In The Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part I - TWW S2E1

Original airdate: October 4, 2000

Written by: Aaron Sorkin (22)

Directed by: Thomas Schlamme (6)

Synopsis

• Season 2 starts where Season 1's cliffhanger ended, with the presidential motorcade speeding away from the chaos of the Rosslyn shooting. We discover both President Bartlet and Josh have been shot, one much more seriously than the other. While emergency room medical personnel work to save their lives, staff members think back three years to the beginnings of Jed's presidential campaign and how they came together.

"Look what happened."

I've said it before and I'll stand by my opinion - Season 2 of The West Wing ranks as one of the best, most well-crafted, and consistently excellent seasons of any television series anywhere. And it starts with another terrific Aaron Sorkin script, a two-part episode showing us the outcome of the Season 1 cliffhanger shooting while also flashing back to the beginnings of how Bartlet's staff came together. (Much like season-ending cliffhangers, two-part season premieres sort of became a thing for Sorkin and The West Wing.)

We're thrown right into the situation from the season finale, with the Presidential motorcade speeding across the Arlington Memorial Bridge away from Rosslyn. President Bartlet and Ron Butterfield (the incredibly awesome Michael O'Neill) have a back-and-forth about the whereabouts of Zoey and the condition of Ron's hand that feels real and true, the exact kind of frantic conversation that could take place in the aftermath of an assassination attempt - until Butterfield notices blood coming from the President's mouth and finds more blood underneath his jacket. Instantly the audience starts with the knowledge that this is the big reveal from last season's cliffhanger, that the President has been shot and is in danger.

Then we're taken back to Rosslyn (remember, the production had to set up again at the same location as the previous year to shoot these scenes, since when What Kind Of Day Has It Been was filmed Sorkin didn't know who was going to end up shot at the end of the night). We see CJ being treated for a bump on the head, Sam, Charlie, and Toby, who is searching for Josh. He finds him, all right - shot in the chest and bleeding out on the walkway. Sorkin has faked us out, and we have two gunshot victims to worry about.

The story of the night, the rushing of the President and Josh to the emergency room, the Bartlet family and staff making their way to the hospital, the two undergoing surgery - that's the current running plotline that takes us through the episode. Adding to the chaos of that storyline is unusual troop movement in Iraq that might require an American response, but there's uncertainty about exactly who is in charge and the failure to draw on the 25th Amendment provisions for handing over presidential power. Adding to the story of the night's events, and more importantly to the series, we see through flashbacks the beginnings of how we got here, how Jed Bartlet and Leo McGarry put together a staff that built a successful campaign ending with Bartlet in the White House.

That's the real meat of the episode, of both episodes, really. We get to see the characters we got to know over the first season in a new light, at the outset of the Bartlet story: Josh, working with Hoynes on his presidential campaign, but not fully convinced this is the "real thing"; Sam, about to make partner at a top law firm, where his biggest (and unfulfilling) priority is creating oil tanker liability barriers to protect oil companies; and Toby, certain he's about to be canned for his failure to get the Bartlet campaign to catch fire. Not to mention a Bartlet making uninspired speeches to a VFW hall full of half-interested New Hampshire residents.

Josh tries to get Hoynes to get out in front of big issues (saving Social Security, to be exact) but ends up getting shot down for base, electoral-politics reasons. Leo shows up asking Josh to go to New Hampshire later that week to hear Jed Bartlet speak. He asks as an old friend of Josh's father, but Leo always knows - he knows Josh isn't satisfied with the Hoynes campaign, and he knows Josh is a top-notch asset for any candidate. Their discussion winds up with what is actually a pretty good slam on the 1988 Michael Dukakis campaign (which didn't actually happen in The West Wing universe, but we get who Josh is referring to):

Josh: "The Democrats aren't gonna nominate another liberal academic former governor from New England. I mean, we're dumb, but we're not that dumb."

Leo."Nah. I think we're exactly that dumb."

