Six Meetings Before Lunch - TWW S1E18

Original airdate: April 5, 2000

Written by: Aaron Sorkin (17)

Directed by: Clark Johnson (1)

Synopsis

• The good mood from Mendoza's confirmation to the Supreme Court proves short-lived when word breaks of a nominee for assistant attorney general's support for slavery reparations. Sam and Mallory argue over a position paper on school vouchers, Mandy asks Toby for help on getting new pandas for the National Zoo, and Zoey gets in a bit of hot water when a friend gets arrested at a party.

"We're meant to keep doing better. We're meant to keep discussing and debating and we're meant to read books by great historical scholars and then talk about them, which is why I lent my name to a dust cover."

There's always a lot going on when you're running a country. In fact, you hardly ever get the time to just sit back and savor your victories - or, at least, any more time than it takes to lip-sync to "The Jackal." And that's what we get in Six Meetings Before Lunch. The administration has put Roberto Mendoza on the Supreme Court, following a rather bruising confirmation battle and giving the Bartlet presidency a much-needed win, but even as the celebration goes on, complications pile up elsewhere.

The Mendoza confirmation is seen as such a major victory for a star-crossed administration that Toby, for one, puts a halt to the happiness until the vote count is final:

Toby: "Fifty-one votes is what we see on those screens before a drop of wine is swallowed. Because there's a little thing called what, Bonnie?"

Bonnie: "Tempting fate?"

Toby: "Tempting fate, is what it's called. In the three months this man has been on my radar screen I have aged 48 years, and this is my day of jubilee, I will not have it screwed up by what, Bonnie?"

Bonnie: "Tempting fate."

Toby: "By tempting fate! These things take patience. These things take skill, these things take luck. In the 15 months we've been in office what kind of luck have we had, Ginger?"

Ginger: "Bad luck."

Toby: "What kind of luck?"

Ginger: "Very bad luck."

(Don't get me started - again - on the list of achievements for the Bartlet administration since we embarked on this TV voyage 17 episodes ago ... just accept Aaron Sorkin's contrivance that it's been nothing but bad luck, Congressional opposition, and directionless drifting, and he'll clean all that up in a couple of episodes.)

This "day of jubilee" brings much rejoicing and celebration to the White House, bringing CJ to the fore for her acclaimed rendition of lip-syncing to Ronny Jordan's "The Jackal." (In real life, Allison Janney actually liked to do this in her trailer on the Warner Brothers lot, entertaining castmates as they waited between shots. Once Sorkin learned of her lip-syncing skills, he wrote it into this episode as something CJ likes to do at celebratory occasions - and then it was never mentioned again). Now, while it's obvious CJ (and Janney) are having a ball with this bit:

It's kind of creepy to see the vibe of the men, mostly, gathered around to ogle at CJ as she does her thing. I mean ... what kind of late-night club would these guys be doing this at, if you know what I mean? Here's Toby blowing cigar smoke-rings while Josh does the underbite-head groove:

And Sam doing a young White House lawyer's idea of a street-smart urban dance move while Leo grins manically:

I know "The Jackal" is a fan favorite - and Janney is awesome, she nails it, she's enjoying the heck out of it - but it's not exactly an example of proper workplace behavior, now, is it?

But watching "The Jackal" is about all the time the staff gets to enjoy their Supreme Court confirmation victory. Already there's trouble brewing with another nominee yet to go in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as Bartlet's man for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights has written a blurb on the dust jacket of a book calling for slavery reparations. Mallory also blows up at Sam after reading a paper he wrote supporting school vouchers, which sends public tax money to private schools:

Sam: "We're gonna watch CJ do "The Jackal," then we're going to get a late dinner, after which I may or may not kiss you good night cause there is something going on between us, Mallory. But frankly I don't think you're doing a very good job on your part so I've decided to take over."

Mallory: "You're taking over."

Sam: "Yes. Let's go."

Mallory: "Not much chance."

Sam: "I didn't think so, but you gotta give me credit for trying."

Mallory: "Good night, there, skipper." (She leaves)

Sam: "Apparently, you don't have to give me credit for trying."

