Walking And Talking And Yelling At Clouds: Ellie

Original airdate: February 21, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (36)
Story by: Kevin Falls (3) & Laura Glasser (2)

Directed by: Michael Engler (1)

Synopsis

After the Surgeon General makes some controversial remarks about marijuana, the President's strained relationship with his middle daughter is laid bare when she expresses her public support for the doctor. Sam deals with a movie producer trying to drum up publicity at the White House's expense. Toby resorts to subterfuge in his battle to jump-start the blue-ribbon commission on entitlements.

"The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy, was come home at the end of the day."

Presidents are more than Leaders of the Free World, Commanders in Chief, and the most powerful person in their political party. They're also husbands, fathers, brothers, and uncles (and yes, someday soon, wives and mothers and sisters and aunts). It's easy to forget that, particularly watching an episodic series dealing with big-picture political life in the White House, but Aaron Sorkin turns Ellie into a tight little family-relationship drama that re-centers the way we might think about Jed Bartlet.

We've known since Pilot that the Bartlets have at least one daughter, Elizabeth, and that she has a daughter as well (making Jed and Abbey grandparents). In The Crackpots And These Women we met Zoey, preparing to start her freshman year at Georgetown University and soon to start dating Charlie. Now the third (and last, since Jed calls her the middle daughter) daughter is revealed ... Eleanor, or Ellie, a medical student at Johns Hopkins who, we discover, has somewhat of a fraught relationship with the President-dad. I gotta admit, as a father myself (including a daughter as well as a son) this story line hit me right in the feels. There's always an emotional minefield parents and children have to maneuver, and it often gets more complicated as the kids grow up. It's easy for a parent to stay rooted in the same familiar pathways they're used to, even when a child might have moved away from that pathway and wants the parent to adjust, too.

Let's start at the beginning. The Surgeon General, Dr. Millie Griffith, is holding an online chat discussing various medical issues with anyone who wants to send an electronic question. When the topic of legalizing marijuana comes up, Dr. Griffith outlines the facts about the drug, essentially pointing out that in many ways marijuana is less harmful than tobacco or alcohol. This sets off alarms in the White House, as the basic political stance of pretty much everyone in the late 1990s-early 2000s was a strong "No" to legalization, as part of the overall War On Drugs that had been ongoing since the Reagan administration. The next step is clear: the Surgeon General has to go, by resignation or firing.

That step is delayed slightly because the President is out of the country, returning from a trip to Japan - and that's where Ellie steps in. She's studying medicine at Johns Hopkins, following in the footsteps of her mother, and she knows the facts outlined by Dr. Graham are correct. She knows that politically restricting medical and scientific truth isn't the right thing to do. She's also very close to the Surgeon General, given that Millie is Ellie's godmother. On her own accord, and knowingly taking the legs out from under the administration, Ellie calls a reporter (Danny Concannon, to be precise) and gives him the quote, "My father won't fire the Surgeon General. He would never do that."

When the President returns to the White House, he is understandably furious (although first believing Danny called Ellie, in violation of the rules the President gave to the press about his children). He calls Ellie into the Oval Office, resulting in one of the most uncomfortable father-daughter meetings we might ever see. Jed makes some passive-aggressive digs at his daughter for her failure to come visit (boy, is that a typical parental discussion), shouts at her for lowering her head and hiding her face behind her hair, and sarcastically calls her out for not clearing her interview with the White House in advance. And then ... we get to the meat of the situation:

Jed: "There is politics involved in this, Ellie. And you knew this would make me unhappy and that's why you did it and that's cheap."

Ellie: "I didn't do it to make you unhappy, Dad."

Jed: "Well, you sure didn't do it to make me happy!"

Ellie: "I don't know how to make you happy, Dad! For that, you've got to talk to Zoey or Liz."

Ouch.

The President is thrown by that. He knows he's been short with Ellie - he was pretty mad about her going to the press and taking his legs out from under him - but he also knows deep down that they haven't gotten along very well lately, and that's at least partly his fault. He can hardly look at her when he invites her to stay the night and watch a movie:

Ellie: "I can stay over if you want me to."

Jed (looking at some papers on his desk): "Yeah. Thanks."

And then we get the point that Ellie doesn't feel she belongs in this part of her Dad's world. She doesn't even know how to exit the Oval Office:

Ellie: "I go out ...?"

Jed (pointing): "That door over there."

There is a lot to unpack there.

