College Kids - TWW S4E3

Original airdate: October 2, 2002

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (68)
Story by: Debora Cahn (1)  and Mark Goffman (1)

Directed by: Alex Graves (10)

Synopsis

• As tensions with Qumar over Shareef's death continue to intensify, President Bartlet asks Leo to bring in a lawyer, resulting in the return of Jordon Kendall. Josh and Toby come up with a plan to make college a little easier, after their talk with Matt Kelly in the Indiana hotel bar. A judge's decision on debates complicates things for the campaign, and a related job offer for Amy complicates things for her and Josh. Debbie finally gets hired.

"There are a lot of reasons not to do it, but during the first campaign the President said there were two kinds of politicians."

"The ones who try to say yes, and the ones who try to say no."

It's all about saying yes. Yes to trying to find a way to make college "just a little easier," as Matt Kelly said in the previous episode. Yes to stepping up against Qumar trying to falsely accuse Israel of killing their Defense Minister. Yes to hiring Debbie Fiderer, even though she wanted to poison President Bartlet with arsenic not all that long ago.

I mean, there's some "no" answers here, as well (hello, wide-open debate stage ... howdy, the idea of rekindling Josh & Amy) but it's overwhelmingly about being proactive, moving forward, and making progress. It's a refreshing change from reality here in 2020, isn't it?

This episode really could be Part 3 of 20 Hours In America. It begins immediately on the Tuesday morning when that episode ended, with the President and Leo in the Situation Room hearing about the latest from Qumar while Josh, Toby, and Donna make their way into DC on foot (also, where did Nancy McNally go? She was part of the group heading for the Situation Room at the close of the last episode, threatening to unleash nuclear weapons on Qumar, but now she's vanished. Aaron Sorkin throws in a quick explanation as Bartlet says, "Nancy's in her office, I asked her to make a few calls."). Since we're starting with Qumar, let's continue with that storyline.

At the end of Season 3 Bartlet ordered the killing of Qumar Defense Minister Shareef after finding out he was behind numerous terrorist attacks on American military forces, as well as a threatened attack on the Golden Gate Bridge. All the evidence of the assassination was destroyed, with the official story being Shareef's plane going down over the Atlantic. Now Qumar is investigating again, claiming that it was no accident and to have discovered evidence proving Israel was behind the assassination.

So the President and his advisers find themselves in a fix. They know Israel wasn't involved; they also know any Qumari evidence is faked. The problem is, they can't prove those points without admitting their own culpability and violation of international laws.

Adviser: "Call Qumar's bluff. Demand they produce proof."

Fitzwallace: "We can't call their bluff."

Adviser: "Why?"

Fitzwallace: "Cause they're calling our bluff. When they produce manufactured proof, we'd have to say, 'You manufactured that.' And they'd say, 'How do you know?' So, the next option is we defend Israel."

President Bartlet's first move is to ask Leo to bring in a lawyer - even though he's convinced he did the right thing, Jed knows the legal walls could be closing in, much as they did for the MS coverup in Season 2, and getting ahead of the curve is the best option. The next move, as the day wears on, is Fitzwallace's plan to create a disinformation campaign to imply that Shareef is still alive, hiding out in Libya, and planning to overthrow the Qumari government.

Leo immediately goes to the lawyer he knows, the lawyer who helped him get through the Congressional hearing in Bartlet For America, the lawyer he had a Christmas Eve dinner date with - Jordon Kendall. While it doesn't seem obvious for such a criminal defense lawyer to be the choice for an international law case like this one, it turns out Jordon does have some experience in the area - a graduate of the Maxwell School of Diplomacy and International Relations, former general counsel for the United Nations, involved in high-profile cases like the defection of a Cuban baseball player - Leo has done his homework. Plus, he's still a bit smitten with her:

Jordon: "The problem was, you were never at the other end of the phone."

Leo: "That's an entirely different kettle of beans and we can have that discussion but history's shown that if you just wait and tell it to a divorce lawyer, you can have half my stuff."

Jordon: "I don't want half your stuff."

Leo: "You don't know - some of it's good stuff."

(He also tries to impress her by showing a simulation of a nuclear strike on her hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska; overwhelms her with her government file; and later has this conversation with the President:

President: "How did you do with Jordon?"

Leo: "She's a little wary, but I think she might be willing to go out with me again."

President: "Yeah?"

Leo: "But you meant the other problem.")

