When her husband, Judah, dies of a sudden heart attack while out with his ten-year-old son, Shane, Nancy Botwin finds herself in a financial crisis. With no other option available to her, she turns to Conrad Shepard and his family to sell cannabis, using a fake bakery to move the goods. Aided by her wayward black-sheep brother-in-law, Andy (Judah's younger brother), she struggles to keep her new means of bill-solving secret from suspicious PTA members and her nosy neighbors as well as from her children, Shane and his teenage brother, Silas. Coping without Judah as the patriarch of the family reflects in the Botwins, especially Shane, who is going through the painful process of growing up without his dad, with Andy as the reluctant and rather poor substitute for father-and-son topics that go with growing up.