And unpacking we get, late in the episode, when Dr. Griffith comes to the White House to finally offer her resignation. She had first refused, saying the President would have to fire her, but at last came around to the conclusion that her resignation was the only proper political path. Jed takes the opportunity to do a little family counseling with Ellie's godmother:

Millie: "You've been the king of whatever room you walked into her entire life."

Jed: "It never seemed to intimidate Zoey or Liz."

Millie: "Well, kids are different, they're not the same. You would be amazed, you'd be stunned at how soon they understand they're not their father's favorite."

Jed goes off at this remark - "I will not stand and allow someone to tell me that I love one of my children less than the others" - but a bit of reflection goes a long way. Along with a callback to Shakespeare:

Jed: "I wanted to be so mad at her. I heard the news and my first thought was ... (beat) My God, King Lear is a good play. 'My father won't fire the Surgeon General, he would never do that.' I wanted to be so mad at her. But the truth is, it's the nicest thing she ever said about me."

The President refuses to take Dr. Griffith's resignation, he keeps her in his post, and he returns to the movie room to at least start to make things right with Ellie:

Jed: "The only thing you ever had to do to make me happy, was come home at the end of the day."

He follows that up with some dad jokes about confusing various medical specialties, which never succeeds in making Ellie laugh, but does bring them a bit closer together for the moment.

On the political side of things, Toby is trying to put together the blue-ribbon commission to examine entitlement programs that was touted in Bartlet's Third State Of The Union. He's getting an enormous amount of pushback, particularly from labor and the liberal wing - while the administration wants to have all options on the table to ensure the future of Social Security and Medicare ...:

Man in Roosevelt Room meeting: "If current economic conditions continue - "

Toby: "Forever? You mean if we never have another recession ever again? Then the fund can withstand all of 30 years without going bankrupt. Unfortunately, the actuarial tables say I won't be dead yet."

... the liberals demand North Dakota Democratic firebrand Seth Gillette (who threatened a third-party run against President Bartlet in The War At Home) be put on the commission. Toby would personally love that, but he fears if he's asked, Gillette will turn down the offer so that he can criticize its conclusions. And if the White House asks Gillette and he says no, the commission instantly becomes ineffective and makes the administration look weak.

So Toby calls on his ex-wife, Congresswoman Andy Wyatt (previously seen in Mandatory Minimums), to enlist her help in the situation.

She, being a part of that liberal wing somewhat suspicious of the administration's motives, says she won't help with Gillette. Toby really digs in, with what I think is a great justification of his reasons for building the panel his way:

Andy: "Why does this have to happen in secret?"

Toby: "Because it's the only way it's going to happen! Because you can't solve Social Security and ask people to run for election at the same time! So why not give politicians some cloud cover and let them be lawmakers for a while? Fifteen people in a room with the door closed; seven Democrats, seven Republicans, and the President of the United States, who will not have a vote, and they walk out of that room and with one voice they make a recommendation to Congress and the American people. And nobody knows who was where."

They end up getting nowhere, but ... on the way out of Toby's office, the two have a conversation about Toby discovering (by reading the newspaper) he'd been put on the benefit committee of the Childhood Leukemia Foundation:

Andy: "I guess they must have gotten it from that press release or something."

Toby: "I guess they must have. You don't think it'd be a better idea if you asked me first?"

Andy: "I really didn't."

Toby: "Interesting."

Andy: "I find that when I skip over the first step and move right to the second step, it becomes a lot harder for people to say no."

You practically see the light bulb go on over Toby's head as he stops stock-still after that line. He's discovered the path to get Gillette on the commission - simply announce the fact that he's agreed to be on it, without even asking him. When he tells CJ to make the announcement the next day, his reaction to her questioning is brilliant:

Toby: "Make sure they know that he's a patriot, and when the President asked him to serve, Senator Gillette answered the call."

CJ: "Did he?"

Toby: "Yeah. I just saw it at your press briefing tomorrow morning."

Which then leads CJ to threaten to quit for the third time in the episode.

There's one other storyline here, about a movie producer building up an imaginary fight with the White House. Morgan Ross has made a film called Prince of New York, and he sent a print of it to the White House for President Bartlet to watch. Charlie, in his role as assistant, viewed the movie first and decided it wasn't something the President would enjoy:

Charlie: "It's an updated version of Dostoevsky's The Idiot which tells the story of a Christ-like epileptic young man who embodies goodness, but encounters sex, crime, and family dysfunction."

