1: Nancy is selling small quantities of weed, only to adults. One kid (Josh) she's selling to in bulk is young (high school? college?) but he promises not to sell to kids. She tried to cut him off when he does, but he blackmails her. She gets leverage, blackmails him back to get him to stop selling to kids.

E3: Shane shoots a mountain lion with a BB gun. Nancy also starts selling edibles.

E5: A drive-by shooting hits Heylia's house. No one injured. Andy tries to start selling weed. Shane gets in trouble for writing a violent gangster rap at school. Andy gets community service when he gets busted.

E6: Nancy gets involved with Tusk, a drug dealer with guns. Shane makes terrorist videos (vivid imagination).

E7: Nancy learns to have multiple tiers in her sales organization. Starts using burner phones. Hires 4 more college kids to sell for her. Nancy is subtly threatened by a rival dealer Alejandro (pennies).

E8: Nancy meets Peter, who she will later learn is a DEA agent. The threats from Alejandro escalate. She confronts, threatens him with a BB gun.

E9: Nancy is distributing on a college campus, is jacked by a security guard. Asks to borrow a gun from Heylia, who doesn't give her one. Shane starts a fire at school ("Moses and the burning bush wasn't realistic enough") which he considered low-risk. Alejandro offers protection so Nancy can expand her territory. Conrad beats the security guard, who returns Nancy's weed. (Nancy did not ask him to do that.)

E10: Silas breaks into model homes, high on ecstacy. Conrad talks Nancy into starting a grow operation (abandoning the bakery front).

Season 2

E1: Sanjay burns down the bakery for the insurance money so they can start the grow operation (arson, insurance fraud).

E2: Nancy and Peter (DEA agent) have been dating. Peter reveals that he knows Nancy is a drug dealer since just after they first met. He doesn't care, he has bigger targets (corruption?).

E3: Nancy and gang set up a grow operation in a rented house. Nancy and Peter get married in Vegas so Nancy doesn't have to worry about Peter being forced to testify against her drug sales. Silas punctures a condom to get his girlfriend pregnant (rape).

E4: Andy takes Shane to a full service massage parlor (sexual child abuse). Armenian dealer / gangster (Kesheshian) threatens the grow house.

E5: Silas breaks a window because his girlfriend's parents won't let him see her post-abortion. The father and/or Silas assault each other. Peter busts the Armenian dealer grow houses surrounding Nancy's grow house, leaving Nancy's alone (corruption).

E6: Nancy introduces Peter to Conrad. Peter says if the grow operation doesn't expand he doubts there will be any trouble (corruption).

E9: Peter tries to bust Heylia "to keep the heat off Nancy" (corruption) and to try to work his way up to U-Turn (a much larger volume drug dealer). Doug teaches Celia how City Hall corruption works in Agrestic.

E10: Nancy tries to retire to legit marry Peter. He comes over for dinner, it goes extremely poorly so Peter and Nancy are now at war. Peter can't do it by the book because he'll lose his job and/or go to jail because he's known about Nancy's drug dealing for a long time. Kat shows up, having stolen $1.2M in poker chips from a casino, fleeing to South America eventually.

E11: Peter assaults Conrad, threatens Conrad and Nancy at gunpoint. He threatens to kill them if they don't cooperate with him robbing them. Heylia rats Nancy out to the Armenians. U-Turn and the Armenians all decide to rob Nancy.

E12: Kat flees town, Shane joins her. She abandons him (child abuse / kidnapping). The Armenians kill Peter. (This is the first murder in the show. Apparently it was Haylia's plan to have the Armenian's kill Peter and "Nancy would pay them.") U-Turn and the Armenians now have shitloads of guns at Nancy's grow house, robbing her. Silas has stolen Nancy's weed.

Season 3

E1: Lots of kidnapping / running around threatening Nancy, Conrad. Doug and Dean do a ton of prescription pills.

E2: Lots of threats to kill Nancy, Conrad, and Sanjay at gunpoint. Andy gets beaten by citizens who think he's a child molestor / kidnapper.

E3: Nancy is slave labor for U-Turn. Told she was supposed to pick up heroin (not weed). Nancy wants nothing to do with heroin.

E4: The DEA shows up trying to find Peter. Nancy lies to them (omission). Andy is in the Army, his battle buddy is killed in a drone accident (murder?). Andy flees the Army (AWOL). Silas starts selling Nancy's weed.

