Walking And Talking And Yelling At Clouds: Process Stories

Original airdate: November 13, 2002

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (72)
Story by: Paula Yoo (1) & Lauren Schmidt (1)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (11)

Synopsis

Romantic celebrations of Bartlet's election win are thwarted throughout the White House, by events (a coup attempt in Venezuela), unexpected news (Sam's promise to a widow), unearned headline-grabbing (CJ's frustration over an unknown pollster taking credit for the election win), and babies (Toby's news about Andy's pregnancy). Ashtrays are also broken.

"What he said was this - he said, 'A probable impossibility is preferable to an improbable possibility.' The impossible is preferable to the improbable."

We pick up where we left off in the last episode, as election night moves on into the wee hours, and the President's convincing win has everybody in the White House feeling a bit, well, randy.

Jed woos Abbey with Dean Martin and caviar, dabbing a bit of martini behind his ears for good measure:

Leo dances with Jordon on the Portico, making her melt with election facts and figures until she tells him that's not the way to get what he thinks he's going to get:

His role with the campaign finished, Bruno is working his charm on Ashley, and later Annette, along with anyone else on their way from progressive women's-rights groups:

(If only CJ would stop interrupting him while he makes his moves:)

Josh's plan to also go after that "target-rich environment" gets redirected when Amy takes off her coat:

Even Donna goes a bit goofy-eyed when Jack Reese shows up in the White House, a guy she literally met just a few hours before when he agreed to swap votes with her (this is all the same day, remember). So the hormones are working overtime tonight!

Let's count the ways these romantic overtures are foiled. I'll start with Leo, since that's the most cut-and-dried. He's called away from his dance with Jordon by word of a potential coup brewing in Venezuela. Off to the Situation Room he goes, where Lt. Commander Reese gets a quick lesson on his first day on the job:

Officer: "Mr. McGarry needs you to cull the pertinent intelligence data and put together a two-page briefing he can give the President. So, how much time do you need?"

Reese: "Umm ... three hours?"

(Laughter from the others in the room)

Leo: "Twenty minutes, son."

The coup fizzles out, we understand, without much threat to American lives, and Leo's night may turn out all right after all when we see Jordon waiting for him in his office.

A few moments later, and they continue their dance amidst the remnants of the night's victory party:

Way to go, Leo.

As for Jack Reese, he stumbles into Donna looking for his office on his first night as Situation Room watch commander. She helps him find his way, then wields a wrench as a sort of White House maintenance worker trying to fix the radiator - a typical romantic gesture from the assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff:

As she pesters him over his earlier intention to vote for Ritchie, he responds by disagreeing with President Bartlet over military spending. Donna insists the President only wants to cut Pentagon waste like $500 hammers and $400 ashtrays ... and, look, Reese happens to have one of those $400 ashtrays handy right here!

Which he promptly shatters with the wrench:

Thereby making his point that the military can't use normal things like regular glass ashtrays in a warfighting environment, and that means things might cost more than you'd expect. (Kind of missing the point that a regular old metal ashtray, say, would also not shatter glass splinters into sailors' eyes and wouldn't cost $400.)

Donna convinces him to come to the party, though, so that all seems to be working out.

Toby's not really in that much of a romantic mood, but he does have some touching moments with his pregnant ex-wife Andy. She's been reluctant to make their pregnancy public, but Toby finally convinces her to release a statement - and then he realizes her entire game plan is to use her single motherhood as an issue to go after more, shall we say, prudish political adversaries.

Toby: "You're sniffing around for a fight."

Andy: "Yes."

Toby: "Not sniffing around for one as much as ... trying to create one. Trying to create trouble where none existed."

Andy: "Yes."

Toby: "Well, I can admire that."

Game recognizes game, right, Toby? Anyway, Andy also reminds him he hasn't given the news to the President yet, so for some reason he decides the early morning hours after Election Day is the perfect time.

CJ gets needlessly worked up about a low-level pollster she sees on the news taking credit for the campaign initiatives that helped get the President re-elected. She knows this guy didn't have anything to do with it, that these were all Bruno's ideas, and she keeps tracking Bruno down (cramping his style with the ladies) to try to get him to publicly call the guy out. He wants nothing of it.

Bruno: "Look at me."

CJ: "What?"

Bruno: "We won. It's over."

CJ (almost tearing up with emotion): "In a poll taken three days after the MS announcement, the President lost to Ritchie by nine points. He won by eleven. You did it."

Bruno: "It helps when you cook with the right food. But at midnight, my contract with Bartlet For America expired. I'm a taxpayer now, and I'm telling you I've got bigger problems than who gets credit for a win, and I'd rather the White House not spend time on it."