Mrs. Landingham: "Hard to imagine why you didn't think the President would enjoy that, Charlie."

When word of the refusal got back to Ross, he started a media campaign blasting the administration for censoring his movie, a campaign intended to stir up public interest (and as a side effect, bringing a full page ad from the Family Values Leadership Council congratulating the White House for denouncing the film. Which it did not).

Sam takes the lead on dousing that fire (over the objections of CJ, who wants to rev up her old Hollywood PR experience to make Ross cry), and does a nice job of it:

Sam: "Because it makes me crazy, Morgan, this is exactly the kind of thing that should be celebrated by First Amendment advocates. Charlie was offered a choice and he made one. Why aren't you standing up saying, 'See, it works! You don't need to ban movies like Prince of New York, you just have to choose not to watch them.'"

Which leads Toby to tell Sam "Good job" as he walks by his office, tossing one of his rubber balls to Sam behind his back:

In essence, Ellie is a family-relationship-drama episode of The West Wing, which doesn't make it bad (not at all!), just different. While we've seen a lot of family relationship stuff in past episodes, it's generally about the family grown by the staff around the President. Ellie (and to a lesser extent, both Bartlet's Third State Of The Union and The War At Home) brings the Bartlet family dynamic to the fore, which gives us a deeper personal understanding of Jed and how his political life has had an impact on his family life. Even though political maneuverings and the day-to-day operations of the Bartlet administration continue to be the foundation of The West Wing, we'll be going down this path again in the future. Count on it.

Tales Of Interest!

- Here's the first time we see Toby smacking that pink rubber ball against the window between his office and Sam's. That's going to be an ongoing activity over the next several years. Those balls are called "Spaldeens" (a corruption of Spalding, the company that makes them) and have been used for decades by New York City children to play stickball and other games. Spalding stopped making these balls in 1979, but restarted production in 1999 (just over a year before this episode was filmed). Toby was definitely a child of New York City (we've heard of his Yankees fandom earlier, and here he's wearing a New York football Giants cap), so he's had lots of experience with the Spaldeen.

- If you listen to The West Wing Weekly podcast, hosted by Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway, they often refer to moments in The West Wing that pertain to the present-day Presidency as "Trump-ai-yi-yi" moments. Listening to President Bartlet talk to Charlie about tariffs on Japanese steel was absolutely one of those moments for me, particularly as the imposition of increased tariffs on Chinese goods was happening while I was rewatching the episode:

President: "They're begging for a protectionist response. Steel and mining employ a hundred and seventy thousand workers. They're not going to sit around while discount steel comes flying into - (waves to onlooker) How you doing? - They're going to want retaliatory tariffs, and you know what that means?"

Charlie: "A return to Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression."

President: "A return to Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression."

- Ed and Larry get to run a meeting! They're in charge of the meeting with Hollywood film producers, with the setting sun giving a glow to all things West Wing:

- Ah, yes, those days before YouTube and Facebook Live video streaming and Skype, when having an online chat - where you typed in questions for someone who then typed in a response for you and everyone logged on to see - was the pinnacle in technology. I can practically hear the modem dial-up sound right now, followed by the AOL voice saying, "Welcome! You've got mail!"

- President Bartlet's reference to King Lear cuts deep, considering the main story of the episode. Shakespeare's tragedy deals with a king who is dividing up his kingdom based on which of his three daughters love him the most, and the flattery of some (resulting in initial riches for them) and the simple truth of familial love from his favorite (angering the king and disinheriting her) results in madness and death, as in any good Shakespeare tragedy. Pretty deep and dark for Jed to bring up in comparison to his situation ...

Quotes

Toby: "It will be 7 PM Thursday in Japan when he leaves."

Josh: "And he lands here when?"

Sam: "Okay, the flight is 13 hours long ..."

CJ: "This isn't happening ..."

Sam: "He's going to travel eastward from Tokyo, leaving at 7 PM, so when he crosses the International Date Line -"

Toby: "He will have traveled back in time to what?"

Sam: "Three AM."

CJ: "Which puts him down in Washington at 6 PM Thursday."

Josh: "He's going to land in Washington before he took off?"

Sam: "Yeah."

Josh: "And that's not a story that beats the Surgeon General?"

-----

President: "I've got to hand it to you guys, you've pulled off a political first. You've managed to win me the support of the Christian Right and the Cheech and Chong Fan Club in the same day."

