Sara, a cold college professor, and her husband, an ecstatic painter, spend a summer away from the city, straining their rocky relationship.
A real estate agent is shot while trying to sell a rural farm and tries to bring the shooter to justice.
Hattie, a New Orleans prostitute, meets a photographer named Bellocq at her brothel one night and, after he photographs her, he befriends her 12-year-old daughter, Violet. When Violet is brought on as a working girl by her mother's madam and Hattie skips town to get married, Violet quickly loses her innocence and focuses on reuniting with Bellocq. But a life with Bellocq is compromised for Violet after her mother returns to town.
Molly Dodd — a mid-30s, divorced woman living in New York — faces the comedy and drama of a widely changing career, difficulties of apartment living, love life and its consequences, and more.
Robert McCall is a former agent of a secret government agency who is now running his own private crime fighting operation where he fashions himself as "The Equalizer." It is a service for victims of the system who have exhausted all possible means of seeking justice and have nowhere to go. McCall promises to even out the odds for them.