Original airdate: May 8, 2002
Written by: Aaron Sorkin (63)
Directed by: Christopher Misiano (8)
Synopsis
- President Bartlet's military advisers desperately try to track down a credible threat to American bases, including possibly the White House itself. CJ's shopping trip with her niece results in another threat on her life. Sam's attempt to cooperate with a friend in the Ritchie campaign over an anonymous attack ad backfires big time. Toby fights with TV network news directors over coverage of the national convention, and Josh's gift to Donna marking the Helsinki summit gets an intern into hot water.
"Are you telling me the Qumari Defense Minister may have ordered an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge?"
Things are getting serious.
It doesn't seem so serious to start with - everyone is returning to the White House in a good mood after the Helsinki summit with Russian president Chigorin. Sam has brought moose-themed items back as gifts for Ginger and Bonnie, Josh has brought back actual moose meat as a gift for Donna, the President is jovial as he and Leo head down to the Situation Room ... but he's quickly sobered to discover a Chechen prisoner of the Russians has given up credible information about a terrorist threat to an American military base somewhere in the world. And now we are thrown into what eventually becomes a deep moral and ethical dilemma for President Bartlet and his advisers, one that will play out for several episodes.
While Admiral Fitzwallace and the other military advisers are fairly certain of the threat to their bases, they can't narrow down exactly which bases might be targeted. In fact, as more information comes in, they actually expand the list to include installations very near to the White House itself. Leo has to bring up some extremely sensitive topics to Bartlet:
Leo: "Mr. President? I want you to start getting yourself into a mental place where you can order an unidentified plane shot down. We're sealing a one-mile perimeter. Fitz is about to call you and ask you to put the Coast Guard on alert for the Atlantic."
President: "We're leaning on Arab intelligence sources?"
Leo: "They're not what they used to be."
President: "We're leaning on them?"
Leo: "Yes, sir. We have to talk about the bunker."
There's a lot to unpack here. The backdrop of this plotline of a Ba'hi terrorist cell planning a strike against American assets is directly related to what actually happened in real life the previous September. Even though such an attack didn't happen in The West Wing universe (we are supposed to regard Isaac And Ishmael as a morality play not actually included in the show's timeline), it's apparent that something must have happened that heightened security in the US and affected our relationships with the Muslim world (Toby shouting, "They'll like us when we win!" in Night Five, for one instance). For example, the comment about ordering unidentified aircraft shot down comes from the very real possibility that the military had to consider the reality of possibly shooting down a hijacked civilian airliner on 9/11. The remark that Arab intelligence sources favorable to the US aren't what they used to be also relates to 9/11, and how the American military response in Afghanistan and Iraq angered much of the Arab world and ended cooperation with many Middle Eastern sources. But the bunker (which was actually used by Vice President Cheney and other Bush administration members on 9/11) and the possible need to use it to protect the President in case of a terrorist attack on Washington really drives the point home that danger could be right on the doorstep. Eventually President Bartlet makes his opinion about that crystal clear:
President: "I'm not going to the bunker. There are going to be people who aren't going to the bunker, and when I get out I'm not going to be able to tell them what to do any more, and I like doing that. Let's get Abbey to New Hampshire but I'm not going to the bunker. And if you say I have to, I'm walking across the alley with the Chief Justice and I'm handing John Hoynes my resignation. And as soon as he's sworn in I'm telling him to appoint me his Vice President because I'm not going to the bunker. If the agents come, the agents come but tell Ron he'd better bring more than a couple of guys."
Things are tense, as the information the military has indicates an attack is imminent, but they can't tell the President where, although bases in the Middle East and along the US East Coast are the most likely. Finally, surprisingly, a Ba'hi operative is caught with explosives ... but not anywhere near where the threat was actually expected to be. A boat was captured in Oakland, California, loaded with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel - materials similar to those used in the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. The target was a military one, of a sort - Fort Point, a Civil War-era fortification on San Francisco Bay that had been decommissioned for years. Why that target?
Fitzwallace: "Well, it's military, which is consistent, but decommissioned, which wasn't. It's not a very valuable asset."
President: "So why'd they want it?"
Leo: "Because of what's above it."
President: "The Golden Gate Bridge."
