Walking And Talking And Yelling At Clouds: The Women Of Qumar

Original airdate: November 28, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (52)
Story by: Felicia Willson (2) & Laura Glasser (4) & Julia Dahl (2)

Directed by: Alex Graves (7)

Synopsis

An arms deal with a Persian Gulf nation that oppresses women puts CJ at odds with the administration; a possible outbreak of mad-cow disease causes debate over how much information to share with the public; Toby meets with a veterans' group upset over a Smithsonian exhibit; a feisty advocate for women's issues generates sparks with Josh; and Sam tries to deal with a lawsuit against the President over some offhand remarks on seatbelts.

"They're beating the women, Nancy."

Ethical responsibility. The morality of international relations. How far should a nation go to try to stop the human rights abuses of its allies - and is it ever justifiable to sell weapons to governments oppressing its citizens? Can an administration dedicated to the cause of doing good, in the country and in the world, still be on the side of "good" if it makes deals with nations that deny the rights of some of its citizens? Those questions are at the heart of this episode, and at the heart of those dilemmas we see CJ, struggling with her place in this ethical quicksand.

I have to admit, before I re-watched this episode this week my memory of it was that it was preachy, that it was an overly goody-goody CJ-is-right-everybody-else-is-groveling-and-wrong fantasy, that it was one of the weaker episodes of the series ... I even had a clear vision of CJ attacking the administration's arms deal at the podium, right in front of the press corps, something that would never happen in real life without that press secretary getting canned immediately.

My memory was wrong.

This is an involving, well-written, terrifically acted example of TV drama, one that clearly takes sides but still makes the audience use their brains. Allison Janney, who had already won two Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy awards, earned her first Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Emmy for her work here, and she's absolutely stellar.

We are told right at the outset that a deal has been made with Qumar, a fictional nation in the Persian Gulf - in exchange for their purchase of $1.5 billion in American weapons, the country will renew a 10-year lease for an airbase on their land. We also get right from the outset that there are other topics at play:

President: "Every time we make one of these deals in a place like Qumar I feel the women around here look at me funny."

Toby: "I think you're probably wrong about that."

President: "You think it's just guilt?"

And a bit later President Bartlet asks Toby, "CJ's gonna be cool with this, right?" Why wouldn't she be cool with it, or the other "women around here"? Take a look at CJ's face when Toby tells her about the arms deal, followed by him telling her "Don't start":

It turns out Qumar is an oppressive nation, one that denies basic rights to women. Throughout the episode, CJ steps up at the most inappropriate times to fill us in on the outrages of the Qumari system:

- She tells Leo that a Qumari woman was executed for adultery, purely on her husband's word and without a trial;

- At a meeting with Toby and Josh about an entirely different domestic issue, out of nowhere she tells the men the administration has an extra $1.5 billion they weren't counting on that they should figure out how to spend, money they got from a country where rape victims and not the rapists are beaten;

- She barges into a meeting between Toby and a veterans' group and starts drawing parallels between Qumar and our World War II enemies, asking the veterans what they'd think if today's United States sold weapons to a surviving Nazi nation

That last example lets us see CJ show off her temper, letting Toby have it with:

CJ: "You know, if I was living in Qumar I wouldn't be able to say, 'Shove it up your ass, Toby.' But since I'm not, shove it up your ass, Toby."

It all comes to a head just before CJ has to go into the press briefing and announce the arms sale. Nancy McNally, the National Security Adviser, comes to CJ's office to try to get her to stand down on her outspoken criticism of the deal. Instead we get CJ's impassioned defense of why she feels the way she does, and why Nancy probably should feel that way, too:

CJ: "They beat women, Nancy. They hate women. The only reason they keep Qumari women alive is to make more Qumari men."

Nancy: "So what do you want me to do about it?"

CJ: "How about instead of suggesting that we sell guns to them, suggesting that we shoot the guns at them? And by the way, not to change the subject, but how are we supposed to have any moral credibility when we talk about gun control and making sure that guns don't get in the hands of the wrong people? God, Nancy! What the hell are we defining as the right people?"

[...]

Nancy: "What's the point?"

CJ: "The point is that apartheid was an East Hampton clambake compared to what we laughingly refer to as the life these women lead. And if we had sold M1A1s to South Africa fifteen years ago, you'd have set the building on fire. Thank God we never needed to refuel in Johannesburg!"

