Original airdate: February 9, 2000
Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (13)
Story by: Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. (4) & Paul Redford (2) and Aaron Sorkin
Directed by: Thomas Schlamme (4)
Synopsis
- Over the course of a weekend, President Bartlet struggles with the decision of whether or not to commute the execution of a federal prisoner. Josh has to give bad news to the fiery campaign manager for a California congressional candidate.
"We make it very hard to kill anyone in this country, Toby."
"It should be impossible."
"But it's not."
"But it should be."
This is a rather unusual episode of The West Wing. Right off the bat, there's no "previously on" section of clips from prior episodes, which signals this one pretty much stands alone and doesn't tie in with the ongoing threads of the series. Additionally, there are only two plotlines in this episode, as opposed to the multiple storylines we usually see.
But "unusual" doesn't mean "bad." Quite the contrary - this is a top-notch example of the series, one if its best ever (in my opinion), with some incredibly fine writing and great performances, centered around the controversial topic of capital punishment. When the Supreme Court unexpectedly denies the appeal of Simon Cruz, convicted of two murders in federal court, the administration has only a weekend to decide if the President will use his Constitutional power to commute the death sentence. President Bartlet, a staunch Roman Catholic (as is Martin Sheen himself), personally opposes the death penalty, but realizes the political problems with having the executive branch step in to override the decision of the judicial branch on purely personal motives. The President struggles with the weight of the decision, as do the other characters in the West Wing. Sam, Toby, even Jed's old parish priest from New Hampshire urge him to grant clemency, to not use the state's power to take a life. He even brings Joey Lucas, a congressional campaign manager meeting with Josh, into the Oval Office to ask her opinion. The other side of the issue is revealed in a powerful moment between the President and Charlie:
President: "What happened to the guy who shot your mother?"
Charlie: "They haven't caught him yet, sir."
President: "If they did, would you want to see him executed? (long pause) Killing a police officer's a capital crime, I figured you must have thought about it."
Charlie: "Yes, sir."
President: "And?"
Charlie: "I wouldn't want to see him executed, Mr. President. I'd want to do it myself."
Toby's rabbi (spurred by one of Cruz' attorneys) gives an anti-death penalty sermon hoping to spur Toby to influence the President toward commutation; Sam gives up a sailing weekend to dig through law books and court records, trying to find a solid reason to grant clemency; Lucas (as a pacifist Quaker) gives her view that the state shouldn't take a life; CJ battles with the personal connections of the execution: "I wish I didn't know his mother's name was Sophia." By the time the President calls on Father Cavanaugh, his mind is already made up - it seems he wants his childhood priest to help soothe his soul from the results of that decision, rather than take the priest's advice on what to do.
That is a great scene from Season 1. Karl Malden (in his last performance, as he died a few months after filming) delivers a terrific portrayal of Father Cavanaugh. When Jed tells him how frustrated he is with not getting wisdom after praying for it, Cavanaugh tells the story of the man who ignored a radio report about a flood, then turned away a rowboat and a rescue helicopter because he knew God would save him. After he drowned, the man asked St. Peter why God never stepped in, which leads to the punch line, "I sent a radio report, a rowboat, and a helicopter. What the hell are you doing here?" After which Father Cavanaugh tells the President:
"He sent you a priest, a rabbi, and a Quaker, Mr. President, not to mention His son, Jesus Christ. What do you want from him?"
(This, of course, brings us to the question of how did Father Cavanaugh know about the other two characters? It seems unlikely he would have been told about Joey Lucas' visit in the Oval Office, let alone the rabbi's sermon to Toby. But it's still a great line.)
Schlamme works some great directing magic again in this episode. At the start of the final scene, while President Bartlet is gazing out a window in the Oval Office while holding a rosary, a ghostly image of a man preparing for execution is shown, like a reflection in the window:
It's as if Jed is watching the execution right in front of him, with the prisoner's mother and other officials on hand. Then, after receiving word of the execution being carried out, Jed kneels for confession with Father Cavanaugh - kneeling right on the Presidential seal on the floor of the Oval Office. It's a tremendous illustration of President Bartlet's conflict, his personal religious beliefs and the weight of leading a nation of diverse thought and creed. The camera also pulls up during the shot, in a manner reminiscent of the closing shot of Pilot (also directed by Schlamme).
