The West girls are visiting Wolf, before they head off for a bit of a night out. They’re off to a going away party at the Markham’s house. Allen and Lexy are two of Cheryl and Wolf’s oldest friends – old enough for Wolf to know exactly what a womanising bastard Allen is. Being pissed off with Wolf for his opposition to her grand plan for the family, she’s quite happy to let Wolf’s imagination do its worst. With him stuck in there and Allen all on his own while Lexy heads off to Paris… Who knows what might happen?

I’m a poor urban maori, alienated from his roots.Jethro

Meanwhile, as the ‘Maori’ law clerk at Trapman-Stierson, Jethro is working on a potential goldmine of a case – misappropriated land, Treaty money – big fees for the company and big ups for Jethro if he can find the incriminating evidence. Enter Hugh, Jethro’s law clerk rival, onto the scene. Hugh is an up himself son of a judge and he wants in on Jethro’s job.

This Jethro can deal with easily. What’s more awkward is that Hugh is rather too interested in Jethro’s ‘Maori roots’. He even goes as far as to wonder if Jethro is related to the famous white trash, criminal West family. The scent of blackmail hangs in the air, leaving Jethro in no position to argue when Hugh manages to brown-nose his way into the tribal case.

Back in West Auckland, at the party, there is most certainly a frisson between Cheryl and Allen, but it is Eric who puts the first moves on Cheryl. Drunkenly and clumsily, of course, being Eric.

And who should rescue Cheryl from Eric’s amorous embrace…? Allen Markham, her very own knight in shining polyester. Having saved her from Eric, Allen proposes to save Cheryl from her job as a checkout chick at BigFoods.

Which is how Cheryl ends up managing the office at Markham Auto Imports. She’s earning heaps more money, Allen’s behaving himself around her and even Loretta approves of her new career choice. Except for the fact she’s just discovered Pascalle is working as a waitress at a strip club, life is looking up for Cheryl.

Wolf, however, is less than thrilled at the thought of Cheryl and Allen spending all that time together. Eric (who is keeping his own ‘advances’ towards Cheryl very quiet) is dispatched to keep an eye on things.

Meanwhile Jethro is also having a good run of it. His te reo (Maori language) lessons with Caroline are not only educational but also x-rated, so there’s no complaints from him there. Even better, he finds the ‘smoking gun’ – scribbled on the back of a takeaway menu.

But scarcely has Jethro savored his triumph, when the evidence goes missing. Hugh. He denies this, of course, but Jethro knows an attempt to steal the glory when he sees one. So…

Jethro hatches a plan. With his trusty PA, Savannah, as bait, Hugh is lured out for a big night out. Meanwhile, Van and Munter are to burgle Hugh’s apartment – to retrieve the smoking gun.

Elsewhere, in a not unexpected move, Allen starts putting the moves on Cheryl. Dinner at his place? She knew this was coming and lets him down very smoothly. Until…

Wolf comes in, all guns blazing, letting loose his jealousy over Cheryl’s working relationship with Allen. Cheryl, already pissed off with Wolf as it is, doesn’t need this lack of trust and tells him to stick it up his arse.

Then she does go to Allen’s for dinner; where he kisses her and invites Cheryl to stay the night.

Meanwhile, Jethro, Hugh and Savannah have ended up in the Champagne Club. Savannah can stand Hugh no more and bolts, leaving Jethro and the very very trashed Hugh alone – which is when Jethro discovers that Savannah was worse than useless as bait, because it is Jethro’s ‘brown arse’ that Hugh craves. Luckily for Jethro, the alcohol has done its work, and Hugh passes out.

A late night meeting is taking place. Wolf and DS Wayne Judd. Wolf can stand idly by no longer. He has information for Sergeant Judd.

The next morning, Hugh wakes up on a park bench.

Cheryl arrives for work. She didn’t give in to Allen’s advances last night. Allen can’t understand why she didn’t. He’s in the process of proving how much he feels for her, when the Judd and the cops raid the car yard – catching Allen with his trousers round his ankles.

Allen Markham, it seems, is not the honest second-hand car dealer he makes himself out to be. Winding back odometers and a sideline in stolen Subarus is very much his territory. In this way Cheryl loses her new job.

She also realises who shopped Allen.

Over at Trapman-Stierson, Jethro leads the powhiri (welcome) in Maori for the Iwi (tribal) representatives. The smoking gun is safely in the hands of Stierson and Jethro is the hero. Hugh, arriving late and disheveled, has been vanquished.

All that remains is for Cheryl to confront Wolf. He didn’t trust her. He had no faith in her. And what he did to Allen goes against everything they’ve ever believed. She tells him she doesn’t want to see him for a while.

Wolf is defiant to the end – he’ll be right there when she does.

Cheryl’s plan to march her family down the straight and narrow road has not got off to a good start. There is rebellion in the air.

Van is not enjoying working for the Hong family, paying off his debt to them as their pool boy and driver – or, in his words, “a bum boy for the Triads”.

It’s just my suckville life.Loretta

Pascalle’s modeling career, meanwhile, is under severe threat. She’s working at the Snapper Shack fish and chip shop, where the fat is playing havoc with her complexion. Even worse, there is no way she’ll ever get the $1500 to pay Rene, her photographer, to finish her portfolio.

Worst of all, the money has run out. Cheryl’s job as a checkout chick may satisfy her desire for honesty, but it sure as hell doesn’t pay the bills. There’s only so much mince a family can eat by candlelight because the power’s been cut off, before tempers begin to fray.

