4th Season
2001-2002
#1 Dad
#2 Home Sweet Home
#3 Impulse Control
#4 You Can Count On Me
#5 Civil Unrest
#6 Best Man
#7 The Honeymoon's Over
#8 Rocky Road
 		#9 Gobble Gobble
#10 The Mating Dance
#11 The Start of Something Big
#12 Shadow Play
#13 The Good Fight
#14 All the King's Men
#15 Act Naturally
#16 Limbo
 		#17 The Whole Truth
#18 Gotcha
#19 Great Expectations
#20 Things Have Changed
#21 Smoke and Mirrors
#22 Out of Control
Other Seasons
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

#1 Dad: Aired Friday, September 28, 2001

Jim returns from the hospital a changed man, and Joanie insists that he stay at home rather than go to a rehab facility. Jim ends up wandering off during his own welcome home party and scaring his children. Syd deals with a patient who believes characters from television shows are real. Elliott tells Joanie that he's moving back to Chicago. Tina's divorce becomes final and she puts on Robbie's engagement ring. Robbie gets himself and Heather arrested in a foolhardy attempt to capture his father's shooter.

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#2 Home Sweet Home: Aired Friday, October 5, 2001

Heather turns the vet clinic into a dog boarding house and loses one of the dogs she's caring for. The dog turns out to be hiding out with Jim. Syd treats a man with full-blown AIDS who refuses to reconcile with his gay father. Joanie thinks Jim's new therapist, Marilyn, is too tough on him and fires her. Syd is nervous to appear in public with Joe at a formal party in Boston. Syd and Joanie continue to argue about whether to put their father in a rehab facility or not. Robbie hides from his family and his father and works on crazy fix-it projects at Tina's, meanwhile Tina's son Pete is less than accepting. Joanie's finding it hard to balance caring for her father, caring for her daughter and running her business, and wishes she'd get more help from her family.

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#3 Impulse Control: Aired Friday, October 12, 2001

Robbie tries to help Pete with his science project, but Pete rebels against having any kind of father/son relationship with Robbie. Joanie finds it hard to take care of her father when, not only will his insurance company not pay all his bills, but Jim himself seems very unappreciative of her help. To help their money problems, Joanie and Heather start interviewing temporary veterinarians, and after a bunch of nightmare interviews, they find the perfect guy, a candy-junkie from Kenya, Dr. Sam Magala. Syd and Erica Connelly find themselves working for the same charity, and are both surprised when they enjoy each other's company. Joe isn't wild about his girlfriend and his ex-wife being friends. Syd agrees to perform reconstructive surgery for Erica's friend who recently had a mastectomy due to breast cancer. Jim and Pete bond over building the failed science project.

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#4 You Can Count On Me: Aired Friday, October 19, 2001

Syd misses Joe while he's on the campaign trail and considers moving to D.C. with him if he wins the election. Syd helps a boy who is slated to give his Leukemia-ridden sister a bone-marrow transplant. Joanie is finding it more and more difficult to care for her father and her daughter, especially now that Jim keeps trying to go back to work while Sam is in the clinic. Joanie doesn't receive well the news that Robbie and Tina are getting married in three weeks. Robbie offers to take on Joanie's responsibilities for a day so that she and Tina can bond. Robbie finds Joanie's responsibilities almost impossible when Hannah gets sick at preschool and Jim spills dog food in the clinic and then hits Fearless when the dog tries to eat it. Jim learns a lesson from hitting his dog and remembering when he hit Robbie when Robbie was sixteen. Joanie and Tina have a great day together bonding, and Tina has the best luck when she picks up the leftovers from a rich girl's wedding that was cancelled at the last minute because she eloped.

