Summary
Sheldrake comes out of his office just as Ms. Olsen is hanging up her call with Mrs. Sheldrake. “Don’t worry, I’m on my way. Just making a personal call,” Ms. Olsen says. We see Baxter arriving home from the grocery store. In the hallway he runs into Mrs. Leiberman, who frantically tells him that she smelled gas coming from his apartment. Thinking that Fran is attempting suicide again, Baxter runs into his apartment. He finds Fran innocently walking around the apartment. She is trying to boil water, but didn’t notice that she had to light the stove. Baxter is pleasantly surprised to find that not only is Fran not attempting suicide, but she is also washing his socks. Fran questions Baxter about his disorganized apartment; she found a tennis racket in the kitchen, which Baxter tells her he used to strain his spaghetti. When Baxter admits to being a bad housekeeper, Fran agrees, confronting him about the fact that she found a number of women’s cosmetics in his couch. He admits that he has trouble saying no to businessmen who want to use the apartment. Of Mr. Sheldrake, Fran says, “He’s a taker…Some people take, some people get took, and they know they’re getting took and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
Fran wants to leave, but Baxter insists that she has to stay until she’s completely well. Fran laments the fact that she cannot get over Mr. Sheldrake, and Baxter confides that he has also tried to take his own life over a girl, the wife of his best friend, in fact. “I went to a pawnshop and bought a .45 automatic and drove up to Eden Park…I parked the car and loaded the gun... Well, you read in the papers all the time that people shoot themselves, but believe me, it's not that easy. I mean, how do you do it?” Baxter tells her. He tells her that while he was looking for a place to shoot himself, he was apprehended by a cop, and in trying to hide the gun, accidentally shot himself in the knee. It caused him a lot of trouble, he tells her, but he was able to quickly get over the girl he was in love with. The woman still lives in Cincinnati and sends him a fruitcake every year. Baxter grabs the fruitcake from under the tree and says he’ll make it for them for that evening.
The scene shifts and we see a man in a leather jacket and a newsboy cap come into the lobby of the office building. He goes over to Fran’s boss and asks where Fran is. The boss directs the man to go to Mr. Dobisch to learn more. We see Kirkeby in Dobisch’s office telling Dobisch that he saw Fran in Baxter’s apartment. The man from the lobby enters and introduces himself as Karl, Fran’s sister-in-law. He wants to know what happened to Fran, and Dobisch and Kirkeby look at one another, deciding to help Karl find Fran. The scene shifts and we see Baxter singing in fake Italian and making spaghetti, using the tennis racket as a strainer. Fran sets the table as Baxter puts dinner on the table and tells her, “Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe. I mean shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand and there you were.” As they plan their evening, the doorbell rings. When Baxter answers it, Karl is standing there and wants to know why Fran hasn't come home. Karl isn’t very pleased and orders Fran to come with him.
As Baxter tries to come to Fran’s defense, Karl pushes him back, thinking that Baxter is having an illicit affair with his sister-in-law. Fran agrees to go get her things, and while she’s in the other room, Baxter offers him a martini and tries to make friendly smalltalk. Karl just looks at him with a grave expression. Suddenly, Dreyfuss comes over from next door and asks, “How’s the patient?” Karl wants to know what happened and becomes immediately hostile. Fran comes out of the bedroom and tells Karl that she took some sleeping pills. When Karl asks why, Baxter takes the blame, and Karl punches him in the face twice, knocking him to the ground. Fran rushes to his side, kisses his cheek, and says her goodbyes.
The next day, Baxter comes into work wearing dark sunglasses to cover his black eye. In his office, he picks up the phone and asks to arrange a meeting with Mr. Sheldrake. He then rehearses his conversation with Sheldrake; he plans to tell Sheldrake that he’s going to “take Ms. Kubelick off [his] hands…the fact is, I love her. I haven’t told her yet, I figured you should be the first to know.” As he rehearses his speech to Mr. Sheldrake, the phone rings. Sheldrake summons him up to his office. In Sheldrake’s office, Baxter starts to tell Sheldrake that he wants to marry Fran, but Sheldrake speaks first, saying that Ms. Olsen told his wife about his affair, so his wife kicked him out of the house; now he plans to begin a real relationship with Fran. Baxter covers his disappointment and wishes Sheldrake well. As a reward for helping him take care of Fran, Sheldrake offers Baxter a position as his assistant, showing him an office adjoining his own. Sheldrake is confused about why Baxter isn’t more excited about his promotion and Baxter says that it’s just been a busy few days and he wants to make sure that Sheldrake plans on marrying Fran. Sheldrake tells him that he will marry her soon enough, but in the meantime is going to enjoy being a bachelor. As Baxter removes his sunglasses, Sheldrake notices his black eye, before leaving him alone in his new office.