Which brings us to Sam and the tale of Horton Wilde. In The Red Mass we learned about Wilde, a House candidate in a deep-red California district who was basically a sacrificial lamb for the Democrats who weren't interested in spending resources there. Oh, yes, and he was in the hospital with his fourth heart attack. Sam started to question the approach of Democrats not even trying in some districts. In Debate Camp we discovered Wilde had died, just as Sam was trying to convince others to direct some resources to that campaign. In Game On Sam met with Wilde's campaign manager Will Bailey, who continued to fight for votes since Wilde's name remained on the ballot - and Sam actually told Wilde's widow that if the campaign for a dead candidate was successful, he would volunteer to take Wilde's place and run in the ensuing replacement election.

And now here we are. Sam watches in horror as the TV announces Wilde's improbable (or is it impossible?) victory, and the reporter continues with the rumor that Sam Seaborn may be the candidate for office taking Wilde's place. The other staffers gaze at him in shocked silence.

Sam: "They're talking about someone else."

TV moderator: "I'm told that we've got a picture we're going to throw up on the screen ..."

He rushes off to CJ's office to tell CJ, Josh, and Toby what's happening ....

And why exactly is CJ's office looking like some teenage girl's bedroom during the election night celebration? Really, who can say:

Sam: "Can I ask, is your office now the House of the Rising Sun?"

(Later on, as more people come and hang out in CJ's office - which has an actual still, she tells Bruno - we find her lounging on top of her desk, like some languid bordello madam or something. She's even holding a stick of incense!:)

The other staffers take the news in good humor, particularly since Sam really wants to back out of his commitment anyway. They do insist, though, that Sam must tell the President before he starts getting questions in the morning. I love this beaming look of something like stunned pride on Toby's face as Sam heads to the residence:

And now we see how Jed's romantic plans for the evening are foiled. Sam's interruption finds Abbey in a state of, well, see for yourself:

Sam essentially ends up telling the President he's not going to follow through anyway, and off he goes. Later on, though, we get Toby stopping by to deliver word of his impending fatherhood, and as the President tries to quickly usher him away, Abbey is thrilled to celebrate the good news, to Jed's regret:

President: "I was this close."

At the end of the episode, though, Amy has talked Josh into seeing that it would actually be good for the party for a loyal White House staffer to take one for the team in a quixotic Congressional run. CJ also agrees, and while Toby is initially reluctant, Sam actually is able to convince Toby as well as himself:

Sam: "I don't know. I don't know. I worked in a State Assembly race in Manhattan in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 16 to 1. But everywhere we went, there'd be one lone poster of a right-wing nutbar who wanted to eliminate the income tax. And he was holding up signs and canvassing everywhere and bugging the local reporters until we had to comment on it. So I introduced myself to his campaign manager, and I said, 'What are you doing? Your candidate doesn't have a chance and neither do your issues.' He said, 'This is what I believe. And no candidate gets to run in my district without speaking to my issue.' I came this close to voting for him. So ... I don't know about what you just said."

Toby: "Then I think you should win."

The die has been cast. Sam is going to carry the banner for the Democrats in the California 47th, even though, as Amy says, "You're not going to win, so you can't lose."

(Not to belabor the point again, but this is the Season 4 plot line Aaron Sorkin developed to give Rob Lowe a path out of the show. Lowe was disappointed with the plot lines given to Sam and the lack of a raise for him when every other member of the cast demanded and got pay bumps. Having Sam depart the West Wing to run for Congress [and lose] in California was the way to ease him off the show.)

Jed and Abbey, Leo and Jordon, Josh and Amy, Bruno and women-whose-names-begin-with-A, maybe even Donna and Jack ... just some crazy kids looking for love on a celebratory night.

Tales Of Interest!

- Timeline: this episode begins right when Election Night ends, so the two episodes together cover the day of the election and into the late hours of that night.

- While the premise is that the California 47th race is tight with vote counting going late into the night, the writers forgot about time zones. While it's 12:15 am in Washington, it's only 9:15 pm in California, which means the polls there have barely been closed for an hour before the race is called for Wilde. If we've learned anything since 2000, it would be that it's exceedingly rare for a tight election race to be called an hour after the polls close.

- It seems like a faraway time of the distant past to plausibly have a Democratic presidential candidate win states like the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Louisiana. It's also strange to contemplate a President winning re-election by 11 points yet having his party fail to take the House.

- Speaking of faraway times of the distant past, how about all the smoking going on during the victory party? We know that smoking isn't actually allowed in the White House (the President has made that point, even while lighting an occasional cigarette himself) but there's apparently exceptions made for victory cigars this night.

- The trademark spinning camera effect can be seen as Leo and Jordon dance on the Portico, and in the Situation Room, and while Bruno is flirting with the ladies, and ...

Quotes

Jed: "I won the Dakotas. The Badlands. The Black Hills. But let's go down, way down to the Deep South and the humid bayou of Louisiana and its nine electoral votes. What manner of man must it take to win the state, which, by the way, is the only one operating under the Napoleonic Code of France, and I still don't know what that's all about, but back to me -"

Abbey: "Hon, is this like nerd hot talk?"

-----

Sam: "And, uh, to make a long story short, you might be asked first thing tomorrow if you're endorsing me."

