It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik, a physics professor at a quiet Midwestern university, has just been informed by his wife Judith that she is leaving him. She has fallen in love with one of his more pompous acquaintances Sy Ableman.

A weekend in the life of the Arnett family. The events of a forty eight hour period in St. Paul, MN, have a rainbow of incidents. From a preacher to a drug dealer; from an innocent young school girl to a reformed drug addict gone bad. The same scenario that millions of American families encounter each day in suburbia; both black and white and brown and yellow. There are no racial boundaries to the ups and downs of the real American life.

Two unseen detectives turn on a camcorder to record their conversation with Elizabeth, whose 4-year-old daughter, Chloe, is missing.