Gone Quiet - TWW S3E7

Original airdate: November 14, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (50)
Written by: Julia Dahl (1) & Laura Glasser (3)

Directed by: John Hutman (1)

Synopsis

• When an American spy submarine goes missing off the coast of North Korea, an antsy President Bartlet is overeager to send in a rescue mission. Abbey considers making a deal with Congressional investigators. Toby jousts with an Appropriations Committee member over funding the NEA, Sam wrestles with the ethics of soft money advertising, and CJ is over the moon with a Republican leader's non-answer to the question of why he wants to be President.

"Why do I want to be President? (long pause, as the President ponders) ... I've been thinking about it for the last couple of hours. I almost had it."

I have some problems with this episode.

Oh, there's still good stuff, and if it's one of your favorites, I understand. I mean, it's hard to go wrong with CJ singing "I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my skirt, too sexy for the ... other ...things," Hal Holbrook is perfect as the crusty granddad-Assistant Secretary of State that makes Jed feel inadequate, and this is the episode which spawned the famous .gif of President Bartlet banging his head on his desk:

Even so ... let's talk about that whole "the President feels uncertain around the generals" thing. That first came up way back in Season 1, the very first non-pilot episode to be exact ("Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc"). Bartlet's uneasiness around military types, his attempts to compensate for the fact he never served in the armed forces, his eagerness to use overwhelming force to prove himself - we saw all that in that episode and its followup, A Proportional Response. Well, a lot of time and military adventures have gone under the bridge since then: there was the rescue of a downed pilot in Iraq in What Kind Of Day Has It Been; there was the failed rescue mission of captured DEA agents in Colombia in Bartlet's Third State Of The Union and The War At Home; the successful show of force to stop the Haitian coup that spanned the end of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3. I think President Bartlet has certainly earned the respect of his generals and has grown more comfortable with what goes on in the Situation Room.

So what the hell is going on here? Leo starts things off when informing Jed about losing contact with the USS Portland, an intelligence-gathering submarine working inside North Korea's territorial waters:

Leo: "It's one of those things we've talked about that sounds worse than it is because of your inexperience with the military."

The President goes on to appear totally flustered in the Situation Room, seemingly surprised by the fact the crew of a spy submarine would put secrecy and avoiding detection above its own safety, and acting like a chastised kid in front of Albie Duncan. None of this seems like the President we've watched deal with Haiti and Colombia in the very recent past. It's like none of that ever happened, not even the attack on Syria he agreed to in A Proportional Response.

It just all rings false to me, a cheap angle using President Bartlet's military inexperience (that was already explored two seasons ago) as a reason to heighten the tension and add some kind of personal dimension in the search for the missing sub. I don't think that measures up to the plotting and the writing we've become used to with this show.

Another plot line and character turn that just doesn't ring true to me in this episode relates to the soft-money advertising gambit. The deal with "soft money" is that it can be used on "issue" advertising, not blatant campaign ads. Bruno, a top campaign strategist and brilliant mind, seemingly can't do better with his "issue" ads than take a regular Bartlet campaign commercial and take out the "vote for" words. That's it? You can't come up with a soft money ad more effective and creative than that?

And then when Sam steps up to say, let's follow the real letter of the law and do real, actual, detailed issue ads, about education or infrastructure or whatever - Bruno seems terrifically impressed. I mean ... it's just all too neat. First, this top-notch campaign staff appears to be too lazy to actually create a different commercial that they can use soft money for; then when Sam says let's really do what the law says we can do, they're floored. It's too pat, too tidy ... I don't buy it for a second.

There's more about this that strikes me as not West-Wing-quality, and that's in the technical aspects. We start right off with the camera technique of a tracking shot coming across a wall, transporting us right into a different location - in this case, we go from Leo walking out of the Situation Room to the President looking out of an Oval Office window:

Now, there's nothing necessarily bad about that tracking-shot technique. It can sometimes be very effective in taking the viewer from one location to another. But it's not exactly one we're familiar with seeing in The West Wing, and first-time West Wing director John Hutman ends up using the obstruction-in-the-way-of-a-tracking-shot thing over, and over, and over again. And it's not even changing locations! It's just a wall or a post or a door in the way of the camera!

Here's the President and Leo walking up from the Situation Room, with a pillar at the top of the stairs in the way of the camera:

Here's Bruno and Connie, heading into the Roosevelt Room where the tracking shot is blocked by a wall (and a quick sighting of a copy of the famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware):

And then Toby leaving the Roosevelt Room heading for the communications bullpen; once again, the tracking shot following him has a door and wall in the middle of the moving shot:

As with any technical aspect, it's not necessarily "bad" or "wrong," but when you keep going back to the well again and again as Hutman does in this episode, you start wondering if he just figured out a new toy to play with. And it was jarring (to me) the first time we saw it!

And then there's the lighting. For whatever reason, there's a lot of harsh, unflattering downlighting in this episode. And I mean a lot:

The West Wing has always been known for its dramatic lighting effects, but I can't remember another time when there was so much harsh lighting in so much of the episode. Perhaps I'm being petty and nitpicking, but hey ... I noticed the tracking shots and the lighting, and all of it distracted me from the story.

