H. CON-172 - TWW S3E11

Original airdate: January 9, 2002

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (54)
Story by: Eli Attie (2)

Directed by: Vincent Misiano (1)

Synopsis

• Leo is incensed at Calley's offer to drop the investigation into the President's health coverup in exchange for a congressional censure, but the final decision may not be up to him. Josh wants to see Amy again, but is completely clueless about how to go about it. Sam goes on the warpath against a tell-all book from a former White House photographer, and the President gets pushback over a two-century old map of the Holy Land.

"When the fall is all that's left ..."
"... it matters a great deal."

And then ... it all just ends. The drama and the tension that built over the final episodes of Season 2, the angst over President Bartlet's secret multiple sclerosis, the developing street fight between the White House and congressional Republicans ... not to mention Donna's perjury over her diary, the financial strain of legal representation on staffers like Charlie, and - last but not least - the looming public revelation of Leo's alcohol-fueled relapse just before the 1998 election ... just, poof.

It only takes a congressional censure, along with a White House promise to welcome it and not arm-twist Democratic congresspeople to vote against it, and the whole thing disappears. Now, that's not entirely accurate, as some repercussions are going to continue to play out (as Leo tells Jed, Abbey isn't out of the woods with the AMA, and there still could be some friction during the upcoming campaign, and, of course, Jed still has MS). But once the President agrees to the censure resolution, House Republicans end their investigations and depositions and inquiries. That's it.

Leo isn't happy about the prospect of the President admitting he did anything wrong, as his response upon first hearing the offer late one night on Capitol Hill makes clear:

Leo: "Okay. Well ... I'll just call the President and suggest to him that he allow a huge bipartisan vote on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives calling him a liar, and that he welcome the result. Then, I'm gonna flap my wings and fly to Neverland."

Jordon: "Leo -"

Leo: "You think I am so desperate to save my ass, I'm gonna roll over on Jed Bartlet?"

Cliff: "I don't think it's a matter of -"

Leo: "I take a bullet for the President. He doesn't take one for me." 

His loyalty is impressive, and the later scene where Leo muses over the possibilities with that "Bartlet For America" napkin looming on his desk reminds us why he's so devoted to Jed Bartlet.

But come on, it's the obvious play. Take the censure, take the congressional slap on the wrist, and focus on the next 10 months of campaigning. Not only that, but the President knows he really doesn't have the moral high ground anyway:

Leo: "Doing this to save me the embarrassment I've got coming to me is about the dumbest reason I can think of -"

President: "There's another reason."

Leo: "What?"

President: "I was wrong. I was. I was just, I was wrong. Come on, you know that. Lots of times we don't know what right or wrong is but lots of times we do and, come on, this is one. I may not have had sinister intent at the outset but there were plenty of opportunities for me to make it right. No one in government takes responsibility for anything anymore. We foster, we obfuscate, we rationalize. 'Everybody does it.' That's what we say. So we come to occupy a moral safe house where everyone's to blame so no one's guilty. I'm to blame. I was wrong." 

What's Leo's stance really illustrates, though, is what I see as the overall theme of this episode. It's easy to lose focus when you're facing big problems, and sometimes instead of taking the necessary steps to deal with that, you turn to nagging, minor, niggling issues that don't matter much but you feel like you have some control over. Toby's mention of the struggling basketball player kind of sums it up:

Toby: "But let me ask you this. A guy shoots 1 for 23 from the field."

Sam: "McTeer?"

Toby: "Yeah. But he goes 8 for 8 from the foul line. My question is, why are you fouling this guy at all? I'd just get out of the way and point him at the basket."

Instead of acting like McTeer's opponents did, playing hard defense against him and fouling, why not look at the big picture. You want to win the game, so get out of the way of the minor things that aren't really going to impact that goal, like harrassing a player who can't find the basket on this particular night. Don't give guys free throws if they can't hurt you from the field.

Leo does just that by turning down the offer of censure. Sam does it with his war-room antics trying to counter a silly tell-all book. Josh does it by radically overthinking the ways he needs to engineer another meeting with Amy. The President does it with the map of the Holy Land. So much of the energy of this episode is used by people fighting skirmishes that don't really matter, when there's a solution to the war right in front of their faces.

