Lewis, a brilliant young inventor, is keen on creating a time machine to find his mother, who abandoned him in an orphanage. Things take a turn when he meets Wilbur Robinson and his family.

Tom Guthrie, a high school history teacher, is faced with raising two young sons after his wife leaves him. Maggie Jones, a fellow teacher, tries to provide comfort and support.

Erin and Garrett are very much in love. When Erin moves to San Francisco to finish her journalism degree and Garrett stays behind in New York to work in the music industry, they gamely keep the romance alive with webcams and frequent-flyer miles. But just when it seems the lovers will soon be reunited, they each score a big break that could separate them for good.

On the south shore of Long Island in the summer of 1982, a group of working-class teenagers and 20-somethings work their summer jobs, fall in and out of love, and wrestle with what the future holds when the summer ends and the real world beckons.