Privateers - TWW S4E18

 

Original airdate: March 26, 2003

Teleplay by: Paul Redford (11) & Debora Cahn (3) and Aaron Sorkin (80)
Story by: Paul Redford  & Debora Cahn 

Directed by: Alex Graves (13)

Synopsis

• Amy's first day as Abbey's Chief of Staff finds her caught in a dilemma between Abbey and the President. An old friend of Toby's causes problems when he wants to expose his employer's illegal business practices. An Alaskan glacier melts, Charlie respectfully fights for Zoey's attention, and Donna has to keep an eye on a White House guest. Plus, we meet Marion Cotesworth-Haye, much to CJ's inappropriate glee.

"A privateer, actually."

"Isn't that just a hired pirate?"

So it turns out that Abbey has a pirate for an ancestor. A swashbuckling pirate, Thomas Broome Weathergill, who sailed the seas raiding ships for profit and adventure, thumbing his nose at maritime law, forging his own path without regard to custom or convention. Or, at least, that's how we can imagine the path he chose.

And we get to see quite a few unconventional, dare I say piratical maneuvers by our West Wing characters in this episode, from purposefully speaking out against the cautious administration position on global warming to tricking a romantic rival to making up an imaginary award to fool a troublemaking patrician, all the way to serious matters like "accidentally" involving administration staffers in a corporate coverup and trying to bait the President into threatening to veto his own bill. Okay, it's a stretch to call most of those moves something from the pirate playbook, but there's certainly some out-of-the-box thinking going on with almost all of our storylines. 

Let's also not forget to mention, this episode is funny. Not quite as comical as much of Celestial Navigation, but the DAR story with "Helena Hodsworth Hooter-Tooter" and Charlie taking Will's advice to "respectfully refuse" Zoey's demands to leave her alone do bring a smile to our faces. Once again, there's a lot going on here - as recently as The California 47th I said I thought Aaron Sorkin mucked up that episode by packing in too many stories and not really landing any of them - but this one is much more successful. I think it shows a tightening of the writing that often seems to happen toward the end of seasons, as Sorkin starts pulling threads together for his big season finish. There's actually not much here that's going to be important for the final episodes - Charlie, Zoey, and Jean-Paul, I suppose - but the writing is lively and I was entertained throughout. I'm not quite as enamored with the next episode, but after that we find ourselves on quite a thrilling ride to the end of the season.

Where to begin? Let's start where the episode starts, with Abbey and Jed squaring off over breakfast as news breaks of an anti-abortion amendment being attached to the foreign aid operations bill. This bill was a topic before, in Guns Not Butter, a critical policy for the Bartlet administration that has been limping along with continuing resolutions. Now the opportunity to actually pass a bill to help starving people overseas is at hand, and the President is reluctantly willing to swallow the anti-abortion-speech amendment in order to get the aid package into law. Abbey, on the other hand, is not so willing:

Abbey: "It's not that the money can't go to clinics that perform abortions. It's that it can't go to clinics that talk about abortions."

Jed: "I know what the gag rule is."

Abbey: "I wasn't reminding you what the gag rule was. I was reminding you that you sent 11,000 troops to Kundu because in your inauguration you told us that we were for freedom of speech everywhere."

Jed: "That's great except people are starving to death, and they're dying of disease to death, and they can't cook the Bill of Rights."

Luckily for Abbey, her new Chief of Staff is starting work today. Amy Gardner, who impressed the First Lady and accepted the offer in Red Haven's On Fire, is trying to set up her office by hanging some artwork and diplomas on the walls.

Maybe the fact everything is falling off her wall is a clue for how her first day is going to go. Abbey impresses on Amy the importance of killing the gag-rule amendment, encouraging her to go to the senior staff and get the President to threaten a veto ... a veto of a bill he's been shepherding through Congress for months, a bill he's desperate to get signed into law, amendment or no amendment. This is an impossible task.

Will: "Amy, we have a problem for your office."

Amy: "No, you can't. Cause it's only my first day, and Mrs. Bartlet already has me overthrowing the government."

Discussions ensue between Amy and Josh, even Amy and Leo, and despite the fact they are fruitless (as the senior advisors reiterate the position that the overall bill is urgently needed, and the amendment is an unavoidable irritance), Abbey won't let up. And neither will Amy's office, as even her door won't stay attached to the doorframe.

