Duck And Cover - TWW S7E12

Original airdate: January 22, 2006

Written by: Eli Attie (18)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (26)

Synopsis

• An accident at a nuclear power plant in California forces President Bartlet to make life-and-death decisions, Senator Vinick to confront his support for nuclear power (and his assistance in getting that very power plant online), and Josh and Matt to control their instincts to try to take political advantage.
  

"Who would give the order?"

"We've taken charge of the plant, sir. That would be you."

Disaster looms around every corner in this thriller of an episode. Of course the main disastrous plotline is the nuclear power plant accident in San Andreo, California, threatening tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, but we've also got: the potential disaster for Senator Vinick, if word that he pulled strings and pushed hard to get the plant open 25 years ago should break; a similar political disaster for Matt Santos, if Josh decides to go along with Bram and Helen to open up on Vinick for his support of nuclear power, threatening a powerful return attack saying Santos is "politicizing" a potential tragedy; and, overseas, a possible disaster in Kazakhstan, as rigged elections and violent responses to protest cause both the Chinese and Russian armies to cross the border.

 

We also have the additional topice of responsibility. Vinick, who is more than happy to reiterate his support for nuclear power after the accident, isn't quite as excited about having the word get out of his pressure to get that plant open. Josh, who is usually quick to grab opportunities to go after opponents when they present themselves, turns out to be responsible enough to hold off on going after Vinick and using a nuclear accident for political gain. 

And the big one is President Bartlet, who immediately takes on the responsibility of being out in front of the story of the accident:

President: "I want the FEMA director and the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in here right away. Get CNN to stop running rumors. I'll make a statement in 15 minutes."

Kate: "Sir, you really don't want to notify the public until there's a plan in place. There could be widespread panic."

President: "Then we'd better get moving on a plan, because I'm making a statement in 15 minutes."

And then by stressing the entire federal response will be going through him and him alone:

CJ: "Mr. President, with all the levels of government involved in this maybe now's a good time to designate a czar, a single point person to oversee --"

President: "You're looking at him."

This eventually turns out to weigh heavily on President Bartlet, when his decision to order engineers into the radiation-filled reactor room - and then stay longer than planned, to try to close valves - ends up with tragic results.

 

This is how you do a thriller: taut, high-stakes, teetering on the edge of disaster, the clock ticking ... it's pretty darn suspenseful as we fly through the 16 or so hours portrayed, even as we realize having a nuclear power plant building burst open and spew radiation all over San Diego probably isn't actually going to happen on The West Wing. Eli Attie puts together a fast-paced episode that whipsaws from success to failure to success again and then tragedy, and Martin Sheen is excellent as the man in charge forced to make on-the-spot decisions that affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The easiest way to set up our situation is to have it explained to us, the audience, just as CJ explains it to the President:

CJ: "Seventeen minutes ago, at 6:02 Pacific Time, sirens went off at the nuclear generating plant in San Andreo, California. The main feedwater pump failed. Everything proceeded as expected: a relief valve opened to let the water escape, the reactor scrammed -"

President: "Shut itself down."

CJ: "But now a valve is malfunctioning and coolant has stopped flowing into the reactor's core."

President: "If they can't get coolant into the core -"

CJ: "The uranium fuel rods become exposed, which makes them highly combustible. We could be looking at a full-scale nuclear meltdown."

In addition, another valve has failed, causing radioactive steam to build up inside a structure that wasn't built to contain it, risking an uncontrolled release of radiation over southern California. Even running a new pipe of water into the core to cool it is problematic, as it only increases the pressure of the steam being released.

As the campaigns react to news of the accident, this turns out to be one of the rare instances in which both Matt's and Josh's instincts align. Usually Josh is more of a "shoot first, ask questions later" kind of campaign manager ... but as we've seen in plenty of episodes going back to Opposition Research and Freedonia, Matt tends to have a more subtle, reasoned approach to events, and we've usually seen him be right. In this case, they both see the benefit of playing it cool, staying quiet while the accident unfolds, and not risk the outcome of getting criticized for "playing politics" with a disaster that could affect, frankly, millions.

Josh: "I say we go completely dark. Let the press go after Vinick on their own, so they can't accuse us of playing politics."

Matt: "I'm fine doing nothing on this issue."

Josh: "I mean nothing on any issue: no speeches, no press releases. We just ... stay right here."

Matt: "See which way the wind blows."

Josh: "And what's blowing in it."

This also has the benefit of driving Bruno nuts. Bruno knows how Josh works (they worked together pretty closely in Bartlet's re-election campaign of 2002), and he fully expects him to go full-out on the attack against Vinick, using his support of nuclear power as a hammer while exploiting this potential disaster in California. While Vinick's staffer Bob keeps pushing to have Vinick make a statement or attack federal regulations to try to change the subject of supporting nuclear power into "it was the fed's fault," Bruno puts the kibosh on those ideas, knowing deep down that Josh can't stay quiet all night.

He's almost right, particularly after Josh finds out about Vinick's pressure to open the San Andreo plant 25 years earlier. He knows that will give Vinick's campaign a big hit, and he's frustrated that the ongoing events mean the news media don't have the information he does.