On the way north Josh stops in Manhattan to track down Sam, who's working at the second-biggest law firm in New York protecting oil companies from liability on their semi-seaworthy tankers. It turns out these two guys are old friends as well, and Josh has been trying to get Sam to join him on Hoynes' campaign as a speechwriter. Sam, though, is a week away from making partner and has wedding plans for the following year, but it turns out his biggest obstacle is the fact Josh isn't really all-in for Hoynes. Could this Bartlet fellow be the one?:

Josh: "If I see the real thing in Nashua - should I tell you about it?"

Sam: "You won't have to."

Josh: "Why?"

Sam: "You got a pretty bad poker face."

SPOILER ALERT: Sam gets to see Josh's bad poker face in the next episode, but you already figured that out.

Meanwhile, in Nashua Toby is day-drinking at a bar because he knows he's about to be fired. The Bartlet campaign isn't doing much, some 48 points behind Hoynes in polling for the Democratic nomination, and the campaign staff that's been working for Bartlet over the years isn't too happy with his work (as he tells a woman at the bar, even though he's very good at being a professional political operative that's run campaigns for city council, two congressional runs, a Senate campaign, a gubernatorial run and a national campaign, he's never had one of his candidates actually win). The biggest sticking point is Bartlet's vote against a bill while he was in Congress that would have increased prices paid to New England dairy farmers. The old staff want Jed to obfuscate and backtrack to placate the New Hampshire voters, while Toby (and Leo) just want him to tell the truth:

Cal: "Do you enjoy losing?"

Toby: "Not that much, no, but then again I don't actually have a lot to compare it to, so ..."

When Jed is asked the question, he pauses, then lets it all hang out:

Jed: "Yeeahup. I screwed you on that one."

Farmer: "I'm sorry?"

Jed: "I screwed you, you got hosed. [...he goes on to make some points about growing childhood poverty...] Let me put it this way - I voted against the bill cause I didn't want to make it hard for people to buy milk. I stopped some money from flowing into your pocket. If that angers you, if you resent me, I completely respect that. But if you expect different from the President of the United States, you should vote for someone else."

Which finally causes Josh to turn his attention away from the crossword puzzle (right at the moment "I screwed you on that one").

And causes the Bartlet campaign staff to direct even more ire at Toby, until Leo unexpectedly turns the tables and gives it all to Toby:

Leo: "Jerry, Cal, Mac, Steve - you're fired."

Cal: "What?"

Toby: "What?"

Leo: "Don't screw up."

(This picture doesn't fully depict Toby's surprised reaction. Boy, Richard Schiff is outstanding in this episode.)

And the flashback part of the episode draws to a close on the streets of Nashua, with Jed railing against Leo for firing all "his people" and Leo maintaining it's time to build their own team:

Jed: "You know, I got elected to Congress by this state, this state sent me to Congress three times and then elected me Governor, all without your help. Don't start!"

Leo: "No, seriously, that's, that's a real political accomplishment considering your family founded this state."

Jed: "Hey -"

Leo: "Were you even opposed in any of those elections?"

Leo then finishes the conversation off by challenging Jed to be the best candidate, the best man for the job that he can be:

Leo: "They say a good man can't get elected President. I don't believe that. Do you? [...] This is the time of Jed Bartlet, my old friend. You're going to open your mouth and lift houses off the ground. Whole houses, clear off the ground."

Back in the current course of events, the President's wound turns out to be minor and quickly dealt with, but not without Abbey informing the anesthesiologist that he's now the 15th person to know about Jed's MS - and that's a topic that's going to hang over this entire season. However, during the procedure, steps were never taken to actually transfer presidential power to the Vice President; and when a Situation Room meeting is required to address Iraqi troop movement, the question of who can order a change in defense levels is an open one. And that's a topic that ties into the previous one.

Josh, meanwhile, is in much worse condition, with a collapsed lung and a damaged pulmonary artery, requiring a 12- to 14-hour surgery. The entire situation has the staff out of sorts and staggering through the night - poor Donna, racing to the hospital to happily learn the President is going to be fine, only to then get the news of Josh's condition:

(The confusion and emotion of the exchange between Toby and Donna - "Donna, Josh was hit." "Hit with what?" - is so well written and well acted. Great scene.)

