Original airdate: October 24, 2001
Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (47)
Story by: Eli Attie (1) & Gene Sperling (1)
Directed by: Alex Graves (5)
Synopsis
- With the special prosecutor's case against the President not serving as a stark enough contrast for CJ, she cooks up a plan to manipulate the press and congressional Republicans into a House takeover of the investigation. Meanwhile, Republicans try to take advantage of the administration's weakness to repeal the estate tax. The government's handling of a forest fire in Wyoming brings some heat on the President. Ainsley sets up Donna on a blind date with a Republican Capitol Hill staffer.
"Come and get us."
Just when you thought CJ might be down-and-out from the events of Manchester Parts I and II, she proves she's got one of the savviest political minds around in this dandy episode. She comes up with a devious plan to flip the script in the investigation of the administration, and it's great fun to watch it develop.
We begin with subpoenas being handed down by the special prosecutor President Bartlet named to look into his coverup of his multiple sclerosis during the campaign. (That's a lot of subpoenas.):
CJ isn't happy with how this looks - while the administration has been forthcoming and cooperative in the early stages, the very fact subpoenas are coming makes it look like they're not. Plus, the special prosecutor is rather chummy with White House Counsel Oliver Babish, which CJ doesn't think does them any favors. She wants to set up a stark choice, a black-and-white, good-and-evil showdown so the American public can take sides, and she's got an idea for an adversary:
CJ: "Leo, we need to be investigated by someone who wants to kill us just to watch us die. We need someone perceived by the American people to be irresponsible, untrustworthy, partisan, ambitious, and thirsty for the limelight. Am I crazy or this not a job for the U.S. House of Representatives?"Leo replies, "Show me what you're starting with," and we are off. CJ is great, slipping in a "Clem" in reference to the special prosecutor before correcting herself with "Mr. Rollins," then dropping a reference to how the White House sees Rollins differently than the House Republicans do. Just little breadcrumbs, hints that perhaps Rollins isn't going to be that hard on the Bartlet administration, and then let the suspicions of the House Republicans do the rest of the work.
CJ enlists Ainsley to help work the conservative press:
CJ: "Get alone with one of those guys, go off record, and say how you can't believe the President can be claiming to waive executive privileges yet still reserve the right to withhold certain documents. Can you do that?"
Ainsley: "I can't believe how the President can be claiming to waive executive privileges yet still reserve the right to withhold certain documents."
CJ: "Yeah, do it quietly and kind of shake your head in disbelief."
Ainsley (shaking her head as she speaks): "I can't believe how the President can be claiming to waive executive privileges yet still -"
CJ: "You don't have to keep shaking your head, just a little in the beginning."In her next press briefing CJ makes the comment that Rollins and Babish are old friends. That spurs a chance meeting on the Mall where a couple of House Democratic staffers tell her to let up on the "close relationship between Rollins and Babish" talk, as they're worried the Republicans are itching to start their own investigation without waiting for the special prosecutor - exactly what CJ was after.
A little mention later to the press of how Rollins and Babish co-authored an article at Yale, and that's all it takes. It's a master class in manipulation of the media and the Republicans, and while Babish isn't happy with it ("You know, there was an irony in that Clem Rollins was the right man for the job," to which CJ responds, "You think I care less about irony?"), CJ has done what she meant to do - spur the Republicans into cutting out the special prosecutor, get themselves into the investigative fray, and set up a clear political black-and-white situation for the public.
In other plot-related news, Josh and Toby are taken aback when House Republicans abruptly cancel a meeting to discuss a deal on the estate tax (or, as the Republicans and Doug call it, the "death tax"). They quickly discover the Republicans are taking advantage of the administration's focus on the special prosecutor's investigation and Bartlet's perceived weakness to try and ram through a total repeal of the estate tax. Doug, surprisingly, is the adviser who steps up and recommends the President threaten a veto in order to tamp down the Republicans' excitement at doing whatever they want.
Doug: "I think ... he should take out the A-bomb. I think he's got to do something he's never done even once before. 'You think I'm weak? How about I shove Article 1, Section 7 up your ass?' Screw the compromise! I think he's got to veto."Bruno has unnerving news from the campaign front. A California labor leader who is key to Democratic election hopes in that state, Victor Campos, has turned down a seat on a presidential advisory board, and immediately afterward was seen at an NBA basketball game with a Republican bigwig. The White House cooks up a reason to have Campos come to Washington, and get Sam ready to go after him. Bruno insists Connie sit in on the meeting to report back to him, and Sam reluctantly agrees if she stays out of his way.