Jordon doesn't feel like she is at all prepared or qualified for this role, but Leo convinces her to take a meeting with the President. And Bartlet is quite frank - he knows this assassination was in violation of international law, but he also firmly believes it was the only path he could have taken to protect American lives and interests:

President: "And Article 51 of the United Nations Charter says every nation has the right to wage war to defend itself."

Jordon: "The article's incumbent on war being declared."

President: "Wars don't work like that anymore."

Jordon: "Laws work like that."

President: "Forty-four people are dead in Iowa, and most of them college kids. Shareef has murdered Americans in uniform. He's murdered Americans out of uniform. He was trying to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge, and I didn't have time to file an amicus brief."

Jordon: "How can justice that has to be served in secret be justice?"

President: "I don't know, I'm working on that."

Jordon eventually admits that much of international law hasn't really been codified yet, so outcomes of actions like this can be molded as they work their way through the legal system - which is exactly what the President wanted to hear.

Those 44 dead in Iowa refer to the aftermath of the bombing of the swim meet at Kennison State University in Cedar Rapids, which occurred in the previous episode. There's some discussion over whether or not the President should mention the bombing at a campaign event (he does, eloquently and graciously, much as he did with the "streets of heaven" speech in the previous episode), and consternation when the Republican candidate for President, Robert Ritchie, insists on attending the memorial service in Iowa. The initial concern with the bombing was that it might have involved Islamic terrorists, considering the situation with Qumar and Shareef. The FBI, though, eventually tracks down some homegrown methamphetamine-producing individuals in Iowa linked to the anti-government Patriot Brotherhood. They're holed up in a house in Johnson County, claiming to take responsibility for the bombing.

On top of these crises, the hiring of Debbie Fiderer as President Bartlet's executive secretary hits a snag during her background check. In the recent past, she wrote a seemingly threatening letter:

Charlie (reading Debbie's letter): "'Let's stick some arsenic in President Bartlet's drinking water and see if he delegates responsibility to the World Bank then.'"

Debbie: "Okay, um, where it says 'arsenic' that should read 'Schweppe's Bitter Lemon.' I don't know how that -"

Charlie: "Debbie!"

Debbie: "Come on, 35 million people in Bangladesh drinking contaminated water and the White House issued a statement saying they supported the World Bank's efforts to to address the problem but made no move to intervene independently. I wrote a letter."

Debbie, previously uninterested in rejoining the White House staff, is now desperate to have the job after meeting the President several times  - but this letter is a real security problem. Charlie tries to see what he can do, and who Debbie can talk to to try to save the day.

Of course it turns out that "who" is President Bartlet. He grudgingly agrees to see her at the end of the day, before heading to the residence. She makes her case, although she just can't help herself:

Debbie: "I sincerely apologize. It was a higher environmental cancer risk than Chernobyl. We spend $20 million a year on strategic milk reserve. We can't toss -"

President: "Why couldn't you have stopped with, 'I sincerely apologize'?"

But her job is safe.

 President: "You can keep the job."

Debbie: "Great. Why?"

President: "Why, because you knock me out, that's why."

Debbie: "How did I do that?"

President (reading from Debbie's letter): "'Let's stick some arsenic into President Bartlet's drinking water and see if he delegates responsibility to the World Bank then.' President Bartlet. You referred to me and to the office with respect. You're a class act."

Debbie: "Thank you, Mr. President."

President (heading out the door): "Whack job."

Leading to a quiet moment of celebration as Bartlet departs.

A quick mention of Amy Gardner: in Posse Comitatus we learned Josh had maneuvered her right out of her job at the Women's Leadership Coalition, after she tried to whip up opposition to the administration's welfare reform bill. Josh went over Amy's head to her boss to get support for the bill, leaving Amy high and dry as far where she stood there ... and that move also directly led to the breakup of their budding relationship. The two run into each other here, at the Rock The Vote event in Massachusetts. Amy does some work for the organization, which explains why she's there, and of course Josh is there as part of the campaign. While they make surprised small talk after bumping into each other, Amy lets something slip:

Josh: "It took us 20 hours to get out of Indiana. You should have been with us. You'd have had fun."

Amy: "I would have. I don't know what to say about the pipe bombing."

Josh: "There's nothing to say. I ... I was trying -"

Amy (murmuring): "I miss you."

Josh: "- to call Stackhouse."