Fitzwallace: "The fort fronts the anchorage and the tiedown of the suspension cables."
An attack on one of America's most visible symbols, the Golden Gate Bridge. That's enough to stir the President to a swift and strong response ... but, as it turns out, that's not the most important bit of information here. Who was actually behind this terrorist plot?
Fitzwallace: "Well, you know we've been getting a great deal of help from the Russians since Helsinki."
President: "Yeah."
Fitzwallace: "And that they've continued to interrogate the Chechnyan who gave us a target alert in the first place."
President: "Yeah."
Fitzwallace: "The prisoner says he worked with a Ba'hi operative in Grozny who reported -"
President: "To who?"
Fitzwallace: "Abdul Shareef."
President: "Are you telling me the Qumari defense minister may have ordered an attack on the Golden Gate Bridge?"
We remember Qumar from The Women Of Qumar, where CJ struggled with the fact that the United States had a close military relationship with the nation as an ally and partner in the Middle East, even while their culture mistreated women. Now the President is presented with the possibility that the country's defense minister is actually behind a plot to destroy the Golden Gate Bridge.
Yes, this is going to have some really serious ramifications down the road.
Speaking of CJ ... she's still got her Secret Service detail, thanks to the email death threats we saw her get in Enemies Foreign And Domestic. She's still not happy about it, particularly when Simon Donovan lets her know they basically dismantled her car's engine so she wouldn't be able to use it to ditch her agents:
But something kind of weird is also going on between CJ and Simon. They have a discussion about her taking her niece shopping, and the protection requirements he's going to require while they're out in public, and she's a little bit ... off her game?
CJ: "That was a strange thing that I just did, I was telling him that I was taking Hogan shopping for a junior prom dress, a few moments later he referred to the prom and I made a point of correcting him. Why would I do that, I felt so unnatural while I was saying it?"
Carol responds with her typical straightforwardness:
Carol: "You were uncomfortable with the image he had in his head of someone who was old enough to be the aunt of someone who was going to the prom, and you didn't want to be charged for the extra year."
Which causes CJ to counter with an upturned eyebrow:
But she has to admit Carol is right - CJ is aware that she wants to depict herself as young, as vibrant, as attractive to Simon. There's something going on here ... I mean, it is Mark Harmon, so who can blame her?
They do go shopping, Simon has a little discussion with Hogan, CJ's niece, about what he looks for while he's protecting someone and what his background is, and then she figures out he was there that chaotic night in Rosslyn when the President and Josh were wounded by assassins' bullets (What Kind Of Day Has It Been/In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I). Meanwhile, CJ gives up on finding Hogan a prom dress and tries on a black Vera Wang number of her own (hence, our title).
That knowledge of Simon being there in Rosslyn that night simmers for a bit, without CJ's knowledge, until she takes him aside and asks him what he and Hogan were talking about while she was in the dressing room. He explains it, and that tidbit of information sinks in with CJ (obviously she was there, she was terrified, she was thrown to the ground just before bullets shattered a car window - knowing this particular Secret Service agent assigned to protect her was there returning fire and protecting the Presidential party that night naturally means a lot to her). Allison Janney's acting is great here, showing oh-so-subtly how CJ's thoughts about Simon are beginning to turn - the realization he was there that night:
And the look she gives him as she goes out the door:
The final moment, though, is a striking one of anger and frustration from Simon. As he goes through CJ's email, there's another pointedly personal threat from the stalker, and a revelation that he was right there in the store with CJ and Simon:
And the final shot is Simon slamming his hand on CJ's desk in utter frustration at missing the opportunity to catch the stalker:
Sam is greeted on his return from Finland with a mysterious envelope, containing a VHS tape. He jokes with Ginger about how maybe it's porn, but it turns out to be an attack ad against the President, using his coverup of his health issues and his refusal to sign a "clean campaign" pledge as a way to portray him as secretive and sinister. And those eyes!
Sam wants to reach out to a friend of his in the opposing Ritchie campaign, Kevin Kahn, as he thinks cooperation is the best way to keep both campaigns from turning negative. Bruno and the other senior staffers are adamantly opposed.