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#5 Civil Unrest: Aired Friday, October 26, 2001

As election day draws near, Syd loses respect for Joe Connelly when he promises to take the high road and uses negative campaign tactics anyway. Between that and never getting to spend any time with him anyway, Syd decides to end their relationship. Robbie's future step-son Pete locks himself in his room and refuses to attend his mother's wedding, but when a fire breaks out and Robbie saves the boy, Pete reconsiders and asks to walk his mother down the aisle. During an unsupervised moment at the clinic, Jim administers an injection to a dog and the animal goes into cardiac arrest when Dr. Malaga unwittingly gives the dog another shot of the same drug. Jim overhears Heather's concern for the patients at the clinic and gives his keys to the clinic to Robbie. Jim ends up in the hospital from a bleeding ulcer, and Joanie is horrified when Syd points out that it was likely caused by an herbal supplement Joanie was giving her father. Robbie finally gets around to asking Jim to be his best man and Jim happily accepts.

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#6 Best Man: Aired Friday, November 2, 2001

Wedding chaos ensues when Robbie can't get the wedding rings because their jeweler has run off, Jim gets drunk at Robbie's bachelor party, and Tina's prankster father and brothers and youth-obsessed mother come to town and crowd Tina's tiny apartment. During the wedding itself, Jim becomes flustered giving his best-man toast and ends up slugging the groom. Jim's kids realize that his violent tendencies make it necessary to put him into much more intense therapy. Syd gives Robbie a wedding gift that just proves to Robbie how little she knows him, but after putting some serious thought into it she comes up with something much better. Hannah begins to wonder why her mother isn't married while Joanie is feeling more and more single herself.

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#7 The Honeymoon's Over: Aired Friday, November 9, 2001

Robbie and Tina's efforts to get to Miami for their honeymoon are thwarted by every possible airport delay, and finally they end up in a nice honeymoon suite in Providence. Joanie and Syd reluctantly put Jim into a daytime rehab center where he's not happy. Syd finds herself growing more and more short tempered, and, in her haste, misdiagnoses a patient at the clinic who is having trouble with his balance. Jim refuses to go back to rehab and yells at his daughters for sending him in the first place. The next day he apologizes to them and, back at rehab, expresses to his coach his misgivings about Syd's support. Jim's coach shows Syd the videotape of Jim saying that he doesn't know who his eldest daughter is sometimes. Syd begins to realize that her father's condition has been taking an emotional toll on her and decides to consult a therapist. Joanie finds herself with too much time on her hands and decides to look up an old friend from school, but she ends up harassing the woman on her answering machine until she receives a cease and desist order from the police.

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#8 Rocky Road: Aired Friday, November 16, 2001

Jim is slowly but surely recovering, and finds himself helping a friend he has made at rehab who is frustrated and feels trapped. When Jim's friend, George, runs away and tries to go back to his fishing boat, it's Jim that prevents him from hurting himself and makes sure that the rehab center knows where he's gone. Syd finally goes to see a therapist to talk about her father, and is surprised to find herself talking about her mother. Syd hides the fact that she's seeing a therapist from everyone, but finally admits it to Joanie who is very accepting. Joanie finally gets a fat check from Jim's health insurance and tries to re-open the Barkery, but further structural damage makes it difficult. Instead, Joanie finds herself helping another woman, Karen Ashworth, who is fighthing the insurance company on behalf of her daughter. When Joanie is successfull in getting Karen's daughter more help, Karen refers her to another friend with insurance woes. Joanie meets Phil, a handsome rehab center employee who is wheelchair bound. Robbie tries to be a pal to Pete instead of an authority figure, and when Pete breaks his arm skateboarding when he is supposed to be writing a paper for school, both Robbie and Pete make the immature decision to hide the injury from Tina.

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#9 Gobble Gobble: Aired Friday, November 23, 2001

As usual, nothing goes quite right for the Hansen Thanksgiving. Jim goes on a rehab-mandated trip on a crosstown bus and ends up on an adventure with some young music fans and elderly hispanic woman at the airport. Joanie and Phil take Hannah on a trip through the country and end up running scared when Hannah steals a turkey to keep it from getting killed. Robbie tries to plan a surprise Thanksgiving for Tina, but drops the turkey off the balcony and burns the fixings. Syd loans the clinic to an organization called the Daughters of the Mayflower so that they can feed the "less fortunate" on Thanksgiving. Syd gets some satisfaction from showing a bigoted Mayflower descendant that she has some Native American roots. The whole family ends up joining the Daughters of the Mayflower for Thanksgiving.