Amy, at last, stands up for herself, cutting off the First Lady as she approaches and laying out her qualifications and experience and the reasons why Abbey hired her in the first place:

Amy: "You hired me to put a professional face on your office. This bill is going to be law tonight. If you want to fire me, fire me."

Abbey: "I don't want to fire you."

Amy: "Oh. Why did you want to talk to me?"

Abbey: "To tell you you had a good first day."

Amy: "Oh. Okay, I jumped the gun."

Finally, that night, as Jed and Abbey prepare for bed in a bookend to the opening scene, they have a conversation that shows they really do have the same goals, that the President is thinking of ways to counteract the gag-rule amendment and protect freedom of speech and women's rights despite the best efforts of conservatives like Clancy Bangert. To, you know, use some "pirate" tactics to beat back the gag rule.

Jed: "German thinker Max Weber said that politics is the 'slow boring of hard boards, and that anyone who seeks to do it must risk his own soul.' You know what that means?"

Abbey: "I like how you think that patronizing me is going to make me feel better. It's sweet."

Jed: "It means that change comes in excruciating increments for those who want it. You're trying to move mountains. It takes lifetimes. But Zoey Bartlet is the newest Daughter of the American Revolution, so I like our chances in the long run."

Abbey: "That's what you have to say?"

Jed: "Yes."

Abbey: "All right, it's pretty good." 

Leo and Josh start their day talking about a flood in Alaska. A glacier-fed lake has overflowed, and a small town along the lake is being devastated by the flood. While the Coast Guard and other government operations gear up to provide support, experts from the US Geological Service have a somber warning - the flooding was caused by melting of the glacier, melting tied to global warming and rising temperatures in Alaska.

Toobin: "Mean temperatures in Alaska have risen seven degrees in the last 30 years. That's insane. The temperature hike has caused glaciers to shrink and go backwards, leaving lakes of melted glacier water in their wake. A shift in those collapsing glaciers puts pressure on the lakes forcing them to overflow their natural limits, and killing, this morning, fourteen people. Not spotted owls."

Leo: "Are you telling me the deaths this morning are the first fatalities of global warming?"

Toobin: "They're definitely global warming fatalities, but I doubt that they're the first."

This is an example of Sorkin using his TV soapbox to call attention to a, at the time, somewhat controversial subject. While today I think few people would disagree that the overall global climate is warming, in the early 2000s there was a little more debate on the topic - and even now, there are some who disagree that human activity has anything to do with the temperature increases. It's hard to argue with the carbon numbers in the atmosphere, though. In my opinion, we may already be too late to do anything significant to stop a climate catastrophe ... but that's a topic for a different venue, I guess.

Leo and the other staffers agree that, while the overall position of the administration continues to be support for industry and jobs and business (the drivers of increased carbon emissions, after all), they need to make the point that climate change is real and needs to be addressed - and the way to do that is to have an administration official speak out against the official stance, making the point in favor of change and reducing emissions. Even though that person will be criticized by the administration in public, it gets the point out there to be talked about. Will agrees to be the loyal privateer, to fall on the sword:

Will: "I think that's right, but I think that I should do it."

CJ: "You don't want to do it."

Will: "I really don't, but I don't think a researcher at Interior is going to jump-start this the way you need."

Remember Charlie and Zoey? Remember they were a thing, after meeting over chili in The Crackpots And These Women, and having a little kerfluffle over unwanted attention in a bar in Mr. Willis Of Ohio, and starting to date (which resulted in an assassination attempt in What Kind Of Day Has It Been/In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen)? Well, after the two were seen still going out in The Midterms, Zoey kind of disappeared and we heard next to nothing about the two - until this past Christmas in Holy Night, when Zoey shows up again with a boyfriend who is French royalty of some kind. Charlie has not been happy with the situation - in Inauguration: Over There he declared his ongoing love for Zoey (not to her, personally, but to Will, Josh, Toby, and Danny) and his plans to fight to get her back.

Well, fighting time has arrived. Charlie has a talk with Will about a "Dear John" email Zoey sent to him, basically telling him she's done with him, he makes Jean-Paul uncomfortable, and he has to stop chasing her. Will, oddly, actually has some decent advice:

Will: "I'd say no. I'd do it respectfully."

