Original airdate: October 9, 2002
Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (68)
Story by: Eli Attie (4)
Directed by: Vincent Misiano (3)
Synopsis
- With the administration unhappy about how the upcoming Presidential debates are formatted, CJ comes up with a daring idea. Leo's attempt to get a message to Israel about their response to Qumar's threats goes undelivered. The standoff in Iowa with the suspected KSU bombers comes to a head. Stackhouse's renegade candidacy continues to cause headaches, especially for Josh. And Sam starts contemplating his future.
Sam: "Do you know who Horton Wilde is?"
Leo: "That name sounds familiar. He's running in Orange County."
Sam: "Yeah. He's in the hospital. He's had a heart attack."
Leo: "I'm sorry to hear that. We'll send something."
Sam: "It's his fourth. In the Idaho 2nd we're running a guy who lost the race for city council. In the Texas 22nd our candidate's an electrical engineer who paid his filing fee by dumping the cash out of a cigar box. The Arizona 6th features a Democrat who, nine weeks ago, registered as ... a Democrat."
Leo: "You just named three districts that are impossible for Democrats. Finding qualified sacrificial lambs ain't easy."
Sam: "When the D-triple-C tries to raise money by saying 'we're taking back the House' it doesn't appear as if we're giving it all we got."
Sam got a taste of being in the room where it happens (and remember, that was just 10 days ago in West Wing time), and now he's wanting to re-energize the entire Democratic electoral strategy nationwide. Sam's in-depth conversation with Leo about, well, bridges and tunnels, terrorism, and American foreign policy showcase Sam's newfound interest in making policy, instead of just writing about it.
Leo: "It's that I don't know what winning looks like. What does it look like? Is it ... I mean, is it honestly the US flag flying over Mecca? Is that what's going to straighten this out? And if that's the case, why are we postponing that? What are we hoping is going to happen in the meantime?"
Sam: "That somebody will think of something before we have to do the unthinkable."
Leo: "You're one of the big minds of your generation. Have you thought of anything yet?"
Sam: "No."
Leo: "Neither have I. Neither has the President of the United States - also a pretty good mind."
And that sets up Sam's line at the Red Mass, the line that starts to set up Sam's new path in politics:
Sam: "I was thinking about what you asked me before, about have I been able to think of anything and I said, 'No.' And you said, 'Neither have I or neither has the President.'"
Leo: "What about it?"
Sam: "I wouldn't speak for anybody else but you know I'm not done yet, right?"
The Horton Wilde heart attack is going to prove to be Sam's way into the legislative branch, and Rob Lowe's way out of the series. Stick around to see exactly what I mean.
In the latest Qumar developments, Leo is trying to get a message to the Israeli government. Qumar knows it was the United States who had their defense minister killed on the way back from a visit to Washington, but they're publicly blaming Israel in order to stoke tensions with Islamic fundamentalists. The Israelis - not ones for patience or subtlety - have plans in place to strike back at Qumari training bases, but Leo asks Israel's Foreign Minister Ben-Yosef to delay those attacks.
Leo (and the Bartlet administration as a whole) are doing their best to lower the temperature, not raise it, and they know an Israeli attack will inflame the Middle East. Ben-Yosef agrees to take the request back to his government ...
But this is The West Wing, where drama happens daily - so his plane disappears over Lebanon before arriving home. Leo's face is ashen.
"How did I not see that coming?" Leo asks. No matter who is behind it, the disappearance of Ben-Yosef's plane - and the failure of Leo's message to get to the Israeli government - will do nothing but increase the tensions between Qumar, Israel, and the United States, and result in more violence, terrorism, and death.
While Sam works on the President's speech for the Red Mass - an annual Catholic service held the day before the Supreme Court session begins in October - Josh, CJ, and Toby are concerned with the campaign. In different ways and different angles, but it's all about "I know how Ritchie is going to win this election," as both Josh and CJ say.
Josh is concerned about the renegade campaign of Senator Howard Stackhouse, a Minnesota Democrat we saw previously in The Stackhouse Filibuster. He's a firebrand, an independent-minded sort who's not interested in the standard party procedure or being polite - he has issues he wants to bring out for discussion and he's going to do it, whether or not it helps his fellow Democrat Bartlet. The Republican candidate, Robert Ritchie, calls out the idea of the government providing needle exchanges for drug users in order to slow the spread of AIDS. Stackhouse, a deep-blue liberal, wants to grab the opportunity and come out strongly in support of such programs.