CJ is brought to the point of tears, and Janney's acting in this scene is just outstanding:

But right after that, CJ still has to go in and talk to the press! She composes herself, heads into the briefing room with just a hint of redness around her nostrils (an incredibly great tiny little touch by the makeup crew), even makes a little joke about Qumar's promise for "paint and new carpet" as part of the lease renewal. Just when you think she might break, that she might spill her personal feelings right there in front of the press - she doesn't. She takes a breath, she moves on, and as she does, she sees Toby there in the back of the room:

Toby knows what she's going through. Toby almost certainly agrees with CJ on this issue. But as professionals, they both know they need to support the President and his decisions, support the administration, and keep on pressing for everyone to be better, to keep doing good, to use whatever opportunities arise to make things better wherever they can. Toby and CJ have always had a close relationship (back in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II we saw it was Toby that sought out CJ to join the Bartlet campaign), and Toby is expressing his deep respect and love for her right here.

Qumar is not the only battle CJ has to fight in this episode. A cow in Nebraska has died after eating tainted feed, and preliminary tests indicate the possibility of mad-cow disease. While it will take 72 hours for a United Kingdom lab to make a final confirmation, the debate rages as to whether the administration should let the public know about the incident. It's a tremendously tricky subject - the disease had already caused British beef exports to be banned in Europe in 1996, and should word come out that a possible case had been found in an American herd, the widespread panic and collapse of the beef industry would be almost certain.

Again, CJ is kind of swimming against the tide here, but she wants to get the word out - so much so that she brings the President's previous health coverup into the discussion:

CJ: "Yeah, what we say now is gonna be measured against the facts, the consequences of which will be far worse if we don't say anything and it goes the other way."

Toby: "I disagree."

CJ: "Then pretend for a moment that the cow has MS."

Toby (turning to her in amazement): "No, I don't think I will."

President (to Leo): "Something going on with them?"

Leo: "I think they can hear you. They're standing right in front of you."

CJ: "That was a bad analogy. I apologize. What I meant to say was that the public will not forgive a President who withheld information that could have helped them or saved lives. Second, in a crisis, people need to feel like soldiers, not victims. Third, information breeds confidence. Silence breeds fear. That's my argument."

Eventually CJ's argument turns out to be convincing. President Bartlet agrees that the USDA (not the White House) will release some details about the case, even before the final word is obtained from the UK lab. (In real life, a single case of mad-cow was discovered in an American cattle herd in 2003, although it was later discovered that cow actually was imported from Canada. That single instance, much like what this episode is imagining two years earlier, was contained and did not cause widespread panic; American beef exports, however, were severely curtailed and didn't rebound to 2003 levels until 2017 - so the writers of this episode had it right about the impacts of such a discovery).

I mentioned the veterans' group Toby was meeting with - the Smithsonian is about to unveil an exhibit about the 60th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack (so that puts the events of the episode right into late November/early December 2001), and the President is set to speak at the event. Turns out a small group of veterans has issues with how the exhibit is set up, concerned that it calls out American propaganda against the Japanese as racist while also branding the US war in the Pacific as "vengeance." Toby - the guy we've seen in the past defending NEA funding of daring "art" projects, defending the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, defending completely open and free speech - actually takes a bit of a different tack in this one, and people notice:

Woodkirk: "Hang on, it's not like any of the exhibit is anti-American. I can't believe I have to have this conversation with you, of all people."

Toby: "Well, I don't know what 'me of all people' means, but -"

Woodkirk: "Aren't you the one always standing by the NEA?"

Toby: "I'm not. This is different from the NEA."

Toby thinks the Smithsonian ought to dial down some of the rhetoric in the exhibit, and quickly explains why to the President:

President: "Where are you leading them?"

Toby: "Not to turn a blind eye to the dark points of history, for sure, but I think there's a time and place for that, and this isn't it."

President: "You're changing."

Toby: "No, I'm not."

President: "Yes, you are."

Toby: "A very, very little bit."

I mentioned in the last episode recap that Sam's storylines are beginning to come unattached from the rest of the West Wing and the other staffers. That continues here - the President is being sued by a woman who blames his remarks about seatbelts at a fundraiser for her husband being killed in a car accident. While the President actually can't be sued by a citizen while in office, Sam is concerned over how this suit might loom over the campaign and color news coverage. So Sam is off on his own, only occasionally checking in with the other staffers, as he tries to get Congress and the President to agree on making a mandatory seatbelt law a federal priority.

