Original airdate: January 10, 2001
Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (32)
Story by: Paul Redford (5)
Directed by: Scott Winant (1)
Synopsis
- A bipartisan meeting to kick off the new year and a new Congress finds the Bartlet administration caught by surprise when a Republican Senate staffer outmaneuvers Toby. Sam looks into moving the press out of the West Wing. Efforts to atone for Leo's comments about a journalist's shoes snowball out of control.
"The legislative session hasn't begun and we can't put a forkful of waffles in our mouth without coughing up the ball. You got beat."
The West Wing is a television drama set in the world of politics, but it's not necessarily a purely political show. We get human stories, relationships, moral dilemmas, workplace issues, even some comedy for the well-rounded viewer - but then, every so often, we do indeed get a story based on the exercise of political power, how it's wielded, who wins and who loses. What can make these stories even more interesting is the fact that our heroes don't always come out on top, despite their seemingly unbeatable smarts and cleverness. Sometimes that's due to events spinning out of control (The State Dinner is a good example. or this season's The Lame Duck Congress), but it can be more interesting when it's due to overreach, hubris, or pure miscalculation (as in Five Votes Down, or here).
Toby (and the administration) get outfoxed by some even-more-clever adversaries in Congress, with the long game of the next Presidential campaign coming into play. While in some ways it's a sort of callback to the image of the Bartlet administration's listless struggles in Season 1 leading up to Let Bartlet Be Bartlet (whether or not that powerlessness was actually earned, as I have pointed out), it's really intriguing to see these smart, calculating political minds get outplayed by the opposition.
The White House is setting up a breakfast meeting for the top folks from the Democratic administration and the Republican-led Congress to kick off the new year. On its face it's an opportunity for the two sides to work together and find common ground, but in reality it's simply a public relations show from which no one expects any real progress:
CJ: "It's a breakfast to trumpet a new spirit of bipartisanship cooperation and understanding in a new year, no one's going to be listening to each other anyway."
The entire buildup to the breakfast is about seating arrangements, which topics are off the table for discussion, and the amount of time given to the topics that are agreed upon to be talked about. In fact, CJ meets with congressional staff members a couple of days before the event even takes place to hammer out the wording of the post-breakfast press briefings.
And this is where the outmaneuvering begins. Ann Stark, chief of staff for the Senate Majority Leader, asks for the congressional briefing to be held at the Capitol instead of outside the White House. CJ flatly refuses, sticking with the traditional plan of congresspeople talking to the press outside the building where the meeting took place while she does her briefing in her own press room. Stark goes over CJ's head, directly to Toby. Those two have some kind of past political relationship (Toby later says to Ann, "Ten years ago we used to be able to sit down, we'd order a couple of bourbons, we'd talk about health care, we'd talk about the minimum wage."), and Toby has reasons of his own for going off the reservation: he's frustrated over the fact that nothing of any real relevance or meaning is going to happen as a result of this breakfast. He sees the meeting as an opportunity to make progress in areas where the administration wants to move the needle.
Toby demands some time be used to discuss the patients' bill of rights, and also throws out the threat that if a minimum-wage-hike bill is bottled up by Republicans, the Democrats will simply offer it as an amendment on every bill up for a vote. Stark agrees to the health care discussion, in exchange for moving the entire press briefing (yes, CJ, too) away from the White House to the Capitol. Toby sees this as a good trade and orders CJ to make it happen. When the briefing comes around, though, Stark's boss is nowhere to be seen and the Republican congressmen open fire on the administration for strongarm tactics in threatening them over the minimum wage, claiming Bartlet sandbagged the entire bipartisan goals of the breakfast before it even was held.
Of course this was Stark's plan all along. She wanted to use Toby's words to her to paint the administration as a bully, then keep the Senate Majority Leader out of the fray so he could come in later to smooth the waters - in essence, staking his claim as a frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the presidential contest coming up in 2002:
Toby: "When are you going to announce?"
Stark: "Announce what?"
Toby: "That he's running for President."
