When his best friend Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude Keffy-Horn finds his relationship with drugs and his parents devolving into the extreme when he gets caught up in an underground youth culture known as straight edge.

Helen, Jake and Natalie are thrown into disarray when their recently widowed mother announces her love for a new man. Their suspicion of the newcomer triggers events in the siblings' own love lives, which begin to spiral out of control. Can the family pull together, or will old rifts and new conflicts push them apart, even to the point of violence?

Just before his sixteenth birthday, Felton Reinstein has a sudden growth spurt that turns him from a small, jumpy, picked-on boy with the nickname of "Squirrel Nut" to a powerful athlete, leading to new friends, his first love, and the courage to confront his family's past and current problems.

A hard-living ex-con who is the unlikeliest of role models, but when he meets a troubled fifteen-year-old homeless boy in need of help from a violent and destitute father, Joe is faced with the heartbreaking choice of redemption or ruin.

Season two dives headfirst into the sweltering heat of a Chicago summer, grabs Gallagher family life by the throat, and never lets go. Boozed-up Frank's scams constantly fizzle. Grammy Gallagher visits after a prison stint. Bipolar Monica returns to fan Frank's flames. Fiona plays the field--until Steve comes back with a hot new wife. Lip drops out to care for his and Karen's baby. Ian's gunning for West Point.

Futaba Yoshioka thought all boys were loud and obnoxious until she met Kou Tanaka in junior high. But as soon as she realized she really liked him, he had already moved away because of family issues. Now, in high school, Kou has reappeared, but is he still the same boy she fell in love with?

Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....