Original airdate: April 23, 2003
Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (82)
Story by: Eli Attie (8) & David Handelman (2)
Directed by: Christopher Misiano (13)
Synopsis
- A Friday night card game is interrupted by an international incident with a downed UAV, an interview with a new associate counsel candidate, and - oh, yeah - gunshots fired at the White House. CJ's insistence on the vernal equinox' power to help stand an egg on its end draws ridicule.
Faith. Belief. Trust. These are mainstays of this really well put-together episode, whether it be CJ's faith in being able to balance an egg at midnight on the vernal equinox, President Bartlet's trust in being able to tell the Russian President the truth about a drone spy mission, Josh's belief that a principled Republican can serve in the administration, Charlie's understanding of Zoey's need to get away from Washington for a while, or everybody's faith in the protective qualities of the White House's bullet-proof windows.
Toby: "Yeah, that doesn't work."
Josh: "You've tried it?"
Toby: "I don't need to try it, you can't stand an egg on its end. The elements involved with creating an equinox have no connection to the center of gravity of an egg."
CJ: "I've seen it."
Toby: "I've seen guys make the ace of spades jump out of their shoes, I don't think it was the equinox."
The poker game also brings the interest of Presidential secretary Debbie Fiderer, the former professional gambler, who comes into the Oval Office as President Bartlet fiddles with an egg:
President: "This is a cash game, Debbie. These are hard-working people blowing off some steam and taking each other off their coin. We don't play for matchsticks and we don't play --"
(Debbie pulls out a wad of cash)
President: "Okay, can I ask you something? I forgot to have Charlie draw cash for me, can you float me a little?"
Just as the game really gets going, though, both the President and Josh are pulled out by other pressing events - Josh because there's a last-minute interview for a new associate White House counsel (to replace the apparently departed Ainsley Hayes), and the President due to a spy drone crashing on Russian soil.
When the President asks Will to sit in on the game in his place, we see the real difference between the weekend-relaxation card players and the more, shall we say, intense attitudes of people who've had experience at the poker table. Will, as we see, can shuffle impressively like a pro:
Which leads Debbie to regard him with a look of interest and calculation:
(Joshua Malina has been known to gamble a few dollars in professional poker tournaments in real life.)
Off to the real-world problems: Leo and some generals are cooking up a plan to have President Bartlet call Russian President Chigorin and politely get the crashed spy drone back - without actually admitting that the United States had a spy drone flying over Russian territory. The best they can come up is to tell Chigorin that the drone was taking pictures of coastal erosion on the Baltic Sea. President Bartlet is skeptical, but what the heck - he's game to try that anyway.
The call goes about as well as might be expected. Once the Russian president is aware of an crashed American drone on Russian soil, he is quick to send a team out to search for the aircraft and recover it himself, rather than allow a US military team to enter Russia. Suspicions fly, verbal elbows are thrown, and Bartlet threatens to blow up the drone rather than let its technology fall into Russian hands.
But President Bartlet and Chigorin have a little bit of history, with Bartlet showing a little bit of trust and Chigorin using coded language to respond in kind about their common interests in stopping the transfer of nuclear technology to Iran (Enemies Foreign And Domestic). Bartlet decides to ditch the cover story and just be honest:
President: :"We were taking pictures of Kaliningrad. We take pictures of black market nuclear materials being moved out the back doors of depositories and into trucks. The materials are being sold to non-governmental elements and, well, that's what we were doing. Rogue engineers, unemployed military scientists, and ex-KGB - it's just as big of a problem for you as it is for us, but you're not dealing with it, so we were taking pictures of Kaliningrad. We're going to have to trust each other a little, Peter."
It takes a little time for Chigorin to convince his advisers, but this tactic does work. The Americans will share their pictures of the black-market nuclear materials being moved, while the Russians will not interfere with the recovery of the crashed drone.
Josh's distraction from the poker game may not be quite as important on a global stage, but it turns out to be a key element in the Season 4 wrapup of The West Wing. He's tasked with interviewing Joe Quincy, a candidate to replace Ainsley Hayes as associate White House counsel, and it has to be right now because he's only in town one night. While Donna thinks Quincy is pretty dreamy, Josh is uneasy - and he can't quite put his finger on why that is. He thinks he should have run into this guy before, seeing the political circles Quincy has been working in.
Josh: "It's the strangest feeling. It's like a ... really good baseball player is standing in the other team's locker room for the first time."