The story ... we've covered quite a bit about the missing submarine. The President is leaping at the chance to send the Navy into North Korean waters to save the sub and risk war, even though Leo and good old Nancy McNally think the Portland is just hiding from detection.

President: "I assess the national interest by the number of people alive, not dead. You have four hours before I send the Pacific Fleet into Haeju Bay."

The President sweats out the four hours with Assistant Secretary of State Albie Duncan, a longtime State Department hand who Leo originally called over to give advice on whether or not to actually send warships into North Korean waters (of course the answer was no), but then stayed on to annoy Jed by listing all the Navy ships that suffered tragic ends. When the President finally storms back into the Situation Room to send in the rescue mission, he discovers the Portland has reappeared, and had indeed simply "gone quiet" to avoid being noticed by North Korean vessels.

Toby is wracking his brain about why the $105 million that Republicans want to add to the Parks Service budget is ringing a bell. When CJ reminds him $105 million is the exact amount of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, he realizes Congress is trying to defund the NEA. He calls in a member of the Appropriations Committee, Tawny Cryer, who spends her time listing the offensive and "inartistic" art projects that received NEA support. Toby stands up for the arts (as we've seen him do in episodes past, like He Shall, From Time To Time ... and Take Out The Trash Day), but in the end, it turns out Congress just really doesn't like the head of the NEA. They'll restore the funding if the administration changes the person at the top.

Sam is tussling with Bruno and Connie over soft money, particularly the idea of using unlimited non-campaign-related funds to run ads that will, in essence, serve as campaign advertising. While Sam grants the practice is technically legal, he thinks an administration that has called for campaign finance reform would look hypocritical taking advantage of the rule:

Sam: "We're talking about unlimited, unregulated money that can be raised in staggering amounts."

Connie: "Yes."

Sam: "Understand, it's not like there's a law that envisions soft money - it's just that there's no law that specifically bans it. It's a loophole so big you could race the America's Cup through it. How can the President be opposed to soft money one year and take it the next? Where's he gonna be on campaign finance reform tomorrow?"

Bruno: "Exactly where he is today, leading the charge against it. In the meantime, Congress and the FEC have been sitting on their hands. Is that our fault?"

Connie: "No."

Bruno: "So now Bartlet's supposed to obey a law that doesn't exist? What's next, imaginary street signs?"

 (Note what I imagine must be a mistake left during some stage of script revisions. When Sam asks where the President will be tomorrow on campaign finance reform, Bruno answers by saying he'll be leading the charge against it. Well, no ... Bartlet is actually in favor of campaign finance reform. He might be leading the charge against soft money, but that was Sam's previous statement, not what he finished with and what Bruno appears to be responding to.)

Eventually Sam has the brilliant idea of, instead of repurposing campaign ads to fit the restrictions of the law, let's do what the law says we can do and make up some actual issue ads. Bruno is so taken with the idea he actually smiles and chuckles. Who would have thought? There's really not room for my eyes to roll far enough to believe Bruno would be anything like this.

Abbey (in a wheelchair, thanks to a hiking accident) spends the day talking with Babish. He's received the list of witnesses the Congressional committee wants to call in the investigation of President Bartlet's campaign and his health coverup, and included on the list are all of Abbey's patients who sued her for malpractice. She's surprised, but not terribly concerned - of all those lawsuits, four were dismissed, she won two others, and one was settled out of court. When Babish stresses that Congress is willing to go after her and the angle of her technically illegal medical care of her husband in order to attack the President, she's willing to take a censure or a temporary surrender of her medical practice to avoid that. Babish will have none of it, because he's tired of what this investigation is really doing (the "criminalization of politics"):

Babish: "Truth isn't a luxury. You're gonna go in there, you're gonna swear an oath. You're gonna get asked questions, you're gonna tell the truth. It's the way you stand up and say, Stop!"

And finally, CJ is in a great mood, because she's got a fun song stuck in her head. Well, that, and the top prospect for the Republican presidential nomination has completely blown the answer to the question, Why do you want to be President?"

CJ (reading the transcript of the Majority Leader's remarks): "The reason I would run, were I to run, is I have a great belief in this country as a country, and in this people as a people, that go into making this country a nation with the greatest national resources and people, educated people." 

And it gets even funnier, as she shows it to Josh later:

Josh: "Yeah, and he just kept on digging. 'We have the greatest technology of any people of any country in the world along with the greatest - not the greatest, but very serious problems confronting our people, and I want to be President in order to focus on these problems in a way that uses the energy of our people to move us forward, basically.'"

CJ: "Yes."

Josh: "It's the 'basically' that makes it art."

But CJ gets off on a tangent - what's President Bartlet's answer to that same question? It's got to be better than this one, right? Who has the answer? Who has thought about it, worked on it, prepared it? That leads us the final shot in the episode:

CJ: "Can you answer it?"

President: "Why do I want to be President?"

CJ: "Yeah."

(long pause, President sighs)

President: "I've been thinking about it for the last couple of hours. I almost had it."  

