The Squid and the Whale

It's the mid-1980's Bernard and Joan Berkman and their two sons, teen Walt and adolescent Frank, are a liberal-minded family living in Brooklyn. Bernard is an opinionated, condescending, and competitive man who works as an English professor. His past glories as a published writer have given way to teaching, but not without a fight. Joan, who didn't start writing until after they got married, has had more recent acclaim, her writing success which is one of the many strains in their marriage, which led to Joan having past indiscretions. As such, they announce to Walt and Frank that they are separating after seventeen years of marriage, that Bernard has taken another apartment five subway stops away, and that Bernard and Joan will have joint and equal time custody of the two boys. The boys don't much like this situation, not so much because of their parents' break-up, but because they more closely resemble and thus associate with one parent, and would rather live with that parent to the exclusion of the other: Walt with Bernard and Frank with Joan. In addition to and in part because of the upheaval in the boys' lives, the boys are facing their own issues. Walt plagiarizes some material - in his mind, that work being something he would have been able to write - and pushes away his girlfriend Sophie solely because he thinks he can do better. Frank is testing his sexual being, leaving a bit of his manhood in public locations. All the while, the boys have to maintain their relationships with both parents, who themselves are embarking on new relationships - Bernard with Lili, one of his students, and Joan with Frank's tennis coach Ivan.