Stark: "I'm pretty sure we just did."
It's a pure political storyline, one we get once in a while, and nicely crafted. I particularly enjoyed the scene of the press conference held outside the Capitol: CJ and Toby are watching TV intently in their offices, CJ thinking out loud to Carol why the Senate Majority Leader is begging out with a "sore throat;" she puts it all together and realizes it's a trap just before the trap is sprung with Toby's quote; then CJ and Toby on the phone with Toby struggling to figure out a response. Add in some great dramatic underscoring music by Snuffy Walden and it's a gripping little scene.
Meanwhile, a lightweight comedic running subplot involves growing complications as staffers try to apologize to New York Times columnist Karen Cahill, who is apparently powerful enough and intimidating enough that Leo feels it necessary to make up for saying something uncomplimentary about her shoes. Not so necessary that he does it himself, though; he wants to send Josh, but Josh delegates the task to Sam, which may or may not be a good plan:
Sam: "I don't do well with Karen."
Donna: "In what way?"
Sam: "I get nervous."
Donna: "What happens?"
Sam: "I become unimpressive."
Donna: "In what way?"
Sam: "In many ways."
Donna: "You don't fall down, do you?"
Sam: "Once."
Sam does not fall down in his dinner meeting with Cahill, but when he's later reflecting on his triumphant apology for Leo, he realizes he may have mixed up Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan when talking about nuclear weapons:
Sam: "Kazakhstan is a country four times the size of Texas and has a sizable number of nuclear missile silos ... Kyrgyzstan is on the side of a hill near China and has mostly nomads and sheep."
So now Donna is told to go to an art exhibit where Cahill will be in attendance, so she can correct Sam's misstatement on former Soviet republics. Donna pulls it off with aplomb and great success ... until a package arrives addressed to Josh that contains her underwear, which apparently fell out of her pants and onto the floor in front of Cahill. The look on Donna's face as Josh holds her underwear aloft is, well ... just look:
Karen Cahill 3, White House staff 0.
There's also a small plotline about Sam wanting to move the press out of the White House and across the street to the Old Executive Office Building. Unbeknownst to CJ, who thinks it's a terrible idea, he and Josh add a question about the topic to the monthly DNC telephone poll - and when a member of the White House press pool actually is one of the people called as part of the poll, CJ brings her wrath down upon those two guys:
CJ: "Fred and Ethel, would you follow me please?"
Josh (to Sam): "She's talking about us."
I think Aaron Sorkin was pretty smart to have these two small, unimportant, comedic storylines included with the main story of Toby and the White House getting punked by a Senate staffer, showing she's every bit as smart and clever and capable as our West Wing regulars. What we're left with is the sinking realization that despite the lofty goals and proposals that might be driving the administration, the political game never ends. There's always someone jockeying for power and position, sometimes they're better than you, and you have to bring your A game and stay on your toes every day. Otherwise you'll be left playing catch up and burning more political capital and energy just to stay even.
What we're also left with, though, is the committed staff dedicated to getting things done and improving the country in the ways they think best, and if that means convincing President Bartlet to get his reelection bid underway two years ahead of the election, that's what they need to do. The final discussion between Leo and Toby actually kicks off a story arc that will lead us into Season 3:
Leo (to Toby): "Shake my hand. (They do.) We just formed it."
Toby: "Formed what?"
Leo: "The Committee to Re-elect the President."
Tales Of Interest!