-----

Toby: "The first thing I have to do is be nice to a liberal Democratic congresswoman."

Sam: "Will that be hard?"

Toby: "Well, it was when I was married to her."

-----

Margaret: "Let me ask you this - red meat has been found to cause cancer in white rats. Maraschino cherries have been found to cause cancer in white rats. Cellular phones have been found to cause cancer in white rats. Has anyone examined the possibility that cancer might be hereditary in white rats?"

Dr. Griffith: "Let me tell you something, I'm not 100 percent sure we've ruled that out."

-----

President: "Tell CJ when she gives Millie our support on Monday, she can mean it."

Josh: "You know, it's going to seem to some people like you did it because your daughter asked you to."

President: "You know, Josh, I think if you ever have a daughter, you're going to discover there are worse reasons in the world to do something."

-----

Ellie: "Dad, people are trying to watch the movie."

Jed: "You want to bet me your tuition no one in this room is going to shush me?"

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

Surgeon General Dr. Millicent Griffith is played by Mary Kay Place (The Big Chill, Big Love, Mary Hartman Mary Hartman).

Ellie Bartlet is played by Nina Siemaszko (Airheads, The American President, More Tales Of The City).

The film producer Morgan Ross is played by Robert Knepper (Heroes, Prison Break).

Another callback to Josh's recovery from being shot (In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen) comes when Dr. Griffith inquires about how he's doing when he comes to ask for her resignation:

Dr. Griffith: "How about your back?"

Josh: "There's some pain."

Dr. Griffith: "It's in your head."

Josh (laughing): "Along with all manner of things." (a Noël callback!)

Look, it's Nancy (played by Renee Estevez, Martin Sheen's daughter), getting a line as the President returns from his Japan trip. I suppose it's fitting Sheen's daughter gets to appear in this episode dealing with Jed's relationship with a Bartlet daughter:

Danny Concannon gets mentioned (as being the reporter called by Ellie) but doesn't actually appear. Timothy Busfield hasn't been seen on the show since The Portland Trip eight episodes ago.

I think CJ's reaction to Morgan Ross' shenanigans trying to whip up publicity for his movie at the expense of the White House directly relates to her previous job doing PR for movie producers in Hollywood, as seen in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II:

CJ: "This guy's trying to get a little free media by screwing with us."

Sam: "Look -"

CJ: "I'm the enforcer, Sam. I'm going to crush him, I'm going to make him cry, and then I'm going to tell his momma about it."

Sam: "You're not going to make him cry."

CJ: "You want to watch me make him cry?"

Sam: "I believe that you can make him cry, I'm saying you're not going to do it."

DC location shots

None this episode.

They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing

After Dr. Griffith mentions the Allman Brothers in her online chat, the band comes up again and again as the staff reacts to her comments. There's later references to Bob Marley and the Wailers, and Cheech and Chong (all in connection to the marijuana legalization plotline).

CJ refers to the AP, the (New York) Times, the (Washington) Post, the Today show, and Tim Russert. We also see the C-SPAN logo on the TV when Josh is watching CJ's press conference before he talks to Dr. Griffith.

We hear references to Tupperware, Pringles, and Twinkies as food items (yes, even the Tupperware).

Morgan Ross, the film producer, called the President cowardly on Don Imus' radio show.

Dostoevsky gets a shoutout (with his work The Idiot being the inspiration for Prince of New York). We also hear about Hitchcock and his film Dial M For Murder, including stars Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, and John Williams. President Bartlet also brings up King Lear (fittingly, as a study of a ruler's relationship with his three daughters).

Ellie Bartlet is a medical school student at Johns Hopkins University.

Product placement: There are at least three brands of water on the desk while the Surgeon General conducts her online chat - Fiji and Perrier bottles are clearly identifiable, while the other one may be San Pellegrino, I'm not positive (Dr. Griffith is also wearing a Stanford sweatshirt):

We see a screenshot of Donna watching the Surgeon General's online chat. There are logos for MSN (Microsoft Network) and computer product makers Dell, HP, and APC:

Toby wears a New York Giants cap (we see later it's made by Starter):

Josh has a Starbucks cup on his desk (the name written on it appears to be "Show" - it's definitely not "Josh"):

There are Goldfish crackers by the coffeepot near Donna's desk (remember when Josh confused Danny in Season 1 between CJ liking Goldfish the crackers or goldfish the fish):