Which gives us CJ's stricken reaction:

So, in my opinion, anyway, not one of the series' best efforts. But there's still a lot of good stuff, despite the out-of-character and offputting aspects of the episode. We've got Thanksgiving coming up in the next episode, and that one is a classic.



Tales Of Interest!

- Timeline: Sam says Bruno can't spend their campaign ad money yet, because "We're gonna need that money in Iowa in nine weeks." While The West Wing electoral timeline is two years off from reality, the Iowa caucuses held most recently to this episode were on January 24, 2000. Nine weeks prior to that week in 2002 would be around November 20, 2001, or about a week after this episode aired. So the math checks out.

- Abbey's scenes in Babish's office have her in a wheelchair with a cast on her ankle. Stockard Channing had actually injured her ankle in a hiking accident, and had four pins and a metal plate in that ankle, so the showrunners wrote her injury into the show.

- In a sort of Easter egg, Albie Duncan tells President Bartlet the story of the USS Pueblo, a spy ship that was captured by North Korea in 1968. Duncan winds up his story by growling, "I was there." Hal Holbrook, who plays Duncan, portrayed the Pueblo's captain Lloyd Bucher in a 1973 TV-movie about the incident. So in a sense, Holbrook was "there."

- Gail's fishbowl features a Bartlet campaign button, in another example of poking fun at the Majority Leader's meandering answer to the question of why he wants to be President.

- This episode (along with the upcoming Dead Irish Writers) was submitted as Stockard Channing's nomination for an Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy award, which she ended up winning.




Quotes    

President: "The propellers aren't going."

Charlie: "Maybe they're saving fuel."

President: "That makes sense. Also, there's a chance I could get hit getting on or off."

Charlie (chuckling): "Yeah."

President: "Excuse me?"

Charlie: "Sir?"

President: "You think I'm not tall enough to get hit in the neck by the propellers on Marine One?"

Charlie: "I think Dikembe Mutombo isn't tall enough to get hit in the neck by the propellers on Marine One." 

-----

President: "Where's the damn submarine, Nancy? I don't want to hear, 'I don't know,' I want to hear how many people are out there swimming around looking for it."

McNally: "See, and I thought you were going to panic, sir." 

-----

Bruno: "These are direct mail leaflets. (dropping leaflets on table) 'Bartlet: Hopelessly Liberal.' 'Bartlet: Super-Liberal.' 'Bartlet: Liberal, Liberal, Liberal.'"

Sam: "These aren't coming from our side, right?" 

-----

Tawny: "Here's a woman who gets naked, covers herself completely in chocolate, and sings. Does that appeal to you?"

Toby: "By and large, I'm not wild about musicals."

-----

Tawny: "Sam, have you heard of Andrew Hawkins?"

Sam: "No."

Tawny: "You funded his performance piece recently, which involved him destroying all his belongings outside a Starbucks in Haight-Ashbury."

Sam: "I've done that a couple of times. But I didn't know there was funding available." 

-----

Josh: "Well, the Majority Leader got the question last night."

Leo: "He tanked."

Josh: "Yeah, and we're starting to put together an answer for you when you get it."

President: "The question?"

Josh: "Why do you want to be President?"

President: "I don't."

Josh: "Well, we'll put that in the hopper and show you a draft."

-----

Bruno: "Cause I am tired of working for candidates who make me think I should be embarrassed to believe what I believe, Sam. I'm tired of getting them elected. We all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said 'liberal' means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we're gonna tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn't have to work if they don't want to. And instead of saying, 'Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trip back to the fifties,' we cowered in the corner and said, 'Please, don't hurt me.' No more. I really don't care who's right, who's wrong. We're both right. We're both wrong. Let's have two parties, huh? What do you say?"

-----

Bruno (responding to the ideas for issue ads): "This isn't bad, I like this."

Sam: "Yes."

Bruno: "Why am I nervous?"

Sam: "It's not amoral."

Bruno (chuckling): "Yeah."

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

• Tawny, the Appropriations Committee member who threatens funding for the NEA, is played by the always welcome Valerie Mahaffey (Seabiscuit, Young Sheldon, Sully, dozens of TV guest appearances). She's just good in whatever I see her in. Side note, the script names her as Tawny Cryer, but she's never referred to as anything but "Tawny" in the dialogue.

• The crusty Assistant Secretary of State Albie Duncan is played by veteran actor Hal Holbrook (All The President's Men, Lincoln mini-series, North and South, Evening Shade, his one-man Mark Twain show).

• As I mentioned earlier, the subject of President Bartlet's inexperience with military matters and his nervousness in dealing with military brass was originally discussed in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" and A Proportional Response. A lot of time and several military operations have passed since then, though ...

(The series' topic of a President dealing with military issues without having personal military experience appears to be related to the Clinton administration, as many aspects of the Bartlet presidency are. Bill Clinton had been the first President since Franklin Roosevelt who hadn't served in the armed forces, and President Clinton did take criticism from some quarters that his role as commander-in-chief was somehow tainted by his lack of military experience. Since Clinton, of course, only one of the three following Presidents had any military service - George W. Bush served in the Air National Guard, while neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump were in the military.)