Sam: "What is the danger? What is the danger, where is the danger of my sitting down with Kevin and telling him someone sent this to us? If it's you, we've got our own in a drawer. If it's someone else, you've got a mole and we don't want anything to do with it. How do we lose, in court, in public, in the voting booth?"
Bruno: "There are only two things here. Either someone's trying to hurt us, or somebody's trying to help us. Just so you know."
The point Bruno is making is that they don't know why the tape got sent. Is it a heads-up, to help the Bartlet campaign get ahead of a potential negative ad? Or is it a threat, pushing the President to get on board with the clean campaign pledge or face this attack? Nobody knows what it is yet.
Sam, though, gets a call from Kahn and jumps on the opportunity to meet with him and give him the tape. Kahn is grateful, claiming the Ritchie campaign didn't know anything about it, and that he appreciates Sam's cooperation. So all is good, right? Right?
Bruno: "He leaked it to the press."
Sam: "What?"
Bruno: "Your lunch."
Sam: "You're wrong."
Bruno: "He leaked it to the press. He's got you in favor of the pledge and you gave him the tape."
Sam: "I didn't -"
Bruno: "This is three, four, I don't know, a dozen news cycles where we're playing politics and we're losing. Let me be clear, the pledge is their idea. Any move we make on it we lose, any move they make they win."
And then in a tremendously coincidental moment, Bruno turns on all the TVs in the communications bullpen, and of course they're all carrying the story and showing clips from the ad. Free exposure of this anti-Bartlet attack ad, over all the TV news networks.
(Isn't it funny how in TV and movies, whenever a character needs to show something important on the television, it just happens to be playing exactly when they turn the TV on?)
Sam is completely stricken, and he should be.
He got played totally by Kahn, the campaign is going to suffer for it ... and what's worse, he should have known better. Bruno already proved he's four steps ahead of the staff when it comes to campaign politics, back in Manchester Part II, when he chastised Josh for his "triumph" over Big Tobacco when that could have been put to great electoral use in important swing states:
Bruno (to Josh, the previous summer): "You don't want the money. You want the issue. You should have waited until the fall, when the bell rings and then we hammer them with it. [...] Of course you got the money. I'm amazed they didn't send it to you with candy and a stripper. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio - three swing states you could have brought over with that. That's an election."
These guys need to learn that they should listen to Bruno when it comes to campaign tactics, and Bruno points that out to Sam here:
Bruno: "You got played, Sam, and you forgot that all warfare is based on deception. One of these times, you guys are going to listen. Or you're going to find out what the crappy end of Inauguration Day feels like."
Speaking of TV, Toby is meeting with the four TV network new directors about coverage of the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Toby thinks they just want a schedule of what's going on - but it turns out they have other plans:
News Director: "We're thinking about cutting back on our coverage."
Toby: "You only covered two hours a night last time. How much more can you -"
News Director: "We're talking about an hour."
Toby: "You can't do an hour a night, that's just -"
News Director: "See, you don't understand. We're talking about an hour for each convention. We cover the acceptance speeches, that's it."
Toby is flabbergasted, he can't believe network TV would be so cavalier, but he's convinced they're serious about it. Until Bruno tells him there's no way the four broadcast networks could have agreed individually on their own to each reduce their coverage. It was ... well, collusion. And now Toby has his own threat to hold over their heads.
News Director: "You're accusing us of conspiring to not show money-losing television?"
Toby: "Not me so much as the Justice Department. 15 USC Section 1 - 'Every contract combination or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall engage in any combination -'"
Other News Director: "All right, we get it. We all have lawyers that we'll have to talk to."
Toby: "Yes. No, there isn't going to be any horse race to cover, either in New York or San Diego, but we gave you the airwaves for free 70 years ago and 357 days a year you can say who's up and who's down, who won the West and who lost the South, but what's wrong with eight days, not every year but every four years, showing our leaders talking to us. Not a fraction of what they said but what they said. And then the, the balloons."
And then there's Josh's Finnish sauna-smoked moose meat gift for Donna.