Could there still be something here for these two? Unfortunately, the mention of Stackhouse proves to be another wrench thrown into this relationship. Stackhouse, a rogue Democratic Senator and sometimes thorn in Bartlet's side, is considering using a judge's decision to open the presidential debates to all candidates as a way to get on the debate stage and force discussion of his priorities - something the Bartlet campaign really does not want to happen. It turns out Amy has been asked by Stackhouse if she would consider helping him prepare for any potential debate, and Josh is not at all thrilled by that idea:

Josh (angrily): "This is not, not the deal we made with them. In one week, he is supposed to endorse the President."

Amy: "He never thought he'd get into the debate."

Josh: "He's not! So he's, he's moving you from consultant -"

Amy: "I don't know, it's all happening fast. It's just today. I'm considering it."

Josh: "It wasn't the deal we had." (he walks away)

Leading to another murmured "I miss you" from Amy.

Finally, that tuition tax deduction idea. During their time trapped in Indiana, Toby and Josh met with Matt Kelly, just a guy who was taking his daughter on college visits. Kelly said he was proud to be able to provide for his children going to college, but he wished things were "just a little easier." In the next morning's paper, both Toby and Josh saw an article about a CEO getting a huge "retention bonus" from a failing company - and all because Congress had made bonuses and other non-incentive based payouts tax deductible for corporations. Both of them, on their own, come up with a plan - take away some of that tax deduction for big business and use it to give everyday Americans the chance to deduct college costs.

This tuition deductibility idea will be a long-running topic for the Bartlet administration - in fact, in future seasons I believe we see it given away in trade-offs to Republicans in order to advance future budgets - but right here, right now, it's a sign that this administration wants to hear from middle-American citizens, wants to advance the cause of higher education, and wants to make things "just a little easier" for those trying to better their situations. As a sign of the idea's importance, the episode ends with Toby making a phone call from that Rock The Vote event, a phone call to Matt Kelly, the "just a guy" they ran into in Indiana. Toby needs to let him know his voice matters, and this administration listened and wants to turn his thoughts into action.

They want to try to say yes.

Tales Of Interest!

- This episode takes place immediately after the conclusion of 20 Hours In America: at the end of that episode we saw the President with Leo, Fitzwallis and Nancy McNally in the Oval Office heading to the Situation Room while Josh, Toby, and Donna got off the airport shuttle in Arlington and started walking across the bridge over the Potomac; at the start of this episode they are meeting in the Situation Room and Bartlet is told Josh, Toby, and Donna are walking into DC. (Well, the meeting is going on without Nancy - while the President says he asked the National Security Adviser to make a few phone calls from her office, we do know Anna Deavere Smith got a role on Presidio Med that season that cut into her availability for The West Wing).

- We get to see the fictional Qumar depicted on a map in the Situation Room. If you remember In This White House and the fictional Equatorial Kundu, I used some clues in the script to guess where that nation might be located in Africa. Here we get to see an actual map, which puts Qumar in what is actually southern Iran, bordering the Persian Gulf across from Qatar. Qumar would include the important Iranian gulf port of Bandar Abbas. Here's two views of Qumar as seen in the Situation Room:

And here's an actual map of the region, with my roughly drawn border from the first image above, which shows Qumar in southern Iran:

- The trademark West Wing spinning camera is put to consistent use by Alex Graves - we see it in the Air Force One meeting over how to address the KSU bombing at the NEA speech:

We see it again in the hotel kitchen as Sam and Bruno are going over the NEA speech with Bartlet:

And another time in the White House lobby as Josh and CJ spar over Title IX:

And while it's no Five Votes Down scene, we get a long tracking shot in the hotel as the President makes his way up the stairs and into the ballroom to the NEA convention.

The long take starts with President Bartlet coming up the stairs

He heads down the corridor

Walks through two sets of doors

Makes his way through the crowd to the stage

And the shot finishes with the camera on CJ as she watches from the side of the stage.

- I guess we shouldn't be all that surprised given the realities of TV entertainment (especially in the early 2000s), but there's a definite gender-related wardrobe difference at the House of Blues concert. While the guys go without their jackets and ties and push their sleeves up, CJ bares her midriff in her Rock The Vote t-shirt and Amy impresses Josh with her Rock The Vote tank top.

Quotes    

President (as his advisers try to discuss Qumar's moves against Israel): "Listen, I know we're here for a serious purpose, for a sober purpose, but I wanted to say I've never been part of a street gang before, and that's basically what we are - a pretty well-financed one - but anyway, I wanted to say it feels good, and I think when we're done with this meeting, I think we should go out and get girls, and, I don't know, maybe knock over a fruit stand or something."

Leo: "Okay."