• The "question" and the answer to it that is causing such glee among the staff apparently came from the Senate Majority Leader; we know the Republicans control both houses of Congress, and the leader of the majority in the House is typically the Speaker, so the "Majority Leader" must refer to the Senate. This does tie in with The Leadership Breakfast - Ann Stark, chief of staff to that unnamed Majority Leader, used her manipulation of Toby and CJ and the press in that episode to set up her boss for a presidential run. 

• Bruno's associate Connie returns - her first appearance since Ways And Means - in the discussions about soft money and issue ads. But unfortunately, just as Bruno's other associate Doug disappeared after advocating for a Presidential veto in that same earlier episode, we won't see Connie again.

Connie's final appearance before she joins Mandy and Doug

• Toby seems to be the "protector of the arts" in the administration. In He Shall, From Time To Time ... he fought Democratic congressmembers who wanted to keep the topic of NEA funding out of the State of the Union address; in Take Out The Trash Day he dealt with more congresspeople trying to cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Now he's back defending the NEA again against Rep. Cryer.

• What's on the President's desk continues to change from week to week, as all those family pictures that we typically see there are now missing (it seems to be a choice made purely for camera/shooting purposes, to open up the desk for shots like Jed banging his head on it):

• Speaking of stuff missing from desks, in Oliver Babish's first appearance in Bad Moon Rising we saw several Chicago-related things on his desk. Those are gone now.

• Babish and Abbey talk about her violations of medical codes in three states, New Hampshire, Missouri, and Arizona. That's a direct reference to their discussion about her medical treatment of her husband in 18th And Potomac.

DC location shots    

• None

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

• Charlie mentions 7-foot 2-inch NBA basketball player Dikembe Mutombo in the conversation with the President about ducking under helicopter blades. At the time of this episode, Mutombo was with the Philadelphia 76ers, and was coming off perhaps his best season in the NBA.

• The song we hear playing in CJ's office, the one she is so taken with, is I'm Too Sexy (YouTube link), a 1991 hit by Right Said Fred. Personally, I'm taken by her in-depth breakdown of the tune with Carol:

CJ: "What is this song about?"

Carol: "This is I'm Too Sexy."

CJ: "I know, for his shirt, he's too sexy."

Carol: "Other things too."

CJ: "He lists them."

Carol: "Yeah, well, I think he's feeling good, I think he's feeling sexy."

CJ: "Too sexy."

Carol: "I think it's the kind of thing where someone says, 'Oh, this is just too good.'"

CJ: "A hyperbole." 

Carol: "Yeah."

CJ: "So it's not a problem. It's not a song about somebody having a problem."

• Albie Duncan is mentioned as having been at the State Department since Truman.

• The long list of controversial art projects Tawny lists as supported by NEA funds are apparently fictional, as I couldn't find real-life references to any of those artists' names.

• However, the names Toby uses in response are real: the painters Picasso and Monet; the ancient Greek statesman Pericles and his contemporary, the sculptor and painter Phidias; the Italian statesman and arts patron Lorenzo de Medici and his contemporary Leonardo da Vinci; and Queen Elizabeth and the playwright William Shakespeare. 

• Buckley v Valeo is the real Supreme Court decision about campaign finance and the uses of soft money. Connie's mention of footnote 52 is exactly correct (in full, that footnote reads: This construction would restrict the application of § 608(e)(1) to communications containing express words of advocacy of election or defeat, such as "vote for," "elect," "support," "cast your ballot for," "Smith for Congress," "vote against," "defeat," "reject.").

• Albie Duncan spends his day in the Oval Office listing the history of military ships in distress. By and large, the ships he mentions do exist in reality, and many of them were lost in battle or otherwise involved in serious incidents. Not all of the ships he mentioned were lost at sea, though:

- the Pueblo: an American intelligence-gathering ship that was attacked and captured by North Korea in 1968

- the Glomar Explorer: was involved in a secret mission (Project Jennifer) to attempt to raise a sunken Soviet submarine

- the Gudgeon: a submarine that was indeed trapped and forced to surface by Soviet ships in 1957

- the Oklahoma, Hornet, Lexington, and Wasp: all ships sunk in battle during World War II

- the Gerke: a destroyer that saw action during Korea and Vietnam, but there's no obvious disaster linked to it

- the St. Paul: a cruiser that suffered a fire in a gun turret that killed 30 sailors in 1952

- the Irwin: a destroyer whose crew earned military honors for assisting a burning aircraft carrier during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944

- the Manchester: a cruiser that saw action in Korea, but like the Gerke, there appears to be no reason for it to be on this list 

- He mentions the John W. Morrison taking fire off Odopando in 1953, but I don't believe such a ship (or such as place as Odopando) exists. There was a destroyer named the USS Morrison, named after John G. Morrison, but it was sunk off Okinawa in 1945. 

• Product placement: CJ has a Starbucks cup early in the episode:

• Duncan specifically requests a Schweppes Bitter Lemon (with a twist); and there's a parade of products in the Roosevelt Room as Sam, Toby, Bruno, and Connie work out their ad strategy. Here's a Pepsi can:

Connie drinks San Pellegrino water:

And at the end of the episode, there's boxes and cups from Panda Express: 

End credits freeze frame: The President, Leo, and Duncan wait things out in the Oval Office.