As the pressure builds inside the containment buildings at the power plant, the pressure builds on the President as well. He's told in order to keep the uranium rods cool, two engineers must go inside the reactor room to open the malfunctioning valve and restore the flow of coolant. As they're inside, he's additionally informed the only way to avoid a potentially cataclysmic rupture of another building, spewing uncontrolled amounts of radioactive steam across southern California, is to keep those engineers inside longer, in order to close off the valve leaking steam into the building not built to hold the pressure. Bartlet reluctantly gives the order, potentially trading off two lives for those of tens of thousands. It's a call that weighs heavy on him, particularly when he's later told one of those engineers has died.

Speaking of pressure, the pressure on the Santos and Vinick campaigns continues to grow, particularly after President Bartlet decides he's going to fly to San Andreo and bring the California congressional delegation along with him - which includes Senator Vinick. The idea of the Republican candidate being seen with the President handling a crisis is almost too much for Josh to bear - it could be disastrous for Matt's campaign. Meanwhile, Bob continues to press for Vinick to make a statement before he goes, just to get in front of the press and say something. Bruno, continuing to count on Josh losing his cool and going after Vinick, tries to stamp out the idea - but Vinick insists on it.

And when Vinick can't help himself, going off script and lashing out at federal regulators, Bruno has quite the "I told you so" look at Bob:

But Bruno is right: this trip to California with the President is the straw that broke Josh's back. Josh finally folds, telling Donna to go out to the press and drop hints, breadcrumbs, anything to get the press to report on Vinick's past relationship with the San Andreo plant. This time, though, Josh's waiting to use the information he got turns out to be well-timed; the reporter Donna goes to already has the story and is writing it up as they meet.

Almost simultaneously with the press getting the Vinick story, a second team of engineers closes the steam relief valve inside the reactor room, and the crisis is over. At least, the immediate crisis for southern California ... Vinick's enthusiastic support of nuclear power and his pushing to get this very plant started years ago, coupled with Matt's position against nuclear energy, has changed the outlook on the Presidential race. States that were firmly in the Vinick camp are starting to waver. Electoral votes Vinick thought he could count on are now up in the air. And we see both campaigns reacting to the new reality with just about a month to go before the election.

Bruno and Bob, sullenly reviewing their electoral map as Bob removes state after state they thought they had locked up:

And Josh, taking a marker to the Santos electoral map, indicating the contest yet to come:

As we ourselves are going through the ups and downs of the final months of an unprecedented Presidential election cycle in 2024, we are reminded that there's simply no way to predict how events will unfold over the final days and months before the vote, and there's no real way to know how those events might affect either campaign.

But mainly, I appreciate this frantic, gripping episode for the thriller it was meant to be. It's really quite a fine entry for Season 7. And both the San Andreo power plant incident and the unfolding events in Kazakhstan will continue to loom over the candidates as we go forward in the series.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- If you remember the previous episode, Internal Displacement, that began with a Wednesday night dinner for Danny and CJ. The next day, Danny asked her back to dinner "tomorrow night," which would mean Friday. It was at that dinner where CJ was called away, back to the White House, where Kate gave her the news about the San Andreo accident.

 

Why am I bringing this up? Because in this episode, at the Rock The Vote event where Matt and Helen are appearing, the onscreen caption clearly tells us "Wednesday night" - and this is when word of the accident breaks for the Santos campaign.

 

It can't be Wednesday night, unless the events of Internal Displacement took a week, which I'm positive they did not. Seriously, this stuff bugs me, because it's not like it's hard for the writers to have, you know, a calendar they could refer to in order to avoid things like this. Anyway, it's probably the Friday into the Saturday of the first weekend of October, 2006 here.

- At a little before 11 pm EDT, Kate tells the President "It's almost morning in Kazakhstan, sir. The polls open in two hours" - so around 1:00 am DC time. Kazakhstan (which abolished Daylight Saving Time in 2005) would be nine hours ahead of Washington, DC, so that would make it almost 8:00 am Saturday in Kazakhstan (or, Thursday, if we went back in time to Wednesday like they told us at the Rock The Vote event). Apparently the polls won't open until 10:00 am local time. A bit over two hours later (the onscreen graphic says 1:28 am Washington time), Kate says the polls just closed ... at about 10:30 am Kazakhstan time. After being open for only half an hour. I guess that explains the riots and the uprising over the results, huh?

- Speaking of time, the map showing daylight hours on the wall of the Situation Room doesn't seem right. Will's meeting with the agency spokespersons comes at 10:41 pm, according to the onscreen graphic. This scene in the Situation Room comes immediately after. Going by the daylight/nighttime imagery on this screen, it would appear to be midday in eastern Europe, through Poland and eastern Africa. If it was noon in those areas, it would be about 6:00 am in Washington DC ... not 11:00 pm.

