Dharma & Greg

- Season 3

(1999)

Greg questions his reason for becoming a lawyer and begins a journey of self-discovery.

Greg checks into a seedy Monterey motel and takes up squid-gutting to 'find himself,' while Dharma fends off the parents and their expectations of how she should be handling this "crisis."

Dharma takes more work to cover expenses while Greg finds himself, but still can't make ends meet. She accepts money from Kitty and becomes obligated to do her bidding.

Greg's argumentative side comes out in every daily encounter since he has no lawyerly outlet for it. Dharma joins a teen band. Guest starring: Bob Dylan.

Kitty's going through menopause and in mourning for her unrealized dreams. Dharma tries to help her achieve one by coaching her through the Mrs. San Francisco beauty pageant.

Dharma is 'possessed' by the spirit of a deceased neighbor woman who never lived fully.

Greg decides his calling is golf, and trains to turn pro.

Dharma wants to give Abby and Larry the wedding of their dreams, but it turns out to be a nightmare. Greg helps Larry get a birth certificate so he can get a marriage license, and he gets back into being a lawyer.

Greg is starting his private lawyer's practice, but Dharma keeps chasing his clients by giving them alternative non-litigant advice, even after he takes a shabby office to get away from home where her loony nature is obvious at first sight. When Pete asks for legal advice concerning their common landlord Mrs. Spinoza, Greg hands the case over to Dharma. She gets what she deserves for believing the greedy shark to be a sweet old lady. Meanwhile Larry's childish fight with his neighbor gets so desperately out of hand that he becomes Greg's despairing client.

Greg and Dharma experience a physical downside to being on good terms with both families: their parent pairs each insist on hosting Thanksgiving parties. Abby tearfully 'murders' a turkey and Kitty actually cooks- so badly even she can barely recognize the courses. As if that weren't enough assault on their digestion, Dharma volunteered both of them for a homeless shelter's turkey dinner, and 'almost her own son' Greg couldn't deny popping in at Montgomery maid Celia's first Thanksgiving with her recently immigrated parents.

Greg launches his practice with a dignified TV commercial, nevertheless the end of civilization according to Kitty. Alas the only interested reaction all day is - for Dharma, whose endless bumbling cost over 150 takes, for a beer commercial. Greg feels even more miserable when the loony job earns her a small fortune, which she spends on a giant TV 'for him', which he can't even turn on as it symbolizes his loss of bread-winner status, so he tuns it in and buys a small one.

When another nasty row between Pete and Jane makes them bail out of an Aerosmith rock concert, Greg and Dharma are stuck with two extra tickets. Looking for alternatives they realize they don't really have friends their age, but finally meet a charming couple, Doug and Cynthia, with whom they get on well. Suddenly the Goodbars seem unwilling to meet Greg and Dharma anymore, so they start guessing what the other did to scare them off and sort of spy on them.

Greg's law practice now goes so well he's exhausted. He wants a secretary but is too stressed for time to select one, so Dharma decides to do that for him, and subjects candidates to loony tests, even horoscopes. When the apparently ideally qualified and motivated candidate is too attractive for words, as even Jane remarks, Dharma imagines what will happen if she goes by her principles of non-discrimination, before making up her mind.

When mindless Dharma runs after a man to 'return' a wallet he obviously just stole, before the police and worried Greg catch up she has accidentally made a citizen arrest. For once her cupid-meddling with young cops Billa and Ellen makes both couples spend time as friends, with a major drawback: the police are Larry's very idea of incarnated evil authority, incompatible with planning Abby's birthday 'surprise' party, so they end up staging one each, in adjoining rooms.

Whilst in the midst of a call confirming a Valentine's weekend getaway with Dharma, Greg is interrupted by another phone call. It so happens to be Bob Dylan calling for Dharma. Greg excitedly hands her the phone and is perplexed and unaware they were already friends from previously playing music together. Bob asks Dharma if it would be ok for a friend of his to seek her guidance with personal issues. Next there is a knock at the door and Greg answers it revealing another famous musician. Dharma walks in having finished talking with Bob Dylan and the course of their ...