She's not enthused about the gift, and when Josh is told that it ended up being posted on eBay (in violation of White House ethics guidelines), he is not pleased. Donna explains she passed the gift on to an intern, thinking some free food would be welcome for a young man working basically for no pay in the White House. It turns out he's the one who posted it for sale, because he needs the money and not the food. Donna actually ends up being the one who buys it off eBay, asks him for the money back (which he's already spent), and then instead of firing the intern as Josh wanted, reassigns him out of the West Wing. So ... a throwaway plotline about moose meat and interns.
Let's give Aaron Sorkin some credit for continuing to carefully lay down the foundations for ongoing plot lines to take us to the end of the season. While he already did it masterfully last year in Season 2, with the fantastic arc from The Stackhouse Filibuster to Two Cathedrals, here it's a tighter, more restrained path we're going down ... but, I think, really well constructed, with pieces of information coming together bit by bit as we start to arrange them and guess about where they're taking us. CJ's stalker, her Secret Service protection, the discovery of a high-ranking government official of a friendly nation planning a terrorist attack inside the United States ... where are we going with this?
Stay tuned and we'll find out.
Tales Of Interest!
- We find out CJ drives a baby-blue 1965 Mustang convertible, because of course she does. At least, she does when the Secret Service isn't disabling the engine so she can't ditch them.
- CJ says this about Simon:
CJ: "You have been annoying me for six days. You annoyed me here for three days then you annoyed me in Finland."
She says this Sunday night, just after returning from Helsinki. Simon showed up late on the previous Thursday night. If CJ says he annoyed her "here" for three days, that's Thursday/Friday/Saturday - but it was established in Enemies Foreign And Domestic that the Helsinki summit was on Saturday, and the Presidential party surely would have traveled there a day ahead. Also, Thursday-Sunday is four days total, not six, and that's giving a full day's credit to Thursday, when Simon showed up very late Thursday night. I've noted before Sorkin has real trouble with keeping lengths-of-time straight ...
- The map graphic in the Situation Room showing Dover Air Base, Fort Myer, and the White House has the identical latitude/longitude for all three locations - lat/longs which, by the way, actually point to a completely empty location in the Iraqi desert west of Kuwait. The actual location of the White House is 38° 54' North and 77° 02' West (not East). Also, Fort Myer is located west-southwest of the White House, in Virginia next to Arlington National Cemetery, not east of the White House as shown here:
- Toby makes it clear that the Democratic National Convention is set for New York (at the "Garden," Toby says - Madison Square Garden) while the Republican convention will be in San Diego. It's also interesting to note Toby's debate with the network news directors; there are four of them, apparently reflecting the real-life ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox networks. This storyline is about the broadcast television networks only, not cable news, which makes sense considering Toby's point about giving them the "airwaves" 70 years ago.
- There was never a Barneys on Connecticut Avenue. The only Barneys in the District of Columbia was located in Georgetown - the scene with CJ and Hogan shopping was filmed at the Barneys in Beverly Hills. Barneys declared bankruptcy in late 2019 and closed all its remaining stores in February 2020.
- There's a figurine wearing a ball gown in Gail's fishbowl, although it's not black and most likely not a Vera Wang.
- We get another look at CJ's email in-box, and thanks to the miracle of freeze-frame we can examine the wonderful email addresses created by the production staff: addresses like Bob27@aol.com, mymail@msn.com, johndoe@aol.com, Eric_L@mail.edu, and the msnbc23@msnbc.com address we noticed in the previous episode. There also do not appear to be any more critical emails coming from Saudi email addresses - good thing that's blown over in a week!
CJ's stalker is no longer using the 2ala@mail.sa address we saw previously. Now he's using bill182@aol.com:
- Ron Silver and Mark Harmon were both nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series (Tim Matheson was also up for that award for his work as Vice President Hoynes on the series). Charles S. Dutton took the award for his appearances on The Practice.
Quotes
Ginger: "What'd you bring me?"
Sam: "I brought you a collector's plate of a moose racing through the woods."
Ginger: "I love moose."
Sam: "I know how you do. Bonnie? You get a hat with a moose on it."
Bonnie: "You like a good hotel gift shop, don't you?"
Sam: "I do."
Ginger: "What do they eat in Helsinki?"
Sam: "They eat moose."
-----
Bruno: "If I wanted to sink the Bartlet campaign, this is exactly the ad I'd run."
