Enemies - TWW S1E8

Original airdate: November 17, 1999

Story by: Rick Cleveland (1) and Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. (2) & Patrick Caddell (2)
Teleplay by: Ron Osborn (1) & Jeff Reno (1)

Directed by: Alan Taylor (1)

Synopsis

• President Bartlet and his staff celebrate the imminent passage of an important banking bill, only to have Republicans insert a last-minute rider allowing mining in a Montana nature reserve. The President treats the Vice President harshly at a Cabinet meeting, word of which leaks out to the press. Leo and Mallory face up to their conflicts over the end of Leo's marriage, but not before Leo and Jed spoil Mallory's evening plans by giving Sam a little extra work.

"I don't like these people, Toby. I don't want to lose."

"We talk about enemies more than we used to. I wanted to mention that."

We find adversaries galore in this episode. Josh is lined up against Sam and Mandy (and eventually Toby) over recommending a veto on an important banking bill. The administration in general is opposed by a Republican Congress that inserted a problematic rider into that bill. Leo and Mallory are at odds over the breakup of Leo's marriage, which leads Leo and Sam to kinda-sorta face off over Mallory's interest in taking Sam to the Chinese opera with Leo's tickets. Sam and Toby metaphorically fight with writer's block, or whatever happened to make them feel they've lost their touch. And then, of course, we see the rancor that exists between President Bartlet and Vice President Hoynes. A lot of battles are underway here, and while Josh (thanks to Donna's word choices - I mean, really, who drops "antiquated" into a conversation about computer files?) finds a way to win the day's political issue, we get the distinct feeling a lot of this antagonism isn't going away.

Let's follow up a bit on something I mentioned from the last episode. Again, we are meant to think that the Bartlet administration is floundering and weak ... but we keep getting political victories from them nonetheless. Here is another one, a bill that mandates more oversight of the banking industry and gives benefits to bank customers. It's such a big victory that President Bartlet exults to CJ, "We beat the banking lobby! We beat 'em!" Add this to the gun bill passed in Five Votes Down, the successful staving off of the census sampling amendment in Mr. Willis Of Ohio, not to mention that the economy must be humming right along, with the largest budget surplus in 30-some years, and it's hard for us to accept that Bartlet's unfavorables are creeping up near 50 percent and the administration seems adrift.

Anyway, passage of this bill has the President in such a good mood the episode both opens and closes with Jed trapping a staffer in the Oval Office, providing scholarly treatises on the National Park system. At the open we find Josh is being held hostage as 2 a.m. nears, and the entire pre-credits conversation is a real hoot:

President: "There are 54 national parks in this country, Josh."

Josh: "Please tell me you haven't been to all of them."

President: "I have been to all of them. I should show you my slide collection."

Josh: "Oh -- would you?"

(NOTE: While the 54 number was current in at the time of filming, in 2017 there are 59 national parks. Added since this episode: Black Canyon of the Gunnison [1999]; Cuyahoga Valley [2000]; Congaree [2003]; Great Sand Dunes [2004]; and Pinnacles [2013].) 

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President: "Shenandoah National Park right here in Virginia. We should organize a staff field trip to Shenandoah. I can even act as the guide. What do you think?"

Josh: "Good a place as any to dump your body."

President: "What was that?"

Josh: "Did I say that out loud?"

President: "See? And I was going to let you go home." 

Which leads to Josh reacting in exasperation as the President moves on to Yosemite:

As the day develops, though, the West Wing's excitement is dimmed upon the discovery that two Republican congressmen (Broderick and Eaton) managed to insert a land-use rider into the bill, a rider that would open the Big Sky federal reserve in Montana to mining. Sam and Mandy insist the bill is too good to let this rider ruin it (Mandy is basically on a fervent crusade to get the bill signed), and Toby eventually joins them. Josh, though, is adamant. He feels the Republicans are trying to take out their loss in the Presidential election on the White House through small cuts like this one, and (being incapable of being taken for advantage for anything, at any time) he insists on looking for another way, even if it means vetoing the banking bill.

