Original airdate: October 16, 2002
Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (69)
Story by: William Sind (1) & Michael Oates Palmer (1)
Directed by: Paris Barclay (3)
Synopsis
- Debate preparations force the staffers and the President to re-live a botched Attorney General nomination, bringing us flashbacks to the early days of the administration trying to find their way around the West Wing. President Bartlet considers how to react to a Qumari ship on its way to arm terrorists. Amy and Josh continue their flirtation over policy wording, and Toby drops a bombshell.
How we react to mistakes in our past can tell us a lot about ourselves. Do we obsess over them, constantly berating ourselves in our minds about what we did or should have done? Or do we take time to consider the factors around the misstep, and try to learn from them and improve ourselves going forward?
Josh: "Here it is. 'Take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record, you'll see -"
Toby: "Yes."
Josh: " - he's fought for justice his entire career. If you take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record, you'll see he's fought for justice his entire career.'"
Toby: "I don't want to be able to turn my head tomorrow without reading that quote."
In very Sorkin-esque hubristic fashion, naturally this blows up in their faces:
CJ: "Well, I did a one-on-one with Danny Concannon a few days ago on Rooker."
Toby: "Did you say, 'If you take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record ... ?"
CJ: "Yes, as a matter of fact."
Toby: "And?"
CJ: "He did."
Toby: "Oh, man."
It turns out Rooker had a DUI ticket fixed in law school, so the background check obviously hadn't been done very well for this choice. Rooker's name is withdrawn, the fledging Bartlet administration gets spanked for getting ahead of itself, and Leo reads the depressing results of the public opinion polls:
Leo: "Our report card for our first two weeks in office. The President's approval has gone from 61% during the transition - when, I suppose, there's nothing to approve - to 49% once there was. Forty-seven percent see him as a strong leader - a result of bungling the Rooker nomination - and African-American support, which basically elected him, has gone from 92 to 78."
Back in the present, as President Bartlet has had a chance to reflect on the issue while the staff tries to come up with a good answer for the debate, he and Sam have a little heart-to-heart.
President: "You pay for these things for such a long time. Too long, don't you think?"
Sam: "I absolutely do - and I don't know why we struggle with it."
President: "We made a mistake, I corrected it. I'll make more."
Sam: : "Yes. Humans can't rebut that. It's prevent defense and it has the added merit of being true."
President Bartlet is also dealing with military issues at this debate sleepaway camp. A Qumari ship bearing some fairly high-tech munitions has been spotted in the Mediterranean, undoubtedly bound for Ba'hi terrorist camps. Bartlet is willing to negotiate, to give Qumar something in order to turn the ship around, but Leo expresses a surprisingly hard line:
President: "Well, for the moment, they haven't stood up, but in the meantime let's think of something we can give them when they do."
Leo: "That's what we should do in the meantime?"
President: "Leo ..."
Leo: "We should think of something we can give them?"
President: "Honey, if we're going to have this fight, can we not do it in front of the Joint Chiefs? It just scares the hell out of them."
Eventually, though, Leo's point carries the day (with help from Admiral Fitzwallis and Nancy, of course). Instead of making a deal with Qumar, President Bartlet makes plans for the Navy to stop and board the ship. This is less a matter of learning from a past mistake as it is President Bartlet listening to his advisers instead of taking the easy way out (and it's also a diametrically opposite reaction of the characters of Jed and Leo compared to the end of "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" when Jed was ready to blow Syria off the face of the earth before Leo pulled him back).
You know who else is dealing with a mistake in the past? Well, just about everybody in this episode, but let's mention Josh first. You recall from Posse Comitatus that right when Josh and Amy's budding relationship was going great guns, their opposing stances on a welfare reform bill eventually caused Josh to undercut Amy's position at the Womens' Leadership Council, costing her her job. While they've bumped into each other in recent episodes (with Amy advising Senator Stackhouse on his quixotic campaign), they still haven't really addressed what happened at the end of last season. We know Amy's still yearning (her whispered "I miss you"s from College Kids made that obvious), and here we see Josh, in his own weird, arrogant, braggadocio-filled way, show he's still thinking about her, too.