Adding to the complications, Mandy (yep, she's reappeared) is on the warpath trying to get some new panda bears for the National Zoo. With the last surviving panda at the zoo recently dying, thousands of letters have come to the White House asking about a replacement, and media-savvy Mandy wants to grab that wave of public interest to score some points - but again, Josh is having none of it:

Mandy: "You guys have gotten something more than 3000 letters in the last ten days wanting to know when we're getting the new bear for the National Zoo."

Josh: "What happened to the old bear?"

Mandy: "Lum-Lum?"

Josh: "Okay."

Mandy: "She died two weeks ago."

Josh: "Did I kill her?"

Mandy: "No."

Josh: "So what are you talking to me for?"

Mandy: "Three thousand letters in ten days."

Josh: "Did I write any of them?"

Mandy: "No."

Josh: "So, once again --"

And then Zoey gets in on things. When she's ambushed by a reporter (on campus, where he's not supposed to be) about her attendance at a frat party where a friend of hers was arrested on drug charges, she lies about the circumstances of being there, and then later repeats the lie to CJ. The lies have the potential of ramping up a non-story into something possibly embarrassing to Zoey and the President.

Well. At least they had one "day of jubilee" to celebrate.

Cleaning up all these issues - or, at least, the best that can be done to clean them up in the course of one episode - just takes us through the morning of the day after Mendoza's confirmation, hence the "Before Lunch" part of the title. CJ ends up ping-ponging from person to person dousing the fire of Zoey's story and chasing the truth, going from Danny to Charlie to Zoey to Gina to Sam to, finally and memorably, the President himself. As Jed gets all fired up in his wrath at the press, ready to march down to the briefing room and chew them out personally, CJ does just a bit of chewing out herself. She stands up to the President, pointing out that his personal involvement would elevate this nothing story into something newsworthy that the White House doesn't want or need. It's great character development for CJ - while she was nervous about taking Sam's advice to straight-talk the President, she buckles down and does it anyway because it's necessary ("It's your job," Sam tells her. "It's what he needs you to do."). The respect Jed gives her, realizing she was right all along, is quite a step up from how the guys shut CJ out of big events in Lord John Marbury, and this grows the character of CJ and helps set the stage for major storylines in the future of the series. As far as building toward the future, the Secret Service briefing scene and CJ's talk with Gina give us more exposition about the white-supremacist threats toward Charlie and Zoey,  plot points building toward the season finale.

Sam and Mallory have quite a tiff. Mallory, as a public school teacher, has strong opinions against the idea of school vouchers, which pull funding away from public schools in favor of parents choosing to put their children in private schools. After her father gives her a paper Sam wrote in favor of vouchers, she goes right after him - mainly because she can't understand why a high-level liberal Democratic staffer like Sam would ever support such a thing.

Sam gives as good as he gets, even as he's baffled by Mallory's inability to separate policy/work issues from their fledgling personal relationship (nice moments: Mallory's retort of how "snotty" he's acting when he wants to date her, and his reaction; the looks Sam gives Cathy after she scheduled Mallory's meeting, and then when she cancels his meeting on the Hill; Sam's begging CJ for dating advice). But at the end we learn that Sam isn't in favor of vouchers at all - he wrote the paper as opposition prep, giving the administration a look at the other side of an issue as they get ready to debate a situation. So what this seems to prove is Sam loves the argument, the debate, the back-and-forth of discussion, even when at the heart of it, both sides have the same opinion. On the other hand, it shows that Sam really doesn't have much of a clue when it comes to women, as one simple statement to Mallory at the beginning of the episode would have ended this whole fight before it even started (although that wouldn't have been nearly as much fun for Leo).

Let's touch on the Sam/Mallory coupling. Yes, the writers have been making an effort to make them a thing, going back to their comically disastrous meeting in Pilot and Mallory's attempt (doomed by Leo) to take Sam with her to the Chinese opera in Enemies. Yet, we find out here the two haven't actually gone out on a date yet - they were apparently scheduled to the night of the confirmation, but Mallory's reaction to this voucher news torpedoes that. I think they're pretty cute together, but it never really works out, and it's not everybody's favorite plot line (plus, what's going on with Laurie? Haven't heard from her in a while).

The panda plot line doesn't have much there, but considering we're talking about Mandy, that's not so surprising. Mandy's destruction of Toby's rare good mood is pretty humorous, though:

Mandy: "Toby!"

Toby: "Mandy."