Charlie: "You'd say no?"

Will: "Respectfully."

Charlie: "What would that sound like?"

Will: "Zoey, you say Jean-Paul is uncomfortable with our relationship and he'd rather I not be around, and I respectfully say no."

Charlie: "Can I ask you something?"

Will: "Sure."

Charlie: "Do you have a girlfriend right now?"

Will: "No."

Even so, it turns out to be pretty good advice. Jean-Paul shows up at Charlie's office before the DAR reception to mark Zoey's induction into the group. He's confused about where he's supposed to meet Zoey's car, which obviously wouldn't be in Charlie's office - but Jean-Paul is stoned out of his gourd, so ...

Charlie grabs the opportunity in front of him, just like a pirate. He sends Jean-Paul off on a wild-goose chase, to meet Zoey's car in a place she's not going to be, and then heads off to the White House entrance to talk to Zoey himself. She's still angry, demanding he give her up and stop pursuing her, but he sticks with Will's approach:

Charlie: "I refuse respectfully."

Zoey: "You can't refuse and be respectful at the same time."

Charlie: "Watch me. Ask again."

Zoey: "Stop pursuing me."

Charlie: "Respectfully, no."

Zoey: "Why?"

Charlie: "Cause I'm in love with you and that's the way it goes."

Charlie's outright declaration of love must not be totally disagreeable to Zoey, as she can't hold back a smile.

And as she heads into the White House for the reception, Charlie's joyful leaping reaction is just perfect.

There's actually a story for Donna here, too - she's tasked with shadowing a guest at the reception who's had drug charges in the past - but it's not important in the least. So let's get to the final two plotlines.

The next move of piratical treachery comes not from one of the staffers, but from an old friend of Toby's. Burt Gantz, a chemical company executive, stops by to say hello on his way to testify in front of Congress against a bill that would force companies to pay to clean up their pollution messes. It turns out, though, that Burt isn't there just to talk about old times:

Gantz: "I'm supposed to be in here looking at pictures of Andy. Could you take out your wallet and look for a picture?"

Toby: "What?"

Gantz: "Toby, please take out your wallet and look for a picture you can show me. Kearney-Passaic's been lying for three years. I need protection under federal whistleblower laws."

Burt wants to turn in Kearney-Passaic for lying to the government about how much they're polluting, and he wants Toby to give him protection for doing it. Toby gets Josh, they bring in a lawyer from the counsel's office, only to discover it's not whistleblower protection laws they need.

Mike: "Well, you're talking about the anti-retaliation provisions in the False Claim Act."

Toby: "Yes."

Mike: "This entitles an employee to relief. If he's fired or demoted or suspended or in any matter discriminated against because of lawful acts done by the employee on behalf of the employer."

Toby: "Yes."

Mike: "These acts weren't lawful."

[...]

Mike: "Well, let me ask you this the way federal prosecutors will. Did you knowingly and purposefully sign fraudulent documents submitted to federal authorities?"

Gantz: "Well, it's not that the documents were -"

Toby: "Oh, my God ..."

Mike: "Yeah, he doesn't need 3730, he needs immunity from criminal prosecution."

Even worse, by laying out the details behind Kearney-Passaic's deceit of the government, Gantz has put Toby and Josh into the position of having to turn him in.

Josh: "We have to turn him in now?"

Mike: "No, you don't have to, but you'll go to jail as a co-conspirator."

Josh: "I don't understand. All I did was get up in the morning, (to Toby) then I got a message to go see you."

Toby: "How come he knows about the rule?"

Josh: "Everybody knows about that."

Toby (to Josh): "Was something else on your mind that moment in law school when they taught that rule? Were you distracted by a bumblebee?" 

But, clever guy that he is, Toby figures out this was Gantz' plan all along. He'll spill the story to Toby, Toby will be on the hook to get the facts to federal prosecutors, and Gantz counts on Toby helping him get immunity so he doesn't go to jail for helping to falsify the documents.

Toby: "It didn't occur to me until I asked you why you didn't tell your lawyer. You knew what you were doing the whole way, right? Get the President's muscle to lean on Justice for immunity."