CJ asks Josh to call Amy to get some material for the debate about support for families, without making it seem anti-feminist. Josh calls her, multiple times, tossing in just enough little comments to show there's still something going on - from mentioning her "date" for the evening is still married, to telling her (during her dinner with the married guy!) he's going to call her again "at a really bad time," to saying "you'll never lose me" when she's getting ready to go back into her apartment. Amy has just the right thing to say for the President, of course, and the future of these two kooky lovebirds may still be up in the air - but Amy's face after Josh says he'll call her back after 1:00 am tells us a lot:
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| "Good." |
Donna also makes a mistake, in the flashback, falling for an outlandish story about nuclear missiles under the White House, a story told her by her predecessor in order to make her look foolish in a magazine story. It works, causing Josh to react with his typical overblown arrogant confidence since he would never fall for such a ploy:
Josh: "This is just like when I played the lead in Li'l Abner in eighth grade and rehearsals are going fine. All of a sudden there's sets and lights and costumes, and everyone's tripping all over themselves except me. You guys all walked into the building and got freaked by the lights. I walked in and, you know, something else happened."
Donna gets the last laugh, convincing another staffer to pretend to be an NSA official coming to Josh to tell him that Donna's interview may have revealed more secrets than she realized. Josh freaks out, which gives Donna a much-needed win as the administration just gets started.
Then we have Toby. We found out in Mandatory Minimums that he was divorced, and his ex-wife, Andy Wyatt, was a Congresswoman with whom he still had at least a professional relationship with. But we didn't get any background into that family life, not then, anyway. But what about now?
First, in the present, Rep. Wyatt is part of the team helping the President with debate prep. We see her and Toby playfully spar a bit, as Toby is pressing her on something important:
Toby: "I need you to look at a couple of answers on defense readiness. I need concrete examples of waste in Pentagon procurement. We need two more members of the IRC for post spin. I need you to fill out this marriage license and paperwork for a joint checking account and review this 60-second answer on Rwanda."
Andy: "Okay, okay, okay, and, um, under no circumstances, and sure."
We flash back to the transition in 1999. The couple are having issues with conceiving, we discover - we find out they're apparently trying in-vitro fertilization, and a later flashback scene informs us that Andy's immune system is making it difficult for her to get pregnant (and she needs Toby's white-blood cells to help). In both cases, Toby missteps with his responses - first, when Andy is saying the fertility clinic needs more contributions from him, he asks if it can "wait five days" until the inauguration, which brings this reaction from Andy:
And in the midst of the discussion about white-blood cells and immune systems, Toby steps right in it.
Toby: "You don't have to sell me. It sounds like something we should try ... but let me ask you something, and bear in mind that I'm happy, I'm ... eager to go to as many doctors as there are - but should we talk about a stop date?"
Andy: "You mean talk about adoption?"
Toby: "Yeah, we can talk about adopting."
Andy: "You meant a stop date stop date."
Toby: "I meant adopting. I meant surrogacy. And yes, I love kids and I want them and I don't have to have them -"
Andy: "I want them."
Which gives us this look from Andy:
And now, maybe, we start to realize the issues that caused these two to break up. In some ways it's a reminder of how Leo's marriage went belly-up in Five Votes Down - the job of working in the White House becomes all-consuming, leaving no time for a wife or children or any kind of family life. But why is Toby anxious to get back together now? Why is he after Andy to remarry him?
Charlie, Josh, and Sam recognize there's heat between the two during the debate sessions, so they put together a "Team Toby" to support him in his efforts to win Andy back - efforts which are only redoubled when Toby drops a huge bombshell on everyone, viewers included:
Josh: "Why don't you do your job as a man and get that nice girl pregnant?"
Toby: "I did."
Josh (pause): "Wait, what?"
CJ: "What?"
Toby: "Andy's pregnant."
Josh: "Toby ... Andy's pregnant?"
Toby: "With twins."
Sam: "This is incredible."
Josh: "And they're yours?"
Toby: "Yeah."
Josh: "Both of them?"
Toby recognizes his mistakes from 3 1/2 years ago, and now he's trying to make up for them - Andy is pregnant, and he's wanting to re-assemble that family unit that he let go awry in 1999.
Mistakes of the past - they can keep eating away at us eternally, or we can use them as examples to make us better, more productive, more essential members of humanity. I guess I leave it to you to see which way Sorkin wants us to see our characters here.
