In Los Angeles, married Robert and Theresa Dyne and their only offspring, twenty-six year old daughter Old Dolio Dyne, are small time scam artists, their scams usually ones of opportunity rather than of any real forethought. Robert states that he prefers the small time nature of what they do rather than doing big scams to become proverbial "kajillionaires", it arguably more an excuse than the truth. This life is the only one that Old Dolio has ever known, her parents her entire life in she never having been properly socialized. Robert and Theresa treat Old Dolio as a partner rather than a daughter in they splitting everything three ways whether it be their take or their expenses. One of those expenses is rent, they, in having no money in their scams usually netting little, three months behind in where they live, an open office in a soap factory, one of their duties in a reduction in rent being to gather up and discard the liquefied soap bubbles that routinely seep over the wall from the factory into that office space. Regardless, they focus on needing to come up with that $1,500 imminently to prevent being evicted. In one of those scams that they believe will net them just the needed amount, Robert and Theresa meet a young woman named Melanie Whitacre. In the friendly and quite open nature of their discussion, Robert and Theresa tell Melanie what they do, she who seems amenable to joining "the family business" in she even proposing scams of her own involving connections with her job. Melanie being a fourth fundamentally changes the nature of the dynamics between the three Dynes.