The President is on Josh's side to find a way to get the bill without the rider, for mainly the same reasons - they both hate the fact the Republicans are finding a way to poke them in the eye, even when (or perhaps because) the White House is getting a win.

President: "I'm surprised Broderick and Eaton have taken an interest in anything."

Toby: "It's retaliatory, sir."

President: "For what?"

Toby: "The campaign."

President: "What did I do to them during the campaign?"

Toby: "You won, sir."

Mandy and Sam eventually bring Toby around to their point of view, and Mandy is hard after Josh to join them. But Donna unwittingly comes to the rescue by using the word "antiquated," which spurs Josh to recall the Antiquities Act,  a 1906 law that gives the President power to designate national monuments and protect them from excavation or destruction. Josh goes to the President - who is now regaling Charlie with his tales of national parks, just as he did Josh at the top of the episode - and the banking bill dilemma is solved with a full victory for the administration.

While the banking bill and the land-use rider make up the main plot of Enemies, probably more important is the tension between President Bartlet and his Vice President, John Hoynes. We've seen in earlier episodes that Hoynes chafes under what he considers poor treatment by the President, telling Leo he's tired of being Bartlet's "whipping boy." We see what he means here, as the Cabinet gathers for a meeting. Before the President arrives, Hoynes takes the liberty of speaking for him, saying their first goal should be finding a way to work with Congress. When Jed comes in and asks for the notes to be read back, he stops on that statement and asks (rather snarkily) whether their first goal should be "finding a way to best serve the American people." And right in front of the rest of the Cabinet, Jed stares down Hoynes and threatens to have his words read back again.

Which does not please Hoynes one bit.

So we definitely see Hoynes has a point in his feelings of being mistreated by Bartlet. The President is indeed pretty harsh.

Word of this leaks out, of course, and Danny Concannon has the story. CJ tries to track down the leak (shades of our current West Wing, huh?) and eventually finds a way to quash publication (thanks to Mandy, who finally has a helpful idea; offer Danny an exclusive interview with the President). But while the Cabinet meeting story doesn't turn out to be a big deal after all, a face-to-face between Bartlet and Hoynes in the Oval Office enlightens us on why the President keeps slapping the Vice President down:

Hoynes: "What did I ever do to you? Where in our past, what did I do to make you treat me this way?"

President: "John --"

Hoynes: "What did I ever do to you except deliver the South?"

President: "Really?"

Hoynes: "Yes."

President: "You shouldn't have made me beg, John. I was asking you to be the Vice President."

Hoynes: "Due respect, Mr. President, you had just kicked my ass in a primary. I'm 15 years younger than you. I have my career to think of."

President: "Then don't stand there and ask the question, John. It weakened me right out of the gate. You shouldn't have made me beg."

(By the way, "deliver the South"? Yet Hoynes wasn't able to deliver his home state of Texas, as we learned in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc".)

Speaking of Danny, I think I jumped the gun in my discussion of the previous episode. While he was certainly flirting with CJ in The State Dinner, I don't think he'd actually asked her out on a date. But he does in this episode ... boy, does he:

"I like seafood. I like all food. I should also mention I'm a lively conversationalist. I'm very good at kayaking, I can kayak."

And

"I enjoy movies. I enjoy music. I'm not wild about ice skating but, what the hell, I'll do it."

CJ, of course, turns him down flat. She has to - can you imagine the uproar in the press room if the White House Press Secretary started going out with a White House reporter from the Washington Post? There's already got to be some eyebrows raised there. After all, Danny got a head start on the Syrian airstrike news (because he held off on the Sam/Laurie story) and here he's getting an exclusive sit-down interview with the President (because he's going to spike the Cabinet meeting story). The rest of the press contingent doesn't know why he's getting extra attention from CJ ... but they can see the flirting going on and they've got to start wondering.