The other storyline of the episode is considerably more lighthearted, and introduces the fabulous Marlee Matlin as Joey Lucas. Her character will reappear numerous times over the course of the series. Here she's campaign manager for Bill O'Dwyer, a candidate for Congress in California's 46th district. He's running a strong race against the Republican incumbent, a cartoonishly conservative and xenophobic figure. However, the White House and the DNC have decided they'd rather keep the cartoon in his seat over an "empty shirt" like O'Dwyer, knowing that the racist and offensive things the Republican will say are good for fundraising.
(On a side note, this kind of caused me to shudder in today's political environment. Josh mentions the Republican saying something about "brown people coming across the border" being good for the DNC to raise a couple of million dollars - yet Congressman like Steve King and others have gained significant power in recent years with viewpoints far worse than that ("calves the size of cantaloupes" anybody?)
The meeting between Josh and Lucas (and Kenny, her sign-language translator) is played for laughs, since Josh, to put it lightly, is not recovering well from a bachelor party the night before.
That's Josh sleeping on the floor of his office - he didn't go home because he couldn't find his keys, or remember where he lived. Donna tries to sober him up with some coffee:
Which he immediately drools over himself. So in order to get his clothes cleaned before the meeting, he has to wear Sam's foul-weather sailing gear ... which is what he has on when Joey and Kenny barge in, yelling at him about the DNC cutting their funding.
Josh: "Tell you what, let's just take a deep breath for a second while I try and remember, you know, where I am right now."
Joey (signing): "Are you drunk?"
Josh: "I have a very delicate system."
Which is a pretty funny throwback to the afternoon before, when Josh is talking with Donna while he gets ready to leave for the party:
Donna: "Are you going to behave yourself tonight?"
Josh: "It's a bachelor party."
Donna: "I'm saying - "
Josh: "I can hold my liquor."
Donna: "No, you can't."
Josh: "I can drink with the best of 'em, Donna."
Donna: "You can't drink with any of 'em, Josh."
Josh: "I'm in politics, okay? I can drink."
Donna: "You have a very delicate system."
Josh: "I wish you'd stop telling people that, it makes me sound like an idiot."
Anyway, while Lucas doesn't get what she came for (even the President declines to offer help to her candidate), Josh comes to her hotel before she leaves to offer a word of encouragement. The President had told her if she came up with a better candidate, the party would be willing to work with her. It turns out, Josh tells her, the better candidate the President would like to work with is Lucas herself.
(The hotel bar scene has a continuity mistake. When Lucas and Kenny first arrive to talk to Josh, there's nothing on the bar:)
(A couple of lines later, money has magically appeared:)
(And a few lines after that, Josh reaches into his pocket and pulls out some bills to toss on the bar - which, as we saw above, already has money on it:)
Just two storylines, pretty much self-contained - but in-depth, involving, well-written and very well-acted (Sheen and Allison Janney are particularly great, with terrific guest appearances from Matlin and Malden). It's a fantastic episode in a stretch of great television here in Season 1.
Tales Of Interest!
- Martin Sheen's performance in this episode earned him an Emmy nomination for Best Lead Actor in a Drama Series. He lost to James Galdofini of The Sopranos. Sheen would end up being nominated for his role as Jed Bartlet six times over seven seasons, but he never actually won the Emmy.
- I mentioned in Pilot how the plot device of the switched pagers between Sam and Laurie already seemed a bit anachronistic in late 1999. It's a few months later now, and Toby gets paged while he's in temple, and Sam makes a point of leaving his pager behind before he sets out for his sailing weekend.
- Speaking of Sam's sailing weekend (and Josh's bachelor party and Donna's shopping plans) - did it seem odd to anyone else that the entire West Wing staff appeared to be taking the weekend off? In today's 24-hour news cycle world, it just felt wrong to have this notion of the bullpen area being dark and empty over a Saturday and Sunday, which is kind of what it looked like was going to happen. Obviously, even White House staffers have to have regular days off, but you'd still have somebody there, right?