War Crimes - TWW S3E6

Original airdate: November 7, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (49)
Story by: Allison Abner (3)

Directed by: Alex Graves (6)

Synopsis

• A shooting at a church in Texas causes the President to ask Hoynes to travel there and support the administration's gun control stance, a move the Vice President sees as harmful to his future electoral chances. Leo and an old Air Force friend debate whether or not the United States should sign on with the UN war crimes court. Donna's secrecy about a personal item lands her in hot water with the Congressional investigation into the Bartlet campaign. Toby deals with trust issues with junior aides, CJ reconnects with a returning White House reporter, and Sam mulls over eliminating the penny.

"All wars are crimes."

This is a busy episode, and it all takes place during a single rainy October Sunday. Tying most of the storylines together, however, is the theme of the title - people do things outside the bounds of propriety when engaged in an existential struggle. A President sends his Vice President on an errand that could torpedo the VP's future electoral hopes; a White House staffer lies in a deposition during a congressional investigation; a communications chief considers scorched-earth tactics to deal with a press leak before trying a different tack.

Where to start? Let's start where the episode starts - there's been a shooting at a church in Abilene, Texas. A gunman fired at his estranged wife, wounding an innocent bystander. Another churchgoer pulled out his concealed weapon and fired back, striking not the gunman but a 9-year-old girl, who later dies. This leads us to a philosophical tete-a-tete between President Bartlet and Vice President Hoynes that begins with gun control, but runs far afield to strike at the very relationship between the two men.

While the President is preparing the face the press and address the death of the girl, he and Leo agree on sending Hoynes to Texas the next week to carry the administration's message of more restrictions on guns. This is a dangerous subject for the Texan Hoynes; he knows his constituency and voter base for an eventual Presidential run is built with hard-core gun rights advocates, and speaking out counter to those voters' views could cost him.

President: "You're a hero in Texas."

Hoynes: "I was a hero in Texas."

President: "Texans don't like that you have the courage of your convictions?"

Hoynes: "They're not my convictions. They're yours!"

President: "Oh, yeah, I forgot."

The President, though, knows he can get a double benefit by sending Hoynes - he'll get to promote his administration's gun control stance, and also weaken Hoynes as a way of taking revenge for the Vice President's early campaign trip to New Hampshire that led to the revelation of Bartlet's MS (17 People).

This entire face-to-face meeting is golden work by two good actors. We usually think of President Bartlet as a good-hearted, gregarious man who makes the tough decisions when he has to, but doesn't glory in it. Here we see the hardness behind the friendliness. After his relatively easygoing greeting with Hoynes - even offering him a beer! - when the Vice President questions the need of his going to Texas Bartlet's response is a steely-eyed "That's what Vice Presidents do."

The two continue to spar over guns and philosophy through the evening, until they finally come to a grudging realization that they each need the other:

President: "Not easy being my Vice President, is it?"

Hoynes: "No, sir."

President: "I wouldn't think so. (pause) But it's the only way you're gonna get the nomination. You know that, right? If I win."

Hoynes: "Yeah. And the only way you're gonna win, is if I'm on the ticket. You know that, don't you, sir?"

President: "Yeah. (pause, Hoynes starts to leave) You'll go to Texas?"

Hoynes: "I want a seat at the table."

President (pause): "Yeah." 

So Hoynes will take the hit, because the President asked him to, and because he needs the President to succeed now so that Hoynes can win later.

Speaking of Jed's MS troubles, the Congressional investigation into his campaign and the coverup of his health continues. It's Donna's turn to talk to the investigators and give her deposition on this Sunday. It shouldn't be a big deal - the committee is mainly checking on Donna's work gathering the files and paperwork to answer the investigation - but she ends up face to face with Cliff Calley. That's the guy Ainsley set her up with back in Ways And Means, just before he was tasked to join the Oversight Committee and help with the probe into the Bartlet campaign. They had two dates, including one where they spent the night together after they both realized the conflict between the investigator and the West Wing staffer.

And Calley knows something he's probably not supposed to know. When Donna is asked if she keeps a diary, she says no. Calley asks that to be read back, looking directly and meaningfully at Donna.

Donna returns the look, steady and unperturbed.

And we move on. We later discover, when Calley tracks Donna down at her apartment, that he knows she has a diary - he saw it the night he spent at her place. He threatens her with the consequences, with jail time and fines, and pleads with her to correct her testimony. Her response (after asking him, "What would you say? That you thought you saw a diary while you were hunting around for your boxer shorts?"): "You shouldn't be here."

Turns out, yes, she does keep a diary. Where does she go for help? Naturally, to Josh. Even though she thinks he's pissed at her for even seeing Calley, she goes to him to ask for a way out of her dilemma. If Josh wasn't pissed at her before, it appears he is now:

"Ya think?!?"