Okay, so the censure thing is a big deal. Leo flat out rejects the proposal from Cliff Calley by walking directly into the camera

while Jordon asks for some time to try to change his mind. Her hanging out in Leo's office reading off the list of nonbinding congressional resolutions is pretty funny ("A resolution in support of Ohio's state motto. A resolution fostering friendship and cooperation with the people of Mongolia. A resolution recognizing the contributions of Bristol, Tennessee, to the development of country music.") ... but it's also very sweet, what she's doing. Remember, these two lonely people shared dinner on Christmas Eve after the dramatic events in front of the House committee meeting in Bartlet For America - and the gentle touch of Leo's shoulder Jordon gives him as she leaves is a reminder of the deeper compassion she feels for him.

Leo doesn't even want to give the President the option of thinking about it, but there's a couple of moments between President Bartlet and other staffers that show he's already been considering the idea. When Toby talks about the scene from The Lion In Winter, with Richard, Geoffrey, and John in the dungeon awaiting their execution:

Toby: "Richard tells his brothers not to cower but to take it like men. And Geoffrey says, 'You fool! As if it matters how a man falls down.' And Richard says -"

Toby and President (together): "'When the fall is all that's left ...'"

President: "'... it matters a great deal.'"

Toby: "It matters a great deal."

President: "Are you trying to tell me something?"

Toby: "No, Mr. President, of course not."

Bartlet takes that quote to heart, about the fall mattering. And later, when Sam stops by the Oval Office to try to verify a story from the tell-all book about the President first meeting the Joint Chiefs and using poll results to tell them off, this exchange:

President: "Why does it matter?

Sam: "Excuse me?"

President, "I said, why does it matter?"

Sam: "Well, cause I don't think it's such a good idea to be casual about the truth."

President: "Neither do I." 

There's a tiny moment of realization before "Neither do I" that I think is the point where the President decides he's going to take the censure deal. He was casual about the truth, he knows he was, and he says as much to Leo later.

Josh is just, well, clueless about things (if you recall, Amy figuratively hitting him over the head with questions about dating before almost literally hitting him over the head with a water balloon in The Women Of Qumar didn't even make his light bulb go on). He wants to see Amy again, romantically, but the only way he knows how to make that work is to come up with some fake policy-related reason to talk to her.

Toby: "Women are getting a decent break."

Josh: "Damn. Where the hell are the pro-lifers when you need 'em?"

Toby: "Sons of bitches, don't they know you're trying to get -"

Josh: "Hey! This is not that. She's got ... I really ...  I'm ... I'm bewitched. I'm ensorcelled."

 Amy's curious enough about his reaching out over a policy matter that she'll meet him after a date at the ballet, but she instantly sees through his facade and starts to get a little miffed when he insults her boyfriend.

But man, the look on her face after she calls him out for being "hit and run Josh" and he quite earnestly replies, "That's not true." A phone call about the censure issue cuts things short, but much like that tiny moment of realization President Bartlet had with Sam, I think Amy's reaction right here to Josh's unguarded, emphatic denial is when she decides she's going to track him down later:

Which she does, on the steps outside his apartment (that we saw in The Midterms, where he wore the giant pajamas CJ gave him as he recuperated from being shot), in the wee early hours of Tuesday morning. Josh opens up like he never has before, relating that his younger, formative years were spent studying hard and pursuing the political position he holds, but admitting he's never learned the intricacies of relationships. To which Amy responds by shutting him up with a big smack on the lips:

Another not-very-West-Wing moment, as romantic personal moments are shown to us very, very rarely (and if this isn't the very first romantic kiss to appear on the series, it's one of the first). Anyway, it leaves Josh bewitched. And ensorcelled.

Sam is hell-bent on ruining the reputation of a former White House photographer who has written a tell-all about what he saw in the administration - almost none of it true. Sam wants to be sure everybody knows the book is full of lies, so he sets up a war room and divides chapters up among staffers to verify or debunk stories being told about them ... but again, it's not really about the book, or protecting the image of the Bartlet administration. CJ gets it right:

CJ: "Let me tell you something I've learned in my years. There are victims of fires. There are victims of car accidents. This kind of thing, there are no victims ... just volunteers. Of course we'll get in the game. I'll talk to the editors of the major papers but we're not going to publicly refute every bogus charge. First of all, there are too many of them. Second of all, I'm not going to give this guy and his book the weight of the White House. As far as the press is concerned I've read the book because I had to. You have a vague recollection of the guy but he wasn't here long enough to make a lasting impression. Have you read the book? Of course not. You're too busy doing a job."

Sam: "While you're convincing the Post and the Times that it's ridiculous -"

CJ: "Sam! Once again, we don't know what's going on in the Oval Office. Obviously, there's a problem, when it's our turn to worry about it they won't be shy about telling us. Let's not fixate on the knuckleheaded stuff we think we can fix in the meantime. And it feels a lot like ... that's what you're doing."