- The cold open is like a mini-play all by itself. We have Josh and Sam, bundled against the cold (with the White House heat malfunctioning), trying to start a fire in the Mural Room fireplace; CJ, Ed, and Larry (also wrapped in coats) trying to work out the complicated seating arrangements for the breakfast, and a stocking-capped Donna shuttling back and forth between the two groups. It's tightly written, with some good comic dialogue between Sam and Josh (the discussion of spruce versus hardwood and drying out the wet wood in the fire is a hoot), and it all leads up perfectly to Charlie's final line:
Charlie: "Mr. President, you know how you told me not to wake you up unless the building was on fire?"Speaking of that fire-building scene, take a look at this image from Six Meetings Before Lunch, which aired nine months before this episode:
That shows a fire merrily burning in the Mural Room fireplace, which appears to be the exact same fireplace Sam and Josh are working on here:
So it doesn't seem possible, as the plaque says, that this fireplace has been welded shut since 1896. In addition, the entire interior of the White House was completely rebuilt during the Truman administration between 1949 and 1952. Here's what it looked like in 1950:
No fireplace welding from 1896 is going to survive that kind of reconstruction. (The Truman Balcony, which President Bartlet mentions in the episode, was added to the White House in 1948, just prior to this complete interior renovation.)
- It's both interesting and sad that the topics the Democrats and Republicans were fighting over in 2001 continue to be the same issues we can't find agreement on almost 20 years later: health care, the minimum wage, tax cuts. Also, the fact that the major sticking points are what words are used to describe proposals (patients' bill of rights vs. Comprehensive Access and Responsibility Act; tax cuts vs. tax relief or 'income enhancement') or the difference between a two-year or three-year phase-in of a minimum wage hike ... so much energy is expended for so little actual progress. I guess that's government in a nutshell.
- Tying in reality and The West Wing timeline: Congressman Shallick says the 107th Congress hasn't yet begun its session; the real 107th Congress actually convened January 3, 2001, or just a week before this episode aired.
- It's pretty hard to make out what's in Gail's fishbowl this time. Other websites say it's a fire engine, a nod towards the antics of Josh and Sam in the Mural Room. I guess I'll buy that; I can't really tell for certain.
- There are a couple of neat script callbacks that you may not catch unless you're like me and dig waaay too deep into things. For one, (and this may be a bit of a stretch, but it fits) I mentioned the energy expended on the semantics of what each party wanted to call certain proposals, with the differences not so much in the actual plans but just in the terms used to describe them. There's kind of a preview of this in the fire-building scene:
Josh (setting logs in the fireplace): "You want to stand them in a tripod, right?"
Sam: "Yeah, standing three sticks on an end and slanting them to a common center."
Josh: "Isn't that a tripod?"
Sam: "Yeah, but ..."
Josh: "You just thought you'd say more words."
Sam: "Yeah."The other script callback is clear as a bell. When Toby makes his threat to Stark about adding the minimum wage hike to "everything that moves," she replies with "Say that again?" At the press conference, when the reporter quotes Toby's words in the question to Congressman Thomas, the congressman responds with "Could you say that again, please?" While in neither case does Toby or the reporter actually "say it again," the repeated rhetorical device used by Sorkin is kind of neat.
- This is Scott Winant's first shot at directing the series, but he shows he's paid attention. He makes great use of all the windows on the set, with this clever shot in CJ's office (we see Carol out at her desk through the window, with CJ reflected in the other set of windows with the blinds closed):
- John Spencer was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor Emmy for this episode (along with In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part I). Richard Schiff was also nominated for the same award for this episode and the upcoming 17 People. Bradley Whitford ended up winning that Emmy for this season; Schiff had won the Supporting Actor Emmy the previous year. (Spencer will get his, not to worry.)
Quotes
Donna: "To move Jankowicz, we've got to move either the House or Senate whip."
Josh and Sam (together): "House."
Donna: "Why?"
Sam: "Cause life is tough in the big cruel world, and if he doesn't like it, he can kiss me."
Donna: "So, the spirit of bipartisanship begins."
-----
Josh: "And what stupid-ass Irish thing did you say to Karen Cahill that you now need me to apologize for at Ben and Sally's like a little girl?"
(Leo stares at Josh)
Josh (sheepishly): "Let me tell you what was surprising about that moment just then."
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Ann: "I think you're going to have to start getting next to the idea that your party isn't in the majority."
Toby: "My party's in the White House."
Ann: "A building to which the Constitution does not endow sovereign power."