President: "We're going to need to learn to sing and dance." 

-----

Leo: "First of all, we have to go beyond the normal attorney/client privilege. This is sensitive."

Jordon: "There are no degrees of attorney/client privilege. I don't care if it's sensitive."

Leo: "No, I'm talking state secrets with highest security classification. If you told anyone, you'd be convicted of treason and sent to prison, probably for life."

Jordon: "No, I wouldn't."

Leo: "No, you wouldn't. It's nothing like treason. But if you told anyone, it'd be bad."  

-----

Leo: "Qumar has been investigating the accident because they believe there was foul play. And we believe, in fact we know, they're trying to frame Israel. They're producing phony evidence."

Jordon: "How do you know?"

Leo: "I'm sorry?"

Jordon: "You said, 'we know.' How do you know?"

Leo: "Because we do."

Jordon: "Why isn't it possible for Israel -"

Leo: "Jordon. We know any evidence of assassination is manufactured."

Jordon: "How?"

Leo: "Cause we destroyed all the evidence."

-----

Jordon: "I don't have any experience with what you're talking about."

Leo: "Nobody does. And we're talking about we killed Shareef. We put 14 bullets in his chest on an airstrip in Bermuda. It's helpful to start saying it out loud." 

-----

Josh: "Who's at the event?"

Donna: "Aimee Mann, the Barenaked Ladies, Chrissie Hynde, Sixpence None The Richer, Aaron Neville, Diamondback Whale, DaisyChain, Next Big Thing, the Cruel Shoes, and Single-Cell Paramecium."

Josh: "You've just been practicing for when I asked the question, right?"

Donna: "Yes."

Josh: "And you made up Cruel Shoes?"

Donna: "No, Single-Cell Paramecium."

-----

Josh: "They're back."

Toby: "They are?"

Josh: "Yeah."

Toby: "Are they being funny?"

Bruno (walking around the corner): "Barnum, Bailey, and their sister Sue!"

Josh: "They're almost over it."

-----

CJ (reading the judge's decision): "'The 15 percent rule, benefiting the two major parties, is partisan politics of the worst kind - regulatory duopoly, democracy by favoristic fiat, a bureaucratic junta -'"

Bruno: "Yes." 

CJ: "'-that is clearly prohibited under federal law.'"

Toby: "There's no way 'favoristic's a word."

Sam: "We all agree with you, Toby, we just don't think it's grounds for an appeal."

-----

President: "Look, win or lose on the 5th, I'm the President right now, right?"

CJ: "Um, yeah, I'm almost sure."

(Election Day 2002 was indeed November 5.) 

----

President: "Allergy medicine?"

Casper: "Allergy medicine with tractor starter fluid strained through a coffee filter is methamphetamine."

President: "Tractor starter fluid doesn't kill you?"

Casper: "No, it'll definitely kill you, but first you'll get pretty high."

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

• Joanna Gleason returns as Jordon Kendall, the attorney who represented Leo in front of Congress in Bartlet For America (and they later had a date; Leo is apparently angling for more of those).

• Clark Gregg is seen again as FBI Special Agent Mike Casper.

• Amy Gardner returns! Mary-Louise Parker's character apparently split up with Josh at the end of Posse Comitatus, as he maneuvered her out of her job at the Women's Leadership Coalition in order to get a welfare reform bill passed.

• In the Situation Room President Bartlet tells a story involving his daughter Ellie (seen in, naturally, Ellie). Later he refers to some of the victims of the Iowa bombing as the same age as his daughter Zoey (first seen in The Crackpots And These Women). He then asks Charlie to set up phone calls with each of his daughters (he has three, we haven't yet met the oldest).

• Leo mentions his divorce to Jordon, which we saw coming initially back in Five Votes Down.

• The Josh-Donna relationship has been an undercurrent from the very start of the series. It's obvious the two have deep affection for each other, from the note Josh wrote for Donna in her gift in In Excelsis Deo to Joey Lucas telling Josh Donna wants to date him in The War At Home to her statement "I wouldn't stop for red lights" in 17 People and plenty of moments in between, even as they both try to develop relationships with other people. A telling moment here, after they return to the White House from their Indiana adventure - Josh has just met with Toby about the idea to make tuition tax deductible, and as he excitedly heads down the hallway he crosses paths with Donna. He's got other things on his mind, but then ...

Donna: "Hello."

Josh: "Hey."

Donna: "Did you sleep all right?"