Sam and Campos have a rather contentious meeting, and while Sam gives him most of what he's asking for, he's unwilling to provide amnesty for all undocumented immigrants from the Americas. Connie has an unusual way of staying out of Sam's way:
Campos: "The Legal Amnesty Fairness Act is in the Senate right now!"
Sam: "We can't back a bill that treats Hispanic immigrants any differently than -"
Campos: "Sam-"
Sam: "There's no way we can do it."
Connie: "Sure we can."
Sam (taken aback, to Connie): "I'm sorry?"
Connie: "We can do it."
Sam: "We really can't."
Connie: "We really can."Sam takes Connie aside, and she explains how amnesty for Hispanic immigrants could really help the electoral map for Democrats, so Sam and Campos come to terms. Frankly, it's shocking Sam was swayed by that argument - he would have had to have known the math, right? And the administration was against the bill for other, political, reasons? Oh, well, it's television.
President Bartlet has a couple of problems he's dealing with. There's a forest fire raging in Yellowstone National Park, and while forestry experts in the Department of the Interior think it's better to let the fire burn, the governors of Wyoming and other western states want the feds to step in and put the fire out. Luckily, rain is in the forecast and should help douse the fire without governmental assistance.
Jed also can't find his good pens, for some reason. He complains to Charlie that he's always had the perfect pens right there in his jacket pocket in the past, just right for signing things, but now none of the pens he can find feel right. Charlie, who's been urging the President to start thinking about a new personal secretary, explains where those pens had come from:
Charlie: "She (Mrs. Landingham) put the pen in your pocket every morning. She slipped it in there."
In a later quiet moment, the President sits at Mrs. Landingham's desk, and finds the box of pens she used to supply him with every day.
Despite the love, affection, and grief Jed still holds for Mrs. Landingham, he's coming to the conclusion that it's time to move on and find another secretary.
Donna is frazzled, as she had a perfect plan to track storage of all the Presidential memos and receipts and schedules that are tucked into coded boxes. Problem is, the sheet with the codes is also inside one of those boxes, and she doesn't know which one.
Ainsley thinks she might have a remedy for Donna's frazzlement - a date. And she's got just the guy in mind:
Donna: "Where does he work?"
Ainsley: "On the Hill. House Ways and Means."
Donna: "He works for the minority counsel's office."
Ainsley: "Not exactly."
Donna: "Where does he work?"
Ainsley: "Well, let me say this. He works with the minority counsel's office."
Donna: "Ainsley ..."
Ainsley: "He works for the majority counsel's office."
Donna: "He's a Republican?"
Ainsley: "We are the majority."Donna doesn't love the idea, as going for a date with a Republican working with the Ways and Means committee seems like a betrayal of Josh, who's fighting with that committee at the moment. Donna finally relents, though (because if you remember the actors' intro to Isaac And Ishmael Janel Moloney says "I get a boyfriend!"). She has a meet-cute with Cliff Calley outside the restaurant they were to meet at, an hour-and-a-half previously. They're getting along great, until Calley is telling Donna about he was "traded" to the House Oversight Committee and he suddenly realizes the reason - the House is about to begin their investigation of the administration and they want a litigator like Calley in their corner. So he's about to become one of the White House's biggest adversaries:
But even though this relationship looks doomed from the get-go ... we'll see more of Calley in future episodes.
A lot of intrigue and political maneuvering going on in this episode, which is one of the things The West Wing can do really well. And it's great to see CJ putting her skills to work in really clever, crafty ways.
Tales Of Interest!
- This episode is Eli Attie's first-ever writing credit on The West Wing. Attie, a former speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore, would go on be credited on 20 more episodes, and eventually became a producer of the show for the last several seasons. Gene Sperling, also with a story credit (the estate tax plotline), was a former economic advisor to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He worked on Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign as well.
- Stockard Channing, who was included in the opening credits for the past two episodes, was not seen in the credits this time. For the first time, it appears, the series will put occasional featured players like Channing in the credits only if they appear in the episode.
