Con artist Marcus Pendleton has just been released from prison for embezzlement. He has emerged into a world increasingly reliant on computers. He convinces computer programmer Caesar Smith to follow his lifelong dream of hunting moths in the Amazon rainforest. Assuming Caesar's identity (how he does this is not explained in the film), he gains employment at the London offices of an American conglomerate called Tacanco. While Marcus fools executive vice president Carlton Klemper, another Tacanco executive, vice president Willard Gnatpole, is suspicious. As Caesar Smith, Marcus uses the company's computer systems to send claim cheques to himself under various aliases and addresses all over Europe. For his Paris company, the cheques go to 'Claude Debussy' and his cheques to Italy go to 'Gioachino Rossini', both famous (but conveniently dead) composers. He meets and marries Patty, an inept secretary and frustrated flautist. As Caesar, he now has the problem of hiding his hot money. Beating discovery of his fraud by Gnatpole, he and Patty flee to Brazil when Klemper and Gnatpole fly to Rio after Patty invited them. In a twist, it seems that a now-heavily pregnant Patty found the loose change from his foreign visits money and invested it in companies Marcus mumbled about in his sleep, thus making a profit for Tacanco. Patty offers to sell the stock back at a reduced price, repaying the money stolen by her husband. Wanting to have the baby back in England, she has invited Klemper and Gnatpole to 'visit'. She persuades Klemper to rehire Marcus as Taranco's treasurer: the reformed embezzler could easily spot fraud, and would not steal from his own company. Though unhappy about his new legal status, Marcus agrees. The film ends with Marcus conducting an orchestra (one of his dreams) as Gnatpole and Klemper sit in the audience. Patty, still expecting, is the solo flautist. As she finishes her solo, she realizes the baby is on the way, to which a concerned Marcus whispers, "What, now?"

Jay Trotter and his best friend Looney are cab drivers. Looney records his passengers' private conversations with a hidden microphone. He has a new tape of two men talking about an upcoming horse race and how one of the horses, due to unethical practices by its owner and trainer, is sure to win. Trotter and Looney go to the track to place a $50 win bet on the horse, despite the fact that Trotter told his wife Pam that he would quit betting forever. In the restroom of the bar next door to the racetrack, he prays, asking for just one big day. A man exiting the bathrooms overhears him and says to let it ride. Trotter places a $50 bet on the tipped horse, who wins and pays $28.40 to win (earning Trotter $710). Armed with newfound confidence, Trotter approaches the two men from Looney's cab ride and gives them the tape of their taxi conversation. Out of gratitude, they give Trotter a tip for the next race. He places a large bet and wins again. Sensing that this could be his "lucky day," Trotter intends to "let it ride" (parlaying all of his track winnings on every race). Just before the next race, before he can make another bet, he is arrested in a case of mistaken identity. After he is released, he realizes the horse he was going to bet has lost. Now, he really feels this is his "lucky day". Trotter resumes his lucky wagering streak. As he accumulates more money and uses his new clubhouse friends' membership in the track's exclusive clubhouse dining room, he starts meeting other well-to-do gamblers, including the wealthy Mrs. Davis and a sexy vixen named Vicki. Trotter soon becomes a hero to the ticket seller, whose window he uses to wager every time, and to the customers of the track's bar. However, Trotter has neglected his wife Pam, who realizes he must be at the racetrack. She confronts him at the track clubhouse and flies into a rage. Trotter calms her and tells her of his hot streak. Unable to decide on a horse in the next race, he takes a survey of the track patrons and, eliminating any selection they give him, bets on the remaining horse, Fleet Dreams, who wins. Trotter decides to call it a day and goes home to Pam, buying her a diamond necklace on the way. At home, he finds Pam intoxicated and passed out. He heads back to the track to help the patrons of Marty's bar across the street, but when he suggests sharing his luck by betting their money together, they all balk at the idea. Disconcerted, Trotter goes for a walk around the track. Vicki suddenly offers to go to bed with him. He turns her down by professing his love for his wife. After Looney advises him not to, Trotter makes a bet of $68,000 on Hot to Trot. As the race begins, Looney and Trotter argue, and the main characters all make resolutions. Vicki vows to give up rich guys and consider a poor one, looking at Looney. The race comes down to a photo finish. While everyone awaits the result, Pam shows up to thank Jay for his gift and to tell him not to worry about the money, when the announcer reports the winner: Hot to Trot. The total winnings from Trotter's bet on the last race at 40:1 odds would have netted him around $2.7 million. However, the large wager dropped the odds on Hot To Trot down to 8:1, netting Trotter $612,000.

