Walking And Talking And Yelling At Clouds: Gone Quiet

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: