Mr. Willis Of Ohio - TWW S1E6

Original airdate: November 3, 1999

Written by: Aaron Sorkin (6)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (1)

Synopsis

• Toby tries to convince three Congressmen, including a recently appointed member from Ohio, to stop a budget bill amendment that would prohibit the use of sampling data in the upcoming census. Meanwhile, Sam explains the ins-and-outs of the census process to CJ. President Bartlet acts fatherly toward both his daughter Zoey (harassed by frat boys at a Georgetown bar) and the-son-he-never-had Charlie. Donna can't understand why she can't have her personal share of a recent budget surplus to buy a DVD player.

"I met an unusual man. He didn't walk into the room with a political agenda, he didn't walk in with his mind made up. He genuinely wanted to do what he thought was best, didn't mind saying the words, 'I don't know'."

One of the things I really love about The West Wing is how it wants to show our government and our leaders not necessarily as they really are, but how we'd hope they'd be - in pursuit of the ideals of a higher calling and the greater good in leading our nation. Mr. Willis Of Ohio (the man and the title) brings to this universe an everyman whose aims are so simple and pure and open that our characters realize they can aspire to even greater heights than they think.

This episode is also a civics lesson. And in typical West Wing fashion, it's a civics lesson cloaked in entertainment and humor. You want to know about the census? This here episode of The West Wing is the one for you. And also the one for CJ, as it turns out:

CJ: "Sam, I read my briefing book last night on the Commerce bill regarding the census, and there's certain parts of it that I don't quite understand."

Sam: "I can help you out, which parts?"

CJ: "Well, all of it."

Sam: "All of it?"

CJ: "Yes."

Sam: "You don't understand the census."

CJ: "I don't understand certain nuances."

Sam: "Like what?"

CJ: "Like, the census."

(While the conceit of having a concept explained to the audience by having it explained to a character on the show is a well-used trope, we'll just ignore the fact that The West Wing often does this through explanations to the female characters, usually Donna. Are we really to believe that a top-notch sharp cookie like CJ doesn't have any idea of what the census is about?)

The other main theme of this episode is the fatherly attitude of Jed Bartlet - not only in his justifiably protective approach towards his youngest daughter Zoey (brought to the fore by three frat bros who harass her in a Georgetown bar), but also towards Charlie. Throughout the series we'll see that Charlie becomes the son Jed never had, and the process of the President taking Charlie under his wing and giving him fatherly guidance develops into an ongoing plotline. Heck, the only reason Zoey was in the Georgetown bar in the first place is because the President told Josh to take Charlie out for a drink (with Zoey and Mallory volunteering themselves to tag along, as well as Sam, CJ, and Mandy EDIT: Not Mandy. Mandy wasn't there, she wasn't invited. Take this as a hint, Mandy).

But to the civics lesson: the House of Representatives is debating a budget bill for the coming fiscal year. While there's a big surplus to deal with ($32 billion), Congressmen are wasting no time finding ways to spend the money. But there's also a pending amendment to the bill prohibiting the use of sampling data in determining census numbers, an amendment the administration is so adamantly opposed to that the President is threatening to veto the entire bill.

So the White House brings in three swing votes from the House Commerce Committee (Representatives Skinner, Gladman and Willis) to try to change some votes. Toby explains that the administration wants to use sampling data to provide a more accurate accounting of all the citizens of the country, including the homeless and those less likely to answer the door-to-door canvassers that typically conduct the census. Supporters of the amendment don't trust data sampling, and want to stick to the traditional "hand count." It comes down to Mr. Willis (of Ohio), who is convinced by Toby's arguments and a reading of a section of the Constitution. Willis agrees to change his mind and vote against the amendment, supporting the administration until such time as the courts make a legal determination on the use of sampling.

(It's stated these three Congressmen are all swing votes, yet Willis is the only one to change his mind. Apparently they only needed one, as we see the administration celebrating victory on the vote at the end of the episode.)