He does come up with a plan - a surreptitious meeting with Calley, where he'll be given an hour to look through the diary and decide if there's anything requiring additional investigation. That seems to settle things, and even a seriously upset Josh is able to comfort Donna, a little, putting his arm around her as they sit on a bench in the chilly evening air.

(An aside about this screen shot: Janel Moloney, in her several appearances on The West Wing Weekly podcast, has said it was her actor's choice from the very beginning in Pilot to play Donna as deeply, secretly in love with Josh. There's not a lot of textual support for that choice so far - a little bit, I suppose, but mostly subtext - so it's a bold choice, and given the chemistry between Moloney and Bradley Whitford right from the start, a believable one. Just look at Moloney's face here ... is there any doubt this woman is not hopelessly in love?)

The question we have, though, is why did Donna lie in the deposition? Calley had her original answer read back. If she just misspoke or it kind of slipped her mind (like when she clarified the previous question about "photo albums" vs "photographs"), why didn't she correct herself? She continued to lie to Calley outside her apartment (partly, I imagine, in anger at him for snooping around when they spent the night together), then desperately went to Josh to admit the truth. She claimed to think there was nothing incriminating in the diary and therefore it wasn't that big a deal to tell the committee she didn't even keep one. Was it embarrassment about what she had in it? Her writings about Calley? Or her writings about Josh? I like to think it is her diary entries about Josh that she desperately wants to keep a secret, which makes it a huge sacrifice to go to him about the problem and have Josh be the one who gives the diary to Calley. Josh admits he hasn't read it - I think that subtext (Donna has her secret feelings for Josh in that diary, and she really doesn't want him to know about them) is definitely what Aaron Sorkin is trying to illustrate here. And the trust Josh shows in her, by not even looking at the diary himself, really illustrates his chivalry and devotion to her as well.

The obvious connection to our title is the meeting between Leo and Air Force General Alan Adamle. The two are old friends, having served in Vietnam together, and they are wrestling with the topic of whether the US should join the United Nations war crimes court. Leo believes to be on the right side of history, comparing the issue with the Nuremberg or Tokyo war crimes trials after World War II. Adamle points out the conflict with national sovereignty, and who has jurisidiction over American soldiers charged with crimes.

It takes a bombshell to shake Leo's position. Adamle pulls out a file from a mission Leo flew in Vietnam in 1966. Leo had been told it was a military target, a bridge; Adamle reveals it was a civilian target instead, and 11 civilian casualties resulted. John Spencer's reaction is haunting:

"Why did you tell me that?" he asks. Adamle responds, "Because you could be tried and charged with a war crime." The personal connection hits Leo to the core, and while the question remains unsettled, he promises Adamle he'll get time with the President.

CJ is dealing with a new White House reporter - well, not new, just newly returned from overseas. Will Sawyer apparently made an impression with CJ when he was on the beat 2 1/2 years ago, as they show an easy banter in their scenes. Sawyer has a scoop, though - a source has told him Toby said if President Bartlet wins re-election, it will be on Hoynes' coattails.

When CJ goes to Toby, he admits he said it, but in a closed meeting with junior staffers in the context that Hoynes' polling was better than Bartlet's in some Midwestern states. He's more struck by the idea that one of these aides working in the White House would feel like it was okay to give that damaging quote to a reporter. He tells Ginger to call in all the junior staffers and senior assistants, and if they can't make it in two hours (on a Sunday), they don't need to come in Monday morning.

This leads us to one of the most finely crafted pieces of writing in The West Wing. Toby doesn't rant, he doesn't roar, he doesn't attack (the way we saw him respond to a leak in Bad Moon Rising) - he expresses his disappointment, and explains why he's disappointed in a touching, personal speech:

Toby (to aides): "We're a team. From the President and Leo on through, we're a team. We win together, we lose together, we celebrate and we mourn together. And defeats are softened and victories sweetened because we did them together. [...] So, an item will appear in the paper tomorrow, and it'll be embarrassing to me and embarrassing to the President. I'm not gonna have a witch hunt. I'm not gonna huff and puff. I'm not gonna take anyone's head off. I'm simply gonna say this: You're my guys. And I'm yours. And there's nothing I wouldn't do for you."

It's a great moment, a great speech, and Richard Schiff is great in it.

The humorous part of the episode is Sam's befuddlement about and eventual agreement with a proposal to eliminate the penny. A congressional staffer wants the administration's support for such a bill in exchange for helping move the President's plan for education funding out of committee. While the topic is played for laughs, the Legal Tender Modernization Act was a real bill introduced by Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe in 2002. And Sam starts to see some sense behind the whole thing, even trying to talk Josh into coming on board:

Sam: "Two-thirds of the pennies produced in the last 30 years have dropped out of circulation."

Josh: "You've been reading about this?"

Sam: "It's interesting."

Josh: "No, it's not."

Sam: "The Mint gets letters with pennies taped on notebook paper. Letters from citizens who found the pennies on the street and mailed them back to the Treasury to help pay down the debt."

Josh: "It's almost hard to believe that plan hasn't worked." 