Setsuko Kawashima is a lonely, middle-aged office worker in Tokyo who is aloof from her co-workers, lives in a cluttered studio apartment and is estranged from her sister, Ayako. One day, she meets with her niece Mika, who tells Setsuko that she signed up for a year of English classes but can no longer afford to attend, as she needs to save money and keep working. Mika persuades Setsuko to buy her out and sends her to the school for a free first class. At the school, Setsuko meets John, an American teacher who hugs her warmly, gives her the American name of Lucy and a bright blonde wig so she can adopt an American persona. She meets Takeshi Komori, a classmate in the English class who goes by the name Tom. Setsuko is quickly charmed by John and decides to continue attending classes. At their next session, she learns that John has abruptly quit to return to the United States. Outside the school, she spots John and Mika kissing and getting into a cab. Ayako informs her that Mika has moved to the US. Setsuko returns to English class, but finds the new teacher too conventional and leaves the school. When she receives a postcard from Mika containing her address in Los Angeles, Setsuko impulsively decides to follow her, with Ayako insisting on joining her, despite her strained relationship with her daughter Mika. It is revealed that Setsuko harbors resentment towards Ayako for stealing and marrying her boyfriend. Arriving in Los Angeles, the two are surprised to find only John at home, who claims that Mika has left him and he has no idea where she is. After raiding his room, however, Ayako discovers a postcard sent by Mika from a motel in San Diego. The sisters have John rent a car and drive them to the motel where Mika was last heard from. While waiting for Mika to reappear, John offers to teach Setsuko how to drive and the two end up having sex. Later that night, Setsuko goes to a tattoo parlor to get the same tattoo as John, but when she shows it to him, he rebuffs her. The next morning, Ayako confronts John and tells him to take her to Mika. He goes to his house where he introduces Ayako to his estranged wife and daughter, who know where Mika is but will not tell him. Setsuko, left alone at the motel, runs into Mika who tells her that she broke up with John after discovering his family. They have a picnic near the beach where Mika teases Setsuko about having a crush on John, and Setsuko responds by revealing that she had sex with John. The two women engage in a physical altercation, culminating in Mika jumping off a cliff in a suicide attempt, but she survives. At the hospital, an enraged John asks Setsuko if she told Mika about them. She insists that she loves John, but he rejects her and drives off. Ayako tells her to stay out of their lives. Back in Tokyo, Setsuko learns she is being transferred to another department, prompting her to quit. Shortly after leaving the office, she overhears her co-workers laughing and cheering. Distraught over losing John, her job, and her family, she attempts suicide by overdosing on pills at home. She is found by Takeshi, who makes her vomit the pills. She tries to seduce him, but he kindly rejects her advances. As they head to a subway station, Takeshi reveals that his son killed himself and that he blames himself for being too strict, which is why he enjoys slipping into his Tom persona. He asks Setsuko for a hug, and she agrees.