Here's the great thing about Willis. He's just an 8th-grade social studies teacher, thrust into the job to serve out the term of his wife, who died a month prior. He's not a politician, he's not dazzled by the power of the White House, he's not fazed by the career elected officials he's working with - he's just a guy, an everyday American, willing to listen to both sides of the argument and make his decision based on the facts presented. It's a perfect-world version of who should actually be governing, and we know our government is everything but "perfect-world," but it suits our purposes in this episode. What if "just a guy" was thrust into Congress? What if political considerations didn't matter, and every decision was made based on what was best for the country and where the facts led us? Well, it'd be something like Mr. Willis Of Ohio.

And to meet someone as down to earth and as fundamentally honest and open as Joe Willis, well ... that can make even a prickly grump like Toby absolutely beam.

(Of course, here's the thing: Toby's using the Constitution to make his argument on the census. In the very same Article and Section of that document, we would learn that a vacancy in the House of Representatives must be filled by "the people," in a special election; there's no way a governor could appoint the spouse of a deceased Congressperson to fill out the term. Senators, yes, governors do appoint those replacements, but not in the House. Aaron Sorkin admits he knew the facts, but dealing with an appropriations bill - which has to come out of the House - and feeling that the audience would make too many real-world connections with any Senator he might use for this instance, he decided to ignore the actual Constitutional requirements and do it his way. Of course, The West Wing is a fictional universe, after all - perhaps their Constitution is slightly different. Maybe? Fanwank?)

As for Jed and his fatherly intentions showing through, we first really see his concern about his family's safety early on. As a staff poker game in Leo's office is breaking up, the Secret Service holds everyone in the Oval Office because someone jumped the fence. We later find out this person was a mentally disturbed woman with a gun, and she wasn't after the President, but she was after Zoey.

(This information comes to us courtesy of the head of the White House Secret Service detail, Ron Butterfield, played by Michael O'Neill. He'll return in that role many times over the next seven seasons. I think he's just great; matter-of-fact and eminently capable concerning his security role, yet you see the humanity and concern coming through in his acting.)

So, after Jed pushes Josh to take Charlie out for a drink, Mallory (Leo's daughter) and Zoey sweet-talk their way into joining the group. They go to Georgetowne Station, which at the time was evidently a bar in Georgetown near the university.

It's called something different now, but it looks exactly the same and still appears to be a bar in Georgetown (this is a Google Streets image from 2017):

Everyone is having a great time (maybe except for Sam, as he takes a good amount of grief about his ongoing relationship with Laurie, the call girl he's trying to reform), until Zoey is accosted by three frat bros (Georgetown students? It's implied, so much so that the Georgetown student newspaper had to publish a column about the episode). One thing leads to another, Charlie is the first to step up to pull Zoey away from her harassers, and then Josh uses Zoey's panic button to bring the Secret Service to the rescue.

The whole sequence of events - an intruder after Zoey, a kerfluffle in a bar - drives Jed the father crazy with concern, and he has to go to tremendous lengths to convince Zoey of the seriousness of his situation:

President: "My getting killed would be bad enough, but that is not the nightmare scenario. The nightmare scenario, sweetheart, is you getting kidnapped. You go out to a bar or a party in some club and you get up to go to the restroom, somebody comes up from behind and puts their hand across your mouth and whisks you out the back door. You're so petrified you don't even notice the bodies of a few Secret Service agents lying on the ground with bullet holes in their heads. Then you're whisked away in a car. It's a big party with lots of noise and lots of people coming and going, and it's a half hour before someone says, Hey, where's Zoey? Another 15 minutes before the first phone call. It's another hour and half before anyone even thinks to shut down all the airports, and now we're off to the races! You're tied to a chair in a cargo shack somewhere in the middle of Uganda, and I am told that I have 72 hours to get Israel to free 460 terrorist prisoners. So I'm on the phone pleading with Ben Yahbin and he's saying, I'm sorry, Mr. President, Israel simply does not negotiate with terrorists, period. It's the only way we can survive. So now we've got a new problem. Because this country no longer has a Commander-In-Chief, it has a father who's out of his mind because his little girl is in a shack somewhere in Uganda with a gun to her head! Do you get it?" 