- And speaking of time again, when we're informed it's 4:25 am Washington time, we can see the watch on President Bartlet's wrist does not agree with that information. It certainly appears to me that the watch is reading 9:00. I've mentioned before (particularly CJ's watch in Evidence Of Things Not Seen, or the clock on the wall of the fitness center in The White House Pro-Am) how difficult it is for continuity/script supervisors to make clocks/watches/time agree, with all the different takes and the scenes being filmed at a different time than they are set. (I did notice the two times we see the grandfather clock in the Oval Office, at about 9:20 pm and again around 12:21 am, the time on that clock does agree with the times shown onscreen.)

 

- The cinematography and directing choices here are very interesting. There's a lot of shaky, hand-held camera work here, which fits perfectly with the frantic pace of the pending power plant disaster and the high stakes faced by the characters.

Several times over the course of The West Wing we get shots of the President gazing out an Oval Office window, with its old glass bending the images into strange, off-kilter shapes. And so, here:

We've also seen the technique used effectively in the past of characters being seen both on our screen and on screens within the shot, often in the briefing room. That happens a couple of times in this episode, with the President's first statement and then later with Will, seen here from a couple of angles:

And seen again both on our screen and in a camera viewfinder (this was also used effectively in Game On):

And in a very cool directing choice, Christopher Misiano combines a hand-held camera shot with a step-by-step zoom in on Bruno's face as he insists Vinick can't make a statement before going to California. Instead of a steady zoom as you would expect, the camera zooms and stops, zooms and stops, then zooms and stops again.

- Why'd They Come Up With Duck And Cover?

The phrase "duck and cover" came about in the early 1950s as a method to help protect people from the effects of a nuclear explosion, and is used as the title here given the potential explosion of the San Andreo nuclear power plant. President Bartlet brings up the phrase to CJ:

President: "You're too young to remember duck and cover."

CJ: "Sir?"

President: "We'd hide under our little wooden desks at school. At some point they stopped the drills. The threat was still there - they just stopped having the drills. I guess they realized a piece of plywood wasn't going to protect us against an atomic blast."

Quotes    

FEMA Director (on the phone with officials in California; to the President): "Based on prevailing winds, FEMA recommends we evacuate 15 down, 6 and 9 around. It'll cover all of San Andreo."

Will: "Fifteen down?"

CJ: "Fifteen miles, between 6 and 9 like a clock."

FEMA Director: "But state emergency services want to do just 10 down, 6 and 9 around: the legal minimum."

President: "Tell them if they're fine with 10 miles, the Governor and I will be setting up a command post at 10.1 miles from the plant. We'd like them to join us there. (to Will) Is the press ready for my statement?"

Will: "Readier than we are."

CJ: "It's not like we have much to tell them."

FEMA Director (after listening to officials in California): "It sounds like they're more comfortable with 15 miles."

-----

Helen: "How's the governor?"

Matt: "Nervous."

Helen: "I don't see why. Any angry constituents will just be vaporized anyway, right?"

(Matt gives her a look)

Helen: "Oh, am I the only one left in the family with a sense of humor?"

----- 

Will: "You told Time we were worried about wind shifts?"

Blyden: "I got that from your office."

Will: "Which is why my office has taken you off the talking points distribution list."

Blyden: "I need those to do my job."

Will: "Not any more. You're being transferred. You no longer speak for this government."

Blyden: "For telling people the truth?"

Will: "For telling people something which can only cause further panic. It doesn't matter if it's true. It doesn't matter if I've already said it. We're trying to prevent mass hysteria in a climate in which even the truth can be misinterpreted, so we speak with one voice. You're lucky you still have a job."

-----

Josh: "We're getting a few press requests."

Matt: "By a few, you mean ..."

Josh: "A million kajillion."

Matt: "Okay, that's not a real number."

-----

CJ: "You ready?"

Will: "To fly into a massive cloud of radiation while the rest of the country's making hats out of tin foil?"

CJ: "That was more of a rhetorical question. (pause) You think we're flying into a massive cloud of radiation?"

Will: "I was dramatizing a point. (pause) Maybe."

-----

Vinick: "I felt we might want to coordinate our statements, for press availability."

President: "You're expecting me to bash myself too?"

Vinick: "It wasn't aimed at you."

President: "Federal regulators? I think a few of them work for me."

 

Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)

• Our favorite news anchor on TV shows is back, Ivan Allen! He first appeared in A Proportional Response, and in earlier episodes has worked for MSNBC, the fictional cable news network CND, and a local Washington DC station. Allen is credited for 27 appearances on The West Wing.

• I love J.K. Simmons (too many credits to list, including Spider-Man, Law & Order, The Closer, La La Land, the Farmer's Insurance guy, and he won an Oscar for Whiplash), and it's great to see him here as the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

• The head of FEMA is played by Michael Chieffo (Better Call Saul, L.A. Confidential, Roswell).

• It's Nancy!

• It's Mark! The former White House pool reporter is now seen asking questions of Senator Vinick. We also see him onscreen in the background, apparently reporting for MSNBC now.
  

• Speaking of reporters, the new-ish White House reporter (Joyce Guy) I first noticed in Access (even though she first appeared in Constituency Of One), and was one of a few reporters getting a small-group briefing from Annabeth in Things Fall Apart, is the reporter Donna goes to in order to plant the story of Vinick greasing the wheels for the San Andreo plant - except the reporter already has the lead. (Also somewhat interestingly, while that character has been credited as "Charlayne" in the past, in this episode she's just "Santos Reporter #1.")
  