Tales Of Interest!
- Paris Barclay goes a little nuts with the shaky, hand-held camera style in this episode. I believe that's become a much more common television technique in recent years (along with the faux-documentary style of The Office, Modern Family, and the like), but it was probably slightly unusual for 2002, and, in my opinion, doesn't really fit the "vibe" of The West Wing. Certain, hectic, active scenes with a time-crunch element, that might work, but just normal conversations in Leo's office? I did not care for it. Barclay used camera motion a bit in his first time directing for the show, The Portland Trip, but it was more subtle and worked well there, I thought. The scenes shot through glass showing a reflection in that glass? Also used in that episode as well as this one.
Quotes
(Sam and the President are practicing the debate)
Sam (as Ritchie): "I don't know how you can talk about providing opportunity, while at the same time supporting racial profiling."
President: "What the hell is -- I don't support racial profiling."
Sam: "Your nominee for Attorney General did. Can you tell us why you nominated him?"
President: "Why?"
Sam: "Yes."
President: "Cause bite me, that's why."
President: "I agreed to be locked up with you people for 48 hours. How much time do I have left?"
Leo: "47 hours, 41 minutes."
Toby: "Let's line up people for IP, the mornings ... 'Cornell Rooker has an exceptional record as a US Attorney ... a leader in fighting unemployment discrimination ... was college chair of ... he's tough on crime, he's fair on justice.' That's the line. Say that. (beat) Do not say that. What the hell was that? 'He's tough on crime, he's fair on justice'? Sings a song, has a mustache? What is that supposed to -?"
CJ: "Toby's gone to the zoo."
Leo: "Yeah, I think we may have killed these two guys with inauguration."
-----
President: "What are we doing right now?"
Mrs. Landingham: "We're choosing pictures from the collection at the National Gallery."
President: "They'll loan stuff?"
Mrs. Landingham: "Anything you want in the National Gallery or the whole Smithsonian."
President: "Really?"
Mrs. Landingham: "Yeah."
President: "I want Apollo 11."
Mrs. Landingham: "Well, you can't have that."
President: "Then don't bother me."
CJ: "Six hundred thousand evangelicals are praying for me, so ... we have that going for us."
Leo: "What the hell are you talking about?"
CJ: "It's true - a guy gave me this card. '365 In Media.'"
Sam: "Who are the others?"
CJ: I don't know, let's see ... Hugh Hefner, Don Imus, Howard Stern, all the late-night guys. This is ... one, two, three ... the editorial board of the New York Times. (realizing) This isn't a good list, this is a list of people who are going to hell!"
Toby: "Yes."
CJ: "They aren't praying for me because they like me. It's cause I'm doomed to eternal damnation!"
Sam: "Well, if you weren't, it'd be a waste of praying."
CJ: "You're on the list, too, pal."
-----
Josh: "We're gonna do better for you, boss."
Leo: "Do better for him."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- Congresswoman Andy Wyatt (Kathleen York), ex-wife of Toby, reappears both in the present and in the flashback scenes. We first saw her in Mandatory Minimums and her most recent appearance came in Night Five. We also learn they were still married and trying to figure out how to conceive in January 1999, although when the series began in the fall of that year the couple was already divorced. Andy is going to stick around for a few episodes here.
- Martin Sheen is well-known for not being able to remember people's names, and Sorkin and the writing staff made that a trait of President Bartlet's as well. Here he can't remember the name of Joey's sign-language interpreter:
President: "How you doing there, Joey? Kippy?"
Josh: "Kenny."
President: "Okay."
- The names Hutchinson and Berryhill are mentioned as "Secretaries" - they were first referred to in A Proportional Response, and they constantly come up in foreign policy/military frameworks. I think Hutchinson may be the Secretary of Defense; I'm not sure which Cabinet position Berryhill holds.
- Leo also mentions "Peter from State;" we've seen someone named Peter offer foreign policy advice in the Situation Room and the Oval Office in the past (he first appeared in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I, then was seen regarding the Haiti embassy situation between 18th And Potomac and Manchester, as well as giving info on the Middle East situation in 20 Hours In America Part One). He doesn't actually appear in this episode, but here is Victor McCay as Peter in his most recent appearance.