Toby: "In May?"
Bruno: "No. But I would show it to the other side to let them know what happens if they hit me first. Every campaign has one in the drawer."
CJ: "We didn't."
Sam, Toby, and Bruno (together): "Yes, we did."
-----
CJ: "Do you have any reason to believe it was stolen?"
Sam: "No."
CJ: "How can he be an accomplice to a crime he had no reason to believe occurred?"
Josh: "You wanna find out?"
CJ: "Nope."
-----
Network news director: "We'll show the acceptance speeches. And the balloons. The balloons aren't news, but it's nice television."
-----
Leo: "I'm trying to tell you that if the time comes they're not gonna give you a choice."
President: "You're telling me that the Secret Service, you're telling me my own bodyguards are gonna escort me to the bunker?"
Leo: "Your feet may touch the ground a couple of times along the way but I doubt it."
-----
Toby: "What about corporate sponsorship?"
Bruno: "You think?"
Toby: "Why are people footing the bill for this anyway?"
Bruno: "The Nabisco Democratic National Convention?"
Toby: "It's better than four nights of professional wrestling."
Bruno: "How much better?"
Toby: "I don't know!"
Bruno: "I wouldn't mind hitting some of these people, I can make it look real."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- Evan Rachel Wood, who plays CJ's niece Hogan, was 14 years old at the time, but already had worked steadily in Hollywood with appearances on the series American Gothic and Profiler, and was a regular in the cast of Once And Again. As of this post, she currently stars on the HBO series Westworld.
- Martha, the White House protocol staff member tracking where gifts to administration members end up, is played by Ivy Jones. She's been a recognizable character actor on TV shows since the mid-1970s, most recently with a recurring role on Baskets.
- Bruno Gianelli, head of the Bartlet reelection campaign, returns to the show (last seen in The Indians In The Lobby).
- Speaking of returns, we also revisit the basement office where the secret meetings about the President's MS revelations (with the "Sagittarius" code word) took place last season. This set was a reconstruction of Ainsley Hayes' office in the Steam Pipe Trunk Distribution Venue (which may also explain why we saw her in a different office when she last appeared in The U.S. Poet Laureate). We most recently saw this space in 18th And Potomac. This time it gets a name; Donna tells Josh his meeting is in Basement Office C.
- The President mentions they just finished with "Helsinki and the reactor" - the summit with Russian president Chigorin and the discussion of the Russian-built reactor in Iran were topics in Enemies Foreign And Domestic.
- The President tells Leo and Charlie about the upcoming War of the Roses show, being put on for Catholic charities. A combination of all Shakespeare's Henry plays (as Bartlet puts it "Henry V, three Henry VIs [Shakespeare wrote three parts] and Henry VIII"), we are going to see some of that production onscreen eventually.
- Bruno's confusion with Margaret's name was previously seen in Ways And Means, when he called her Gertrude. In this episode:
Bruno (entering Leo's reception area): "Hey, Stacey."
Margaret: "Margaret."
Bruno: "I thought Margaret was the girl who worked here before."
Margaret: "I'm the girl who worked here before. I'm Margaret."
Bruno: "You changed your hair."
Margaret: "No."
But then, in a sweet gesture, Bruno leaves a box with Margaret as he goes in to see Leo. Inside the box - a necklace with Margaret's name. He knew it all along!
- Donovan reveals to Hogan that he was on the Secret Service detail at Rosslyn the night President Bartlet and Josh were shot (What Kind Of Day Has It Been/In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I).
- When Ginger is giving Sam messages she says his father called. We saw that Sam and his dad have a complicated relationship (because of his father's secret mistress) in Somebody's Going To Emergency, Somebody's Going To Jail.
- The President's on-mic recorded "gaffe" about Governor Ritchie's lack of smarts that we saw in The U.S. Poet Laureate is a big part of the argument between Sam and Kevin Kahn.
- Bruno's beatdown of Sam's gullibility at being played by Kahn and the Ritchie campaign over the videotape calls to mind the same kind of evisceration Bruno gave Josh over his tobacco lawsuit gambit in Manchester Part II. In both cases, the White House staffers thought they were making moves to help the administration, but Bruno had to explain to them how what they did caused real damage to the reelection campaign.