We see a man changing a board to reflect Baxter’s promotion as Baxter watches. Fran comes around the corner and greets him. “I suppose you heard about Mr. Sheldrake,” she says. Baxter congratulates Fran on the fact that Sheldrake is leaving his wife and draws her attention to the fact that he got a promotion. When Fran asks if he’ll walk to the subway with her, Baxter points to a woman across the lobby whom he tells Fran he is taking on a date that evening. Fran says goodbye and leaves the office, and Baxter walks over to the concessions stand across the lobby. While it appears at first like Baxter is walking over to the woman whom he pointed out to Fran, the woman links arms with another man and walks out; Baxter evidently lied to make Fran jealous. At the concessions stand, Baxter purchases something, but we can’t quite see what it is.
We see Sheldrake getting his shoes polished in his office, before calling Baxter into his office. When Baxter tries to show him what he’s been working on, Sheldrake tells him to relax, since it’s New Year's Eve. He then tells Baxter that he’s taking Fran out that evening and needs access to Baxter’s apartment again. During the suicide scare, Sheldrake tells him, he threw his extra key to Baxter’s apartment out the window of a train, so he needs to borrow Baxter’s key. Baxter refuses to give him the key, especially for Fran. When Sheldrake threatens to fire Baxter if he doesn’t cooperate, Baxter throws a key on the desk and goes back into his office. After a moment, Sheldrake comes into Baxter’s office complaining that Baxter gave him the key to the executive washroom, not his apartment. Putting on his coat, Baxter tells him the substitution was intentional and that he is quitting. When Sheldrake asks what he’s doing, Baxter informs him, “I’m following doctor’s orders. I’ve decided to become a mensch. You know what that means? A human being.” Baxter leaves the office.
Later, Baxter is home packing up his apartment, when he finds his revolver on the mantle. The doorbell rings and it’s Dr. Dreyfuss looking for ice for a party he’s throwing next door. Dreyfuss is surprised to see that Baxter is moving out of his apartment, and invites Baxter to come over to the party. Baxter declines his invitation and offers to pay for the care that Dreyfuss gave to Fran, but Dreyfuss assures him that he “did it as a neighbor” and refuses the money. When Dreyfuss wants to know what happened to Fran, Baxter says that they are no longer together and wishes Dreyfuss farewell. When he continues to pack up, Baxter finds a piece of spaghetti on his tennis racket and smiles. Meanwhile, we see Fran at a New Year's Eve party at the Chinese restaurant. Sheldrake comes back to the table and tells her that he got them a car to drive down to Atlantic City that night. When Fran seems sad about it, Sheldrake tells her to blame Baxter, who refused to let him use the apartment and quit that afternoon.
Fran cannot help but smile at the thought of Baxter quitting. When Sheldrake continues, and tells her that Baxter told him he couldn’t bring anyone to the apartment, “especially not Ms. Kubelick,” Fran smiles to herself. As the patrons of the bar begin to sing “Auld Lang Syne,” Sheldrake kisses Fran, but she seems bored. Sheldrake cheers and enjoys the festivities, but when he turns back to Fran, she is gone. We see Fran running down the street to Baxter’s apartment. As she climbs the stairs, she hears what she thinks is a gunshot. Fran runs towards the door and screams for Baxter, worrying that he shot himself, but he promptly opens it, holding an uncorked champagne bottle. The noise was just the popping of the cork. He invites her inside, and she notices that he’s moving. “That’s funny, so am I,” Fran tells him, before asking Baxter where he put his playing cards. She goes and retrieves them from a moving box and begins to shuffle. “What about Mr. Sheldrake?” Baxter asks, to which Fran responds, “I’m gonna send him a fruitcake every Christmas.” Baxter tells Fran that he loves her. When she doesn’t respond, absorbed in the cards, he reiterates: “Did you hear what I said? I absolutely adore you.” She smiles at him, hands him the cards, and simply says, “Shut up and deal.”