It's a great way for us to see the difference between President Josiah Bartlet and Jed the dad, as well as how they are inextricably linked. This is coming up again, at the end of Season 4.

This episode also includes a great running thread with Donna's complaints about not getting her share of the budget surplus returned to her. Sorkin uses this to play with the fiscal stereotypes of Democrats (all the spending listed in the appropriations bill) and Republicans (tax relief, tax relief, tax relief!). Donna actually ends up making a good market-based argument for her side:

Josh: "Let's say your cut of the surplus is $700. I want to take your money, combine it with everybody else's money, and use it to pay down the debt and further endow Social Security. What do you want to do with it?"

Donna: "Buy a DVD player." (CAUTION: auto-play YouTube link, and it's LOUD.)

Josh: "See?"

Donna: "But my $700 is helping employ the people who manufacture and sell DVD players, not to mention the people who manufacture and sell DVDs. It's the natural evolution of the market economy."

Josh: "The problem is, the DVD player you buy might be made in Japan."

Donna: "I'll buy an American one."

Josh: "We don't trust you."

Donna: "Why not?"

Josh: "We're Democrats."

Donna: "I want my money back!"

Josh: "You shouldn't have voted for us."

And finally, Leo tells Jed about the breakup of his marriage with Jenny. Leo has moved out of the house into a hotel (Mallory is actually bringing him some things from home, which is why she's hanging around and able to go out to the bar later - not only to hang around Sam). Bartlet's first reaction to the news is less than gracious:

President: "Fix this, Leo."

Leo: "It's not as simple as that."

President: "It is as simple as that. You're the man. Fix it."

Leo: "Mr. President --"

President: "Fix it."

At the end of the day, and especially after his talk with Zoey, the President realizes his misstep with his old friend, and he offers an apology and a heartfelt response of support for what Leo is going through. Not a huge focus of the episode, but it fleshes out the deep friendship between the two (and the faultlines that any long friendship will have), and strengthens the theme of fatherly/familial support and respect.

So not only a optimistic picture of public service and selfless democracy, but also a picture of overriding fatherly love and affection - that's what we get in Mr. Willis Of Ohio.


Things to think about:

- Sam and Toby are both smoking cigars during the opening poker game in Leo's office. I guess the White House wasn't smoke-free in 1999 (we know the President smokes cigarettes, after all).

- I don't know exactly why, but the rustling suit noises in the episode's first Oval Office scene were incredibly distracting. I don't think I've heard that before, so I don't know if it was a problem with the sound mixing in that scene or what, but once you hear it, you can't stop hearing it.

- I've mentioned the poor taste in background music in previous episodes (even if maybe the producers did have New Order in the broadcast version of "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" and just couldn't get the rights for DVD/streaming), but they stepped it up a notch here. In the bar we hear the Foo Fighters' "Learn To Fly" playing in the background. Nice.

- President Bartlet sticks Josh with a crack about going out for "malteds or something" instead of taking his daughter to a bar. Would a New Hampshire guy like Jed call them "malteds"? My research is unclear. Many parts of New England call a flavored ice cream/milk mixture a "frappe" and not a "milkshake," as much of the rest of the country would call them. Rhode Island, of course, calls them "cabinets," which is just weird. However, malted milkshakes might indeed be called "malteds," even in New England, so I don't know if that's a Sorkin mistake or if it's an accurate New Hampshire reference.

- CJ tells Josh "I like beer" when he's asking Sam to come along to the bar with him and Charlie. Once at the bar, though, she's ordering a grasshopper. Not exactly the same as beer ...

- Charlie tells the frat bros they'd need to take Zoey to Maryland to buy her a drink, as she's 19. I don't know what he means by that; all 50 states raised their drinking age to 21 by the late 1980s in order to prevent a loss of federal highway funds. You suppose he was just taking a dig at Maryland somehow?