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#10 The Mating Dance: Aired Friday, December 14, 2001

Syd diagnoses a Brown student as love sick when he starts feeling tired all the time after getting dumped by his girlfriend. Syd's therapist tells Syd to try speed-dating, and Syd has fun pretending to be someone she's not, but in the end she just makes a good new friend. Joanie goes on the TV show Blind Date, and her dates turns out to be a clueless "octopus," but she finds romance at home with Phil who is baby-sitting Hannah. Jim helps Dr. Magala create romance between two cats while Dr. Magala gives Jim some dancing lessons to help him with romancing a woman at rehab. On the first anniversary of their meeting, Robbie sells his skis to buy a new sewing machine for Tina, while Tina sells her old sewing machine to buy ski boots for Robbie.

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#11 The Start of Something Big: Aired Friday, January 4, 2002

Just when Syd feels she has everything under control and doesn't need therapy anymore, a disaster with a high risk pregnancy has her doubting her abilities as a doctor and being sued for malpractice. Robbie's new salad dressing at O'Neill's has pregnant woman coming in by the droves because they think it will induce labor. Tina is scared she might be pregnant and turns to Joanie for support. Joanie is so good at supporting her sister-in-law that Tina is actually disappointed when she finds out she's not pregnant. Jim helps his friend Meredith through the final steps of rehab with a cute kitten. Sam agrees to supervise Jim as the vet returns to work part-time. Joanie is hesistant to start a relationship with Phil, but finds herself unable to deny the attraction.

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#12 Shadow Play: Aired Friday, January 11, 2002

Due to the malpractice suit against her, Syd is shadowed at St. Clare's Clinic by one of its particularly annoying board members, Dr. Mincus. He reviews Syd and her staff as highly competent, but the board still wants to settle the suit while Syd wants to fight it. Jim returns to work part-time under the watchful eye of Sam. Both Jim and Sam are frustrated when they aren't allowed to treat a young girl's dog because her parents don't believe in medical intervention. They convince the girl to give the dog to an elderly woman whose dog just died of old age so that she will allow them to treat it. Tina and Robbie finds out that, due to a medical condition that Tina has, they have to have a baby now or quite possibly never at all. They decide to start trying to get pregnant. Robbie becomes a full partner at O'Neill's. Joanie and Phil use their talents for fighting the system to help a father whose son recently had brain surgery and now needs more assistance than his school is willing to give him. Joanie comes up with idea of using the boy's popularity and rallying his fellow students to tutor him.

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#13 The Good Fight: Aired Friday, January 25, 2002

Syd meets the lawyer that her insurance company recommends for her defense, Owen Frank. Owen is attractive, brilliant and quirky, and Syd takes an immediate dislike to him. She quickly learns, however, that Owen is good at what he does, and she agrees to trust him with her case and her career. Syd starts teaching a clinical medicine course and finds herself reassuring a promising but hesitant student who faints at the sight of blood. Joanie worries about the physicality of her relationship with Phil due to his paralysis and pushes him away. She realizes that her fears were only an excuse to keep herself from getting hurt and apologizes in the best way she knows how. Robbie and Tina try to setup the perfect dance date for Pete and his tomboy friend, Nicky, but end up creating an impossible situation. Luckily, romance blooms for the young couple over a skate-boarding accident. Jim's first solo case, which involves surgery on a dog who swallowed a diamond ring, reunites an estranged couple and convinces Sam that Jim doesn't need him as a "shadow" anymore. Heather takes French lessons.