This plotline is the only one that can't really be linked to the title, but the rest of this busy episode all has connections to the theme. How far should a President go to get back at his Vice President for misdeeds, whether real or imagined? How much responsibility does a country hold to protect its soldiers and citizens over the interests of the morality of the world at large? How much devotion and loyalty must a person demand in the quest for idealism? What are the boundaries of truth and revelation of secrets, and who decides what's pertinent in a contest between Congress and the White House, between Republicans and Democrats? And what good is the battle between the parties, between the desire for scoops and eyeballs and the search for the truth, what good is all that? Will Sawyer has an usual attitude for a Washington reporter (with a direct Sorkin reference to the Clinton years):

Sawyer: "I don't like being a stenographer. And I don't like writing gossip. I read a column last week where a lady bemoaned the decade of scandal she's had to cover, as if the news was to blame for the quality of journalism. I don't know if there's ever been a more important time to be good at what I do. Can you imagine how much I don't give a damn about what Toby said to a staffer?"

Tales Of Interest!

- We can pinpoint the setting of this episode exactly, to Sunday, October 21, 2001. Why? Because all the NFL games mentioned during the day (Oakland-Dallas, Tennessee-Detroit, New Orleans-Atlanta, Kansas City-Arizona, Chicago-Cincinnati) were actually scheduled for October 21. Interestingly, though, in reality the Oakland-Dallas game, which had been scheduled for the Oakland Coliseum on that Sunday, ended up being moved to October 7 in order to avoid a conflict with a potential Oakland A's American League Championship Series game on the 21st (which did not happen since the A's lost to the New York Yankees in the American League Division Series). Naturally, at the time Sorkin and Allison Abner were writing the script, they would have had no way of knowing that football game was going to be moved up two weeks.

- We see a football game in progress on a television in the press briefing room - it's literally the very first thing in the episode. Later, when Charlie and Sam are discussing their bets, Charlie says, "The first games are about to start." All the early NFL games on that Sunday started at the same time, 1:00 pm Eastern, so if there was a game already underway on TV in the briefing room, all the games had already started.

- Sorkin is really on the ball here with writing skills. I mentioned the heartfelt, meaningful speech Toby gives to his aides; earlier, though, Sorkin apparently takes his own personal view of writing and speech and puts it right in President Bartlet's mouth:

Jed: "Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance, are music. They have rhythm, and pitch, and timbre, and volume. These are the properties of music, and music has the ability to find us and move us, and lift us up in ways that literal meanings can't. Do you see?"

Abbey: "You are an oratorical snob."

Jed: "Yes, I am. And God loves me for it."

Abbey: "You said He was sending you to hell."

Jed: "For other stuff, not for this."

I guess when you're writing your own television series, you get to put your personal opinion about language and speech right there in the script for all to hear. Ha!

- Sawyer tells CJ he's been out of the country for 2 1/2 years (she thinks it feels like three months). This would put his departure in the spring of 1999, not long after the Bartlet administration took office. It's certainly plausible that he had a working history with the White House and CJ at that time, prior to the events we've seen in the series (that started in the fall of 1999).

- It's tough to see, but it appears Gail's fishbowl has some American flags as decoration. Perhaps that's a reference to the war crimes discussion between Leo and General Adamle, and the topic of American jurisdiction over its soldiers:

Later on, we see the fishbowl has swapped sides with the lamp on CJ's desk. Remember, the events of this episode take place over one day ... CJ must have had some time to spare and reorganized her desk that Sunday:

- Speaking of swapping sides of a desk, I've mentioned before that President Bartlet's collection of glass globes - usually on his left at his desk - occasionally switches to his right, as we saw in the previous episode. Now they're back on the left:

- A real nice directorial choice by Alex Graves: As the President and Vice President have their tense discussion in the Oval Office, with both characters having solid reasons as well as political motivations to back up their opinions, note how both actors are in shadow in this shot. A lot of this exchange leaves both Martin Sheen and Tim Matheson out of the light, which I thought was a bold and expressive choice:

- This was the second episode submitted by Janel Moloney for her nomination for the Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy award (along with the previous episode, On The Day Before). Castmate Stockard Channing ended up with that Emmy.



Quotes    

CJ: "Will Sawyer, is that you?"

Sawyer: "Yes."

CJ: "You back in the country?"

Sawyer: "Yeah."

CJ: "You working for the San Francisco Chronicle now?"

Sawyer: "No."

CJ: "Then you want to get your ass out of their chair?"

Sawyer: "There's assigned seating?"

CJ: "You see the little brass plaques with the names of media outlets on the front of the seats?"

Sawyer: "I thought that meant they made a generous contribution."

----- 

Charlie: "How was church?"

President: "It sucked."

Abbey: "It was fine. Stop it!"

President: "It sucked."

Abbey: "You're talking about church."

President: "Oh, like I'm not already going to hell." 

-----

Congressional staffer: "I'm gonna need to give the Congressman a good reason why the White House won't support the bill if they won't support the bill."

Sam: "Oh, don't make me give you a good reason."

Staffer: "You want your $30 billion in school repairs?"

Sam: "Well, we're already well on our way with 140 million pennies."

-----

(CJ walks by Toby's darkened office and notices him on his couch)

CJ: "Hey."