While CJ is doing the right thing (except for letting Danny roam around the communications office), my question is, what is Danny thinking? He has to know this is ethically no good, he can't really start dating the press secretary. Yet he keeps trying (and will continue to try). He's a smart guy, he's been covering the White House for 7 years, he's got to know this has no chance. Anyway.

And speaking of relationships ... Mallory, who appears to have a little thing for Sam after their disastrous first meeting in Pilot, asks Sam to help her use her father's tickets to the Beijing Opera.

Sam: "You're asking me out on a date."

Mallory: "No."

Sam: "No?"

Mallory: "No, I'm asking you if you'd like to go together with me to see an internationally renowned opera company perform a work indigenous to its culture."

Sam: "Right. And in what way will it distinguish itself from a date?"

Mallory: "There will be, under no circumstances, sex for you at the end of the evening."

Sam: "Okay."

Mallory: "So, what do you say?"

Sam is indeed taken with the idea of an evening with Mallory (they do make a cute couple), but he makes the mistake of mentioning this to Leo. Leo, who is at first "fine" with the idea, later assigns a last-minute writing of a birthday message directly to Sam, knowing this will keep him tied up and unable to join Mallory at the opera. Jed even joins in on the plot, asking Sam to do an additional draft and really "do a job" on it.

This is mainly Leo's way at getting back at Mallory for what he feels is unfair blame for the breakup of his marriage. We don't really see Mallory acting all that terribly toward her father, but the combination of his guilt and Mallory kinda-sorta on her mother's side make Leo retaliate by ruining her plans for the evening. When you think about it, it's really quite mean of Leo and Jed - they're trying to make a point about Leo's job being important and overriding marriage and family, but they didn't need to screw with Mallory's night to do it.

Sam actually takes to the birthday message assignment, as he and Toby were lamenting the flatness of their writing and the disappearance of their talent earlier, but it doesn't make up for the meanness of the plot in the first place.

"Enemies" is kind of apt for a title (perhaps summed up a little too neatly in Josh's final line), although it's more like "Antagonists" or "Adversaries" when you really get down to it. In a world of politics, it's not surprising that sides face off and try to earn victories when and where they can. At least it shouldn't be surprising - and the arc of the Bartlet administration is still just beginning.


Things to think about

- This is the first episode not written by Aaron Sorkin, and the only episode of the first two seasons without his name on the teleplay (there are only three more total in the first four seasons: Documentary Special, Swiss Diplomacy, and The Long Goodbye). It's stuffed with good, clever lines that sound Sorkinesque, so you hardly notice he didn't write it. Just as with the procedural political goodness of Five Votes Down, we get the goodies of the banking bill/land-use rider fight thanks to former political operatives Lawrence O'Donnell and Pat Caddell.

- We saw in the last episode Sam had a Mac laptop. And now Toby has one, too! The upgrades from CJ's old Gateway continue ...

- This is a neat little moment: when Mallory dismissively pushes her coffee cup away (upon being told by her father that his hotel charges $6.50 per cup), she does it so strongly a little coffee splashes out into the saucer.

So maybe it's lame. I thought it was at least a little interesting:

And a closeup:

-Tim Matheson is starting to try to lay on a little Texas accent now for Hoynes. We never heard it in his first two appearances, but it sneaks in during a couple of scenes here.

-Toby and Sam are adorable as they struggle to find their writing talent, however it might have left them. It all leads up to Sam insisting "I want to nail this thing," about the birthday card (sorry, birthday message) for the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, even after Mallory gets him off the hook of Leo's and Jed's trickery. And while Sam goes to work, Toby tries to "help":

- I hope I'm not giving too much away, but it's a shame they were never able to really develop the Sam-Mallory relationship. I thought they had a nice chemistry, and Allison Smith was always a nice addition to every episode she appeared in (Allison played Annie on Broadway, and actually still holds the distinction of the actress who played Annie the longest).