Sam is worried about what might come out in the continuing congressional investigations, and he's particularly aware that there's something bad about Leo that might be exposed. But he can't do anything about that, so like the basketball team that vigorously defends a poor shooter and sends him to the foul line, he's going 110 percent on something counterproductive.

And then there's the map issue, a map of the Holy Land drawn in 1709 that Charlie finds for the President at a swap meet, or flea market, or something. It's sweet to see the President geek out over this old map, and proudly show it off to everyone who comes by the Oval Office - but when they each in turn point out that he can't put that map on display in the White House because it doesn't depict Israel, he's baffled:

Toby: "Cause some people are going to find it offensive."

President: "Why?"

Toby: "It doesn't recognize Israel."

President: "It was drawn in 1709."

Toby: "Yeah."

President: "There was no Israel."

Toby: "Right."

President: "Israel wouldn't happen for another 250 years."

Toby: "Yeah."

President: "So what's the problem with the map?"

Toby: "Some people are going to find it offensive."

President: "Why?"

Toby: "It doesn't recognize Israel."

Of course the President is right that a 1709 map would have no business depicting a country that wouldn't even exist until 1948; but the staff members are right that even broaching the topic of a Middle East without Israel is a controversy not worth having.

We reach the end of the road, with a President resigned to taking the congressional slap on the wrist because he knows he deserves it, smoking a rare cigarette, as he and Leo watch the snow fall. In the background we hear the text of the censure resolution being read on the House floor. It's a solid way to wrap up the episode - and it's jarring, in a way, to realize how sudden the end of (much of this) plot line happens, a plot line that generated some of the best television drama ever made in the run of shows that ended Season 2.

We move on, hopeful that the administration can stop fouling the guy who's shooting 1 for 23.


Tales Of Interest!

- The events of this episode stretch from late on a Sunday night (the Capitol meeting with Leo, Jordon, and Calley) into early Tuesday morning (we see the graphic "Tuesday 12:05 A.M." when Josh returns to the White House after meeting Amy at the Ritz-Carlton). In Bartlet For America Chairman Bruno said the Oversight and Government Reform committee would be in recess until "January 5th." January 5, 2002, was a Saturday, so that's probably not actually a day Congress would return from the holiday break. Anyway, there's a mention here that Leo is scheduled to appear and resume his testimony in front of the committee on the next Monday. If this episode occurs Sunday, January 6 through early Tuesday, January 8, Leo would be slated to appear before Congress on Monday, January 14 - nine days after the date Rep. Bruno called for the committee to reconvene.

- Jordon reads off a list of nonbinding resolutions passed by the 106th Congress. It's never specified whether she's referring to the current Congress (which at this point would be at the midpoint of its two-year session) or the previous one. In reality, the 106th Congress had been in session from January 1999 to January 2001, and the current congressional session (from January 2001 to January 2003) was the 107th.

- The staffers Larry and Ed are almost always seen together, working as a team. Here Aaron Sorkin pokes fun at the idea that viewers have trouble keeping them straight, as their assigned chapters of the tell-all book get mixed up and even CJ has to admit she doesn't know who is who:

Sam: "What we're doing is making note of anything big or small that's wrong. Anything I can use to attack credibility."

Ed: "Okay, well, right away I see one."

Sam: "What?"

Larry (swapping binders with Ed): "I'm Larry, he's Ed."

CJ: "I usually don't know that." 

- I've mentioned President Bartlet's glass collection on his desk several times, as it switches sides or even disappears depending on the directors' needs. I called them glass balls, and just now thought "globes" would be a better descriptive ... but I've been too thick-headed to realize they're paperweights, of course. Here he uses them for their intended purpose, to hold down the map he's showing off to Toby.

- It's difficult to make out exactly what's in Gail's fishbowl this time, but it looks a lot like an homage to the "Bartlet For America" napkin that the President gifted to Leo in the previous episode:

- The mention of Andrew Jackson as the only President previously censured by Congress is true. Just as Leo tells Josh, he was censured in 1834. President Bartlet's reference is off by a year, though, as the censure was expunged in early 1837, just before Jackson left office, and not 1836.

- Sharp-eared viewers probably caught the explanation of the title, late in the episode. When Leo is talking to the President about the weight of a congressional joint resolution, Jed corrects him, as a joint resolution must be signed by the President. Without that, it becomes a concurrent resolution - hence, House Concurrent Resolution 172, or H. Con-172 for short.