- Cornell Rooker, Bartlet's original nominee for Attorney General, is referred to as an African-American US Attorney from Florida. In A Proportional Response we learned the Attorney General at that time was African-American, although it couldn't have been Rooker because his nomination was withdrawn. In Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics we saw the Attorney General, Dan Larson, and he most certainly was not an African-American.
- Sam's concern with Rooker and privacy issues that we see in the flashback ties in nicely with his similar concerns with Bartlet's Supreme Court pick in Season 1:
Sam (talking about the Supreme Court in The Short List): "It's not about abortion. It's about the next twenty years. Twenties and thirties, it was the role of government. Fifties and sixties, it was civil rights. The next two decades, it's gonna be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records, and who's gay and who's not."
----
Sam (here in a flashback which actually would have been prior to his quote above, referring to Rooker): "I thought there might be more conversations about the more conservative tendencies."
Leo: "Like privacy?"
Sam: "Yes."
- There's Mrs. Landingham in flashback, helping President Bartlet pick out artwork.
- Sorkin makes a sly reference to the "walk and talk" scenes that this show made famous, giving us a kind of "creation story" in a flashback as to why these staffers spent so much time talking while they were on the move in the corridors:
Josh: "WW-160, you been able to find it?"
Sam: "I don't even know where I am right now."
Josh: "I'm looking on this side again."
Sam: "Do you mind if I talk to you while we walk?"
Josh: "Well, we may as well get used to having meetings in the corridors from now on. It may be our only hope."
(later)
Josh: "I should be sitting at my desk right now. Do I have a desk yet?"
Donna: "No."
Josh: "Then I'll just ... walk around some more. See if I can get into a pickup meeting."
- Also, when Josh is introducing himself to his staff and asking where WW-160 is, we see Ginger! "I haven't seen it," she mutters as she passes by. So we know she's been here since the beginning (we actually first saw her in A Proportional Response as an aide to Toby, and she first had spoken lines in In Excelsis Deo).
- The producers of the show rebuilt the sets between Seasons 1 and 2. Toby's office in Season 1 had a solid wall next to the doorway, between his office and Sam's. Since Season 2, there's been glass in that wall.
Here's what Toby's office wall looked like at the end of Season 1 - this would have been after the timeframe of the flashback scenes we see in this episode. Note that it's a solid wall behind where his door opens.
And here we see Toby's office in a flashback scene in this episode, a time prior to the image above ... and there's a window in that same area, just as there is in the "present" time.
- It's somewhat jarring to see Leo take such a hard line on American military response to Qumar (particularly compared to his standing up to President Bartlet's impulse to blow up Syria in A Proportional Response). His relentless grilling of an innocent suspect after an unspecified terror incident in Isaac And Ishmael, though, seems to be a foreshadowing of his hawkishness towards Qumar and their sponsorship of terrorism here. In truth, he's kind of a stand-in for the attitude of many American people towards terrorism after 9/11.
- The Horton Wilde storyline in the California 47th and Sam's urging for White House support in more congressional districts from The Red Mass continues.
- Danny Concannon gets a mention in the flashback scenes to the administration's early days. We never see him here (he hasn't appeared since The Portland Trip), but it's a nice callback for CJ to specifically mention him as the administration gets started, both in the scene where she's trying to memorize where the reporters sit in the briefing room and also as the guy who actually did "take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record" to dig up some dirt in his past.
- Speaking of the briefing room, much like Toby's office that I mentioned above, the briefing room got a big upgrade early in Season 1. This was our first look at the press briefing room in Pilot (and again, this scene would have occurred in the fall of 1999, after the flashback scene of CJ practicing in this episode):
But this is how we see the briefing room in this episode from early 1999. It looks just like it's looked since "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc":
- Also in that briefing room flashback we see Carol as CJ's aide right after the inauguration. We originally saw Carol working with Toby in Five Votes Down, and didn't see her working with CJ until The Crackpots And These Women. There were a couple of other unnamed staffers seen helping with CJ's briefings before that.
- After the Rooker nomination is withdrawn and Leo goes over the poor poll results after the administration's first two weeks in office, we can see the origin of those approval ratings that were such a sore subject throughout much of Season 1. Leo says President Bartlet's approval ratings went from 61% to 49% after the problem with Rooker's nomination. Throughout Season 1 we hear several times that the administration is stuck with a 48% approval rating.