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#14 All the King's Men: Aired Friday, February 1, 2002

Syd takes a gun-shot victim to the hospital in her own car, and when police search it later they find crystal-meth in the back seat. Between that and the law suit against her, the state medical board suspends Syd's license pending a full investigation. Joanie freaks out when she finds out that Phil is going to Denver for a job interview. Tina and Joanie plan a wedding for Fearless and a dog named Patti who has an eccentric owner. Fearless runs from the wedding, but he and Patti make up later. Jim and Sam decide to open a larger vet clinic together, but Sam's fellowship comes through and he has to leave town. Jim feels a bit lost without Sam, but gives an inspired graduation speech at his rehab center. Robbie becomes the manager of a burnt out '80s metal band and takes Pete to a gig. Tina tries to humor him, but is horrified when she finds Pete and Robbie with the band in a broken-down van and Pete is hanging out with an older girl. Tina tells Robbie that she's pregnant.

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#15 Act Naturally: Aired Friday, March 22, 2002

Sydney and Joanie go to California when Syd is invited to speak to a bunch of UCLA med students. An old friend offers Syd and incredible job in L.A., but she turns it down. Syd finds out that her ex-boyfriend Jerry is working on a new TV show that is basically about her life. Joanie tries to re-invent herself while in Los Angeles, and even considers moving there, but she quickly becomes disenchanted with the movie world after losing money and having to run from the cops. Jim gets his driver's license back and gets a motorcycle license as well. He gets a motorcycle and starts hanging out with a friendly bike gang. Robbie has to sell the disaster of a van while Tina's out of town, and finally get a sensible family car, but Jim lets a stranger take it for a test drive, and the guy ends up stealing the entire engine. Jim manages to salvage the situation by having Robbie sell the van to local bar that wants to open an outdoor area for bikers.

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#16 Limbo: Aired Friday, March 29, 2002

Syd, directionless during her suspension, takes Joanie up on her offer to work at the Barkery. Syd strikes out at the register the first day, and destroys the kitchen the second. Between Syd's ineptitude and her attitude, Joanie has on choice but to fire her. Syd's trial is set for next week, much sooner than her lawyer anticipated. Syd apologizes to Joanie and admits to her little sister how scared she is about her trial. Meredith, Jim's friend from therapy, invites Jim over for dinner, but when Jim shows up, she is nowhere to be found. When Meredith brings her kitten in to the clinic the next day and doesn't say anything about the night before, Jim is unnecessarily harsh on her regarding her kitten's paw infection. Jim feels terrible, but Robbie urges him to just go and apologize, so he does, and realizes that Meredith has been forgetting a lot of things lately. Meredith and Jim finally have their dinner together. Joanie considers entering Hannah in a beauty pageant for young girls, but she is quickly horrified by the lifestyle. Robbie starts experiencing sympathy pregnancy symptoms.

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#17 The Whole Truth: Aired Friday, April 5, 2002

It looks like Syd's case is lost, but her lawyer, Owen, makes a last ditch gamble that pays off, and proves that Daphne didn't follow her doctor's advice, which is why she had her seizures and a premature baby. Syd is cleared of all charges and gets her medical license reinstated. Joanie starts to feel uneducated and unworldly compared to the rest of her family, so she takes some college classes. Through her Barkery employee, Angela, Joanie meets an intriguing boy named Aidan and signs up to be in his History of Rock and Roll class. Robbie hosts some private parties at O'Neill's to make some extra money to sock away for his child's education, but when Tina helps out by waitressing she realizes that the parties are prostitute parties and gets Robbie to stop hosting them. Jim figures out that a pair of labradors are not getting along because one of them snores.

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#18 Gotcha: Aired Friday, April 12, 2002

Syd returns to work and gets wrapped up in a local game of a Gotcha where she has to shoot other Providence professionals with ink in order to win money for the charity of her choice. Syd lightens up while playing the game and finally agrees to go out with Owen, her lawyer. Syd finds that the game is also a great prescription for a stressed accountant during tax season. Pete enjoys playing dolls with his step-cousin, Hannah, but when his friends stop by and make fun of him, he's mean to her and lets his friends break her doll house. Pete apologizes to Hannah. Tina and Robbie try to do their taxes, but keep getting distracted trying to think of boy and girl baby names. Pete finally suggests they use Hannah's dolls' names, Luke and Sarah. Hazel, who arranged Fearless's dog marriage, advises Meredith on how to become more than just friends with Jim, and Jim and Meredith almost share a kiss. Joanie starts college and meets her cool History of Rock and Roll professor. Joanie tries to pretend she's younger than she is, but then realizes that she's being silly, and her new friend Aidan is not turned off by her age.