- The Supreme Court scene: We know from The Short List that there's still a vacancy, leaving eight justices on the court until Mendoza is confirmed (and Sam mentions the denial of the appeal turned out 5-3). The initial shot indeed shows eight, but it's interesting to see the actors cast to sit as the justices are intended to remind us of at least some of the real-life Supreme Court justices of 2000. Here's someone definitely intended to resemble Ruth Bader Ginsburg:
(The man next to her doesn't really look like one of the justices at the time, although he might be supposed to represent David Souter.) Further down the panning shot is an obvious reference to Antonin Scalia (and perhaps John Paul Stevens next to him):
And the supposed Chief Justice reading the ruling on the denial of the appeal looks quite a bit like Chief Justice William Rehnquist:
I just thought it was interesting to have such visual representations of the real-life justices, when in the series universe we know we've had one justice recently step down. The other actual justices at the time were Clarence Thomas, Sandra Day O'Connor, Stephen Breyer, and Anthony Kennedy; the initial shot of the entire Supreme Court didn't appear to show an African-American (Thomas) or another woman besides Ginsburg (O'Connor).
- As mentioned, this was acclaimed actor Karl Malden's final role. He had retired from acting a few years prior, but answered the call for this character on The West Wing. Interestingly, the pocket Bible he takes out while preparing to hear President Bartlet's confession is the exact same Bible Malden used for his Oscar-nominated role as Father Barry in On The Waterfront.
- Just because I got a good shot of this: Here's the computer screen at the security checkpoint when Sam is signing out for the weekend (or, is he???!!?!?). It reads "WHITE HOUSE INTERNAL INFORMATION SERVICE" across the top bar, then inside the large window it reads "AUTHORIZATION CODE REQUIRED - INTRANET MULTI-VIEW DISTRIBUTION."
- It appears there might be something representing a dead fish floating in Gail's bowl. This would certainly fit in with the capital punishment storyline ... it's kind of hard to see, but it does look a lot like a dead fish.
(This would also be a good place to mention how sick Allison Janney was while shooting this episode. You can definitely tell she's not feeling well in the quick scene where she's talking with Carol walking through the bullpen. In the DVD commentary Sorkin and Schlamme say the above scene, with CJ and Mandy, had to be reshot because Janney felt so sick the first time they shot it that her emotions overtook her playing of the lines talking about the execution and Cruz' mother.)
- When the President checks his watch in the final scene and sees the second hand tick towards midnight, the date on the watch reads "21." The only Sunday that was the 21st in the entire year of 2000 fell in May - considering the snowfall outside the White House at the time, that seems implausible. Perhaps it could be fanwanked that the date turned over early, before the watch actually ticked past midnight, as February 20th was indeed a Sunday in 2000.
Quotes
There are so many excellent stretches of dialogue in this episode. I could just print the entire script here, and pretty much all of it would be, to quote Ferris Bueller, "choice." It's just damn good writing. I'll try to limit myself.
Zane: "You are going to go to the President, you're going to tell him he can't run from this one. He's gotta consider my client, you're going to tell him that."
Sam: "I don't talk to the President that way, Bobby, nobody talks to the President that way, and I've got to tell you not that many people talk to me that way anymore."
Zane: "I got a guy 48 hours away from death, you want to make this personal?" (a reference to Sam & Bobby's high school days, when Bobby used to beat Sam up)
-----
Leo: "Why Monday morning?"
Sam: "What do you mean?"
Leo: "The court denied the appeal, why isn't he being executed at midnight tonight?"
Sam: "We don't execute people between sundown Friday and sundown Sunday."
Leo: "Why?"
Sam: "Hard as it is to believe -"
Leo: "You're kidding me."
Sam: "No."
Leo: "We don't execute people on the Sabbath."
Sam: "No."
Leo: "Well, that's about the most bizarre thing I've ever heard."
Sam: "Leo, I think you're going to find as you go through this weekend that there's virtually no part of this discussion that isn't bizarre."