- Josh and Amy continue their flirtatious re-connection, after they got together late last season and then broke up because Josh's political maneuvers to pass a welfare reform bill got her fired from her job. Even when Amy's on a "date" they're flirting over the phone, over policy wording. What a couple of nerds.
Josh (on the phone): "How you doing?"
Amy: "I'm freezing."
Josh: "Where are you?"
Amy: "I'm at my front door."
Josh: "Well, go inside."
Amy: "I can't, I'll lose you."
Josh: "You'll never lose me, Amy."
Amy (beat): "Please don't say that."
And then the small smile on Amy's face after Josh tells her he'll call her back at 1:00 am and she says, "Good."
- After Toby reveals his pregnancy bombshell, Charlie says "Well, we're going to have to step this up now" about Team Toby, to which CJ replies, "Yeah! We're gonna get hats!" That's kind of a reference to something that happens after the twins are born.
- WHAT'S NEXT MOMENT - Josh says "Break's over" as he sends everyone off to work on debate topics, just as President Bartlet told his staff at the end of Pilot.
DC location shots
- The Bartlet transition office is located at 1900 K Street, as we can see that address both in the building's windows facing the street and on the lobby wall during the tense "sperm donation" scene between Toby and Andy. As you can see from the Street View of that building, this scene was definitely filmed in that lobby at 1900 K Street.
- There are shots of Amy biking near the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin.
- Amy's date with Peter Harlow was outside the now-closed Signatures restaurant in Market Square near the Navy Memorial, a favorite location for West Wing shots. The fountains behind Harlow are undoubtedly the Navy Memorial fountains we've seen in The Women Of Qumar and other episodes. Interestingly, Signatures was owned by Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist made famous as Casino Jack who used the restaurant to launder funds given by Native American tribes into free meals and drinks for members of Congress.
- When Josh calls Amy after her date, catching her on her apartment stairs, that scene was filmed in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- Donna is tricked into believing there's a missile silo under the Eisenhower putting green. This does raise the question - is the silo under the green established by Eisenhower in 1954, or the green re-installed in a different location by President Clinton in the 1990s? Or, in The West Wing universe, did the putting green stay in its original position without a Clinton presidency?
- Mrs. Landingham points out paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci ("Madonna and Child with Pomegranate") and Botticelli ("Adoration of the Magi") as suggestions for loan to the White House; both paintings are indeed among the National Gallery of Art archives (although the gallery attributes the first painting to da Vinci's student Lorenzo di Credi). The Smithsonian is also mentioned, to which President Bartlet responds by asking if he can have Apollo 11 at the White House.
- Donna's magazine profile describes her wearing Selia Yang slacks and a DKNY button-down.
- While ragging on Donna for being gullible, Josh quotes the profile calling her "Bambi-esque" and also mentions how he played the lead in Li'l Abner in eighth grade (fun fact: I have also played the lead in Li'l Abner, as a high school junior, singing songs like If I Had My Druthers and Jubilation T. Cornpone).
- CJ refers to the new administration being called the "Capitol Clampetts" by the Washington press, a reference to the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies.
- Joey asks why Sam wants the President to go to districts where the last Democrat won by "railing against Abraham Lincoln."
- Josh brings up Cher and Sonny while talking to Amy on the phone.
- President Bartlet refers to Star Wars in a discussion about military defense, which brings to mind the 1977 film that was the inspiration for the nickname of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative.
- As Leo lists the poor poll numbers after the botching of the Rooker nomination, he says if the election were held right now Bartlet would be chair of the economics department at the Phillips Andover Academy instead of President.
- Among the media notables being prayed for by Kingspeak magazine readers (in addition to CJ and Sam) are Hugh Hefner, Don Imus, and Howard Stern.
- There's a can of Sprite on the dinner table at debate camp between Toby and Sam (along with a nice-looking plate of pasta that Toby hasn't even touched yet).
- That's an HP laptop in front of CJ as she begins the practice debate. It's notable that we saw a lot of Apple/Mac products in the first couple of seasons; not so much any more.
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