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#19 Great Expectations: Aired Friday, April 19, 2002

Syd tries to help a deaf girl get a cochlear implant which could help her hear, but the girl's deaf mother fears losing her daughter to the hearing world. Sydney and Owen go out on more dates, and find that they are very competitive with one another. They agree that they shouldn't date anymore, but can't deny their attraction to each other and end up sharing a passionate kiss. Jim meets Georgia, a chimp-owning, motorcycle-riding, many-times-married woman who just can't keep her lips off him. Joanie is frustrated by her rock-and-roll class, particularly by her professor. When she drops the class, her professor asks her out on a date. Meanwhile, Joanie gets an email from Phil in Colorado telling her he misses her. Tina is concerned when both Robbie and Pete anticipate Pete getting a little brother. Robbie and Tina decide not to find out the gender of the baby at their five-month checkup, but Pete accidentally finds out the information. Pete tortures Robbie and Tina for awhile, and then admits that the baby is a boy. Tina and Robbie celebrate and share the news, but then find out that Pete was wrong, and even the doctor still doesn't know the gender of their baby.

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#20 Things Have Changed: Aired Friday, April 26, 2002

Syd saves a cute photographer named Kevin from choking in a restaurant and he takes her to lunch as a thank you. Kevin expresses interest in Syd, but she says that she's pretty serious with Owen. Syd gets frustrated with Owen when he's too busy to spend time with her, but after Owen finishes his all-encompassing case he turns on the charm and they end up spending the night together. Joanie gets lessons in how to be a wild and crazy college student from her rock and roll professor, Jackson, and finds herself ignoring emails from Phil. Joanie and Jackson share a kiss in a bell-tower. Jim agrees to go on a trip to Portland with Georgia for a motorcycle convention while Meredith is out of town, but he quickly regrets his decision, apologizes to Meredith, and assures her that he and Georgia are just friends. Meredith and Jim agree they want to be more than just friends to each other. Tina asks Robbie to go to a PTA meeting for her, and Robbie is quickly elected the new fundraising chair when he comes up with a brilliant auction idea to make money. After a very successful auction, Robbie is elected the new PTA president.

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#21 Smoke and Mirrors: Aired Friday, May 3, 2002

Syd stays at Owen's for safety when it turns out that Kevin, the guy she saved from choking, is a violent schizophrenic who has gone off his medication and is obsessed with her. While Tina is away at a spa de-stressing, Robbie and Pete find out that they're being evicted in a week. Robbie is discouraged when he realizes that he can't get approved for a mortgage for a house. Jim has a few episodes of forgetfulness, and worries that he's losing it again, but his doctor gives him a clean bill of health and Meredith assures him that a little forgetfulness is perfectly normal. A snooty dog owner searches out Heather for last-minute help grooming her award-winning dog, but Heather accidentally makes the dog bald. Jim helps cover Heather's mistake by claiming the dog can't handle the stress of being a show dog and just wants to be loved. Joanie is caught in a love triangle when Phil surprises her in Providence and asks her to move to Denver with him.

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#22 Out of Control: Aired Friday, May 10, 2002

Syd treats a pregnant woman whose baby has the hiccups. Owen convinces Syd to officially move in with him when Kevin continues to stalk her. Joanie is flattered when Phil and Jackson compete for her affections, but ultimately gets annoyed and decides to travel with Hannah for the summer. Jim considers driving to the Grand Canyon with Meredith. Patty and Fearless's puppies are born. Tina finds herself job-hunting while Robbie is apartment-hunting. Tina collapses and has an emergency C-section. Both Tina and the 7-month-old baby are left in critical condition. Syd becomes trapped in a mysterious fire at St. Clare's and Kevin tries to rescue her, but Syd is just about as scared of Kevin as she is of the fire.

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Other Seasons
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