A middle aged upper class woman and her family live in an upscale neighborhood. The family's laughter turns malicious when they cannot distinguish between what is comical and what is horrendous and increasingly find amusement at the expense of others.

A disenchanted couple moves from the country to the city. As they engage with an inside joke that once kept them closely together, it incites an exasperated conversation about long-accumulated problems.

In 1960s Boston, a Jewish deli owner who struggles to come up with his newest joke stumbles into a scam with more ramifications than he could have ever dreamed possible.

Upon hearing news of his wife’s poor state of health after giving birth, a man quickly boards a train home and deludes himself into thinking his wife is well.

A businessman covertly heads to the skating rink every day with a flailing routine, where he basks in the laughter of onlookers. Finally, he is forced to choose between his straitlaced family and his clownish — but authentic — alter ego.

The characters found in jokes are forced to act out the jokes every time they are told.

A hard-working Pennsylvania nurse discovers her friend and ex-lover dead in a ditch. She searches his pockets for the money she loaned him, and when she doesn't find it, she drags his dead body around town in a search for the money.

When a writer and her old writing professor reconvene in a Mexican restaurant one final time before the professor's death, they experience a night of unwanted encounters and unnecessary criticism that leaves the writer with a bitter taste in her mouth.

A jobless father attempts his best to care for his family, but when he begins to take his young son to play games and music at pubs, the son develops a destructive habit.

A man recalls his intimate friendship with his former English professor, who resolved to fuel his unsatisfied desire for playwriting during the time they were apart. In their reunion decades later, instead of the brilliant play he promised, the professor shows his former student a disturbing product of his mental instability.