Analysis
In this section, Fran theorizes about what separates her and Baxter from people like Sheldrake. In her estimation, Sheldrake is "a taker." This means that he uses his power to get what he wants and doesn't care about trampling on other people's feelings to get it. In contrast to "takers" are people who "get took." She and Baxter, Fran suggests, are in the latter category, and they are doomed to lives of being taken advantage of by powerful people. In the wake of her suicide attempt, Fran exhibits an exceedingly cynical perspective on the nature of human relations. She can only see the world in terms of exploitation and power, which casts a depressing shadow on her life. Having experienced a loss of meaning in her life, Fran turns this perspective of existential desolation on the broader world around her.
In spite of Fran's diagnosis that they are doomed to "get took" by people like Sheldrake, Baxter exhibits some spine and asserts himself for the first time in this final section of the film. While he supplicated to Sheldrake before, in order to get a promotion and ascend the ranks of the company, he realizes that he loves and respects Fran too much to continue participating in Sheldrake's corrupt system of secrets and lies. Sheldrake asks if he can use Baxter's apartment to spend time with Fran on New Year's Eve. When Baxter refuses, Sheldrake threatens Baxter, pointing to all of the opportunities he's given him in exchange for his apartment and his silence. This coercion doesn't work, however, and Baxter quits once and for all, telling Sheldrake that he wants to "be a mensch," referencing the advice that Dr. Dreyfuss gave him earlier.
Baxter's act of courage and principle is ultimately what gives Fran the courage to follow through on her own convictions and leave Sheldrake. On their date to the Chinese restaurant on New Year's Eve, Fran sits across from Sheldrake, scowling. It is as though she doesn't even know why she has succumbed to him again, but feels unable to make the conscious choice to leave. As Sheldrake begins to vent about Baxter's resignation and the fact that Baxter didn't want to loan out his apartment for their affair—especially not to her—she begins to light up, realizing that Baxter is exhibiting ethical responsibility and that he cares about her. Baxter's willingness to lose his job just so that he doesn't have to host Sheldrake and Fran's irresponsible affair is a glimmer of light and romance. Knowing this, Fran accesses her own self-respect and wherewithal, leaving Sheldrake at the restaurant and running to spend the evening with Baxter.
Indeed, Fran's cynical perspective about "takers" and people who "get took" is reflective of the film's broader cynicism. While we are meant to understand Fran's despondency as specific to her recent bad luck, her assessment that the world is run by "takers and people who get took" is not out of sync with the film's depiction of corporate life. True, Sheldrake loses his wife and his mistress by the end of the film, but that is because of specific interventions (by Ms. Olsen and Baxter, both of whom lose their jobs), not any kind of structural accountability. In many ways, Sheldrake remains a taker and a winner, and his indiscretions do not have broad-reaching professional consequences. Additionally, his status as a "taker" renders him incapable of ever seeing how he hurts other people, or of becoming accountable to his actions.
Thus, the film suggests that while we cannot change the world, we can still find connection within it, as Baxter and Fran do. This is an undeniably cynical depiction of the world, no matter how romantic it may be. Fran and Baxter do not topple the corrupt structures that have alienated and hurt them and get what's theirs; they simply come together in spite of them and try to maintain their dignity. By the end of the film, Baxter has lost his job, which means that he will have to abandon his apartment, and Fran is in an equally precarious moment of life, but Sheldrake remains in his tower, organizing the world. Fran and Baxter do not even profess requited love by the end. When Baxter expresses his earnest adoration to Fran, she simply tells him to "shut up and deal." In lieu of a straightforward romantic ending, the film presents an image of two people playing a game of cards together. This image suggests that life is itself a game of chance, an arbitrary rule system. If you can play that game with someone you love and who cares about you, so much the better, the film suggests.