[Toby may need to choose his friends better, considering he got "screwed with his pants on" financially after helping a buddy speak before Congress, resulting in a public relations fiasco about some stocks he owned (Five Votes Down), then getting played by a old friend into helping set up the Republican Senate Majority Leader for a Presidential run (The Leadership Breakfast) ... ] 

At last, then, the giddy laughter of CJ and the haughty imperiousness of an old-money Marblehead patrician come together in a classic West Wing moment. Abbey, naturally, with her lineage somewhere in New England, is a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution. That group requires proof of an ancestor who provided support to the effort of the American colonists fighting for independence in the Revolutionary War - and Abbey has a guy, some 17 generations back, who sailed the Eastern seaboard to help defeat the British. It turns out, though, that the guy was essentially a pirate. He did work under hire for the American war effort, attacking British shipping under the revolutionaries' flag, so that technically made him a privateer, not a pirate.

Even so, an old adversary of Abbey's in the DAR has leaked word of this disgraceful ancestor to the press, and is threatening to boycott a White House reception to honor Zoey's induction into the group (which makes me stop and think - if Abbey's membership is based on her privateer relative, wouldn't all the Bartlet daughters automatically be members as well? They, of course, have the exact same relative in their ancestry ... what makes this induction of Zoey happen now, anyway? She's not 18, she's not even 21, at this point she'd be 22 years old, given that she was 19 when we met her in The Crackpots And These Women). In any event, it's up to the Communications Office to put a stop to the boycott, by any means necessary.

Will and CJ put their heads together about the news story, and there we discover Abbey's old adversary is named Marion Cotesworth-Haye, a name of stature, of tradition, of 18th-century snobbishness - and a name that's going to make somebody break into the giggles.

Will: "No, I'm just telling you that if this day ends up with me face-to-face with Marion Cotesworth-Haye I'm going to, you know ..."

CJ: "Laugh inappropriately?"

Will: "There's a very real possibility." 

CJ and Will enlist Amy to help them out, since she is now officially Abbey's Chief of Staff. As noted earlier, Amy already has plenty on her plate, but she'll take some time to speak to Ms. Cotesworth-Haye and help stave off the boycott. But how? In a plot right out of I Love Lucy, our gang decides that giving an award to Marion will impress her enough to give up on her disdainful attacks on Abbey's pirate relative.

Until they meet. CJ, Will, and Amy make their introductions, and then Marion stands and announces her presence:

"I'm Marion Cotesworth-Haye!"

Which results in not Will, but CJ dissolving into a fit of laughter:

Which she can't bring under control, leaving Will and Amy to try to deal with the scion of Marblehead society:

(Let's just take a moment to bask in the genius that is Allison Janney and her laugh. Remember her breaking into helpless laughter when Danny gave her a goldfish, instead of Goldfish crackers in The Short List? She's a national treasure.)

Our trio of trouble-stoppers have forgotten one thing in their plan ... they don't actually have a fake award put together to give to Marion! Will tries to help out Amy with some quick charades:

Marion: "May I ask what the award is for?"

Amy: "It's for your many years of service."

Marion: "Is it the Liberty Award?"

Amy (at a loss): "No ..."

 Amy: "It's a key."

 Amy: "The Francis Scott key. It's the Francis Scott Key ... key."

Amazingly, this works.

Marion: "Well, that is a different fox hunt altogether, isn't it?"

Subterfuge a pirate would be proud of, right there, used to counter the efforts of a haughty rich lady to shame a rival because she has a pirate in her family tree. Excellent.

Sorkin has been a master over the past three seasons of building to a terrific climax at the end of the year. This will be no exception, with the added complication that it's not just the end of the season, but the end of Sorkin's tenure with the series. We're not quite there for the buildup yet - I'm not a huge fan of the next episode - but he gets things revved up into high gear after that for the final four entries of Season 4. Trust me, there's plenty to look forward to coming up.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- This is Amy's first official day as Abbey's Chief of Staff, so it can't be that long after she was offered the job the first weekend of February in Red Haven's On Fire, just before the special election in the California 47th House District. We have no mention of the outcome of that election, though, nor anything more than a passing reference to the American military operation in Africa.

- When Leo opens up the newspaper in his office, there's a full-page ad for a "Holiday Sale." There's no holiday in late March, when this episode aired, but since this episode is set sometime in mid-to-late February (considering Amy's timeline mentioned above), this prop could be referring to a Presidents' Day sale, which has been a thing for major American retailers for many years.