That isn't going to work. Two congressional staffers tell Sam, "The Democratic leadership doesn't do damage control for the White House" (unlike today's Republican leadership, knowwhatImean, nudge nudge, wink wink) while also saying seatbelts are clearly a state, not a federal issue. And President Bartlet makes the case for personal responsibility over government mandates:

President: "I can't be responsible every time somebody irrationally twists my meaning. People are responsible for themselves. Today's cars are safer than they've ever been. They've all got air bags, they've all got seatbelts, and they're all crash tested from here to Tuesday. All that's left is personal behavior and bad luck, and I'm not responsible for either one. And, Sam, if Mrs. Landingham was here right now, she'd say the exact same thing. You know what I'm saying?"

Sam: "Yes, sir."

President: "I don't blame this woman for suing me. I'm not a king, and I'm not sure the law should treat me like one. Though certainly for the moment I don't mind. I'm not blaming her. She's got to go someplace with her grief and anger. The ones who should be horsewhipped with a horsewhip are the ones exploiting her grief for political gain, and I'm not getting down with those guys."

Let's wrap the episode up with Josh. The First Lady barges into his office (well, she's pushed in, as she's still wheelchair-bound after her hiking incident from Gone Quiet) to make the point that the wording of a United Nations treaty about prostitution and human trafficking isn't to her liking. Treaty negotiators are planning to add the word "forced" to the definition of prostitution the signatories will be fighting against, and womens' groups aren't happy with that addition. Abbey insists Josh needs to deal with Amy Gardner of the Women's Leadership Coalition.

And so we meet Amy Gardner, played by the wonderful Mary-Louise Parker. She and Bradley Whitford have an undeniable chemistry (there's a story that after filming their first scene, Whitford went to Aaron Sorkin and asked that her role be made an ongoing one, since they had so much fun acting together. I wonder if that's really accurate, since the episode makes it clear Amy isn't going away anytime soon).

Anyway, Josh and Amy spar over the UN treaty language, parting with a promise that Josh will call her by the end of the day with news. As Josh mulls over the treaty language, he actually starts to come around to the relatively forward-thinking point of view that the issue of legalizing prostitution may actually be more empowering to women than his traditional viewpoint - but he does also indeed change his stance on the particular wording of the treaty as well. Instead of calling, Josh tracks Amy down (at her gym, of all places) and walks with her back to her office, whereupon Amy makes her intentions pretty clear while Josh, like most men would, remains clueless:

Amy: "Are you dating your assistant?"

Josh: "No."

Amy: "I heard you might be."

Josh: "I'm not."

Amy: "She's cute."

Josh: "She's my assistant."

Amy: "Are you dating Joey Lucas?"

Josh: "No."

Amy: "She's not your assistant."

Josh: "I know."

Amy: "You know the thing with guys like you?"

Which later leads Josh to say, "What's the thing with guys like me?"

To which Amy responds, "You wanna get hit over the head?"

Just look at those two - Josh is so adorable in that scarf, both of them beaming at the other ... somehow Josh still doesn't get her drift, so as he leaves her office, he almost literally gets "hit over the head" by a water balloon she tosses out her window at him:

Yes, ladies, men really can be that dense. Amy will prove to be a great foil for Josh, especially as Season 3 rolls on (it's kind of the season where everybody gets a love interest for a while ... we already saw Donna and Cliff Calley, here Josh and Amy, later on CJ gets a guy ...).

So despite my faulty memories of what this episode was actually like, it turns out to be one of the strongest showings in Season 3. Janney earned an Emmy for it, and it was one of the episodes submitted for the series' third-straight win for an Outstanding Drama Series Emmy. Turns out ethical quandaries can be entertaining, as well as insightful and thought-provoking.

Tales Of Interest!

- Qumar is introduced here as a fictional Persian Gulf nation. As an ally of the United States that also denies basic rights to women, Qumar serves as a stand-in for Saudi Arabia, basically, giving the show runners a country to use to address various human-rights abuses without actually making a real-life nation angry. We're going to see a lot more involvement with Qumar as the season continues.

Qumar joins Equatorial Kundu (In This White House) as countries created by The West Wing; we've also seen references to conflicts with several real-life nations (North Korea in Gone Quiet, Syria in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" and A Proportional Response, India and Pakistan in Lord John Marbury, Iraq in several episodes including What Kind Of Day Has It Been) and actual world leaders like Libya's Qaddafi (Pilot), the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (On The Day Before) and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain (The Drop In).

- The discussion of a Smithsonian exhibit marking the 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor means this episode is set somewhere near December 7, 2001, which was 60 years after the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian military base that brought the United States into World War II.