Toby: "I ... I'm, I'm not here."

CJ: "I called you at home. I had you paged."

Toby: "Yeah."

CJ: "I didn't know you were here."

Toby (covering his face with a newspaper): "I'm not."

CJ: "I think the jig is up."

-----

Sam: "Why?"

Josh: "Yes."

Sam: "Because this country is populated with unbalanced people. Many of whom find their way to Washington. As if the continent funnels them into this one spot." 

----- 

Sam (knocks on door, enters Leo's office): "Excuse me. Excuse me, General."

Adamle: "Hey, Sam."

Sam: "Margaret wasn't out here."

Leo: "What do you need?"

Sam: "No, if you're in the middle of something I can come back."

Adamle: "We're eliminating genocide, what are you doing?"

Sam: "Eliminating the penny. (pause) So I'll come back."

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

• Will Sawyer, the returning reporter that CJ obviously has a bit of professional history with, is played by Michael O'Keefe (Caddyshack, Roseanne, Homeland):

• Leo's old friend Gen. Alan Adamle is played by Gerald McRaney (Simon & Simon, Major Dad, House Of Cards). I'm assuming his character is the same one referred to as a Pentagon contact named Adamle in A Proportional Response:

• Martin Sheen's daughter Renee Estevez is back as Nancy, here ushering Hoynes into the Oval Office:

• The President offers a beer to Hoynes before they get into their discussion over the trip to Texas and gun control. This shows the President is unaware of Hoynes' alcoholism and his attendance at AA meetings (which we saw in Five Votes Down). Jed's story of his father allowing Jed and his brother to share a beer after church also sheds some more light on the character of Jed's father, who we saw as a stern, unbending taskmaster in Two Cathedrals.

• We also get a callback to the events of The Stackhouse Filibuster and 17 People, with Leo and the President using the gun control issue/trip to Texas as a way to knock Hoynes down a peg or two for getting Jed in hot water (with his wife and the country) by revving up his Presidential campaign a bit early. 

• Gen. Adamle mentions "Hutchison and Berryhill," two names we've heard referred to as administration figures several times during the series. I don't think it's been explicitly stated, but the implication is that Hutchison (or Hutchinson) may be the Secretary of Defense, and Berryhill might be Secretary of State (a passing reference in A Proportional Response seemed to connect him to the State Department in some way).

• Hoynes complains to the President, "You let Griffith run around talking about legalizing marijuana," a direct reference to Surgeon General Dr. Millicent Griffith and her remarks in Ellie.

DC location shots    

• Not exactly a location shot, but an establishing shot of the building where Donna's deposition is taking place turns out to be the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency. This location is on the 300 block of 12th Street NW:

I'm not sure why (or even if) Donna's Sunday deposition would be taken in the EPA headquarters, but I imagine the producers of the show appreciated the governmental look of the building. This is a current Google Street View shot of the building:

And this is the little plaza across 12th Street where the camera was set up. The red shape is the approximate location of the camera (or perhaps a bit further to your left, given the view of the benches/flagpoles in the camera shot), with the camera facing in the direction of the blue arrow:

• The fountain we see in the final scene with Josh, Donna, and Cliff ... not a DC location. As a matter of fact, that fountain (on the Warner Brothers backlot) is the exact same fountain seen in the opening credits of every single episode of the TV series Friends (1994-2004).

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

• When the President is talking about speech hackery and being subject to one another, he mentions watching Larry King to find out who things will be about next (King had a nightly show on CNN between 1985 and 2010). 

• Abbey says she's going to take a bath and turn on Sinatra (Frank Sinatra), which causes a jovial Jed to ask how Mrs. Sinatra feels about that before breaking into song ("You make me egg foo yung ...").

• In an unusual turn for President Bartlet, rather than his typical Notre Dame mug he's seen using one from Antioch College in Ohio (note the logo on the mug is the same logo used by the college today). The connection to Antioch is a personal one for Sheen - he said attending a Shakespeare play there as a teenager in 1954 helped steer him to an acting career. He was actually invited to Antioch's commencement ceremony in the spring of 2001, but filming on The West Wing prevented him from attending. So, unlike the mysterious Florida Gators mug that kept showing up throughout Season 2, I was able to discover the motivation behind this prop:

• President Lincoln gets a mention (as Sam's reason why Illinois tollbooths still take pennies, since Lincoln, a noted Illinois figure, is on the penny - at the time of the episode, despite Sam's belief to the contrary, most state's tollways still accepted pennies, although grudgingly).

• Operation Rolling Thunder was an actual military bombing campaign during the Vietnam War, between March 1965 and November 1968 (so Leo's mission in September 1966 would have fallen within that time frame).

• Product placement: An obvious Coca Cola can is seen being held by Sawyer:

A shot in the opening scene showed CJ with a logoed coffee cup, with a name that looked something like "Amore," but I was unable to find a coffee shop that could match that cup. It seems searching for a 2001-era coffee shop (in either Washington, DC, or Los Angeles) is a difficult proposition ...

End credits freeze frame: High-angle shot of Hoynes with his water and the President with his beer.