 Ken Park focuses on several teenagers and their tormented home lives. Shawn seems to be the most conventional. Tate is brimming with psychotic rage; Claude is habitually harassed by his brutish father and coddled, rather uncomfortably, by his enormously pregnant mother. Peaches looks after her devoutly religious father, but yearns for freedom. They re all rather tight, or so they claim. But they spend precious little time together and none of them seems to know much about one another s family lives. This bizarre dichotomy underscores their alienation # the result of suburban ennui, a teenager s inherent sense of melodrama, and the disturbing nature of their home environments.