------
President: "CJ, look -"
CJ: "Don't start with me, Mr. President."
President: "I was helping pass the time, I was being entertaining as well as instructive."
CJ: "I am back in America now, I have rights, I'm no longer belted down next to the passenger from hell."
Leo: "Welcome back, Mr. President."
President: "Leo! What are you doing here?"
Leo: "I needed a minute, sir. How was the flight?"
President: "Great."
CJ (simultaneously): "It was gruesome. If you look out the left side of the cabin you'll see the fjords. Then we got a history of the fjords, then we got a quiz on the fjords. Do you have any idea how much I'd like to dress you up in lederhosen and dropkick you into a fjord?"
President: "Ah, you don't know how to have fun while we're traveling."
------
Mandy: "What are the stats on federal executions and the President stepping in?"
Sam: " '63 was the last execution."*
Mandy: "Who was the last President to commute the sentence?"
Josh: "Lincoln."**
Mandy: "Abraham?"
Josh: "No, Bert Lincoln. Mandy, what are you -?"
* While at the time of this episode the last federal execution was in 1963 (in Iowa, no less), three people have been executed for federal crimes since; Timothy McVeigh and Juan Raul Garza in 2001, and Louis Jones, Jr. in 2003. Elements of the Garza case were actually incorporated into Simon Cruz' story in this episode.
** Again, true at the time, but Bill Clinton commuted one death penalty and Barack Obama commuted two others.
------
Joey Lucas (signing): "Well, maybe if your head wasn't so far up your -"
Josh: "Hey!"
Lucas (speaking): "I want to speak to the President!"
Josh: "Hey, lunatic lady! Trust me when I tell you there's absolutely no way that you are going to see the President!"
President (appearing in the open door): "Hey, Josh."
------
CJ: "Carol, good. I need biographical information on Simon Cruz."
Carol: "Is it C-R-U-Z?"
CJ: "I don't know."
Carol: "What kind of biographical information?"
CJ: "We're going to need to know how to spell his name, for sure."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- One of Simon Cruz' attorneys (and a former high school nemesis of Sam's), Bobby Zane, is played by Noah Emmerich. While he currently has an important role in the FX series The Americans, I remember him best as Jim Carrey's best friend in The Truman Show. Interestingly, he was also a roommate of Joshua Malina's while attending Yale - Malina will join the cast of The West Wing in Season 4.
- Marlee Matlin, who plays Joey Lucas, first claimed fame in the film Children of a Lesser God. She has numerous film and TV appearances, and continues as a recurring character on The West Wing. However, while in this episode she was campaign manager for a Congressional candidate, in the future she will be a pollster.
- In this shot, we see two binders labeled "Tobacco" on top of this filing cabinet. The Bartlet administration's dealings with the tobacco industry will become an ongoing storyline in the future, particularly for Josh.
DC location shots
- The early scene between Sam and Bobby Zane certainly appears as if it were shot in a governmental building. However, as Sorkin and Schlamme reveal in their commentary, this was actually filmed in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.
- The commentary mentions how Schlamme had to frame the shot to not reveal the dinosaur skeleton displayed, just off the right side of the shot in the rotunda. Here's a photo of the room from a different angle (the passageway the scene was filmed in appears to be at the back of this photo):
- Standing in for Andrews Air Force Base for the Air Force One scene was Dulles Airport, outside Washington, DC. And standing in for Air Force One was a Virgin Airways Boeing 747, which was digitally turned into the presidential aircraft in postproduction.
References to real people
- In various discussions about the death penalty, we hear references to former Supreme Court justice Harry Blackmun, and philosophers St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant.
- Stanford University is mentioned as one of Joey Luca's places of study: the school was founded by Leland Stanford in 1885.
- Product placement - Josh says he looks like the "Gorton's fisherman" in Sam's foul weather gear; President Bartlet wears a Notre Dame sweatshirt on Saturday; it appears there's a Bose Wave Radio on the nightstand next to the President's bed.
End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet listening to Toby in the Oval Office:
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