It's 1963 and teenage Barnie has problems. School bullies are after him, his family is dysfunctional and his girl Leslie screws around. On the run from bullies, he hides in the African-American part of town and meets cute Winona.

A father brings a young child to an emergency room to get treatment for a minor injury occurring in an innocent accident, but he gets accused of child abuse. Child welfare agencies commit grossly unfair over-reactions to remove the child forcibly from the Father, who must brave the arcane system to reclaim his daughter.

In Depression-era New England, a miserly businessman named Benedict Slade receives a long-overdue attitude adjustment one Christmas Eve when he is visited by three ghostly figures who resemble three of the people whose possessions Slade had seized to collect on unpaid loans. Assuming the roles of the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future from Charles Dickens' classic story, the three apparitions force Slade to face the consequences of his skinflint ways, and he becomes a caring, generous, amiable man.

Sergeant Boyd's police search to find a sniper who has been shooting hookers.