In Pamplona, Spain, middle-aged friends Mitch Robbins, Ed Furrilo and Phil Berquist participate in the running of the bulls. As they fly back in the airplane, Mitch tells Ed he is getting fed up with their road trips. A year later, back home in New York City, Mitch realizes he and his friends use adventure trips as escapism from their boring lives, since he is disillusioned with his radio advertising sales job, Phil is trapped in a loveless marriage to his shrewish wife Arlene while managing a supermarket owned by his father-in-law who bullies him, and Ed is a successful and outgoing sporting goods salesman who recently married Kim, a significantly younger woman, but is unwilling to fully settle down. At Mitch's 39th birthday party, Phil and Ed give Mitch a trip for all three to go on a two-week cattle drive from New Mexico to Colorado. Phil's 20-year-old employee Nancy unexpectedly arrives at the party and announces she tested positive in a pregnancy test, causing Arlene to walk out after a fight. Mitch's wife, Barbara, insists he go on the cattle drive to find his smile again. In New Mexico, the trio meet ranch owner Clay Stone and their fellow cattle drivers: brothers and ice cream company founders Barry and Ira Shalowitz, young and attractive Bonnie Rayburn, father-son dentists Ben and Steve Jessup, ranch hands Jeff and T.R., and Cookie the cook. Mitch confronts Jeff and T.R. when they begin sexually harassing Bonnie. Trail boss Curly intervenes, though he also humiliates Mitch. During the drive, Mitch accidentally causes a stampede which destroys the camp. While searching for stray cows, Mitch discovers Curly has a kind and wise nature beneath his gruff exterior. Curly encourages Mitch to discover the "one thing" in his life that is most important to him. Along the way, Mitch helps deliver a calf from a dying cow. Mitch names the calf Norman. Shortly after, Curly suffers a fatal heart attack, leaving the drive under Jeff and T.R.'s control. Cookie gets drunk and inadvertently sends the chuck wagon over a cliff, breaking his legs in the process. After the Jessups leave to take Cookie to a nearby town (being more qualified because of their medical training in dentistry), Jeff and T.R. become intoxicated with Cookie's secret stash. A fight ensues when they threaten to kill Norman and assault Mitch. Phil and Ed intervene, and Phil holds Jeff at gunpoint, which unleashes his pent-up emotions. Soon after, Jeff and T.R. abandon the group. Bonnie and the Shalowitzes continue on to the Colorado ranch, while Ed and Phil remain behind to finish the drive. Mitch also leaves but soon returns to rejoin his friends. After braving a heavy storm, the trio drives the herd to Colorado. When Norman nearly drowns as the herd crosses a river, Mitch acts to save him. Both are swept down current, but Phil and Ed rescue them. They safely reach the Colorado ranch. When Stone offers to reimburse everyone's fee, the Jessups prefer returning the herd to New Mexico. However, Clay reveals he is selling the herd to a meat-packing company. Mitch, Phil, and Ed initially believe they saved the cattle for nothing, but decide to use their experience to help re-evaluate their lives. The men return to New York City. Mitch, a happier man, reunites with Barbara and their two children Holly and Danny; he has also brought Norman home as a pet(he'll later put him in a petting zoo). Phil, having learned earlier Nancy was not pregnant, begins a relationship with Bonnie. Ed intends to start a family with Kim. Mitch is ready to restart his life with a new stance.

The film follows the lives of a small family living in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a desolate and radioactive area abandoned after the 1986 nuclear disaster. The family is led by Baba Prisya, an elderly woman who believes in the supernatural and claims to communicate with rusalkas (water spirits from Slavic folklore). She lives with her daughter Slava, who is in poor health and has been abandoned by her husband, and her grandson Vovchyk, a young man who is shy and fearful of the outside world. Their secluded life is suddenly disrupted one day when Baba Prisya experiences a mystical vision. She is warned by an unknown entity about an impending personal catastrophe that will soon affect her and her family. Believing the warning to be true, Baba Prisya takes it as her mission to prevent the disaster, but her family is skeptical of her visions and beliefs. One day, Vovchyk ventures out into the surrounding wilderness to gather objects from the Exclusion Zone, against his grandmother’s warnings. During this trip, he encounters Vasya, a local policeman, who brings food and supplies to the family. Vasya, who believes the area is dangerous due to the radiation and the presence of bandits, advises the family to leave the zone. Baba Prisy refuses to leave, however, convinced that the radiation is a myth and that the real threat is something much more sinister. As Baba Prisya’s visions intensify, she becomes more obsessed with preventing the foretold catastrophe. She becomes increasingly erratic, convinced that the disaster is tied to extraterrestrial forces that have infiltrated the government. According to her beliefs, the Chernobyl disaster was orchestrated to drive people out of the area and pave the way for a base to communicate with these otherworldly beings. She insists that the government’s evacuation was a cover-up and that the radiation is a distraction from the true danger. The family’s tensions rise as Baba Prisya takes more drastic steps to prevent the catastrophe, including performing strange rituals and consuming a rare mushroom she believes will open a "gateway" to reveal hidden truths. This leads to surreal, nightmarish sequences, where reality and Baba Prisya’s delusions begin to blur. At one point, the family experiences vivid hallucinations, further complicating their understanding of what is real. As the family struggles to understand the meaning of Baba Prisya’s warnings, it becomes clear that her connection to the supernatural may have been stronger than they had thought. In the final act, the mystical warning comes to fruition when an unforeseen disaster strikes the family, leading to tragic consequences. The film ends on an ambiguous note, leaving viewers to question whether Baba Prisya’s beliefs were valid, or if the events were merely the product of her deteriorating mental state.