Let me quickly mention Gina Toscano and her frustration at being unable to remember all the details about the accomplice on the ground. Jorja Fox did a wonderful job of bringing Gina's professionalism and her subdued anger at herself into play - even the fact that her spotting the shooters initially probably saved lives, when she couldn't remember exactly what the accomplice's ball cap looked like, she felt like she had failed in her duty. Speaking of Gina, take a look at the incredible take from 2:03 to 3:25 in the teaser - it's just a minute and twenty seconds, you might say, but it's a single take with a Steadicam moving from CJ and a medic, to CJ looking at a shot-out car window, then talking to Sam, to Gina bursting past them to talk to another Secret Service agent, all with extras moving through the background and foreground and lights shining ... it's an incredible logistical feat, while not quite the long unbroken shot through the hotel from Five Votes Down, still damn impressive.

Before we wrap up the episode, a shout-out to the debut of National Security Advisor Nancy McNally, played by the wonderful Anna Deavere Smith. Nancy is going to be around throughout the rest of the series, and you won't find a more badass take-no-prisoners adviser than she.

Interestingly enough, Smith had roles in the White House-set movies Dave and Sorkin's own The American President prior to being cast in The West Wing. She also got to deliver this line in this episode (real-life foreshadowing):

Nancy: "It's worth mentioning that at this moment we do not know the whereabouts of about a half dozen cell leaders, including Bin Laden."

That's the only mention of Osama bin Laden in The West Wing, in a world in which 9/11 never happened, but this mention comes almost a full year before the actual attack.

Part I of this two-parter draws to a close with the President and Leo looking through a window as the doctors operate on Josh, his life in the balance, while in the flashback sequences an unsettled Jed has put his trust in Leo to put together a staff to help him win the White House. Will Part II bring us closure on any of this? As Toby might say: "I'm just guessing - I'm pretty drunk."


Tales Of Interest!

- Continuity between scenes - things like costumes, hair, props - are tough enough while shooting one episode. When the production staff had to go back to Rosslyn to recreate the scene from What Kind Of Day Has It Been several months later, that must have been a continuity nightmare.

First of all, here's the landscaping from the end of Season 1, with yellow flowers along the walkway (Ron Butterfield, on the right, is right next to the spot where Josh is discovered after being shot):

And here's the exact same area when they filmed this episode. You'll notice the flowers are now red:

Sam and CJ appear to have gotten their hair cut and styled sometime during the assassination attempt.
Here they are from the end of Season 1:

And now in this episode (Sam seems to have changed the side he parts his hair on):

- The credits for Season 2 have changed somewhat. Janel Moloney is now added to the starring cast (yay, Donna!), while Moira Kelly has disappeared (the last we saw of Mandy was her walking down the hallway after talking the President into taking his jacket off during the town hall prep meeting). There's also some different shots mixed in, including a new headshot of Allison Janney, and the removal of the photo with the entire staff (including Mandy) talking with the President in the Oval Office. Rob Lowe remains first credited, with Hill, Janney, Moloney, Schiff, Spencer, and Whitford following in alphabetical order, ending with "and Martin Sheen."

- The basic elements of President Bartlet's shooting storyline were drawn directly from the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981. In both cases the wounds to the President were not discovered until he was in the limousine being driven away from the shooting; both men joked with medical personnel in the emergency room; both were treated at George Washington University Hospital; and in both cases, a staffer was wounded more seriously than the President (press secretary James Brady in Reagan's shooting). Also the question of who actually held presidential powers while Reagan was in surgery (remember Secretary of State Alexander Haig saying "I am in control here"?) is reflected a bit with the 25th Amendment discussion.

- Let's talk about the 25th Amendment storyline and what they got right and what they weren't clear on. While McNally's statement about the Constitution saying the presidency only automatically devolves to the Vice President if the President dies is accurate, it's not the full story. The amendment also offers a provision for the Cabinet to make the determination of transferring presidential powers, and when Jed tells Leo to assemble the Cabinet before he goes into surgery, that provision could certainly have come into play. (Modern-day angle: the current Cabinet, if it saw fit, could absolutely make the decision to remove presidential powers from Donald Trump and transfer them to Vice President Pence. One wonders exactly what it would take for that to happen.)