E5: Some gang shoots Marvin off-screen. Nancy drives him to an underground doctor. Nancy is the driver in a revenge drive-by shooting against her will. Doug and Celia both up their corruption game at City Hall. The Army threatens Andy's life if he tells anyone about his battle buddy being killed, gives him an honorable discharge. U-Turn forces Nancy to store ~20 kilos of heroin at her house.

E6: U-Turn threatens Conrad, Heylia, Nancy at their new warehouse grow. Marvin smothers U-Turn (murder).

E7: Nancy forced to a gang summit between the Mexicans and Marvin, who decided he's the boss now. The Mexicans (Guillermo) threaten Marvin at gunpoint. Nancy uses that to purge past "debts" and to get heroin out of her life completely. Clean slate, back to weed-only.

E8: Peter's body shows up. Turns out he and his partner were corrupt beyond just Nancy (big Internal Affairs files). Doug has somehow hooked Majestic City Hall checking accounts into money laundering purchasing Nancy's weed?

E9: Silas starts interning at the grow operation.

E10: Doug advises to up the Agrestic account money laundering, not repaying the withdrawn money yet. Nancy receives an insurance check and first pension check from Peter's death.

E11: Peter's first wife hires a private eye to spy on Nancy. Private eye tries to blackmail Nancy. Nancy blackmails him back. Celia assaults Dean to get info on the grow house.

E12: Celia threatens to blackmail Nancy. Nancy holds a knife to her throat to back her off.

E13: Nancy buys from a biker gang since her grow is running low. Nancy tells the bikers she won't buy their weed again, so they assault Silas. Shane, halluncinating, starts talking to his dead father (from the stress).

E14: Nancy stores a gun for self defense. Andy threatens to kill the biker, immediately withdraws the threat. Nancy goes to Guillermo (Mexican gang) for protection for 50% of her business. Guillermo torches the biker gang's grow field, which starts a massive wildfire which burns many houses..

E15: Guillermo wants Nancy to sell heroin, she says no. She burns the house down (arson) for a fresh start away from her first husband's memory.

Season 4

E1: Guillermo wants Nancy to work back and forth across the Mexican border. She agrees, but only weed, not heroin.

E2: Nancy drives to Tijuana and back, thinking they packed weed in her car to mule back to the US. (They didn't, it was a test run.)

E3: Guillermo schools Nancy on drug muleing. Nancy discovers she's also going to be hiding people in her car (illegal border crossings). Assisted suicide(?) occurs.

E4: Guillermo sends Nancy for a drug pick up (no border crossing) with a gun "for rattlesnakes." She agrees to do the job. The Mexican police are the ones delivering the drugs to Nancy. Celia was outside Guillermo's spying for the DEA. She's discovered, threatened at gunpoint.

E5: Nancy assaults Celia and one of Guillermo's men, probably saving Celia's life. Andy learns how exploitative coyotes can be to migrants. He shoots the coyote in the knee in self defense (largely by accident). Nancy discovers her retail front has a tunnel to Tijuana in the back room.

E6: Nancy goes through the tunnel, sees the big boss (Esteban). Nancy is kidnapped by Esteban, quickly sent back to America.

E7: Nancy insists on seeing Esteban again, discovers he's the mayor of Tijuana.

E8: Nancy goes over Guillermo's head to Esteban, making Guillermo angry. Andy is a coyote now, running people across the border. Nancy and Esteban are at lunch, a drive-by shooting interupts them. Esteban is grazed.

E9: The coyote Andy shot tracks him down and threatens him at gunpoint. The crew he crossed over the border saves him. Celia gets kidnapped for being a horrible employee, person.

E10: Nancy gets her first glimpse that maybe "her" tunnel is also being used for human trafficking.

E11: "Nancy's" tunnel now being used for human trafficking, guns, and heroin. Nancy gets a meeting with the DEA to put an end to it.

E12: Shane (13) skips school to score weed for him and his girlfriends. Nancy's tunnel is raided by the DEA, one man dies in the gun battle. Underground, the Mexican municiple police face off against the DEA. Esteban green lights the killing of whoever tipped the DEA, without wanting to know the details. Agent Shlatter is brutally tortured, giving up Nancy as the source, and is killed.

E13: Esteban refuses to green light killing Nancy based solely on the tortured confession. Silas (17) has been sleeping with a 40 year old, her husand comes home and uses statutory rape as leverage to get custody of their son. Nancy lies to the DEA saying she doesn't know Esteban is the boss. Esteban now has photos of Nancy meeting with the DEA, summons Nancy to Mexico. Celia's daughter sells Celia to a Mexican revolutionary org for future hostage money.