In 2004 Houston, Jack Harris leaves home with several million dollars in a duffel bag, to pay Russian mobsters. Harris is worried about the safety of his wife Diana and their children. Flashback to 1997 in Los Angeles, where Jack helps a sick friend managing a nightclub. Nearby, Wayne Beering and Buck Dolby are best friends renting together. The drug-addicted friends are watching porn movie reels when Wayne asks why there is no porn on the internet. Buck, a former NASA scientist, takes 15 minutes to create a program to allow online credit card transactions to charge people for looking at dirty pictures on their website. They quickly earn thousands of dollars. Needing more porn content they approach Nikita Sokoloff, a Russian mob boss who owns a local strip club; Sokoloff agrees to 25% of their business in return for letting them photograph and film his strippers. Within a month Buck and Wayne's website is hugely successful. They party in Las Vegas while neglecting payments to Sokoloff. Jack has made the LA nightclub a success and attracts the attention of Jerry Haggerty, a crooked lawyer hired by Wayne and Buck to sort out their problem with Sokoloff. Jack meets the friends and becomes a partner in the business, paying Haggerty $200,000 to get out, knowing Haggerty is under federal indictment and thus a threat to the business. Sokoloff's nephew comes to collect his $400,000 profit, but when he threatens to kill Jack's family, one of Jack's body guards punches him so hard that he falls dead. Jack and his partners dump the body in the ocean and fabricate a story that Sokoloff's nephew took the money and ran. Sokoloff is skeptical, but agrees to let it pass in return for an increase to 50% of the partnership. Jack expands the business by dropping their porn site and focusing on the online credit card billing services. They create a billing company called "24/7 billing.com", becoming the titular Middle Men for other internet-based porn providers. The billing business is making hundreds of millions of dollars within a year. Jack becomes addicted to the money, sex and power of his new L.A. lifestyle, spends little time with his Houston family and starts a relationship with porn star Audrey Dawns. Haggerty, bitter that Jack cut him out of a multimillion dollar partnership, schemes to take over the company. He easily manipulates the foolish Wayne and Buck to work with Denny Z, providing billing services for Denny's numerous child pornography websites. Audrey's live stream porn site is watched by an international web of terrorists, which the US Government uses to track and arrest or kill the terrorists. The FBI asks for Jack and Audrey's help to expand their terrorist hunt, but Wayne and Buck fear that Jack is meeting with the FBI to turn them in for the murder of Sokoloff's nephew and the child porn. The two confide in Haggerty about killing Sokoloff's nephew, which Haggerty uses to incite Sokoloff to make a move on Jack. Jack's life is further complicated when Sokoloff's men kidnap his maid's son, who they believe is Jack's son. Jack gathers up several million dollars and goes to meet Sokoloff, as seen at the start of the film. Jack is told that the boy will be released if he signs a contract giving his partnership share to Wayne, Buck, Sokoloff, and Haggerty. Jack signs the agreement but backdates it to before Denny Z's child porn business was added. Sokoloff shoots Haggerty dead but lets Jack go as thanks for all the money he has made him. Jack's FBI friend charges Sokoloff, Wayne and Buck with providing billing services for child porn. They turn states evidence against Denny Z for a reduced sentence. Sokoloff flees the country and is alleged to be in Moscow. Jack and the maid's son return home, where Diane welcomes Jack back into their family.