• Vinick's support of nuclear power in The Debate becomes a big plot point, with news footage of the debate being included in coverage of the accident.

• We hear that the military units of China and Russia are still holding on the borders of Kazakhstan (well, until the point that Taramov's government starts putting down riots by ethnic Chinese after the elections, when both countries start to move in). In The Wedding we saw President Bartlet make his pleas to both country's leaders to halt their advances and not cross the border, even if just for a few hours; apparently that halt lasted maybe two weeks (Ellie's wedding was probably September 23, this would be around October 7).
  

• There's a mention of California's governor Tillman; we saw him in person in La Palabra.

• We see Vinick still wears his wedding ring; it was in King Corn when we first learned he was a widower.

• President Bartlet reminds us of his academic past, saying, "I thought a degree in economics was plenty for this job, my kingdom for a plumbing license."
  

• It's been a while since we've seen President Bartlet with a Notre Dame mug, but here we are (Martin Sheen, as a condition of taking the role, insisted that Jed Bartlet be a Catholic and a graduate of Notre Dame).

DC location shots    

• None.

They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing    

• Some things that don't actually exist: San Andreo, California, is not a real city; CalVista is not the utility company in southern California; there is no William D. Moseley Hotel in Tampa (although William Dunn Moseley was the first governor of the state of Florida in 1845).
  

• CJ says when steam was released from the San Andreo plant it "sounded something like the Concorde landing."
  

• CNN gets a shout out, as well as plenty of MSNBC logos on TV screens. Later in the episode we hear about Time, the AP, and The Washington Post (not The Washington Leader, which is apparently the fictional newspaper Danny Concannon now works for, as seen in Internal Displacement). And Will tells the President about a story Fox News is running.

 

• Rock The Vote is a real organization (we also saw the Bartlet campaign working with them in College Kids). And in connection with that appearance by Matt, we get mentions of Bob Dylan and his albums Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde On Blonde. Bruno later tells Vinick he talks like a President and not "some latter-day Mick Jagger-in-chief."

• After Matt says Blonde On Blonde is his favorite Dylan album, causing Helen to give him a look, Josh says, "Jay Leno's gonna have a field day."

• As Bram, Donna, and Helen start pushing Matt to use the nuclear plant accident to campaign against Vinick, he tells Josh, "Get them to cool it on the political chatter, I don't want us holding rallies on the Hindenburg."
  

• Will tells the agency spokespeople he doesn't have time to deal with them "by the Socratic method" (questions and answers, basically).
  

• Coffeemate can be seen in the background in Vinick's campaign headquarters.

• Bruno says Josh has "the political equivalent of Tourette Syndrome."
  

• Josh calls the President and Vinick "the Martin & Lewis of disaster management" (meaning Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis).
  

• Bruno is surfing the net for stories leaked by Josh, and he mentions "nothing on Drudge" (Matt Drudge of the The Drudge Report).
  

• Bob brings up the Redskins as he insists Vinick has to say something in public before boarding Air Force One.
  

• CJ is on the phone with someone and says, "I can't talk about the Armenian genocide." That kind of comes out of nowhere, but I'd guess it's a deliberate move by a writer to get that somewhat controversial topic at least mentioned on television.
  

• President Bartlet compares the power of a nuclear power plant's reaction to the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.
  

End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet looking out the Oval Office window.

Previous episode: Internal Displacement

Next episode: The Cold

Internal Displacement - TWW S7E11

 

Original airdate: January 15, 2006

Written by: Bradley Whitford (2)

Directed by: Andrew Bernstein (3)

Synopsis

• A visit from an old friend spurs CJ to take action about a humanitarian disaster in Sudan. Word of a potential scandal in New Hampshire and CJ's reaction to it upsets members of the Bartlet family. Josh tries to pull some strings to get the White House to help out the Santos campaign.
  

"So don't get hypnotized by complexity. Make it count." 

Tick tock. Tick tock.

 

Time is running out - running out on the Bartlet administration, running out on CJ's position in the White House, running out on secrets in the Westin household, even running out on Danny Concannon's newspaper career. And the overwhelming presence of that ticking clock, forcing our heroes to decide exactly how they want to spend that time remaining, looms over this episode.

(Of course this exact same topic was brought up before, by Leo in 365 Days, but that was months ago, how is CJ or anyone else supposed to remember that?)

We start at a restaurant, and our first look at Danny since the kidnapping of Zoey in 7A WF 83429 (except for the quick look at him and CJ as a couple with a baby in the flash-forward of The Ticket, so we already know where this is headed). He has asked CJ to dinner because he has a very important question to ask, one about their joint futures, and what he and CJ might find together once she's out of the White House and he leaves reporting behind. Of course, CJ has very little time for a discussion, and even less time for dinner, what with Kazakhstan threatening to become World War III - and when Danny makes the mistake of mentioning that he thinks he's found evidence of the President's son-in-law having an affair (while running for Congress and expecting a Presidential visit in support a few days later), CJ has no time for the dinner either.