There is an easy way out for Cheryl, in the shape of $2000 Wolf dangles in front of her. If she accepts the money, she can pay the bills and everything will go back to being alright. Except Cheryl knows full well where the money came from and she’s too proud to fall at the first hurdle.

Mind you, her own working life is no bed of roses; not when you’re working at BigFoods supermarket, under the piggy little eyes of Noel, the branch manager. Noel dislikes Cheryl as much as Cheryl dislikes him. She’s a stirrer, in his book. And she is a stirrer because he’s a little prick who can’t keep his hands off the junior staff and he needs to be taught a lesson.

But, after humiliating Noel in front of the staff, over an issue concerning a roll of toilet paper, Cheryl learns that the supermarket game is a dangerous game, when she is both fired and arrested on charges on stealing $500 from her cash drawer.

Possibly the most galling thing about this is that although Cheryl knows she’s been framed – and loudly protests her innocence – most of those around her (i.e. her family) assume she did it and take it as a sign she’s coming to her senses.

Then, when a whole truckload of toilet paper is hijacked from the BigFoods loading dock, the whole world seems to assume this is West family payback for Cheryl’s arrest.

Cheryl, of course, is shouting her innocence to the rafters, but when she learns that all the other checkout chicks have gone on strike in support of her, she is forced into doing something positive about the situation. She can’t have her workmates not getting paid, on her behalf. That’s just not right.

So Cheryl takes Wolf’s $2000 and uses it to buy her innocence. If she can find out who took the truckload of bog paper and return it, then she’ll get her job back and her supermarket colleagues will all go back to work.

Pascalle, especially, is not entirely supportive when she hears that Mum is offering large sums of money in return for information. That money would have paid for her photos. Now she’ll have to use more drastic means to get the photos out of Rene.

Meanwhile Cheryl finds that the trail of the missing toilet paper leads her to…

The Hongs. Where, incidentally, Van has been seduced by Mrs Hong – which could lead to his balls being deep fried if Mr Hong finds out.

After paying Mr Hong for the information, Cheryl has her toilet-paper stealing man – Oscar Fusilama. And after a few stand over tactics from Oscar’s auntie, the toilet paper is duly returned. Of course, what Cheryl doesn’t learn is that the whole thing was masterminded, from prison, by Wolf. No way is he going to sit back and let his sainted wife piss away the family business.

So things end up where they started. Cheryl’s back at work; Van’s still at the Hong house, doing odd jobs and doing Mrs Hong on the sly; and Pascalle, having failed to get her photos, is still at the Snapper Shack…that is until a stranger asks if she’s a model and gives her his card.

Pascalle has been discovered! It didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen!

It’s one hell of a day for Cheryl West.

On the up-side, her number one son is getting capped. Jethro West, LLB. He’s the first West ever to graduate university and Cheryl couldn’t be any more proud. There is no way she’s going to miss the graduation ceremony, no matter what else happens.

On the down-side, her husband, Wolf, is getting sentenced on various burglary charges. But Corky, the family lawyer, has assured them he’ll be out in a year – at the most. It’s not great, but the family has lived through worse in the past. It’s an occupational hazard.

Well, you know my motto, Cheryl? Where there’s a crime, there’s a member of the West family. Judd

Then there’s a familiar knock on the door and the family nemesis, Detective Sergeant Wayne Judd, leads his police team on yet another search of the West property.

Which is when Cheryl’s day starts getting worse.

The cops are looking for Jethro’s twin brother, Van. They are keen to question him about a home invasion in which an elderly Chinese lady has ended up in hospital. Cheryl, of course, denies all – the Wests don’t do violence – but Van’s unexplained absence from the house doesn’t look good.

And when he does turn up, he has suspicious bruises all over his face.

By then, Cheryl’s day has got a hell of a lot worse.

She’s found out that her number one daughter, Pascalle, has been posing for some risqué photos as part of her dream to be the next Rachel Hunter.

Then Wolf’s father, Ted West (a.k.a. Grandpa) has managed to burn down his house.

Then, in the biggest blow of the day so far, Wolf gets sent away for not one, but four years. Cheryl’s going to be without her man and her children will be without their father for a minimum non-parole period of three-and-a-half years.

Just when it looks like Cheryl’s day cannot get any worse, she finds out that her youngest, Loretta, has managed to avoid attending Shadbolt High School for months on end. (Which is an entirely achievable thing when you can blackmail the deputy principal with pictures of her having sex with Jethro back when he was 15.)

But the crap icing on the crap cake of Cheryl’s day is added when she meets Tracey Hong. Tracey Hong has the evidence that proves Van did the home invasion (on Tracey’s family home) and unless Cheryl can retrieve a missing heirloom, then that evidence will find its way to Detective Sergeant Judd.

Unfortunately Van, incorrectly thinking it might contain drugs, has managed to destroy the heirloom.

When Cheryl discovers this, she also finds out that Van’s little foray into home invasion and the drugs trade was done with Wolf’s knowledge and, indeed, blessing. This is a complete betrayal of the code Cheryl has always lived by – the Wests don’t deal in drugs.

But Wolf is unrepentant – look where the code got him. His view is ‘you go where the money is, or you get out’.

So Cheryl, seeing the writing on the wall for her family, takes the second option. They’re getting out. They’re going straight. No more crime.

The general consensus, from everyone from Wolf to Judd, is that this can’t be done.

But Cheryl is a pretty determined woman when she puts her mind to it.