Amy, who's been working for Stackhouse since Josh got her fired from her job in Posse Comitatus, wants to put the brakes on that. She sees Ritchie's speech as the trap it is - if he gets Stackhouse to come out for needle exchanges, President Bartlet will have to take a stand as well, and Ritchie can hit him hard from the right. Meanwhile, Josh is desperate to get Stackhouse to stop his campaign and endorse the President, as he promised to do weeks ago - and he takes out a lot of his desperation on Amy, picking fights with her for no obvious reason:
Amy: "Those polls sample likely voters."
Josh: "Yeah."
Amy: "When a third candidate gets elected it's gonna be by unlikely voters."
Josh: "And why is that good? Why are we eager - what, why are we encouraging a group of people who are so howl-at-the-moon, the lazy-ass stupid, that they can't bring themselves to raise their hands? Why is it important that they be brought into the process?"
Amy (beat): "You should stop being mad at me."
Josh: "I'm not."
Amy: "You are. You know, I lost my job because of a strategy you organized."
Josh: "You lost your job in a fashion that ensured you 93 better offers."
Amy: "That's sweet of you to look out for me but I liked the job I had. And when I lost it, I didn't pitch anything. I didn't stage a nutty. I fought you, I lost, I had a drink, I took a shower. Cause that's how it is in the NBA. You know what I do when I win? Two drinks."
But the smart political minds win out in the end. Amy convinces Stackhouse to stay away from the topic of the needle exchange program, then drops by the White House to entice Josh with her balloon animals. Her tactic actually brings a smile to Josh's face:
Maybe those two crazy kids are going to be able to make things work out after all.
Stackhouse, after hearing Bartlet's eloquent speech at the Red Mass, meets with the President to tell him he's dropping out and giving Bartlet his endorsement. In a very nice closing shot, we see Stackhouse walk away, past the shouting press, and disappear in the crowd:
As the President watches him go, flashbulbs popping in his face.
We are struck with the contrast of Stackhouse, who wanted to bring attention to issues he thought were being ignored as he ran for the office of the most recognized person in the country, drifting his way past reporters and others who don't even realize he's there, and President Bartlet, the focus of the press and their shouted questions and pointed cameras, pondering Stackhouse's sacrifice of his ambitions and his issues.
Whereupon he calls CJ over to ask her to gather the press away from the church, as he wants to make a statement on needle exchanges. He does the right thing, and brings Stackhouse's issue to the public eye.
CJ's concern (and Toby's) centers on the upcoming debates. CJ's belief on "how Ritchie is going to win" comes from their continued focus on the contrast between Bartlet's intelligence and Ritchie's ... well, not. By lowering expectations so much, CJ is afraid the bar is so low Ritchie can win the debates by just showing up and "not setting his podium on fire." Toby doesn't agree - he wants debates, and plenty of them, to keep on showing the voting public how Ritchie isn't suited for the office:
Toby: "When we mention that we want five debates, say what they are. One on the economy, one on foreign policy, with another on global threats and national security, one on the environment, and one on strengthening family life, which would include health care, education, and retirement. I also think there should be one on parts of speech and sentence structure, and one on fractions."
But when the debate commission comes back saying there's only going to be two debates, Toby is livid. Bartlet, too, is unhappy - the format of one candidate speaking, then the other, then a rebuttal, is not his idea of a debate: "It's a joint press conference," he complains.
CJ keeps on thinking. What if, she muses, they request a new format for the debates, something more suited to what the President wants to do? After all, Ritchie got what he wanted with fewer debates, why shouldn't the administration get something they want, too?
President: "We'd never get it."
CJ: "We might."
President: "The Ritchie people would put up too much of a fight."
CJ: "They might consider it. They might consider it if we give them something else they wanted."
President: "Other than this house, we don't have anything else they want."
Sam (realization dawning): "Sure we do. Sure we do. We wanted five debates, they wanted none. We have exactly one thing left that they want."
Trade one of the two debates for changing the format. It's a Hail Mary, a wild idea that's so crazy it just might work ... but only if CJ can get Toby to agree:
CJ: "What's really the difference between one debate and two debates?"
Toby: "What's the difference between - ? It's a whole other debate! It's a second debate! It's 100% more debates!"
CJ wears him down - "When you can't lower expectations, you only have one thing you can do. Meet them." Meaning, if the campaign is making the point that Bartlet's intelligence and leadership make him the best choice, let's use this debate to keep hammering that point home, by using a format that helps the President do just that. Toby agrees, which leads us on to the next couple of episodes as the debate prep gears up.