Josh: "I did, but then I read this thing -"

And he stops. And he realizes Donna is asking about his well-being, and he realizes there are some things more important, at this exact moment, than the policy issues he's in the middle of. This little moment of caring and expressing concern for each other is really sweet, and easily missed in the ongoing sweep of the episode:

Josh: "-How you doing?"

 

• Howard Stackhouse gets mentioned as a guy who might cause trouble for the President by getting onstage for the debates. We've heard the name a lot over the years, first mentioned as a legislator who might have had a family member get favorable treatment for drug charges in Mandatory Minimums. He was mentioned again as a guest on Capital Beat in In This White House, and we then saw Senator Stackhouse speak up against a health care bill (in order to protect coverage of autism) in The Stackhouse Filibuster. He's an independent-minded Democrat from Minnesota, who's been referred to as a possible Presidential spoiler candidate before.

• Charlie gets angry with Debbie over her "arsenic" threat to the President, saying he was four feet away when the guns started firing (What Kind Of Day Has It Been).

• CJ calls on the Rock The Vote crowd to get out and be active, as "Decisions are made by those who show up." President Bartlet said those exact same words in What Kind Of Day Has It Been.

• President Bartlet makes a wry reference to the scandal over his health and hiding his multiple sclerosis diagnosis from the country (a condition first seen in He Shall, From Time To Time ... and which later took up a huge arc in Season 2) when he says to Fitzwallace, "No disinformation to the U.S. press, right? We don't give disinformation to the U.S. press. Unless it's about my health."

• In the final scene, Toby takes the time to call Matt Kelly, the guy they spoke to in the Indiana hotel bar the night before, to let him know the administration is going to try to take him up on the "making college just a little easier" thing.

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• President Bartlet is wearing a University of Notre Dame sweatshirt, the same one he had on at the end of the previous episode.

• Air Force One is bound for the Battle Creek Air National Guard Base, in Springfield, Michigan. It's not that far from East Lansing, so it would be a logical military airport to use. I don't know why they wouldn't have just flown into the Lansing airport, though.

• The NEA convention is being held at a Radisson hotel, as you see the logos in several places as the President enters the building.

• Agent Casper says "It's not Tom Paine" as he refers to the writing style of the Iowa bombers. He means Thomas Paine, whose pamphlets Common Sense and The American Crisis were two of the most influential writings at the start of the American Revolution.

• Rock The Vote is an actual organization founded in 1990 designed to energize young voters.; Donna's list of performers at the event in Boston includes actual musical groups, mostly (I couldn't find anything online for Diamondback Whale; there have been several Daisy Chain groups, including one mentioned as a 90s acoustic duo which is the most likely one for this purpose; all I could find for Next Big Thing was an early 80s Chicago punk band; and Cruel Shoes put out just one album in 1992, ten years before this episode). We actually see Barenaked Ladies and Aimee Mann perform, with Barenaked Ladies performing their hit One Week and Aimee Mann singing James Taylor's Shed A Little Light.

• Poking fun at Josh for his adventures in Indiana, CJ calls him "Admiral Scott" (Antarctic explorer Robert F. Scott was a captain in the Royal Navy, not an admiral) and Don Quixote de La Mancha (who, as Josh corrects her, was not an explorer at all); Bruno also makes a joke, referring to Josh, Toby, and Donna as "Barnum, Bailey and their sister Sue." (As a callback, President Bartlet used the phrase "Barnum Bailey and his sister Sue" in The Lame Duck Congress, a phrase I have been unable to find anywhere except in the writings of Aaron Sorkin.)

• We see Toby with a Starbucks cup; as the series moves along, many of the characters seem to have generic coffee cups from West Wing coffee stations, but Toby pretty consistently sticks with Starbucks.

• Debbie jokes about how her reference to putting arsenic in the President's drinking water should have said Schweppes Bitter Lemon. That is another callback, to grumpy old Albie Duncan asking for that same beverage in Gone Quiet.

• There was a House of Blues in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2002; it was a small capacity space (only room for 180 patrons) which fits what we see in this episode. House of Blues moved to a much bigger venue at Kenmore Square in Boston in 2003.

• Agent Casper says the bombing suspects are holed up in Johnson County, Iowa. That county is immediately south of Cedar Rapids, site of the fictional Kennison State University.

• Debbie mentions Chernobyl, which also came up in Enemies Foreign And Domestic.

• Donna is drinking Miller Lite at the House of Blues.

End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet preparing to leave the Oval Office for the night.

Previous episode: 20 Hours In America Part Two

Next episode: The Red Mass