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President: "Donna wants me to call Karen Cahill and make it clear she wasn't hitting on her when she gave her her underwear."
Leo: "Yeah, that's cause I made fun of her shoes and then Sam said there were nuclear weapons in Kyrgyzstan and Donna went to clear up the mix up and accidentally left her underwear."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- We get to see Ed and Larry, together again!
- Ann Stark is played by Felicity Huffman, who had previously worked with Sorkin on Sports Night. Her big fame with a role on Desperate Housewives was yet to come.
- Congressman Henry Shallick of Missouri is played by Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law, Major League, Psych). A recognizable star at this point, his appearance only via the in-world TV screen would seem to imply Shallick as an important recurring character; however, he will appear on only one more episode. (Also, note the CND logo on the screen to the left; that's the cable news network invented for The West Wing back in Season 1.)
- A quick callback to the events of Noël and Josh's talk with therapist Dr. Keyworth, as Leo asks if he is feeling all right ("I'm going to ask you once a day, okay?").
- We get a mention of both Toby's and Leo's ex-wives, and the rules about what they could and couldn't talk about.
- Ivan Allen is back as newscaster Roger Salier. We saw him first in A Proportional Response, as an anchor for CND; then he was a reporter for the fictional local Channel 5 in The White House Pro-Am; and back as an anchor for the real NBC Channel 4 in Washington in In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part I. Is he now with MSNBC? Or is this still WRC-TV? There's definitely the NBC peacock logo on the screen; I just can't tell if that's supposed to read MSNBC under it.
- As I mentioned, with the Leo/Toby talk at the end of the episode, we kick off a long story arc with the re-election campaign of President Bartlet. I keep saying how Season 2 is one of the best seasons of television anywhere; long overarching storylines are one of the reasons, and here's the beginning of one.
- So what happened to Steve Onorato, the aide to the Senate Majority Leader that we saw dealing with White House staffers back in Let Bartlet Be Bartlet? Now Ann Stark is doing all the work for the Majority Leader ... she does tell Toby she "just got here," but when he says her predecessor wasn't good at playing the game, she says, "Maybe that's why they gave me her job." So she doesn't mean Steve ...
DC location shots
- The press conference after the breakfast is held with the Capitol in the background (not even close to the Capitol steps, the location Stark was insisting upon, but definitely on location). This appears to be next to the Ulysses Grant monument, pretty close to the same area where Leo and Josh met in In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part I, when Leo asked Josh to go to New Hampshire and check out Jed's early campaign.
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- Josh compares the chilly White House to the movie Ice Station Zebra.
- We have mentions of former Presidents Benjamin Harrison (and his log cabin made of spruce); Andrew Johnson (who sat by that fireplace in the Mural Room); Harry Truman's balcony; James Monroe and his doctrine; and John Adams (as well as non-president Alexander Hamilton and their mutual dislike for political parties).
- President Bartlet says he won't have to be Officer Krupke if the breakfast finishes up and everybody leaves. Krupke is a character in the musical and movie West Side Story.
- Leo asks Josh to go to dinner at "Ben and Sally's" in order to clear up his comment about Karen Cahill's shoes. While not expressly named as such, this is an obvious reference to former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn. At the time of this episode, Bradlee was retired as the Post's editor but served as the newspaper's vice president at large.
- There was a London-based military and logistics consulting firm called Global Strategies Group at the time of this episode. I'm pretty sure that's not the polling group employed by the DNC.
- We see the congressional press conference carried on C-SPAN. There's also a clear NBC peacock logo on the screen where Ann Stark is watching the news when Toby comes to see her - it might even be an MSNBC logo, it's hard to tell.
- CJ calls Sam and Josh "Fred and Ethel," a reference to the Fred and Ethel Mertz, neighbors of the Ricardos on the I Love Lucy television show.
- Product placement: Ann Stark has a Dean & DeLuca bag when she brings out the Vermont maple syrup can for Toby.
End credits freeze frame: Leo and Toby in the final scene in the Oval Office, establishing the Committee to Re-elect the President.
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