I haven't even gone into the stories of Anthony (whom Charlie badgers into reading the First Amendment when Anthony complains about the Red Mass being a government-linked event) or Donna (whose weekend is ruined when Josh makes her attend a Teddy Tomba self-help seminar in order to get some more info to use against Ritchie) or the resolution of the Iowa standoff with the bombers of the KSU swim meet (leading President Bartlet to offer one of his daughters to Special Agent Mike Casper), and I'm not going to. There's a lot happening here (and again, all the events from 20 Hours In America until now has occurred over less than two weeks' time), but there's often a lot happening in the White House and in the world of politics and government and we can't even realize how little time people in positions of power might have to deal with the onrush of events. So this episode actually does a nice job of showing us, the viewer sitting down to watch a neatly organized 44 minutes of television drama, that the world we're dropping in on is a chaotically overwhelming torrent of stuff happening all the time.
And the election is less than a month away, and Sam is considering a future of a much different sort.
Tales Of Interest!
- The timeline here is easily determined, as the weekend before the Supreme Court convenes on the first Monday in October would have been October 4 through 6 in 2002. Leo says to Ben Yosef on that Friday night that the farmhouse in Iowa has been surrounded for 11 days, which would refer to Monday, September 23. That's close, I suppose - the events of 20 Hours In America happened on a Monday, with the KSU bombing that night (Josh, Toby, and Donna saw the news at the hotel in Indiana before they flew back to DC, arriving in the wee hours of Tuesday morning). That does mean all the events in the first four episodes of the season have been crammed into two weeks (from Monday, September 23 to Sunday, October 6).
- A baseball discussion: Josh's rant about the Mets makes no sense. If you have a runner on first who's a threat to score (or steal), why would you intentionally walk the batter, automatically moving that runner into scoring position? Even with four pitch-outs, that just makes zero baseball sense. And if you were going to do that, why worry about him stealing? Your plan is to put him on second base regardless. Dumb strategy, Josh.
- The coordinates listed for where Ben Yosef's plane disappeared - 35°51' North, 44°47' East - are not in southern Lebanon, as the advisors say. That location is actually in southern Iraq, southeast of Erbil and south of Dukan Lake. That's about a thousand miles difference. I don't know why Sorkin doesn't ever use accurate lat/longs in his scripts, it's not that hard to do; he's done this before.
- John Spencer was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Emmy for this and Twenty Five. It was his fourth nomination for the award, which he won last season. The Emmy went to Joe Pantoliano for The Sopranos.
Quotes
CJ: "Red Mass is at ... you're right, 10:00 at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is also what they called my dorm room in college."
Ben Yosef: "What's happening at that house in Idaho?"
Leo: "Iowa."
Ben Yosef: "Which one's the potatoes?"
Janet: "Oh, by the way, I was just called. Horton Wilde is in the hospital. He's had a heart attack."
Sam: "Horton Wilde isn't the same as Thornton Wilder, is it?"
Janet: "I'm talking about California."
Sam: "Cause if Thornton Wilder had a heart attack, that would be remarkable news."
Janet: "You don't know who Horton Wilde is."
Sam: "He wrote Skin Of Our Teeth."
Josh: "He's taking the President's votes. It's as simple ... he is taking the President's votes."
Amy: "Listen, I'm not indifferent to the situation, but that right there, that's the crazy part of your argument."
Josh: "Why?"
Amy: "They're not his votes."
-----
Josh (after Donna hands him Tomba's open book): "Okay, well. This is an order form to buy Owning Yourself, followup to the best-seller -"
Donna: "Leasing Yourself."
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Sam: "What do I know? Shareef was a bad guy. Feels like he had money in the Ba'ji cell."
Leo: "He did. He was also behind the plot to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge."
Sam: "Bridges and tunnels. That's my nightmare. What's yours?"
Leo: "Well, now it's bridges and tunnels, Sam."
Sam: "Then my work here is done."
-----
President: "Mike, pick yourself out a daughter. My oldest is married, but I can have it annulled. The Pope said he'd do it, I swear to God."
Casper: "That's very friendly of you, sir. Thank you."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- Senator Howard Stackhouse (previously seen in The Stackhouse Filibuster) returns, played by George Coe (who I will always bring up as a member of the original Saturday Night Live performing crew, as well as playing a memorable role in Max Headroom).
- Stackhouse's adviser Susan Thomas is played by Robin Bartlett (Mad About You, Lean On Me, City Of Angels).