Mandy: "You got two seconds?"

Toby: "Madeleine - you are charming and you are brilliant and for you I have all the time in the world."

Mandy: "What's with him?"

Ginger: "It's the day after his day of jubilee."

Bonnie: "He never sustains a good mood this long."

Toby: "Bonnie, you are dedicated and you are beautiful, and Ginger, you are .. other nice things."

What we do get out of the panda story is that Mandy hasn't changed or grown at all over the course of the season. When Toby tells her he's proud of her getting past her usual ways of tweaking Josh, since Josh played her by sending her to Toby over the pandas, she immediately disproves that point by asking Toby to help her cause Josh pain. Just as she was back in Pilot, Mandy is still nothing but a wise-ass continually finding ways to needle her ex-boyfriend. Compare that with the character development we've got out of CJ, or Josh, or Charlie, or even Donna - the writers just can't find a good purpose for Mandy as a character.

The civic-education meat of the episode comes in the Josh/Breckenridge conversation. Jeff Breckenridge, the nominee for the AG civil rights post, sits down with Josh to talk over his support for reparations, a topic which will likely cause him difficulty with his Senate confirmation. I think the whole issue is handled interestingly and thoughtfully, considering the eight to ten minutes the episode has to devote to the topic. Breckenridge lays out the fact that slaves provided an estimated $1.7 trillion worth of unpaid labor, and their descendants are entitled to that "back pay." Josh gets a little offended and defensive about it, pointing out that things such as affirmative action and the Civil Rights Act should give white America credit for something, and he also argues that other groups (such as his Holocaust-survivor grandfather) also have historical grievances.

It really boils down to Breckenridge's point at the end of the conversation, when he has Josh take out a dollar bill and look at the seal on the back, showing an unfinished pyramid with the eye of God looking over it:

Breckenridge: "The seal is meant to be unfinished, because the country's meant to be unfinished. We're meant to keep doing better."

It's a well-written scene, and helps guide the audience as the series points to a kind of leadership-style reset in a couple of episodes. The seeds planted here - the idea that leaders and citizens need to keep striving for improvement and the common good, even if they can't quite see the perfect way to complete that goal - resonate much better (with me, at least) aiming towards the Let Bartlet Be Bartlet "reset" than Sorkin's contrived notion that this administration is weak, treading water, and can't get out of its own way (as it's really done quite a bit over the past 18 episodes). And the wrapup of the discussion, with Josh and Breckenridge heading for lunch with Josh buying as a way to make a step towards those reparations - just spot on (if maybe just a bit obvious).

So while perhaps we can't quite figure out what exactly are the six meetings referred to in the title, we get a well-crafted episode that continues to pull plotlines together as we aim towards the final installments of the season. And we get CJ's performance of "The Jackal," too, so we've got that going for us, which is nice.


Tales Of Interest!

- What exactly are the six meetings before lunch? A couple of obvious ones are the 11:00 meeting Mallory set up with Sam, and Josh's meeting with Jeff Breckenridge (they are heading to lunch afterwards). Mandy's meeting with Toby about the panda is a third, and CJ's Oval Office faceoff with President Bartlet would be a fourth. What are the other two? CJ and Zoey, perhaps? CJ and Charlie? Girardi's canceled meeting with the President actually was lunch, so I don't think that would count. Mallory asking Leo for permission to have lunch with "fascist" Sam is hardly a meeting. Unless you give CJ the credit for three of these meetings, I don't think you can get to six.

- This is a good episode for the women in the West Wing - Bonnie, Ginger, and Cathy all get good lines, and Carol and Margaret get a nice scene each, too. Particularly Margaret, bewildered by Toby's good mood:

Margaret: "Hey, Toby."

Toby: "Hey, there, Margaret."

Margaret: "Are you okay?"

Toby: "Yeah, why wouldn't I be okay?"

Margaret: "You don't usually say, 'Hey, there, Margaret.'"

Toby: (chuckling) "What do I usually say?"

Margaret: "You usually growl something inaudible."

Toby: "Not today."

Margaret: "I see."

Toby: "You, on the other hand, should turn that frown upside down."

Margaret: "I'm sorry?"

Toby: "Let a smile be your umbrella, Margaret."

Margaret: "Now you're scaring the crap out of me, Toby."