President: "Am I?"

Sam: "Well, I'm not really running."

President: "Then I'm behind you 100 percent."

-----

CJ (to Donna): "You might want to tell Josh that a few carloads of women -"

Donna: "Yeah, he knows."

-----

Donna: "I can't believe you broke a $400 ashtray."

Jack: "Yeah, I wish I hadn't done that. It's ... cause you're blonde."

-----

President: "Yeah. You're young, Charlie. Don't you want to be having fun right now?"

Charlie: "Yes, sir, but I work for you."

President: "I get that a lot."

-----

Leo: "The process matters more than the outcome and that's what we wanted."

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

We see Gina Hecht (Henry Winkler's fiancee in Night Shift, Mork & Mindy, Seinfeld) as the moderator of the TV news panel covering the election into the wee hours.

One of the panelists on the late-night election coverage is played by Victor Raider-Wexler, a familiar character actor and voice-over artist (The King Of Queens, Minority Report, Everybody Loves Raymond, Dr. Wexler in Seinfeld).

The colonel calling Leo away from his dance with Jordon is played by Tobin Bell, best known as Jigsaw in the Saw movies.

Bruno's only been dropping by a few times since the start of the season, but here he is celebrating a job well done of running the campaign (just trying to work the ladies and continually getting blocked by CJ). This is the last we'll see of Bruno for quite a while, until the next campaign, but you might be surprised who he works for then.

Jordon's back, too, and still very romantically interested in Leo (remember he asked her out to dinner on Christmas Eve in Bartlet For America, even though she was serving as his lawyer in front of a congressional hearing).

Elsie confirms the fact that she and Will are siblings - "I'm proud you're my brother," she says.

We get figures on the importance of the debate as a turning point: Bartlet was up by 3 points prior to that night, but 73 percent of the undecideds used the debate to make up their minds and 69 percent of those went to the President.

Similarly, we get a mention of the President's MS announcement (seen in Two Cathedrals) and how things have changed since the spring of 2001; CJ says three days after the announcement Gov. Ritchie held a 9 point lead, yet the President was able to defeat Ritchie by 11 points (a 20-point turnaround in a year and a half). It's also a bit interesting to hear news of this poll showing Ritchie as a legitimate contender in the spring of 2001; the first mention of Ritchie as a Republican candidate on the show came in The Two Bartlets in January 2002 and most of the staffers saw him as a clownish, easy candidate to beat at that time.

DC location shots

None.

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

Sam keeps referring to Aristotle and his statement of the impossible being preferable to the improbable. Aristotle actually was trying to convince storytellers about the best elements of fiction, in that "probable impossibilities" are more interesting and grab the hearers' interest more than "improbable possibilities." So Sam just means he's trapped in a situation that's outlandish enough for fiction, yet it's real life ("an Aristotelian sequence of events that could only happen to me," he whines). Let's not mention the meta-ness of a fictional character complaining that the situation he's in is far-fetched enough to be, you know, fiction rather than reality.

CJ says Sam Donaldson is on the phone asking if the President will endorse Sam.

Louisiana doesn't exactly follow the Napoleonic Code of law, as the President says. Its civil code is based in some ways on French law, but the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 actually came before the Napoleonic Code was enacted in 1804.

Dean Martin's song Love Me, My Love is playing in the Bartlet's bedroom as Jed romances Abbey.

One of the TV interviewers talking to Chris Whitaker mentions Truman.

Amy says one of her election night bets could win her a new pair of Manolos, meaning quite expensive Manolo Blahnik shoes.

Amy also drops a mention of Disney's California Adventure in her argument to Josh that Sam should run in Horton Wilde's place.

When Bruno gives the quote "The biggest lies come after the hunt, before marriage, and during elections" the woman he's flirting with asks if it's from Mark Twain. (The quote is actually attributed to Otto von Bismarck.)

The USS Greeneville, the boat Jack Reese had the ashtray from, is indeed a Los Angeles-class fast attack nuclear submarine, commissioned in 1996 and still in service today.

Jed woos Abbey with "Stoli Cristall, the most elegant of vodkas."

Jed regales Abbey with caviar - "California white sturgeon from the Stillman Sea Farm in Elverta." There is no "Stillman Sea Farm" - however, at the time a Norwegian firm was operating Stolt Sea Farm California in Elverta, raising white sturgeon. The company changed its name to Sterling Caviar in 2006.

Leo tells Jordon "I'll do so while tuning this radio to WNKW, 'The Music Of Your Life' ..." While "Music Of Your Life" is a real radio format, WNKW doesn't appear to have ever been a Washington, DC, radio station. The call letters have been used by a station in Kentucky since 2018; I did find a reference to a WNKW radio station operating in Keene, New Hampshire in 2014. Interestingly, the call letters WNKW have been used many times as a fictional television station, including Captain America: The Winter Soldier, How I Met Your Mother, Madam Secretary, and in the Batman universe.