Minding the Finkelstein house while they travel 'up' to Washington is bad enough for Greg with female furniture sex-suitability suggestions, worse is hearing that's D.C., for a Senate meeting on an environmentally challenged bill his parents also fly to -actually on the same plane. Worst is when the dogs dig up human bones, which Dharma knows to be Uncle Henry 'Pinto', illegally buried, and workmen are about to lay pipes just there.

Greg injures himself whilst having sex with Dharma and ends up at the doctor. Dharma, being her usual self, is overly open about the experience with everyone making Greg uncomfortable. Then at the pharmacy getting Greg's medication, they run into an ex-boyfriend of Dharma', Scott, who is ironically purchasing a large packet of condoms. Things become more uncomfortable for Greg as Scott rents a place in their building.

Dharma's shameless public decides to 'coach' supermarket staff Donald -a cute, coy teenage genius- and Anita who have decided to shed their virginity together. She offers them her home as a venue. Dharma stays at her parents, where Larry discovered a single scent, alas no longer in production, rekindles his memory shortly each time he sniffs it. Greg can't watch and listen to 'kama sutra school' any longer, so he goes to spend time at his parents, where he remembers a traumatic event from his youth. Dharma discovers Anita isn't looking for love, just sex, but Donald ...

Dharma worries that Greg over-plans their otherwise healthy sex-life because of such 'scientific patterns' as food-related sex-games after every shuttle launch, her attempts as Abby advises to break his routine fail. The 'ladies' all keep returning to an unsanitary, hazardous, measly Greek restaurant just because waiter Stavros is such a hot stud. Greg tells Ed and Pete he noticed something makes Dharma aloof and is made to believe she must be unfaithful. Now both spouses are needlessly frustrated while trying too hard.

The Finkelsteins hold their seven-yearly karmic cleansing, which means confessing one's faults to the victim, who forgives by blowing them into an imaginary bubble. Greg adopts this hippie lunacy at home, but when Kitty forgives Dharma 'since you didn't mean it' she dares not confess, and believes from then to be unlucky through spoiled karma. Meanwhile Larry proves most unforgiving as maid Celia's 'union rep', extorting better conditions from 'management negotiator' Edward, although neither knows her present pay.

Greg's ex, Stephanie, wants a letter of recommendation for her son, Jeremy, to get into the exclusive prep school where Greg went. When she brings the kid along Greg and Jeremy get on so well, being obviously alike. This leads Dharma into believing that Greg must be his biological father. Meanwhile a remark by Edward gets Kitty obsessed with Larry.

When Dharma pays the bills she discovers Greg's storage box where he put away all his belongings when he moved in with her. At first she scolds him for mistrusting their marriage, then realizes he gave up everything for her, feels guilty and puts his furniture etc inside instead of her own. Abby calls it a feng-shui nightmare and huge health hazard. Larry just likes it and Edward becomes quit jealous of not being allowed almost anything. Dharma also starts behaving peculiarly efficient, so in the end Pete gets the consolation prize.

Used to being re-elected as the Alternative Cooperation president, Abby expects the same after nominating Dharma as counter candidate, who to all the Finkelsteins' horror is instantly elected. Dharma believes that all her changes are turning into disasters (because of Abby's devious work). Greg is delighted to get a case for Canadian singer K.D. Lang, so he can tag along to her studio recording, where he volunteers his services for a questionable approach to her recording deals.

A drunk 'vision' after a wine tasting trio to Napa Valley makes Dharma decide to have a baby, so Greg is pressed to try hard and often. Pete is finally fired at Justice. Greg refuses to take his legally incompetent friend or even to write him an insincere letter of recommendation, yet is pressed into that by the girls -although Jane scolded Pete a loser herself- only to be bitterly told that got Pete's fake one found out... Abby announces happily to be a crone, then proves cranky, blamed on menopause, but turns out pregnant herself, to Larry's despair and denial, ...