Season 5

E1: Cesar murders two guards so they don't talk about Nancy's pregnancy. Esteban threatens to kill Nancy if she doesn't let a Mexican doctor he chose verify that she's pregnant. Celia's daughter threatens to sell Celia for her body parts.

E2 / E3: A bunch of threatening at gunpoint while watching Nancy. Esteban hasn't decided if he's going to kill Nancy after the baby is born or not.

E4: DEA agent (Roy) was stalking Nancy off the books. He's caught by Egnacio, intends to kill him. Nancy ties them both up, because they're both going to kill the other one. A cop demands kickbacks from Doug and Silas to open a dispensary, they form a partnership. Andy and a banker collude to commit bank fraud. Shane is robbed by his teacher. Esteban arrives, it's implied that they kill Roy.

E5: Shane and Egnacio raid the teacher to get Shane's weed back. Shane shoots a real gun for the first time. Ceilia discovers Sucio's corpse in a freezer.

E6: Cop is now extorting Silas (and Doug) at gunpoint. Shane is being "babysit" by the new bodyguard, who escalates from pranks to assault, which Shane isn't OK with.

E7: The wedding is delayed by the arrival of political operative Pilar Zuazo. Nancy and Shane start thinking they're trapped and will be killed after a home birth of the baby. Cop is busted by internal affairs. Nancy flees, their son is born in a US hospital.

E9: An assassin tries to kill Esteban, hits Shane in the arm. Egnacio kills the assassin.

E10: Nancy tries to hire Guillermo to kill Pilar.

E11: The Mexican police arrest Esteban for conspiracy, tax evasion.

E12: Kids try to rape Esteban's daughter, Silas stops them. She's a heroin addict. An abortion center protestor stalks, threatens Andy and his girlfriend with a crossbow.

E13: Pilar finds out Nancy tried to have her killed. Pilar threatens to kill Nancy's kids. Shane kills Pilar (his first murder).

Season 6

E1: The family flees on a roadtrip north.

E4: Esteban's goons are going to kill Doug. They shoot (kill) a homeless guy accidentally. Doug is spared by a phone call.

E5: The goons catch up with Nancy and the family, capture Shane.

E6: Nancy shoots Cesar with a crossbow. Cesar's wife tells him to kill Nancy and come home. The entire favily is captured. They're released when Shane threatens to shoot the remaining goon.

E12: Dude is writing a book about Nancy's hijinks. She gives him interviews for money. Family aquires fake passports to flee to Europe. Esteban catches up with Nancy.

E13: Esteban / Guillermo kill the guy writing the book, kidnap Nancy. Nancy / Esteban / Guillermo arrested at airport because she called the FBI confessing to killing Pilar. The rest of the family escapes to Europe.

Season 7

E1: Nancy has been in prison for 3 years, the family + Doug in Denmark. Nancy released to a halfway house. Esteban was killed in a different prison. Nancy picks up a bag full of guns and grenades from a parking lot.

E2: Nancy immediately fails drug testing at halfway house, they threaten to send her back to prison, she talks them out of it.

E3: Nancy leaves bag of grenades with Andy. Andy does research into drug dealers for Nancy, who's trying to re-establish weed dealing. Nancy leaves weed at Silas' apartment, who claims half of all inventory / profits for himself. Shane commits some bank fraud (multiple student loans).

E4: Shane loans money to Nancy / Silas for weed. So all 3 are back in the weed business. A suicide bomber blows up the supply in Afghanistan with a bomb vest.

E5: Doug finds out his new corporate accounting job on Wall Street is rife with corruption / theft.

E7: The SEC wants Nancy to pull files so they can bust Doug's firm (where Nancy also works). The pull her from the halfway house.

E9: Doug gets Nancy out of trouble with the SEC by blackmailing them. Shane gets arrested for stealing data from a police station.

E10: Andy threatens rival dealer with a nailgun. Kidnaps her. This is Andy's first threat of violence? The SEC, now fully aware of all the fraud at Doug's firm, are worried about their pension funds, so are ensuring Doug's firm replaces all their pension fund money without the markets or customers finding out about all the OTHER fraud going on. Nancy manipulates the police into busting her competition. (Again.)

E13: The family moves into a big house in Connecticut. Shane joins the police academy. Nancy is shot by a sniper.

Season 8

E1: Nancy is in the hospital. The shooter was Peter's son from season 1.

... Season 8 doesn't seem to ratchet up the criminal stakes after this point. It mainly focuses on reconciliation and the evolution of the aging characters. There's plenty of crime and misconduct, of similar orders of magnitude as previous seasons.