- Janet, the House Ways and Means committee member who brings Horton Wilde to Sam's attention, is played by Deborah May (St. Elsewhere, The Larry Sanders Show, many TV guest appearances).
- Major past story lines referred to here include the assassination of Qumari Defense Minister Shareef and the fallout from that (the arc began in Enemies Foreign And Domestic), the plan to make college tuition tax-deductible (first inspired in 20 Hours In America Part Two), the quixotic Stackhouse presidential run and the issue with debates (from College Kids, although Stackhouse was first mentioned in Mandatory Minimums and first appeared onscreen in The Stackhouse Filibuster), the topic of Ritchie's intelligence and how to play up the contrast with President Bartlet's smarts (which goes all the way back to The Two Bartlets and Hartsfield's Landing), Anthony, who was being mentored by Big Brother Simon Donovan before Simon's death in Posse Comitatus and then was taken under Charlie's wing in 20 Hours In America Part Two, and Josh's legislative strategy to get a welfare reform bill through that ended up costing Amy her job at the Womens' Leadership Coalition (Posse Comitatus).
- Josh's examples of Presidential crises too difficult for a lightweight like Ritchie include the embassy surrounded in Haiti (which we saw in the arc from 18th and Potomac through Manchester Part II) and satellite photos of a heavy water reactor (from Enemies Foreign And Domestic).
- In Josh and Amy's fight, Amy says she handles defeats like losing her job practically the same as she handles wins, "cause that's how it is in the NBA." She compares working on the political front lines to the high-stakes world of professional sports - which is exactly what Vice President Hoynes did with Josh in Five Votes Down. After twisting arms to get a gun control bill passed, stealing away the credit that the White House dearly craved, Hoynes told Josh, "Welcome to the NFL."
- As Sam lists the oddball Democratic House candidates for Leo, he includes the Texas 22nd district, saying their candidate is an electrical engineer who paid his filing fee by emptying a cigar box of cash. Leo responds by saying Democrats never have a chance in any of these districts. Just three episodes earlier, in 20 Hours In America Part One, Congressman Peter Lieu stops by the Oval Office to meet the President, Leo, and Sam. Lieu is the Democratic congressman from the Texas 22nd (who apparently won a special election two months prior). If that's so ... why is Sam aghast about an unqualified, unsupported candidate from that district - whom he has personally met - and why is Leo saying the Democrats never win this seat when they currently hold it?
- The Martin Sheen jacket flip makes an appearance. Sheen suffered an injury to his left shoulder at birth, and he developed the overhead flip to put on his jacket to compensate for the loss of some arm mobility.
- Amy's balloon animal is a callback to The Women Of Qumar where she had her practice balloon figures in her office, and later dropped a water balloon on Josh in the plaza outside her office building.
- We see the full Supreme Court at the Red Mass ... but these justices are nothing like the ones we saw in Take This Sabbath Day. Where's the older woman with the collar to remind us of Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Where's the men who looked a bit like Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist? Even bigger - where the heck is Roberto Mendoza (whose nomination and confirmation was such a big deal in The Short List and Six Meetings Before Lunch)? Edward James Olmos is definitely not in attendance. We do get a look at a justice that is meant to remind us of Clarence Thomas, which is interesting because we saw no African-American on the Court in Take This Sabbath Day.
 |
| This guy is supposed to remind us of Clarence Thomas. |
DC location shots
- None. The Red Mass scenes were not filmed in the actual National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception does exist in northeastern Washington, DC, on the campus of Catholic University. In reality the annual Supreme Court Red Mass is celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in northwestern DC.
- There's a portrait of John F. Kennedy on the wall at the White House lunch reception for Ben-Yosef.
- Sam confuses California Democratic candidate Horton Wilde with playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. He also mentions Wilder's play The Skin Of Our Teeth.
- Josh and Donna discuss the philosophers Immanuel Kant (mentioning his Critique of Pure Reason although Josh calls it A Critique Of Practical Reason) and Plato (and his work The Republic), as well as the poet Robert Frost and his poem Mending Wall.
- I'm pretty sure that's former CNN anchor Jack Cafferty on the screen behind Donna in Josh's office.
- Josh mentions McNuggets, which would imply the existence of McDonald's restaurants.
- Donna calls Josh "Buckminster," which must refer to architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller.
- Sam tells Leo his international news sources include the (International) Herald Tribune and Agence France.
- We see a Dunkin Donuts cup on Toby's desk, which is slightly unusual because he's been consistently seen drinking Starbucks.
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