-There's an interesting "outtake" in the Netflix closed captions of this episode. When Mandy is railing at Toby about taking their lumps and signing the banking bill, Toby says, "I have hatred in my heart." Mandy replies, "Toward whom?" and Toby answers, "You go ahead and pick 'em, today it's Broderick and Eaton." However, the closed captioning reads "Ben Crane," Toby's friend in Congress who assured him the bill was in the bag, and who we later find out was probably the one behind the land-use rider in the first place. It also sounds to me almost certain that the words "Broderick and Eaton" were looped by Richard Schiff, recorded later and added to the scene post-filming. Was the scene filmed with Toby calling out Crane? But then perhaps changed later, because that didn't make sense until the later scene when Toby and Josh talk about Crane being behind the rider all along? Interestingly, the DVD captions go along with the audio and read "Broderick and Eaton," but it definitely sounds to me like those three words were re-recorded after filming.

-Josh's desk has been getting messier and messier over the past few episodes. There are VHS tapes and briefing books and God knows what else all over, not to mention covering the chair to prevent anybody else from actually sitting down in his office.

Quotes    

Danny: "Land-use rider was a bit of a shock, huh?"

CJ: "Danny, do you see this is a restricted area? There are signs posted."

Danny: "Where?"

CJ: "There are usually signs posted."

Danny: "Hey, you guys don't mind me back here, do ya?"

Staffers: "No, no problem."

Danny: "See?"

CJ: "Danny --"

Danny: "I'm saying it looked like someone took your legs out from under you. Say, speaking of legs --"

CJ: "First of all, you're wrong, second of all, shut up, third, I went to Hoynes with your thing and he said he wasn't the one who talked to you and I believe him and he's really pissed at me and he's right and fourth ... shut up again."

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Mallory: "Excuse me, Margaret." (to Leo) "Hello."

Leo: "Hey, baby."

Mallory: "Don't 'hey, baby' me, you addle-minded, Machiavellian jerk."

Margaret: "Should I step out?"

Leo: "Sounds like it."

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Mallory: "Also my father has something he'd like to say to you. Dad?"

Leo: "Wh- is this really necessary?"

Mallory: "I believe it is."

Leo: "Sam, I gave you the thing to do because I was pissed you were taking, you know, blah blah blah."

Mallory: "Well said, Dad."

Leo: "Anyway, I"m sorry about that." 

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

• Congressman Skinner reappears, last seen in Mr. Willis Of Ohio. While that episode seemed to indicate Skinner might be a Republican, his congratulations to Leo about the banking bill certainly implies he's a fellow Democrat.

• You may recall President Bartlet calling out to Mrs. Landingham, "What's next?" at the end of Pilot. "What's next" will become a staple of The West Wing ... it's really incorporated here, one time by the President and in another scene Leo says it to Margaret.
• Another thread, which has been developing over several episodes, is the endearing way Jed finishes up a conversation. He will tell the other person to "Now go away" or "Get out of here" as a way to wrap up a discussion. He does it to CJ in this episode. Believe me, it's much softer and friendlier than it sounds in print.
• The developing tension between President Bartlet and Vice President Hoynes is going to continue, with some major plot elements being brought to the fore (perhaps first in He Shall, From Time To Time ..., but there's plenty more to come after that).
• Speaking of which, remember CJ giving Hoynes a pretty sharp-eyed look after he's caused trouble for the President in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc"? Well, she's starting to make a thing out of that. Check this out after Hoynes sharply responds to her questioning about leaking the Cabinet meeting. (There's a whole post-Sorkin back story concerning these two in later seasons, but ... yeah.)

DC location shots    

• For the second episode in a row, there are no DC location shots. The entire episode takes place in just under 24 hours, entirely in the White House except for Leo and Mallory having breakfast at his hotel.

References to real people    

• President Ulysses S. Grant is mentioned, as the creator of Yellowstone National Park.
• The Chinese opera is taking place at the Kennedy Center, which in real life is named after President John F. Kennedy (who we also heard had an aircraft carrier named after him in the previous episode).

End credits freeze frame: Toby listening to Mandy rant about the banking bill.