So the administration's hands aren't tied, as it seems in this episode, to having presidential powers held solely by a man who is under anesthesia and can't actually exercise them (you know, God forbid someone launches an attack on the United States at the exact same time. Who is the Commander-in-Chief? Who can order a missile launch?). In fact, there's a deleted scene where Leo talks to Danny and expressly tells him they did not want to actually invoke the 25th Amendment provisions. You wonder why that is.

(Also McNally's mention of the 1947 Defense Act and the powers granted to the Secretary of Defense isn't accurate, as that act was superseded by a law passed in 1962. The mention serves only to set up Toby's quite sarcastic line "Of course it wouldn't, cause that's an area of federal law where you'd want to have as much ambiguity as possible.")

- When Josh is pulled out of the ambulance at the hospital, it's a neat overhead shot - but it also shows him being taken out head-first. Which would mean he was loaded in the ambulance feet-first. That's never how it is actually done.

- Let's talk timelines. As this episode picks up right where Season 1 ended, it's still the Monday night in May (and eventually Tuesday morning) of the MSNBC town hall meeting. The flashbacks are described as "three years" ago - Hoynes mentions that it's 13 weeks until the New Hampshire primary, and Leo gripes to Jed about how cold it is in October. So we're looking at October 1997, about a year before the presidential election.

- Some Internet sites say there's a goof or error in the scene with Hoynes talking to Josh, as you can see a Tennessee flag behind Hoynes even though he's clearly a Senator from Texas. To me it's obvious that conversation isn't being held in Hoynes' office, but in a hallway of the Senate office building. A different state flag (I think it's Iowa's) can be seen behind Josh. It's not an error of having a Tennessee flag in Hoynes' office, it's a conversation held in the hallway outside the office of a Tennessee Senator.

- In Pilot Sam mentioned he worked at Dewey Ballantine out of law school, which was a real-life law firm. Now that his job involved creating liability shields for oil tankers, Sorkin decided he needed to work for a fictional firm, and created Gage Whitney Pace. Ever the kind of writer to not let a good idea be wasted, Gage Whitney Pace also popped up on Sorkin's 2006 series Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and appeared on a computer screen in the background of his 2017 movie Molly's Game. The firm also was mentioned in the series 24 and Rob Lowe's series Lyon's Den.

- I really think the transitions between current time and flashback time were well done by Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme: When Josh is wheeled into the ER, he's deliriously babbling about a meeting and going to New Hampshire, which transitions (via the bright overhead light morphing into a chandelier) into Josh meeting with Hoynes' campaign staff; Sam bumps into a woman on the sidewalk after talking to Josh in New York, which immediately transitions into Sam bumping into a nurse in the ER waiting room, throwing us right back into the present; Toby thinks he hears Ginger say something after consoling her, but he's remembering the bartender at Hank's Tavern ask him if he wants another drink.

- A neat little moment illustrating the confusion about who's in charge: when Hoynes comes into the Situation Room, several of the military officers have to be reminded to stand. Then Hoynes pointedly avoids sitting in the President's chair at the head of the table, taking the one next to it.

- Allison Janney's performance at the press conference was perfectly off-kilter, confused, and adrift, exactly what you might expect from someone who had just been through such a traumatic experience. This episode was one submitted by Janney that earned her a second best supporting actress Emmy. Tommy Schlamme also won an Emmy for directing this episode, while John Spencer (supporting actor) and Sorkin (writing) were nominated for Emmys based on this episode.



Quotes    

Nurse: "I need to ask you some questions, sir. Do you have any medical conditions?"

President: "Well ... I've been shot." 

-----

Leo: "Jack? What's the best way to get a message to Iraq?"

General: "King of Jordan."

Leo: "Okay."

Advisor: "What do you want the message to be?"

Leo: "Don't mess with us tonight." 

-----

Reporter: "CJ, can you tell us why the AP knows more than you do?"

