Jack Leary and his younger brother Dylan start over in Oakland, California in 1972 following the death of their mother Elizabeth. The boys live with their father John, who entertains late-night horror film audiences as ''Midnight Shriek'' host-commentator "Al Gory." John has a drinking problem that disrupts the smooth running of the household. Some parental duties fall to Jack, who takes Dylan to his first day of preschool. One of the Learys' neighbors, a young man named Norman Strick, who walks with a cane due to a car accident as a teen, is an anti-social Neo-Nazism who feels the neighborhood is going downhill.