- As the gang is watching and waiting for the 51 votes securing Mendoza's confirmation, they are all watching C-SPAN 2, the public affairs cable channel that covers the Senate. It's just something different from the old CND cable news standby, I guess.

- Mandy's discussion of panda bears at the National Zoo is, of course, based in fact. China first gave a pair of pandas to the U.S. in 1972, with a second pair on loan from the Chinese arriving in December 2000 (about eight months after this episode aired) following the deaths of Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing. Mandy is confused on her story, though - she tells Josh that Lum-Lum, a female, died of loneliness two weeks ago after her mate died. Talking to Toby, though, Toby corrects the name to Hsing-Hsing, a male, which Mandy says died "earlier this year" after his mate died. Hsing-Hsing is the name of one of the original pandas given to the zoo in 1972, and he indeed died in November 1999 (about five months prior to this episode), although his partner, Ling-Ling, had died seven years prior.

- Toby makes a direct reference to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 when discussing how the pandas could improve China's relationship with America:

Toby: "I think it would be a good idea as a symbol to signal that China is serious about a relationship with us, if they stopped running over their citizens with tanks."

- We're back to having items in Gail's fishbowl relating to the episode. This time it appears to be two pandas.

- As President Bartlet prepares to storm out of the Oval Office to chew out the press, Martin Sheen brings out his jacket flip again. Sheen suffered an injury to his left arm when he was born, limiting the mobility of that arm, and causing him to come up with a unique way to put on a coat jacket:

- Director Clark Johnson first became known as an actor (Homicide: Life On The Street, The Wire) but also got his directing career going in the mid- to-late 1990s. He's since directed episodes of many TV series, including The Shield and Homeland.



Quotes    

Josh: "A panda's what I think it is, right?"

Donna: "Yes."

Josh: "Little Australian thing, eats the bark off a koala tree?"

Donna: "That's a koala bear I believe you're describing." 

-----

Mallory: "Don't play dumb with me."

Sam: "No, honestly, I am dumb. Most of the time I'm playing smart." 

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

• Continuing the ongoing saga about the timelines of the dramatic TV series and the real-life calendar, Toby says two things in the opening scene: that they've been in office 15 months, and that it's been three months since Mendoza got on his "radar screen." The 15 months is just about right for an episode airing in early April (with the inauguration in January 1999, the 15-month mark would be April 20). However, The Short List (where Mendoza was introduced to everyone, especially Toby) aired in November, making it about five months since Toby would have begun work on the confirmation.

• We clearly see a fire burning in the Mural Room fireplace. Keep that in mind, as this might pay off in a scene down the line.

• The Secret Service agent called "Mike," who is on Zoey's detail with Gina at Georgetown and is in the briefing led by Ron Butterfield, is played by Kenneth Choi. You might recognize him from Captain America: The First Avenger.

• Jeff Breckenridge is played by Carl Lumbly (Cagney & Lacey, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, the Justice League TV series, Supergirl).

• We learn Josh's dad Noah was a partner at the law firm DeBevoise and Plimpton (a real law firm, where the episode posits Breckenridge met Josh's father while working there as a summer associate while in law school), and that he died the night of the Illinois primary (this is Aaron Sorkin laying some groundwork for an upcoming story). We also learn Josh's grandfather had been a prisoner at the Birkenau concentration camp during World War II (and we get a look at a picture, apparently of Josh and his grandfather).

DC location shots    

• There are no DC location shots in this episode.

References to real people   

• PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer can be seen on the television behind Leo in his office.

• Sam mentions Shakespeare in his rave review of CJ's rendition of "The Jackal."

• Speaking of "The Jackal", it's a real song, recorded by Ronny Jordan (with vocals by Dana Bryant) and released in 1993.

• Donna compares her poor handwriting to surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

• Breckenridge brings up Special Field Order Number 15, the basis for "40 acres and a mule" issued by General William Sherman during the Civil War. He also mentions President Andrew Johnson, who rescinded the order.

• Ron Butterfield mentions the Smithsonian in his briefing to the Secret Service agents, which was originally funded by the estate of British scientist James Smithson.

• President Bartlet is reading Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, a list of maxims copied and published by a young George Washington.

End credits freeze frame: Toby opening the champagne at the Mendoza celebration.