We'll get back to the topic of dinner with CJ and Danny later. The affair news causes CJ to focus on the President's legacy - how tarnished might it become if he heads to New Hampshire to stump for Doug Westin, only to later discover Doug had cheated on Jed's daughter? Not to mention the personal impact on Jed as a father, especially if it's CJ who spills the news. As Will helpfully explains:

Will: "Can I give you one piece of advice before you ask me to leave my own office?"

CJ: "What?"

Will: "I don't know where you're going with this --"

CJ: "I'm protecting the President."

Will: "Right. Whatever. This much I do know - there's only one thing worse than telling the President of the United States his son-in-law is having an affair."

CJ: "What's that?"

Will: "Telling the President of the United States his son-in-law is having an affair and then finding out you were wrong."

This topic also leads to a madcap moment of physical comedy, as CJ is on the phone with Danny trying to get him to confirm she's on the right track, and the phone knocks poor Gail off the desk and nearly onto the floor.

CJ is right there to catch it, though, saving Gail from a horrible fate. (Man, she's really good, hardly anything inside the bowl got disturbed one bit!)

CJ finally lands on a strategy. She asks Doug to come into her office, lays out what she's been hearing and the fact that the evidence is pretty strong against him, and basically orders him to go down the hall himself and request that the White House cancel the trip to come campaign with him. The fact that Doug rather meekly agrees to that seems pretty damning.

And that leads to this (I kinda like the whole CJ-Kate buddy thing they've got going on, you know, women of power sticking together in the male-dominated West Wing):

Kate (after CJ spilled the news of Doug Westin's affair): "And you're telling me this because ...?"

CJ: "I don't know if I should --"

Kate: "Tell her? No. No, no, no, no, now's the time everybody just looks at her funny until she figures it out."

CJ: "I know. I just don't know if I owe the President --"

Margaret (coming down the hall): "Sorry. Liz Westin's in your office, she needs to talk to you."

Kate (smiling): "Good luck." (She walks away)

Wait. Why is Liz, Doug's wife and Jed's daughter, coming to see CJ? Turns out ... she knows about his affair. It's not that she's okay with it, but she thinks getting past it for the good of their children is more important than getting her revenge on a cheating spouse. Plus, as we saw in Abu el Banat, Liz is all-in on helping Doug with his campaign, even if she may not think it's all that wise, because he wants to do it, he asked her to help, and she's his wife and he's the father of their kids and she's going to support him.

Liz is really disappointed to discover that even though she's telling CJ it's okay, and her father is the President and grandfather to the Westin kids, the opportunity for Bartlet to come to New Hampshire and help Doug campaign is gone.

The reason that date has been given away is another plot point. A big government contract to build a molecular transport lab is soon to be announced, but the actual location is not yet public. Josh stops by the White House to urge CJ and Will to go ahead and break the news that it's going to be in Austin, Texas - news that would serve as a huge boost to the Santos campaign in his home state. Trouble is, though, the administration had promised an embattled Democratic Senator from Kentucky facing a tough re-election campaign that they'd hold off on the announcement until after the election, as Kentucky was also on the short list for the lab's location.

CJ and Josh spar over this a couple of times, with CJ getting irate when she sees Matt on television implying the announcement is coming in a few days, but eventually the administration decides they will break their promise to the Kentucky Senator, that President Bartlet will fly to Texas to appear with Matt Santos to make the announcement (hence, the date formerly committed to Doug being given away), and then they will take up Josh on his offer to both fly to Kentucky to make a campaign appearance for Senator Bowles.

What helped spur CJ to recommend this change in course? That looming sense of "time's running out, try to do something big, something important with the time you have left" - which is the same reason we get the other big plot point from this episode.

Kate updates CJ on the latest word from Sudan, where government-backed militias are attacking civilians in refugee camps. The United States, while condemning the attacks, hasn't taken any other diplomatic or military action in return ... but CJ (after her talk with Danny the night before) suddenly has the impetus to try and do something.

(If we remember the Bartlet Doctrine from Inauguration: Over There, the administration should already have been in full-on retaliation mode against the Sudanese government, just as they were in Equatorial Kundu after that, and for almost exactly the same reasons ... but apparently the Bartlet Doctrine hasn't survived since the spring of 2002.)

Again, that sense of "we only have a few months left, let's make them count" inspires CJ to try to do something. She has a meeting with a representative of a refugee rights group, who gives her more details about the atrocities going on in Sudan. She comes up with the idea of cutting off oil revenues to the Sudanese government, but that would require a United Nations resolution that China would surely veto, given their reliance on Sudanese oil. But the situation in Kazakhstan gives her an opening: if the United States could help broker free elections in Kazakhstan, and thereby help guarantee the supply of oil from there to the Chinese, perhaps China would be disinclined to veto this resolution and agree to give up some of there Sudanese oil connections.