- There's some really bold, artistic-looking shot composition from Alex Graves in this episode. I'm kind of in love with it. From the opening scene, which starts with an over two-minute long unbroken take between Jed and Abbey (bookended with another one-minute long unbroken take back in the Presidential bedroom in the closing scene), to the choice to film the beginning of the Josh/Leo scene from outside the window through the shutters:

To the strong contrasting morning light colors used in the scene with CJ and Will:

To the shot of Josh and Amy talking as they walk down the hallway, with Donna prominently in the shot even though she's not actually involved in the scene:

To the long shot of Will and Charlie, panning from a model of a old sailing ship (perhaps a pirate ship, even?):

To several walk-and-talk scenes filmed through glass on the set:

I think the look is original, interesting, and really different from much of what we've seen before. Considering this is actually Graves' 13th time directing the show, I give him a ton of credit for taking a truly fresh approach to this episode. 

- You know, I realized while putting this together that we really don't know much at all about Abbey's family or her background. We don't even know her maiden name, or where her family comes from, or much of anything besides the fact Jed was planning to enter the priesthood before he met Abbey while he was a student at Notre Dame (The Portland Trip). I always took that to mean he actually met her in South Bend (although women didn't start attending Notre Dame itself until 1972, which was after Jed's time there, but there was Saint Mary's College right next door that was a "sister" institution for Notre Dame). But maybe that's not where they met, maybe she was also from New Hampshire. The fact is, we simply don't know, but her membership in the DAR and the seafaring privateer in the family tree seem to indicate her background being in New England somewhere.

- We get pretty much a full CV from Amy Gardner. She told Abbey in the previous episode that she graduated from Brown and Yale Law School (and she's attempting to hang her Yale Law JD diploma in her office here). She goes on to describe her work history: a year and a half as issues director for NOW (National Organization for Women), two years as the political director of EMILY's List (an organization we learned CJ also worked for in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, Part II), founder of the Democratic Women's Forum, AA to Hope Schrader, and Director of the Women's Leadership Coalition (where she was working when she first appeared in The Women Of Qumar). Oh, and Abbey used to babysit her, which is quite a connection to have.

- Stockard Channing earned an Emmy nomination for an Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her work in this episode and the upcoming Twenty Five. Tyne Daly took the award for her appearances on Judging Amy.




Quotes    

Leo: "You don't want to stand here for a minute and reflect on the fact that a glacier melted this morning?"

Josh: "Well, I would, Leo, but a glacier melted this morning, so at this point Americans are simply trying to outrun it." 

-----

Will: "The legitimacy of her membership in the DAR is being questioned because her qualifying relative was a pirate."

Amy: "A pirate?"

Will: "A pirate. A pirate, oh yes, a pirate, he."

CJ: "A privateer, actually."

Amy: "Isn't that just a hired pirate?"

CJ: "Yeah. Anyway, Mrs. Helena Hodsworth Hooter-Tooter of Braintree wants to organize a boycott of the reception and, well, there it is. Yes, Mrs. Bartlet descends from quite the murderous band of ruffians, and her membership in the DAR is suspect on those grounds, or so believes the Boston Globe."

----- 

Amy: "I make up an award?"

CJ: "Save yourself the headache."

Amy: "Am I being hazed? Is this a hazing? Cause I'll go along and everything but I have to see Josh again so -"

Will: "It's not a hazing. They don't do that. (reaches into jacket pocket, turns to CJ) ... except yes, you put olives in my jacket again."

CJ: "I did. I put olives in his jacket but this is on the level."

 

-----

Abbey: "I gave a made-up award to Marion tonight."

Jed: "Marblehead?"

Abbey: "I think she's from Marblehead."

Jed: "No, some of us call her Marblehead."

  

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

• Burt Gantz, Toby's old roommate and current chemical company bigwig trying to save his own skin, is played by Jeff Perry (best known from Scandal - Shonda Rimes, creator of the DC-set drama Scandal, is a West Wing fan and used several members of the cast in her show, including Joshua Malina).

• The fabled Marion Cotesworth-Haye of Marblehead is played by Helen Slayton-Hughes, who you may recognize from her role as Ethel Beavers in Parks and Recreation.

• Our favorite TV news anchor Ivan Allen is seen again, still with MSNBC as he was in his most recent appearance in Red Haven's On Fire.