In spring 1978, in the Northland town of Kaitaia, nineteen-year-old Gerry Austin (a.k.a. 'Blondini') steals a lost wallet and uses the cash and driver's licence to rent a yellow Mini. With no particular aim in mind, he drifts down to Auckland. Meanwhile in Auckland, the middle-aged John fails to convince Sue, his girlfriend of six years, to stay with him. After a night of drinking, John decides to travel to Sue's sister's home in Invercargill to win her back. Searching for transport, John saves Gerry from receiving a ticket for failing to wear a seat belt. As thanks, Gerry offers John a lift part of the way. The duo stop for petrol in northern Waikato but accidentally drive off without paying, drawing police attention to the car. Further down the road, Gerry and John pick up Shirl, another drifter heading to Wanganui. After Shirl informs the duo that she is a virgin, Gerry makes a bet that this will change before reaching Wanganui. After purposely stealing petrol in the central North Island, they are pursued by a motorcycle officer, and avoid arrest by driving into a car wrecker. After Shirl leaves, Gerry and John travel onward to Wellington and meet with Mulvaney, an old associate of John's. Mulvaney supplies them with money and drugs in return for parts of the car; while staying over at Mulvaney's garage, Gerry reunites with Shirl. As the trio leave for the Interislander ferry the next morning, Gerry runs a red light and is pursued by the police through central Wellington. The trio avoid the police by driving through the Wellington railway station and stowing the Mini in an empty boxcar being shunted onto the ferry. In Picton on the South Island, the boxcar is attached to a train bound for Christchurch. Gerry, John, and Shirl ride it south, decorating the inside of the boxcar with Gerry's nickname "Blondini" and various items found in the other wagons. After a night of partying, Gerry finally wins his bet with Shirl. The trio arrive in Christchurch in the morning and learn that the wagon is not leaving for the West Coast until that night. Gerry and John spend the day on the town and return to the train. As it leaves, they notice Shirl hasn't returned, and are forced to continue without her. Stopping at a tearoom further down the coast, John and Gerry find out from a television that Shirl has been arrested for shoplifting, and that a national manhunt has been launched for the "Blondini Gang." The Mini is pursued down the Lake Hāwea shoreline by a determined policeman who almost catches Gerry and John before swerving off the road to avoid a combine harvester. Gerry stops to make sure the officer is all right and mocks the other police over the car's radio. The duo sell more parts off the car at Cromwell. At Dunedin, they meet the unhinged Snout, who helps them avoid a police roadblock and offers to buy the set of flags Gerry has gathered for the Mini's antenna. Gerry initially refuses, superstitious that the flags have kept them safe so far, but relents at John's urging. After Gerry and John leave, Snout tips the police off that they are heading for Invercargill. At the Southland town of McNab, John is spotted by police and drives off in the Mini, not realising Gerry is underneath the car. Gerry is arrested, but escapes from the police car and jumps on top of the fleeing Mini. The police attack the Mini with a PIT; Gerry falls off and is hit by the pursuing police car. John bids farewell to the injured Gerry, then takes the car and proceeds to Invercargill. A trucker at the scene refuses to move aside for the police out of respect for Gerry, whose ultimate fate is not shown. At Invercargill, John is met by a throng of admirers who have been following the Blondini Gang's cross-country journey. Members of the Armed Offenders Squad arrive. A disrespectful bystander goads them into firing at the Mini, shooting a hole in John's petrol can. While his supporters distract the officers, John diverts through a cemetery, making it to Sue's house just as the leaking petrol ignites an explosion that finally destroys the Mini. John reunites with Sue, and the two have sex while police surround the house. Bidding farewell to Sue, John surrenders, cracking jokes for the admiring onlookers as the police take him away.