CJ: "I don't believe they do know more than I do, I just believe they're willing to tell you more than I am." 

-----

Woman at bar: "I'm gonna tell ya, I didn't even know Bartlet was running."

Toby: "Yeah, we keep that secret pretty good." 

-----

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

• The big cheese at Gage Whitney Pace, Jack Gage, is played by Peter White (longtime TV character actor, recurring on The Colbys, Dallas, and Sisters, among many others).

• The Air Force general in the Situation Room is played by Daniel von Bargen (Malcolm In The Middle, Seinfeld).

• And look, there's Jane Lynch (Glee, Best In Show, Two And A Half Men, many others) as a reporter yelling questions at CJ! We'll see her again at the end of the season.

• Check this out - I didn't know this until watching the DVD commentary with Sorkin, Schlamme, Whitford and Moloney - one of the Secret Service agents assigned to Abbey is Olympic sprinter and former NFL wide receiver Willie Gault. Seriously! It's true! He actually started his acting career in the early 1990s, and had a recurring role on The Pretender from 1997 through 2000.

• Some threads that are just for Part II: CJ's constant referral to "somebody pulled me down" will come to a nattily-coiffed head; Josh's mention of his dad being sick plays a big part in the next episode; and the press question about why a tent or canopy wasn't used at Rosslyn will get answered.

• Abbey tells the anesthesiologist that 14 people know about the President's MS. We can assume family members (although that exact number is unknown), and she mentions the Vice President, Leo, and Fitzwallis. We might also assume his personal physician is included, named as Admiral Jarvis in CJ's press conference. So Hoynes, Leo, Fitz, the doctor, Abbey, Zoey, that's six. We'll find out there are two other Bartlet daughters, so that makes eight. So there are six others in on the secret that we don't know about yet (perhaps a son-in-law or other relatives?). And we're not counting Jed - that's made clear later in 17 People.

• Okay, the well-traveled newsman played by Ivan Allen is back. We first saw him as an unnamed anchor for cable news station CND in A Proportional Response :

He then apparently moved to local TV, working under the name Roger Salier at the fictional "Channel 5" in The White House Pro-Am :

Here he is again as Roger Salier, and he's apparently moved across town to the very real Channel 4 (WRC-TV in Washington, DC, owned and operated by NBC):

• When Hoynes leaves the campaign staff meeting, pulling Josh out, he tells the rest to work on the ethanol tax credit. We learned in 20 Hours In L.A. that Hoynes had worked to defeat that credit.

• We learn background information that Leo is an old friend of Josh's dad, and Josh and Sam have known each other for a while.

• In the flashback Sam is engaged to Lisa, with the marriage set for next September. We might see Lisa in the future.

• WHAT'S NEXT MOMENT - We hear Jed using the term three times in his testy meeting with staff after his VFW hall speech (finishing with "What's next? Nothing? Excellent." before stalking off). Leo then jumps right in to say, "Okay, what's next?"

DC location shots    

• Back in Rosslyn at the Newseum site, including a shot outside the segment of the Berlin Wall the Newseum has (still on display at its Pennsylvania Avenue location)

• The Arlington Memorial Bridge shows up twice, in the opening shot of the Presidential motorcade and again in the ending montage with police searching vehicles:

• Leo and Josh talk outside the Capitol building.

• I believe the show actually shot outside the George Washington University Hospital emergency room. I know scenes in Part II were filmed outside the hospital, so it's likely this was actually at GW:

References to real people    

• George Washington University Hospital is, of course, named after our first President.

• Josh mentions the Walt Disney Corporation (actually The Walt Disney Company) and remodeling the rides at Epcot.

• For a pop-culture reference, a nurse mentions how a worried pregnant woman will soon feel her baby doing the Macarena. That dance became a sensation after the song was the number one Billboard hit of 1996.

End credits freeze frame: Aerial shot of the President's motorcade crossing the Arlington Memorial Bridge,with the Lincoln Memorial in the background (in the DVD commentary Schlamme tells Bradley Whitford that this took three takes).