But it's complicated - the US can't be seen to be taking sides in Kazakhstan. Kate mentions that both the French and the Germans would like to start selling arms to China again, a move that's been sanctioned since the Tiananmen Square crackdown on protesting students in 1998. CJ tries the tricky maneuver of getting either France or Germany to present the resolution in the UN, in exchange for the US looking the other way on arms sales to China. The move in the United Nations would not be coming from the United States, keeping its neutrality in Kazakhstan, but still punishes the Sudanese government for their attacks on civilians. China keeps getting oil from Kazakhstan, the Germans (after the French pass on the notion) get to sell weapons to China, and the Sudanese get their oil revenues taken away.

It's a delicate dance. The scenes between CJ and the ambassadors from France, Germany, and China are fraught with the difference between high-minded moral leadership and commonplace concerns of state. The French ambassador, in particular, has a couple of pointed jabs at the United States general approach to world diplomacy:

French ambassador: "Perhaps a murderous government with intelligence on international Islamic terrorist organizations --"

CJ: "Could provide the United States with crucial information, absolutely."

French ambassador: "Perfectly understandable. But when we push things to the side, often they come back to haunt us."

CJ: "We all make calculations, Jacques." 

French ambassador: "And your investors who continue to trade shares of the multinationals who do business with these killers on the New York Stock Exchange; that's another calculation, yes?"

CJ: "And there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around."

French ambassador: "Sure, sure. Unfortunately, CJ, we cannot afford to introduce a resolution so obviously aimed at the Chinese. You are so fond of calling yourselves the leaders of the free world. So ... lead."

(In general, this depiction of statecraft, diplomacy, and tricky multinational balancing acts is a bit dull and in-the-weeds for The West Wing, not to mention heavy-handed; but I'll allow it for the purpose of showing how committed CJ is to trying to achieve something truly important as the Bartlet administration winds down.) 

And so, back to that restaurant, a couple of days after Danny's first attempt at baring his soul to CJ, someone he's been mooning over since 1999. This time CJ seems committed to actually having a meal and actually listening to Danny - his plea to her earlier about not getting hypnotized by complexity, to "Make it count" sank in, and she actually has accomplished something over the past two days. And now, it's getting personal.

Danny is all-in with his offer to share the future with CJ.

And CJ seems very receptive to his request this time.

Danny is eloquent and passionate, and makes his point well. His "fall off the cliff" metaphor is perfect.

Danny: "We're both about to fall off of a cliff and I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life except I know what I don't want to do. And on Inauguration Day you're going to be released from that glorious prison on Pennsylvania Avenue with --"

CJ (smiling): "No human skills?"

Danny: "Seems to me --"

CJ: "I should punch you in the face, but yes."

Danny: "That's what I'm talking about."

CJ: "Keep going."

Danny: "So, if I'm going to jump off the cliff, and you're going to get pushed off the cliff - why don't we hold hands on the way down?"

Then the beeper goes off, there's urgent trouble somewhere, and CJ dashes back to the White House. Poor Danny. 

And poor California, if Kate's scenario in the final scene actually comes to fruition. But that's for another day, and another episode, as events once again take over best intentions and high-minded policy initiatives in the final days of the Bartlet administration.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- The opening scene in the restaurant tells us it's Wednesday night. Given the tight timeline we are presented with over these pre-election episodes, my first inclination would be to say this means the Wednesday immediately after the events of Running Mates and the Sunday VP debate, so it's likely October 4, 2006. The next day, Danny offers to tell CJ whatever she wants to know if she'll have dinner with him "tomorrow night," so the final restaurant scene would likely be Friday, October 6.

- Bradley Whitford's second teleplay for the series (his first was Faith Based Initiative).

- Speaking of which, Whitford and Joshua Malina have had a long-term friendship that still exists today. They met while working on Broadway around 1990 (both were in the Broadway production of Aaron Sorkin's play A Few Good Men), and have been good friends since. The two have a long-standing tradition of pranking one another, or lodging good-natured insults against one another online. Whitford took advantage of his opportunity to write for Malina's character in this episode in giving Malina this line of dialogue:

Will: "I can't act, I'm a terrible actor."

Rumor has it that the original teleplay included this bit of stage direction to describe Will's/Malina's initial entrance in that scene:

Will waddles in. The actor playing Will struggles to be remotely honest. CJ ignores the insincere, one-dimensional acting of the guy playing Will. Will enters - scene dies. Will does deep background cross that nobody believes and punctures the suspension of disbelief globally.

Malina said later, "Hat tip to Whitford. This was a solid prank ... I think they made him take [the stage directions] out of the final script, sadly. It was very mean and funny."

- There's a lot of symmetry in this script. We begin and (practically) end at the same restaurant, with Danny and CJ; Danny's line to CJ about being "hypnotized by complexity" gets repeated later by CJ; CJ tears into Doug about the affair and its potential effect on the Presidency, asking him, "Do you understand me?" to which he answers, "I think I do," while later when Liz tells CJ that the Westin's personal life isn't any of CJ's business (while not flat-out admitting she knows about Doug's dalliance, still implying she absolutely does) she asks, "Do you understand what I'm saying?" to which CJ replies, "I think I do."