Sophie, a teenage girl, has a dream in which she sees a man raking leaves by a swimming pool. She suddenly starts floating up to the sky and cries out to the man for help, revealing that he is her father Paul, a professor of evolutionary biology at a local university. When Paul learns that a former colleague is writing an article on a topic he had discussed with her many years earlier, he seeks to confront her but instead begs her for some recognition. Paul's journalist ex-girlfriend Claire spots him with his wife Janet and tells him he appears in her dreams. With his permission, she writes an article about the experience. Soon, hundreds of strangers come forward to name Paul as the man they see in their dreams. Paul enjoys the media coverage this brings, but is frustrated by consistently being depicted in the dreams as passive and uninteresting. In interviews with some of his students, he learns that their dreams sometimes feature disasters occurring or the dreamers asking Paul for help, only for him to remain emotionless and unhelpful. Janet asks Paul why he does not appear in her dreams, and describes her fantasy of Paul rescuing her while wearing the oversized suit worn by David Byrne in the 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense. Later that evening, a mentally ill man who has seen Paul in his dreams breaks into their house with a knife, raising concerns about the risks of his fame. Paul meets with a PR firm in the hopes of securing a book deal, but they instead attempt to convince him to advertise Sprite on social media. Molly, a young assistant at the firm, tells Paul that she has erotic dreams about him; he attempts to re-enact them for her, but prematurely ejaculates and leaves her apartment in shame. Paul is enraged to learn that his former colleague has published a high-profile paper on the subject about which he was thinking of writing his book. His presence in people's dreams becomes violent and sadistic, and he becomes vilified, being placed on leave after students refuse to attend his classes. Bystanders are bothered by his presence in public, resulting in a brawl at a diner. After Janet's career is affected, she asks Paul to issue a public apology, but he angrily refuses. Paul has a nightmare in which he is hunted and killed by a version of himself wielding a crossbow and subsequently releases a self-pitying apology video. Humiliated, Janet throws him out of the house. Paul forces his way into his daughter's school play but accidentally injures a teacher in the process and is restrained, becoming further vilified. Some time later, Paul ceases to appear in people's dreams. His own dream experience is revealed to have led to the discovery of a shared subconsciousness, and dreams have become an advertising space through the use of technology. Janet is separated from Paul and is dating a co-worker. Paul travels to France for a book tour to promote his book Dream Scenario, which he learns has been retitled Je suis ton cauchemar (I Am Your Nightmare) without his consent. The book is pitifully thin in the translated volume and his signing event has been moved to the dingy basement of the bookstore. Nevertheless, fans line up for his signed copies. Paul uses "dream travel" technology to enter one of Janet's dreams and rescue her while wearing the oversized suit. As he floats away, much like Sophie did in her first dream, Paul declares that he wishes the dream were reality.

Goliath, the circus strongman and the midget, Little Professor Atom, both employed by Wilson's Wonder Circus, are accomplices of villanous businessman John Carter in taking over the circus from owner Jeff Wilson. Julie Randall, Jeff's girlfriend, performs a horse act in the circus. Jeff has hidden $10,000 in cash (equal to $ 231,459 today), which he owes to Carter, in the cage of Gibraltar the gorilla. When Jeff goes to retrieve the money to give to Carter from Gibraltar's cage on the circus train, Carter has Goliath and Atom knock Jeff unconscious and steal the $10,000. Jeff's friend and circus employee, Antonio 'Tony' Pirelli, summons attorney J. Cheever Loophole to investigate the situation. Loophole discovers Carter's moll, Peerless Pauline (whose circus act consists of walking upside-down with suction cups on her shoes), is hiding the money, but she outwits him and he fails to retrieve it. Later, Tony and Punchy search Goliath's stateroom on the circus train for the money, but are unsuccessful. With Carter about to foreclose on the circus, Loophole discovers that Jeff's aunt is the wealthy Mrs. Susanna Dukesbury, and he tricks her into paying $10,000 for the Wilson Wonder Circus to entertain the Newport 400, instead of a performance by French conductor Jardinet, and his symphony orchestra. The audience is delighted with the circus; when the blustery Jardinet arrives, Loophole, who delayed the Frenchman's arrival on the SS Normandie by implicating him in a dope ring, disposes of the conductor and his orchestra by having Tony and Punchy cut the moorings on a floating bandstand as they play the prelude to act III of Wagner's Lohengrin at the water's edge. Meanwhile, Carter and his henchmen try to burn down the circus, but are thwarted by Tony and Punchy, along with the only witness to the robbery: Gibraltar the gorilla, who also retrieves Jeff's money from Carter after a big trapeze finale, which features Tony shooting Mrs. Dukesbury out of a cannon. Loophole asks Gibraltar if the money is all there and the ape carefully counts it. The film ends with Jardinet and his orchestra still playing Wagner to the waves.