• After the Bartlet Doctrine, the insertion of troops into Equatorial Kundu, and the related terror attack on the military camp in Ghana that took up most of the oxygen in the past four episodes, Abbey's passing mention of the 11,000 troops in Kundu is the only reference to those events. It does seem a little odd that the wrenching, deadly attack on the Red Haven base from the previous episode isn't even a topic of discussion now. There's also not a peep about the Democratic tax plan that was key in a recent episode.

• Jordon Kendall, Leo's romantic interest (first seen in Bartlet For America, last seen in Process Stories) gets mentioned by Abbey, so those two kooky kids are still a thing.

• The foreign aid bill, the one with the gag rule amendment, is a followup to the bill we saw being thwarted by Congress in Guns Not Butter. That episode saw quite a discussion about using three continuing resolutions as a stopgap until a bill could get through Congress, which adds to the willingness of the administration to accept the amendment as a condition for finally getting the bill passed.

• Burt Gantz mentions Andy's pregnancy and the twins, fathered by Toby. That was first revealed in Debate Camp.

• Of course the whole Charlie/Zoey/Jean-Paul romantic triangle stems from Charlie and Zoey's original relationship from Season 1 (with the last reference to their being a couple coming in The Midterms; after that Zoey disappeared until showing up again with her new boyfriend Jean-Paul in tow in Holy Night). Charlie's continued pursuit of Zoey - and his plans to declare his love for her - was boldly stated during the snowball-throwing scene in Inauguration: Over There.

• Amy's reference to hazing, Will's denial of anything like that taking place, then the discovery of CJ's olives in his jacket pocket remind us of the bicycles, the Sam Seaborn posters, and the goat being put in Will's office to prank him when he first moved into the West Wing (Holy Night and Guns Not Butter).

• Amy ticks off a list of Bartlet administration cave-ins to Republicans, including allowing marriage incentives into a welfare reauthorization bill (we saw that in Posse Comitatus, as well as Amy being forced out of her job at the Women's Leadership Coalition because of her efforts against that bill) and burying the Surgeon General's report on birth control (we saw a similar report on sex education - perhaps the one Amy is referring to - put in a desk drawer in Take Out The Trash Day, supposedly not to be released until after the midterm elections, but it was never referred to again).

DC location shots    

• There are none.

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

• Abbey calls Jed "Sheriff Taylor," after the character played by Andy Griffith on The Andy Griffith Show.

• The "global gag rule," also called the Mexico City policy, is an actual US government policy that blocks funding for groups that provide abortion counseling or work to expand abortion services. The policy was first put in place under President Reagan in 1985, then rescinded by each Democratic administration since and reinstated whenever a Republican President took office.

• Of course the Boston Globe is an actual newspaper. Also, the Daughters of the American Revolution is a real group, and members do need to trace their lineage back to someone who personally provided support during the Revolutionary War for American independence. Interestingly enough, the list of "accepted Revolutionary War service" for membership expressly includes privateers, so Marion Cotesworth-Haye has absolutely zero ground to stand on here.

• Josh calls Abbey's privateer ancestor "Captain Feathersword," who is actually a character appearing in performances by the Australian children's music group The Wiggles. Captain Feathersword has been a part of Wiggles shows since 1993. It begs the question of why Josh would be familiar with The Wiggles in any way ...

• While the Francis Scott Key Key is not an actual award, Francis Scott Key was an actual person (who wrote The Star-Spangled Banner).

• There's a shot of a caterer holding a box of Geyser Peak wine.

• Toby has a Starbucks cup in one scene (I believe Leo actually has one in his office at the beginning of the episode, but he does a better job of hiding the Starbucks logo).

• Charlie says it's possible his great-great grandfather is Thomas Jefferson - a reference to the fact that Jefferson fathered several children with his enslaved African-American servant Sally Hemings.

• Donna compares her assignment to shadow one of the guests at the DAR reception to a plot point from the TV show Laverne & Shirley. We also see Donna and the guests she's tailing drinking from bottles of Rolling Rock beer.

• President Bartlet quotes Max Weber with his comparison of politics to the "slow boring of hard boards" in the final scene.

End credits freeze frame: The White House entrance where Charlie and Zoey have their discussion.

Previous episode: Red Haven's On Fire

Next episode: Angel Maintenance