- Danny shows an eerily accurate foreshadowing of American politics in 2015-2024 (hopefully that's the end of it) with his description of modern politics and false heroics:

Danny: "Well, there are two places where you can see a pumped-up egomaniac slathered with man-tan talking about how great he is and how he's going to kick his opponent's ass: one is a professional wrestling match, the other is a national political convention."

(Using the words "a pumped-up egomaniac slathered with man-tan" boasting about his greatness scarily fits the crude phenomenon that is Donald Trump today, considering this was written nine years before Trump rode down the escalator to announce his candidacy for President. Not to mention that Trump was also involved with professional wrestling and appeared in the ring several times since 2007. Trump is even a member of the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame, for chrissake!) 

- While I get that it's realistic to see prior commitments and promises get left behind and forgotten as time passes, let us not forget that the very theme of this episode - we hold the power to do great things, but our time to do them is running out, therefore let's use the time remaining to actually do great things - is the exact same theme as we saw in 365 Days. While that episode aired almost exactly a year before this one, the events of that episode occurred only about eight months prior to what happens here (January 20 to early October, 2006). Leo was making the exact same points that Danny does here, spurring CJ to actually work at trying to make a difference - you realize that CJ was in the room with Leo back in 365 Days, even offering ideas of initiatives the administration could pursue in its final year?

Again, it's not unrealistic for a group of hard-working people to forget those good intentions and let them fall by the wayside over a few months, being distracted by election campaigns/a potential space shuttle disaster/leaks of top secret government information by a key staffer/a potential global war breaking out, but maybe at least have CJ remember they already talked about this in January. And that's not even including the "Bartlet Doctrine" of Inauguration: Over There, which has been long sent to the ash heap of Aaron Sorkin Plot Points We Don't Care About Anymore and dropped like it was hot, even though it fits ideally with a military intervention into Sudan right now.

- It looks like there's a clock in Gail's fishbowl, which is an obvious symbol of time running out for the Bartlet administration.

 

- Why'd They Come Up With Internal Displacement?

The formal definition of "internal displacement" is the movement of refugee populations within a country's borders, or what we see described in this episode with the forced relocation of people within Sudan. I think we can extend the metaphor to include the forced "relocations" of some of our characters: Danny, giving up reporting to try something else; CJ, facing the reality of leaving the White House and political life in a few months; and the administration overall, with the same looming deadline of leaving the office to someone else. How do they take on this change in their lives? Will they do something with the time they have left, or simply run out the clock?

Quotes    

Danny: "Your boss never has to get elected ever again. But you guys are content to run out the clock with the same game of well-intentioned defense you've always played."

-----

Danny: "You could do more in a day than most people could do in a lifetime."

CJ: "You think I'm not aware that I'm living the first line in my obituary now?"

Danny: "So don't get hypnotized by complexity. Make it count."

-----

Danny: "I think the President's son-in-law may be banging the nanny."

CJ: "Is that a euphemism?"

Danny: "No. Well, 'banging' is, I guess."

----- 

CJ: "I think Doug Westin is having an affair with his nanny."

Will (astonished): "Geez, I don't want to know that, why did you tell me that?"

CJ: "Because you deal with the press and I don't want you to get blindsided."

Will: "Exactly, I work with the press, I do my best work when I'm the least informed person in the room - you taught me that."

CJ: "Suck it up."

Will: "I can't act. I'm a terrible actor."

CJ: "You were up in New Hampshire --"

Will: "I don't like to pretend."

  

Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)

• It's Danny! We saw him in the flash-forward opening scene of The Ticket, so we already know he and CJ become a couple eventually, but other than that we haven't seen him since 7A WF 83429 at the beginning of Season 5.

• Steve Laussen from Refugee Rights Alliance is played by Tim Guinee (Major Allen in Iron Man, The Good Wife, Homeland, The Staircase).
  

• Chinese ambassador Ling-Po is played by George Cheung (then credited as George Kee Cheung - Rush Hour, Murder In The First, Starsky & Hutch). We saw Cheung play this role earlier in A Change Is Gonna Come.
  

• Another appearance by Doug Westin (Steven Eckholdt) and his wife and Presidential daughter Liz (Annabeth Gish), both of whom we last saw campaigning in New Hampshire in Opposition Research. Doug's intent to run for a House seat (in the face of the Democratic Party's plans, and hoping to use his Presidential-family connections to help) was first discovered in Abu el Banat.
  

• Kate leaves CJ's office rather quickly when she learns Will is on his way, and they exchange a little awkward glance at the door. The two have been flirting on-and-off since Drought Conditions, and had a date of sorts (watching the debate and eating take-out in Will's office) in Running Mates (which would have been just a few days before this episode).

• I've been trying to keep tabs on the older background actor with the close-cropped gray hair who keeps popping up in the West Wing scenes. Here he is again!

• The ongoing potential conflict between China and Russia in Kazakhstan has been a topic ever since Mr. Frost.

• The rumors of Doug Westin having a affair with the nanny reminds us that in Abu el Banat we first heard of this nanny, as the Bartlet family was waiting for everyone to arrive for Christmas dinner:

Zoey: "Where's Doug?"

Liz: "I think he's making sure Gus is down."