- Mary-Louise Parker was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy for this episode, along with her work in The Women Of Qumar. That Emmy instead went to Stockard Channing.




Quotes    

Jordon: "If you're gonna put a deal on the table, I'd prefer there not be armed guards outside the door to intimidate him."

Leo: "I'm not that easily intimidated."

Jordon: "I am."

-----

Josh: "Are we taking this a little too seriously?"

Sam: "No."

Josh: "He was a White House photographer. He was fired. My recollection is that he was a buffoon."

Sam: "He was a buffoon, which has always stopped the American public - to say nothing of the press - from taking something seriously."

-----

Larry (reading from manuscript): "'Bartlet was playing a round of golf with Toby Ziegler, the prickly, mumbling Communications Director whose inner, bitter darkness spelled the breakup of the one marriage we know about.'"

(Pause. CJ leans to look at Toby around a desk lamp)

CJ: "It was miniature golf, wasn't it?" 

Toby (also leaning to see CJ around the lamp): "Yeah."

-----

Jordon: "You left without me."

Leo: "Well, if you're going to make a strong exit, you really can't wait for someone to get their purse together."

Jordon: "How long does it take to get a purse together?"

Leo: "A question I've been asking my entire adult life."

-----

Toby: "One for 23. That's exactly one better than my mother would have done. She's been dead 12 years."

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

• Our friends Jordon Kendall (Joanna Gleason) and Cliff Calley (Mark Feuerstein) are back, which is appropriate as continuations of both Leo's situation from Bartlet For America and the Congressional investigation/two-dates-with-Donna that Calley has been a part of since Ways And Means.

• The mention of Toby and the President playing golf is funny, and not just because in Five Votes Down we discovered President Bartlet doesn't golf, he plays chess. Miniature golf, though - that's a whole different situation.

• Cliff and Donna get another moment together - remember, they dated in Ways And Means, and then Donna got ticked off at him asking about her diary during her deposition in War Crimes.

• Look, it's Josh's stoop! It's the same stoop we saw the gang hanging out on in The Midterms as Josh was recuperating from being shot.

DC location shots    

• None (I'm almost positive Josh's stoop is a backlot set, and not actually in DC).

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

• When Toby starts talking about seeing President Bartlet's favorite movie the night before, he and Bartlet start quoting the 1968 film The Lion In Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole. 

• Amy says she'll meet Josh at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, which is located not far northwest of the White House, between Washington Circle and DuPont Circle.

• Jordon brings up George Washington as one of the topics of recent nonbinding resolutions.

Jordon: "A resolution remembering the life of George Washington cause there was a chance we were going to forget who he was."

Leo: "Look -"

Jordon: "'What's that tall thing at the end of the Mall?' 'I don't know. A monument to somebody.' Where are we again?"

• Donna tells Cliff on the phone that she "can't go Deep Throating" in the middle of the night. This is somewhat striking in The West Wing universe, as it's a reference to the source Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used to help expose the Watergate coverup in Richard Nixon's presidency. Nixon and Watergate are never mentioned in the series, with Lyndon Johnson being the most recent President ever referred to. The term "Deep Throat" itself, used as the source's pseudonym by Woodward and Bernstein, actually has its roots in the 1972 pornographic film Deep Throat.

• While fact-checking Ron Burkhalt's expose, CJ asks the President if he used methods from the book How To Choose The Sex Of Your Baby by Dr. Landrum B. Shettles. That book actually exists.

• Josh's drink order at the Ritz-Carlton is for an Absolut martini, on the rocks, with two olives.

• Josh says The Nutcracker is the only ballet he's ever heard of, although he also knows enough to compare Amy's boyfriend to the famous early-20th-century dancer Nijinsky.

• And then Josh wraps up that insult with a timely pop-culture reference to late-night TV host Jay Leno.

• President Andrew Jackson and his experience of being censured by Congress (and then having it expunged) is discussed by Leo and Josh, and then Leo and the President.

• The musical West Side Story gets a reference, as CJ sings a snippet of  "Cool" (YouTube autoplay link) to Sam (while snapping her fingers like a real Jet).

• That old standby Keeper Springs water pops up again in the Roosevelt Room; Ed has a Dunkin Donuts cup in front of him (or is it Larry? No, that's Ed):

• Toby carries what's obviously a Starbucks cup around throughout much of the episode, but he does a dandy job of keeping the logo hidden. He's not as successful with the bottle of Samuel Adams beer he's drinking in CJ's office:

End credits freeze frame: The President and Leo watching the snow fall.