A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.

Chris is a teenager growing up as the eldest of three children in Brooklyn, New York during the early 1980s. Uprooted to a new neighborhood and bused to a predominantly white middle school two-hours away by his strict, hard-working parents, Chris struggles to find his place while keeping his siblings in line at home and surmounting the challenges of junior high.

In the fictional town of Neptune, California, student Veronica Mars progresses from high school to college while moonlighting as a private investigator under the tutelage of her detective father.