- I don't think we've ever seen so many people in CJ's office before, with this staff meeting. All it needs are a couple of turkeys hanging out, too:

- Sam is left on his own again with the seatbelt lawsuit storyline, much as he was with the poverty formula, or soft-money advertising, or the penny. It's the fourth consecutive episode where it's becoming obvious that Sorkin and the writers are really having trouble incorporating him into the overall stories.

- Abbey's still in the wheelchair, as we first saw in Gone Quiet. Stockard Channing actually did injure her ankle while hiking prior to filming that episode, and the writers just wrote her injury into the show.

- Gail's fishbowl features a cow, a nod to the mad-cow disease storyline:

- When Sam and Leo are talking about the most important states for the campaign, I suppose it makes sense that Michigan might be an key general election state for the Electoral College. However, when they agree that New Hampshire is the most important Democratic primary state, I have to wonder ... since Bartlet is from New Hampshire, would that state even be competitive in the primary? How would that be "most important" of all the primary states? Of course, it's just a plot-related way to justify the caution in pursuing a national seatbelt law, since New Hampshire didn't have such a law on the books, and in fact still does not require drivers/passengers over the age of 18 to wear seat belts.

- There's a famous dramatic concept called "Chekhov's Gun," named after Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov. To illustrate his belief that every element of a dramatic story should be necessary and contribute to the plot, he used the example "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." Here we have what could be called "Chekhov's Balloons" - Josh notices the balloon animals Amy is working on in her office, which has no relationship to what's going on in that scene ... but then it pays off in the final scene when Amy drops a water balloon on Josh on his way out of the building.

- There's a great look to this episode, thanks mainly to Alex Graves' direction, but the cinematographer and lighting people should get credit as well. The sweeping camera movement we've come to expect in The West Wing is here (the scene with Toby and Sam in the communications office); we get lots of close-ups and slow push-ins of the camera, to illustrate the secrets being kept; and the uplighting/light from the side in this scene between Leo and Toby is striking and effective:

- As I mentioned, Allison Janney got a well-deserved Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Emmy for this episode (after two consecutive years of winning an Outstanding Supporting Actress award). Mary-Louise Parker also received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress for this episode and the upcoming H. Con-172); Stockard Channing ended up with that award. This episode was also part of the submission that earned the series its third straight Outstanding Drama Series Emmy.

Quotes

Toby: "Ginger."

Ginger: "Yes?"

Toby: "Have you set up a meeting for me?"

Ginger: "Yes."

Toby: "With the veterans' group?"

Ginger: "Yes."

Toby: "The one that's talking about not coming?"

Ginger: "Yes."

Toby: "You haven't yet, have you?"

Ginger: "No."

Toby: "But you will?"

Ginger: "Yes."

-----

Donna (standing at Josh's door): "Josh?"

Josh: "Could I get five minutes without being interrupted by banality?"

(Abbey is wheeled into Josh's office)

Abbey: "It's not banality, it's the boss's wife."

Josh (standing): "Morning, ma'am."

Abbey: "Morning, Josh."

Josh (to Donna): "A little heads-up wouldn't be out of line."

Donna: "I said, 'Josh.'"

-----

Sam: "Contributory negligence in a wrongful death is the tort equivalent of murder."

Toby: "And aren't lawsuits against the President the tort equivalent of insane?"

-----

CJ: "I don't know how many more times we can get caught keeping a secret."

Leo: "Sometimes that's what we're supposed to do.":

-----

Josh: "The more countries who sign a treaty the more effective it is."

Amy: "The more toothless a treaty is, the more toothless it is."

Josh: "That's a permeating syllogism, to be sure."

-----

Josh: "So I just came from seeing Amy Gardner."

CJ: "Yeah, how'd it go?"

Josh: "I showed her who's boss."

CJ: "Who'd it turn out to be?"

Josh: "It's still unclear."

-----

Staffer: "So I got a funny joke the President could do about telling people not to wear seatbelts."

Sam: "Well, he didn't tell people not to wear their seatbelts."

Staffer: "He should say, 'Maybe I should go back to concealing my health.'"

Sam: "That's a good one. He can use it at the Rotary Club."

Tom: "By the way, Josh Lyman shouldn't make jokes about Rotarians. They're good people."

-----

President: "Isn't there a joke to be had with lawsuits and dry cleaners? I've been working on it all day."

Josh: "You've been working on other stuff though, too, right?"

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

It's the wonderful Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds, the RED movies, Angels In America TV miniseries) as Amy Gardner, in her first appearance of a long recurring run. I think Parker is just terrific in everything, and her energy and approach fit right into The West Wing and she plays opposite Whitford incredibly well.