- A lot of active camera work from Alex Graves here, and I mean a lot. We get the vantage point of the camera spinning around our subjects multiple times - the opening scene with Rollins getting out of the car, Leo and Josh in Leo's office, Toby as he comes into the Communications Department area, CJ in one of her briefing room scenes, and Donna getting out of the cab to meet Calley.
- A couple of other neat shots involving CJ - a slow pan from the back of the briefing room as she starts her spin on Rollins, showing her at the podium as well as all the cameras/monitors showing her (and it stops in a well-composed place, with Leo watching her as we see the monitors along the wall:
And then again later, with a shot through the blinds of a briefing room window, with CJ seen on a monitor just inside:
- Connie tells Sam she has a Ph.D. from Oxford in political economics. Oxford doesn't grant what's referred to as Ph.Ds, but instead they're called D.Phils (said as "dee-fills").
- We get an actual accounting of the Republican-Democratic split in the House, as Josh tells Leo the full Republican vote count would be 226, leaving 209 seats for the Democrats.
- The place where Donna and Cliff meet, the Farragut Grill, is apparently fictional (also I'm fairly sure these scene was shot in Los Angeles, but I could be wrong):
We also get a glimpse of a fictional newspaper in the Communications Office, the Washington Star Observer, made up for the show to give us this headline:
(Also note the sports banner at the top of the page: "Icebergs' Playoff Hopes End With 24-3 Loss To Streakers." That score sounds like football, and ending a football team's playoff hopes would be late in the season, like December, probably, but it's clearly not December here. I suppose it could be a blowout baseball score, which would match the fall season, but 'Icebergs' doesn't really sound like a baseball team name, you know? I mean, they're imaginary sports teams, so they can be whatever you want. If you see the sports banner on the quite real Washington Post below, it mentions Woods [Tiger, I imagine] leading the Masters golf tournament and the season opener for the DC United soccer team. Both those events would happen in April of 2001, so, either Toby is keeping really outdated newspapers around or we weren't supposed to take a good look at these headlines.)
- The pictures on the President's desk have been rearranged a bit. The picture of Zoey has been moved to face the room instead of the President, and there's a new photo of what looks like a mother and daughter facing him (perhaps Elizabeth and her daughter/Jed's granddaughter Annie, referred to in Pilot?):
- Given the key plot-important advice coming from both Doug and Connie in this episode, it's a bit surprising that this episode is about all Sorkin wrote, literally, for both characters. Doug will not appear again onscreen, although Evan Handler would go on to work for Sorkin again (alongside Bradley Whitford and Tim Busfield) in Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip in 2006. Connie returns for one more appearance a few episodes down the road, but then she's done as well. I guess Bruno puts them to work somewhere offscreen, probably teaming up with Mandy.
Quotes
Donna: "I had a plan. I grew up on a farm."
Josh: "You grew up in a condo."
Donna: "I grew up near a farm. I was cute. And I was peppy. And I always did well on my 19th century English literature midterms till you came along and sucked me into your life of crime."
Josh: "Hey, I'm not the one -"
Donna: "White collar crime, boy."
-----
Sam: "Technically I'm not a professional fire fighter, though there was a time I wanted to be."
Josh: "When?"
Sam: "When I was four."
Josh: "When I was four, I wanted to be a ballerina."
Sam: "Yeah?"
Josh: "I don't like to, talk about it."
-----
Margaret: "You still don't know my name, do you?"
Bruno: "It's Gertrude."
Margaret: "It's not."
-----
Leo: "Sam will have the meeting and report back."
Bruno: "Sam will have the meeting and one of my people will be there and they will report back. It's time to distinguish between the White House and the campaign."
Leo: "Sam does this for us."
Bruno: "Does he do it right?"
Leo: "Oftentimes."
Sam: "You guys know I'm sitting right here, right?"
-----
Ainsley (catching up to Sam and CJ): "Excuse me!"
Sam: "Hey!"
Ainsley: "You need a haircut."
Sam: "Shouldn't you be someplace keeping me out of jail?"
Ainsley: "I'm taking a break."
-----
President: "Letting this fire burn is good for the environment. You know how I know?"
Leo: "How?"
President: "Because smart people told me. Please, God, let 'em be right."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- The special prosecutor Clem Rollins is played by Nicholas Pryor, a recognizable character actor who was Tom Cruise's dad in Risky Business, played the chancellor in Beverly Hills 90210, and had a long run on the soap opera Port Charles.
- Donna's date (and soon to be the administration's congressional antagonist) Cliff Calley is played by Mark Feuerstein (Caroline In The City, What Women Want, Good Morning Miami). This episode begins a recurring arc for his character.
- The California labor leader Victor Campos is played by Miguel Sandoval, who has been seen in lots of TV shows and movies (Medium, Jurassic Park, Get Shorty).
- Secretary of the Interior Bill Horton is played by Edmund L. Schaff, who has a familiar face and voice from his appearances on a variety of TV shows (Space: Above And Beyond, The Practice, Mad Men).
- You might remember Congressman Mark Richardson (Thom Barry) as leader of the Congressional Black Caucus from Five Votes Down.
- Here he is again, dealing with Josh and Toby over votes for the estate tax repeal.
- Made-up cable news channel CND returns, this time with coverage of the Wyoming wildfires.
- Of course you remember Toby's pink rubber "Spaldeen" ball he uses to bounce against the wall to help him think (first seen in The Stackhouse Filibuster). Here we see him with it as he, Josh, Doug, and Connie talk about the estate tax repeal issue in the Roosevelt Room.
- Doug makes a big deal over President Bartlet threatening to use his first veto ever for the estate-tax-repeal bill. Last season, in In This White House, Capital Beat's Mark Gottfried asked Sam, "Why is this (education) bill better than its Republican counterpart that the President vetoed last year?" In addition, a key plot point of that season's The Portland Trip dealt with President Bartlet's decision to pocket veto a same-sex marriage bill passed by Congress. Perhaps the education bill was pocket-vetoed as well ... but this discussion does serve as a great excuse for us to see President Bartlet haul out the old Veto Stamp.
- Michigan Republican Randall Thomas (Thomas J. McCarthy) was seen in The Leadership Breakfast leading the press conference that Ann Stark cooked up to sandbag Toby and CJ:
- He's back again here, as chair of the House Oversight Committee that's going to take over the investigation of the Bartlet MS coverup:
DC location shots
- The opening scene with special prosecutor Rollins arriving outside the courthouse was filmed on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the E. Barrett Prettyman U. S. Courthouse (that's the George Gordon Meade Memorial in between the street and the courthouse):
- The scene with CJ outside talking with congressional staffers was filmed on the National Mall, on the southeast end near what is now the National Museum of the American Indian (which opened in 2004). You'll notice the TV camera focal length makes the Capitol and the Washington Monument look much nearer than they appear with a regular photograph:
- After Donna and Cliff share drinks at the Farragut Grill, they walk through the U.S. Navy Memorial Plaza, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the National Archives (the red arrow on the second photo shows where they were actually walking):
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- Donna mentions how her "farm-girl ass" would be sold for "a carton of Luckys" in prison. She also brings up FedEx receipts as something she's searching for in the boxes.
- Real-life Arizona Senator Jon Kyl can be seen in the background on C-SPAN2.
- Bruno mentions a game between the NBA's Indiana Pacers and Cleveland Cavaliers as he tells Leo about Victor Campos' meeting with Jack Buckland.
- An article co-written by special prosecutor Rollins and White House Counsel Oliver Babish in the Yale Law Review is part of CJ's plan. In real life, though, it's called the Yale Law Journal.
- The online document access firm LexisNexis is brought up by Babish when he's suspicious about CJ's motives.
- We see a couple of Starbucks cups with the actors somewhat trying to hide the logo (Rollins holds one, Sam has one later):
- Babish throws a Wall Street Journal on the table in front of Rollins.
- There's a bottle of San Pellegrino water in front of Ainsley in CJ's office:
- CJ has a Reebok bag when she comes back to her office - apparently returning from the gym (walking all the way from somewhere near the east end of the Mall, that's ambitious; also in Pilot we were told 5 to 6 am was "her time," when she worked out). The prop crew did try to disguise the logo with some black tape (a technique referred to in the industry as "greeking"), but we can tell what it is:
End credits freeze frame: The final shot, with all the staffers gathered to watch Congressman Thomas announce his plans to take over the investigation, causing CJ to say, "Come and get us." (And there's Evan Handler over Toby's right shoulder, the last time we'll ever see him here ... much like Mandy walking away down the hall in What Kind Of Day Has It Been.)
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