Tess McGill is a working-class woman from Staten Island who dreams of climbing the corporate ladder to an executive position. Having earned a business degree via night school, she works as a secretary at a stockbroker firm in lower Manhattan. There, Tess's boss and male co-workers treat her like a bimbo, despite benefiting from her intelligence and business instincts. After one humiliation too many from her scornful boss (he fixes her up with a rival executive, who only wants to do cocaine and have sex), Tess retaliates by posting on a VDT what she thinks of him and of what he's done. This greatly amuses Tess's colleagues, but also gets her fired. Shortly thereafter, Tess lands another job, this time as an administrative assistant to Katharine Parker, an associate partner at the mergers-and-acquisitions firm Petty Marsh. At first, Katharine seems supportive of Tess, encouraging her to share ideas. Eventually, however, she insists that Tess's proposed purchase of a radio network by Trask Industries would not work out. When Katharine breaks her leg skiing, she asks Tess to house-sit. While there, Tess discovers meeting notes which reveal Katharine's intention to pass off the Trask Industries idea as her own. Returning home, Tess finds her live-in boyfriend having sex with another woman. Tess dumps him. With Katharine still in the hospital, Tess uses her boss's connections and clothes to ramrod the Trask proposal. With help from her friend Cyn, Tess gives herself a makeover, borrowing Katharine's stylish clothes to look more professional. Tess schedules a meeting with Jack Trainer, a mergers-and-acquisitions associate from another company. The night before the meeting, she attends (on Katharine's behalf) a dinner hosted by Trainer's firm. Trainer is attracted to Tess, and approaches her at the bar. Yet Jack does not reveal his name, even after she asks directly whether he knows the man she's slated to meet with (himself). Trainer brings Tess to his apartment, after she passes out in a cab from a combination of Valium and alcohol. Tess leaves early the next day, believing that they slept together. Arriving for her meeting with Trainer and his associates, she is surprised to recognize him from the previous night. They both feign non-recognition. After the meeting, Tess worries that her deal has failed, until Jack arrives at Tess's office. He assures her that they did not sleep together, and that he wants to move forward with her idea. Together, they prepare the financials for her merger proposal, which they present successfully to Trask. Tess and Jack celebrate by giving in to their attraction, and ending up in bed. Thereafter, Tess discovers that Jack has been involved with Katharine, but was planning to break up with her when she went skiing and got injured. Katharine returns home on the day of the merger meeting. While Tess is helping her get settled, Katharine brings up the Trask merger, claiming she was intent on taking it to Jack, and on eventually giving Tess credit for it. Katharine adds that Jack's strict ethical code has prevented him from looking at another's ideas without verifying the source, ever since he was accused of stealing himself. Jack arrives in response to a call from Katharine, who unsuccessfully tries to seduce him. Tess avoids running into Jack at Katharine's apartment, but accidentally leaves her notebook there before she departs for the meeting. Katharine discovers Tess's deception by finding the notebook, which includes Jack's phone numbers and the scheduled merger meeting. At the meeting, Tess brings up what Katharine told her about Jack's ethical code, and about his being accused of stealing. Jack insists that it was all a lie. Then Katharine crashes the meeting and outs Tess as her secretary. She accuses Tess of stealing the Trask merger idea. Unable to defend herself, Tess apologizes profusely and leaves. Tess returns to Petty Marsh a day later, intent on cleaning out her desk. Instead she encounters Jack, Katharine, Trask, and members of Trask's board. Jack sticks up for Tess, who points out a news item which presents a possible risk to the merger's success. In an elevator pitch she explains to Trask what inspired her plan for his radio acquisition. Trask confronts Katharine, who, when she is unable to explain where Tess's plan came from, is fired. Tess lands an entry-level job with Trask Industries. She also moves in with Jack. On her first day at Trask, Tess meets a colleague named Alice, whom she takes for her new supervisor. Alice explains that she is actually Tess's secretary. Tess makes it very clear that she considers Alice a colleague, thus proving herself very different from Katharine. At the first opportunity, Tess calls Cyn from her new office and tells her that she has made it.