- The discovery that Qumari Defense Minister Abdul Shareef is connected with terrorists trying to strike inside the US is a key plot point for the upcoming episodes. The fictional nation of Qumar was first mentioned in The Women Of Qumar.
DC location shots
- While the scene of Sam yelling at Kevin Kahn in the rain shows the address of "531 Connecticut" and a "Dupont Tower" building, the scene was clearly shot on a set (you can kind of tell by the rounded shape of the street and the generic signs in the shop windows, I think, not to mention the copious fake rainfall). Plus, that address doesn't even exist - Connecticut Avenue begins at the northwest corner of Lafayette Park, just north of the White House, with the 800 block - there is no "531 Connecticut."
- As I mentioned above, there was no Barneys in DC (except for a small one in Georgetown - there certainly wasn't one on Connecticut Avenue), and the shopping scene was filmed in the Barneys in Beverly Hills.
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- Sam's comment to Ginger about not eating moose in Finland - "I don't like eating things where the cartoon character can talk, and, you know, hatch a plan" - is a reference to the cartoon character Bullwinkle J. Moose.
- The stage show President Bartlet talks about, with "all the Henrys," is fictional - but it refers to an actual production called The Wars Of The Roses, originally performed in 1963 and adapted from Shakespeare's plays Henry VI Parts 1, 2, and 3 and Richard III. The stage show was not produced again after its original run until 2015, and in that version lasted 9 hours, not the "four or five" Jed told Leo to expect:
Leo: "How long is it?"
President: "Four or five hours, maybe, you'll be fine."
Leo: "They do all the Henrys?"
President: "They do all the Henrys. They do a thing, call it War of the Roses. I'm told by those who saw it in London it's spectacular. Catholic Charities bought out a Broadway theatre. We're gonna go, we're gonna make some money."
Leo: "Everything was fine except the part where we go."
Reality check: Bartlet includes the Shakespeare plays Henry V and Henry VIII as being part of this show, when those two kings weren't really part of the War of the Roses at all. The actual power struggle between the Houses of York and Lancaster encompassed the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, and Richard III - the two houses were united when Henry VII married Elizabeth of York and created the House of Tudor.
Charlie mentions the use of "music and song and other theatrical devices," which wasn't really a part of the actual 1963 play.
- Many real-life military bases are mentioned as being under threat: Jaber Air Base in Kuwait; Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia; Incirlik, Turkey; Seeb North Air Base in Oman; Dover Air Force Base in Delaware; Fort Myer in Virginia (right next to Arlington National Cemetery and not, as Leo says, in Maryland); and Fort Point in California. The Golden Gate Bridge turns out to be the actual target of the Ba'hi terrorist cell.
- CJ is involved with several real-life references: the Barneys clothing store; the famous designer Vera Wang; and the golfer Ben Hogan, after whom CJ's golf-crazy older brother named his daughter. Here's a gratuitous mention of Vera Wang on the store wall in the background:
- The saga of Josh's sauna-smoked moose meat includes the online selling site eBay and the upscale kitchen store Williams-Sonoma.
- Margaret tells the staffers about the Washington Times' plan to publish their salaries.
- When Kevin Kahn calls Sam and they plan lunch, Sam suggests "Old Ebbitt," meaning the Old Ebbitt Grill, a famous hangout for Washingtonians just across the street from the Treasury Department near the White House. Patrick's, the restaurant Kahn suggests instead, doesn't appear to exist.
- Norah Jones' recording of Don't Know Why is playing at the Barneys as CJ and Hogan are shopping.
- Bruno brings up Andrew Jackson as a defender of Democrats getting government jobs; the presidential campaign between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan (as well as Bryan's Cross of Gold speech) comes up during Sam and Kahn's lunch meeting.
- Bruno mentions Nabisco as a possible sponsor of the convention, as well as "Tiny Tim and Miss What's-her-name" (Miss Vicki) as samples of what the TV networks would want to cover.
- Product placement: Sam is using a Dell laptop:
End credits freeze frame: Leo and the President talking about the bunker.
Previous episode: Enemies Foreign And Domestic
Next episode: We Killed Yamamoto
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