Christian Clemenson (Apollo 13, CSI:Miami) plays Evan Woodkirk from the Smithsonian. Clemenson is probably best known for his work as Jerry "Hands" Espenson in Boston Legal. (I also just discovered he was born in Humboldt, Iowa! Yay for Iowans!)

You may recall back in Season 2, we saw Modern Family's Eric Stonestreet as a member of Oliver Babish's staff in Bad Moon Rising. Now we get Modern Family's Ty Burrell as Tom, the congressional staffer who thinks Josh is too tough on Rotarians (but also thinks Elks are okay).

There's a couple of familiar character actors as two of the members of the veterans' group meeting with Toby: Here's Bruce Kirby (a long list of TV guest appearances including Columbo and L.A. Law, Stand By Me, The Muppet Movie) as Barney Lang:

And Bill Erwin (Gunsmoke, Seinfeld, Home Alone, Somewhere In Time) as Ronald Cruikshank:

There's another mention of the so-far-unseen Hutchison as part of the Qumar arms deal - it appears this guy may be the Secretary of Defense.

There's a couple of obvious threads tying the administration's truthfulness to the President's issues with covering up his multiple sclerosis - one of the congressional staffers talking to Sam brings up the President's health as a punch line to a joke, and CJ explicitly compares the secrecy around the possible mad-cow outbreak to the earlier coverup ("Then pretend for a moment that the cow has MS.").

Another long-running thread, Toby's defense of free speech and free expression, comes up again with Woodkirk's comment about "you of all people ... aren't you the one always standing by the NEA?"

Here's something I missed last season: we saw CJ working out on a treadmill at the gym in Pilot ("this is my time ... 5 to 6 am"). Then in In This White House she was working out on an exercise cycle in the building when Ainsley dropped by - while I didn't realize it then, actually it was right there in her office; I didn't catch that originally because so much furniture was moved around it didn't look like it was her office. Obviously that bike hasn't shown up much since then (wouldn't it have been visible in Shibboleth, at least, when the turkeys lived there?) ... but there it is, in the background behind Josh, right there in CJ's office while they talk mad-cow:

Jed's late personal secretary Mrs. Landingham (who perished in a car accident in 18th And Potomac) gets mentioned in the President's discussion with Sam about seat belts and personal responsibility.

CJ says Carl Reed is the Secretary of Labor in her press briefing. He was also named as that Cabinet official in On The Day Before; in that episode Josh said he was on his way out for a job in the private sector, and he'd put in a good word for Governor Buckland to replace him. Obviously he hasn't left yet.

WHAT'S NEXT MOMENT - We've got a few: the President calls out "What's next?" after talking with Toby about the Qumar deal announcement in the Oval Office; CJ says "What's next?" at the meeting in her office just before Toby drops the Qumar news on her; the President again says "What's next?" after dismissing Toby with the red tape story (and then Charlie has to remind him he didn't actually respond to the question Toby was asking).

DC location shots

One of The West Wing's favorite filming spots, the Navy Memorial Plaza on Pennsylvania Avenue NW (across from the National Archives) - this area has also been seen in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" when Mandy drove her car up on the curb and confronted Senator Russell, and in Ways And Means when Donna and Cliff were walking after their first date. Here's an establishing shot:

And here's the scene they shot with Josh and Amy returning to her office, apparently in that building shown above (the later water balloon scene was also shot here on the plaza; and while I'm not positive, the interior scenes of Amy's office may have actually been filmed inside that building as well):

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

The Rocky Mountain News was a Denver newspaper until ceasing publication in 2009. The characters were confusing it with the Bugle/Bugler/Herald for comic effect (although The Rocky Mountain Herald was a weekly publication before it went under in 1976).

Look at that iMac in the Women's Leadership Coalition office. From 64 to 256 MB of memory! A 20 GB hard drive! Those were quite the thing in 2001:

Josh brings up Amerigo Vespucci as the creator of Amy's human trafficking map.

President Bartlet regales the hard-studying Charlie with names like the Roman emperor Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire Justinian, George Perkins Marsh (who did speak about man's effect on climate at Rutland, Vermont, but in 1847 and not 1845), and Ernst Haeckel, who did indeed coin the term "ecology."

The Washington Times is a real newspaper with a definite conservative viewpoint. It was founded in 1982 by Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church.

We hear political names from the past such as President Franklin Roosevelt ("that chair used to be over there"), World War II general George Marshall, President Harry Truman, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (there's also a portrait of her in the Womens Leadership Coalition offices).