Jed: "Isn't there some kind of person ---"

Liz: "A nanny is not a substitute for a parent."

Jed: "I thought that's exactly what a nanny was."

Zoey: "She has a strange chin."

Abbey: "No, she doesn't."

Zoey: "Well, she kind of has no chin."

Liz: "She's Swedish."

Zoey: "Yeah, most Swedes have chins."

Jed: "Would you like to call him up and tell him we're waiting, and he can leave the child in the confident care of the chinless Swede?"

So no real foreshadowing of an affair there, but we learn there is a nanny, and she's Swedish. In this episode we learn the nanny had worked with the Westins for three years before being let go in August, which means she had started her job not that long before Christmas 2003 and this discussion in Abu el Banat.

• Will's protest to CJ of "I didn't do it ... Toby did it" when she was simply asking him to close the door is a reminder of Toby's confession to leaking information on a secret military space shuttle to the press (Mr. Frost/Here Today).
  

• The mention of "losing a VP in a sex scandal" takes us back to Life On Mars and the randiness of John Hoynes forcing him to resign the Vice Presidency.
  

• Sort of a missing story thread, but whatever happened to the Bartlet Doctrine outlined in Inauguration: Over There? President Bartlet made a pledge for the United States to intervene anywhere, anytime, if human rights were threatened. Seems like an obvious situation to trot that out in Sudan, but nobody even mentions it. 

President (just before his second inaugural): "We're for freedom of speech everywhere. We're for freedom to worship everywhere. We're for freedom to learn, for everybody. [...] And so we are for freedom from tyranny everywhere, whether in the guise of political oppression, Toby, or economic slavery, Josh, or religious fanaticism, CJ. That most fundamental ideal cannot be met with merely our support. It has to be met with our strength. Diplomatically, economically, materially. [...] No country has ever had a doctrine of intervention when only humanitarian interests were at stake. That streak ends Sunday at noon."

And, as I mentioned earlier, the entire concept of not wasting your final days in office and using that time to do something meaningful was already addressed by Leo in 365 Days, but that also seems to have been forgotten ...

• Danny was previously writing for The Washington Post, a very prestigious job for a political reporter. Now we see him apparently working for the (fictitious) Washington Leader, given the sign on the wall behind him when CJ calls. Seems less than likely ... unless the Leader has taken over the mantle of the leading newspaper in DC from the Post in this universe (even though we have literally never heard the Leader mentioned in dialogue, while the Post keeps coming up over and over).
  

• We get the Bartlet/Sheen jacket flip, only partially in the foreground, but it's there.

• Danny's reference to "As long as you didn't kill our fish" goes back to The Short List, when a smitten Danny wanted to give CJ a gift. Josh told him she likes goldfish ("can't get enough of 'em"), but not understanding that Josh meant the snack crackers, he showed up in her office with an actual goldfish in a fishbowl. Hence, "our fish."
  

• The San Andreo nuclear power plant accident is going to be really, really important over the coming episodes.

CJ: "What is it?"

Kate: "Some kind of nuclear accident."

CJ: "Oh, lord. A weapon?"

Kate: "Power plant."

CJ: "Is it Russia?"

Kate: "San Andreo, California. They think it might blow up."

DC location shots    

• None. There is an establishing shot of the outside of the restaurant where Danny and CJ are meeting at the opening of the episode; what we see there is actually the Sherry-Nederlander Hotel on the Upper East Side in New York City. Not Washington DC at all!

They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing    

• The conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan really happened, and to a certain extent is still going on 18 years after this episode aired. The war started in 2003 when two rebel groups began fighting the Sudanese government, in opposition to the government's treatment of non-Arabs. The government responded with ethnic cleansing of the non-Arab population, resulting in the "internal displacement" of millions and the starvation deaths of hundreds of thousands. The Janjaweed is an Arab militia in Darfur with founding ties to Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, first appearing in 1988, and operating as an arm of the Sudanese government during the 2003-2010 war. While a peace agreement to end the hostilities was signed in 2010, a civil war between factions of the Sudanese military (including one made up of Janjaweed fighters) broke out in spring 2023, and is ongoing as of the fall of 2024.
  

• CJ, referring to Westin's possible sex scandal as well as Hoynes' resignation, says she feels like she's handing out towels at the Playboy Mansion.
  

• Steve Laussen mentions the 1963 photo of the Vietnamese monk who lit himself on fire to protest the war in Vietnam. The monk, Thich Quang Duc, actually immolated himself in a protest against how the South Vietnamese government was treating Buddhist monks, so not an anti-war protest at all (but that didn't matter to those who saw the photo, or to Laussen's point to CJ, either).
  

• We see Matt's speech touting a potential announcement of the molecular transport lab being shown on C-SPAN. We also see some coverage of Steve Laussen criticizing the administration on MSNBC.

• There's a mention of Tiananmen in the discussion between CJ and the Chinese ambassador, which implies the events of the government's brutal crackdown on protestors in Tiananamen Square in 1998 happened in this universe.
  

End credits freeze frame: Danny and CJ during their end-of-episode talk in the restaurant.

Previous episode: Running Mates

Next episode: Duck And Cover