Jerry and George have gotten into the swing of writing their pilot for NBC, which now features themselves, Jerry's butler, and Kramer. They remember to include Elaine, but, not knowing how to write women, scrap her appearance.
Kramer encounters Jerry's chef ex-girlfriend Gail; remembering that Gail would not kiss Jerry after three dates, Kramer snubs her, earning Jerry's thanks. In response, Gail goes to Monk's Café to complain to Jerry, where she notices Elaine's eye-catching shoes. Gail puts Elaine on the spot to confess that the shoes are from Botticelli's, a shop which Gail claims to be beyond her own means. Elaine is needled by Gail's backhanded compliment, while Jerry is oblivious. Jerry refuses to share his sandwich with Elaine, especially since she has come down with a cough.
Jerry and George seek feedback ahead of another meeting with NBC. At George's therapy session, Dana finds the script unfunny, and George defends himself first with denial, then by blaming Jerry. Elaine avoids giving her opinion entirely.
To Jerry's chagrin, Kramer and Gail have hooked up after Kramer's snubbing inadvertently became negging. As a result, Kramer has heard about Elaine's shoes—inciting such fury from her that all three men shrink back. At Pfeiffer's, the power lunch restaurant where Gail works, Elaine barges into the kitchen to browbeat Gail, and sneezes on a plate of pasta primavera that is served to NBC president Russell Dalrymple.
Dalrymple contracts stomach flu and meets with Jerry and George at home, but runs to the bathroom to throw up in agony every time he tries to finish his thoughts on the script. Learning that he got sick from pasta at Pfeiffer's, George warns him about unsanitary food at another restaurant, Bouchard's. Dalrymple's 15-year-old daughter from a previous marriage arrives, and Dalrymple catches George—at Jerry's nudging—gawking at her cleavage. After leaving, Jerry and George learn that their pilot has been canceled again, and that Elaine is to blame for the pasta contamination.
Cut off by Dalrymple, Jerry and George plan to catch him at Pfeiffer's, but Gail demands Elaine's shoes as the price for her cooperation. Rationalizing that the male gaze operates at the "molecular level", Jerry reckons that Dalrymple likewise could not resist cleavage coming into view. They rope Elaine into not only giving up the shoes, but coming along to Pfeiffer's in a low-cut dress. Goaded by their belief that Gail, but not her, could seduce Dalrymple, Elaine performs many antics to raise Dalrymple's gaze to her cleavage, whereupon he is immediately smitten.
Dalrymple revives the pilot deal and gets a date with Elaine in return, giving her leverage over Jerry and George to demand a role in the script. George, hearing that the date is at Bouchard's, starts choking.