Terry Reynolds, longtime assistant to Gwen Leonard, creative executive at a Manhattan marketing and promotions firm, announces to Gwen that she's been let go from her job. The self-centered Gwen's reaction is predictable: she wonders how this will affect her. But she soon finds out that she's a victim of the same corporate downsizing. A few months later, Gwen shows up at the SoHo loft where Terry lives with her brother Danny, an aspiring writer who works at the bar downstairs run by Guy Mann. Without Terry to look after her finances, Gwen has spent all her money and has run up unpayable debts, resulting in her being kicked out of her high-priced condo. Desperate, she pleads with Terry to let her stay with her until she can get back on her feet. Part of that effort includes filing for unemployment benefits, where Gwen is confronted with the unsympathetic civil servant Mrs. Francis. Later Gwen tells Terry that their talents compliment each other and that they should go into business for

Terri and Gwen disagree over Guy's suggestion for their first client, a would-be comedian known as Little H. His father, who wants to see him succeed, is a mobster known as Bobby H., a man who usually gets what he wants and who people want to stay on the good side of. Trouble is, Little H. has no apparent talent.

Lunching at Clockworks, Gwen and Terry are both attracted to James Collins, a young man who's a new client, but they both agree (Gwen very reluctantly) that he should be off-limits while he's involved with them professionally. He proves too tempting for Terry, though, and she agrees to go out with him the first time he asks. He promises not to tell Gwen. However, the first time he's alone with Gwen he goes through the same routine with her, with the same results. When James comes by the apartment later, both women act like they're seeing him for the first time since their business lunch. As soon as he's alone with either one of them, he begins to put a move on her.

Terry confesses her guilt to Danny, who sees it merely as fodder for a story. When Guy and Danny both agree Terry shouldn't tell Gwen the truth, she decides that she should do it anyway. At the restaurant Terry and Gwen are both about to confess to each other when they see James there kissing another woman. Terry tells Gwen

Gwen is laid up with illness for a few days and she has nothing to do but lay around watching infomercials and eating Terry's delicious soup made in a pressure cooker. She gets a brainstorm and decides that she and Terry could market pressure cookers as a way to make this delicacy. They find a dealer with a warehouse full of the cookers and make arrangements with him. Gwen recruits Guy to be in their infomercial and Danny to write it, though much of his strident working-class rhetoric is red-penciled. Gwen uses the soup to bribe Mrs. Francis into providing them the name of an out-of-work celebrity to endorse the product. June Lockhart is contacted. She's suitably impressed and agrees to endorse the cookers. The first broadcast of the infomercial is a ringing success with orders pouring in. But then the women find out that their supplier Mr. Tolafa has reneged on the deal and is selling them himself, touting them ""as seen on TV!"" June comes by in a fury and tells the girls in terms she