- The epithets hurled at Charlie (and later Sam and Josh) by the frat boys in the bar aren't all that creative or groundbreaking. Kind of an obvious racial slant to things like "LL Cool J," "Ice T," Ice Cube," "G-Funk" or "Dr. Huffy Puffy Dread, man." Seriously, Huffy Puffy Dread? Then they up the ante with "Dr. Doolittle" and "Dr. Faggot." Wow, real deep thinkers, these college boys. But then the "Fairy Poppins" thrown at Sam, well, that's got Sorkin all over it.

- Toby is watching the House vote on the budget bill on C-SPAN while the poker game gets set up. Leo tells him he doesn't need to watch, they won "40 votes ago," but Toby wants to witness Joe Willis casting this vote. But take a look:

That appears to show the "2001 Appropriations Bill" currently losing 74-22, with less than 5 minutes remaining on the roll call. Now sure, congressional vote-counting is a thing where you often can count your chickens before they're actually recorded votes, but to say "we won it 40 votes ago" when there's still almost 340 votes to be cast? Hmm ...

- Product placement: at the bar the guys are drinking Heineken and Michelob. Zoey (underage, remember) appears to have a Diet Coke. Leo is drinking Canada Dry ginger ale during the first card game (although interestingly, everyone starts out with bottled water as they sit down for the game at the end of the episode).

Quotes    

Toby: "Kathy, I need a copy of Article 1, Section 2."

Kathy: "Article 1, Section 2 of what?"

Toby: "The Constitution."

Kathy: "Is that something I'm supposed to have at my desk?"

Toby: "Does anyone have a copy of the Constitution?"

(blank looks from everyone)

Toby: "This is discouraging."

Kathy: "Bonnie, would you get Toby a copy of the Constitution?"

Bonnie: "Is it still in print?"

Toby: "Aw, for crying out loud! Try Amazon dot com, if they don't have it, then just bust into the glass display case at the National Archives!" 

----- 

Donna (to Josh, about the surplus, multiple times): "I want my money back."

----- 

Sam (when the topic of his call girl friend comes up at the bar): "Mallory -- does your father know?"

Mallory: "No."

Sam: "Zoey. Does your father know?"

Zoey: "Not yet."

Sam: "Oh, so this is going to be a thing."

-----

Charlie (after Josh and Sam are discussing which two frat boys they would have fought at the bar): "There were no two guys that either of you could have taken."

(Which results in this reaction from Josh and Sam:)

-----

President: "What were you doing, taking my daughter out to a bar?"

Josh: "You -- told me to, sir."

President: "I told you to take Charlie. When Zoey said she was going I just assumed you were going to go have malteds or something."

Josh: "Malteds, sir?"

President: "Yes."

Josh: "What is this, 'Our Town'?"

 (I love the face Jed gives Josh after that snarky line.)

(a few minutes later)

President: "You know, I once played the Stage Manager in a production of 'Our Town'."

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

• Congressman Gladman is played by Kenneth Tigar, a pretty recognizable character actor. You might recall him as the German guy who stands up to Loki in The Avengers.

• Congressman Skinner is played by Charley Lang, another character actor who had recurring roles in the TV series Dark Skies, Seven Days, and Murphy Brown. His Congressman character actually appears a few more times in The West Wing.

• The main frat boy facing off with Charlie and Sam was played by Eric Balfour, who had recurring roles in the series 24, The OC, and Six Feet Under.

• As alluded to above, the "nightmare scenario" outlined in Jed's speech to Zoey plays out in an eerily similar way in the Season 4 episode Commencement, including Bartlet's realization that his situation as a helpless father makes his position as a nation's President untenable. Thanks a lot, Jean-Paul, you jerk.

• Zoey is specifically referred to as being 19, not once but twice. This makes great sense with her starting at Georgetown in the coming January. Listen closely in upcoming episodes, though - that age might mysteriously change.

• Nancy (Renee Estevez) is back, delivering a line in the Oval. Good old Nancy.

End credits freeze frame: Josh giving sass to the President and Leo.