A dishonest insurance salesman's life quickly disintegrates during a Wisconsin winter when he teams up with a psychopath to steal a rare violin at the home of a reclusive farmer.

Matt and Karen have inconsiderate neighbours whose lawn sprinkler drowns their flowers. A feud errupts and a series of tit-for-tat actions develop and escalate.

A polygraph examiner has an affair with a murder suspect after her test clears him, but new evidence then suggests that he's guilty after all.

A soon-to-be-married woman is distraught when someone kidnaps her baby. Things get even worse when the police accuse her of orchestrating the abduction.

By accident, the content of a computer encyclopedia is transferred into the brain of Dexter Riley, a less than average college boy. Because of his newly acquired knowledge he competes in a quiz show between various universities, where he sweeps all the points. A wiz kid from another university finds out about his cheated wisdom and does everything to discredit Dexter.

Caroline, a young waitress who seems to have bad taste in men, is on her way home one night when thugs attempt to rape her. Adam, the mysterious busboy who works at the same diner, helps fight off the assailants, and she begins a relationship with him -- but not all their fellow Minnesotans are happy for them. Meanwhile, the couple face their own difficulties when Caroline finds about Adam's past, including his unique health condition.

Advertising executive Nick Beame learns that his wife is sleeping with his employer. In a state of despair, he encounters a bumbling thief whose attempted carjacking goes awry when Nick takes him on an involuntary joyride. Soon the betrayed businessman and the incompetent crook strike up a partnership and develop a robbery-revenge scheme. But it turns out that some other criminals in the area don't appreciate the competition.

Afraid of her imminent success, Bettina, the leader of a threadbare garage band, nearly destroys herself when she returns to Minneapolis to the husband and child she left behind.

Middle-aged and divorced, Wilson finds himself lonely, smug, and obsessed with his past.

In a picture-perfect seaside town, an insurance salesman begins to realize that his entire existence may be staged and observed by a vast unseen audience as part of a long-running real-time reality TV show.