Donna: "You're the baseball player?"
Josh: "He's the baseball player."
Donna: "In the other guy's locker room?"
Josh: "Yeah."
Donna: "I don't understand. Are you writing poetry about this now?"
Josh needs some extra time to figure out exactly what the deal is with Quincy, and he ends up getting it in a quite unexpected way. Back at the poker game, Will takes the joker card and flings it across the room into the trash, to much admiration from the others. Toby, not to be outdone, tosses another card into the trashbin. This leads to a challenge from Will, that he can hit a specific seat in the fifth row of the press room from the podium, which later brings Will, Toby, and CJ to the darkened press room to carry out the challenge.
Until shots ring out from Pennsylvania Avenue:
The Secret Service springs into action, closing down the West Wing and - once they are told of other potential terrorist activities in Germany, Malaysia, and Guam - they crash the building into lockdown. So Quincy can't go anywhere even if Josh was satisfied with his answers.
Finally, Josh figures it out (as if his own baseball player analogy wasn't clear enough to everyone watching at home) - he doesn't recognize Quincy because he's been running in the wrong political circles, namely Republican ones. Josh keeps pressing:
Josh: "Why do you want to work here?"
Quincy: "I like public service. I want to serve. And you guys are the only ones left."
So yeah, he'll make an ideal replacement for Ainsley.
Meanwhile, during the crash of the building, Zoey just comes strolling up outside to check on the people she cares for - which includes Charlie. Charlie, though, can't help but insult her boyfriend Jean-Paul again (calling him "Chef Boyardee") which just continues to make her angry, hardly the result a lovestruck ex-boyfriend like Charlie wants considering his vow to win her back (Election Night). Zoey then admits she'll be spending the entire summer in France with Jean-Paul, planning to leave immediately after her Georgetown graduation in two weeks. Somewhat amazingly, though, she and Charlie come to an understanding about why she needs that:
Zoey: "It's been four years in the White House, another being the daughter of a candidate. Eight years as governor. My grades get printed in the paper. My boyfriends are in the paper. I live and die by my parents' successes and failures. And so do you. Sometimes even more than me. And Jean-Paul doesn't. He's happy. He's just ... happy."
Charlie: "That's cause he's got five hundred million dollars and no conscience."
Zoey: "No, it isn't. He cares about things. And one of them is me. And none of them are this, and that's appealing to me right now."
Charlie: "Yeah. I can understand that."
So, we come to the end of the night. The lockdown is lifted, as the gunman is found to be a disturbed person just hoping to be shot by the police. Zoey and Charlie are in uneasy agreement about her summer plans. Josh has come to see the wisdom of hiring a very capable Republican in the counsel's office. And the President went out on a limb, coming clean with the admission of a spy drone over Russian territory, and found the Russian president willing to meet him out there.
Folks are heading home, ready for another day tomorrow. CJ looks up - the clock reads midnight exactly, on the spring equinox. She steadies an egg.
"Guys? Hey, you guys?" she whispers ... but there is no one there to witness this, no one to see this evidence that CJ was right all along.
They'll have to take her story on faith.
- In my opinion, this episode ramps things back up after a string of somewhat weaker offerings. It's a good palate cleanser to get us ready for three really good, taut episodes to bring us to the end of Season 4 - and, as it happens, the end of Aaron Sorkin's involvement with the series. Nothing here really is necessary for that final three-episode arc - we could get the same results of Joe Quincy's investigations in Life On Mars without seeing him being hired - but it helps tie things together and gives us a feeling for who Quincy is. Plus it's Matthew Perry, and he needs more than just one episode, right?
Quotes
Leo (to CJ, waxing rhapsodically over the deli buffet): "This is what I call a night off. Squeeze this piece of rye bread."
(CJ grabs the bread, squeezes it)
CJ: "Now what do I do?"
(The staff is in the midst of bidding on a hand)
Debbie: "Fifty dollars."
Larry: "Fold."
Josh: "Fold."
Toby: "I'm out."
Ed: "Out."
CJ: "Take it."
Josh (as Debbie rakes in the chips): "Nothing like the mounting tension of a well-contested hand."
-----
Will: "What is the exact moment of the equinox?"
CJ: "I don't know ... midnight?"
Will: "Midnight where?"
CJ: "All right, maybe it's not at the exact moment of the equinox. Maybe it's at some point during the equinox and you just have to keep trying, but I've seen it."
-----
Donna (talking about Quincy - who is, you recall, played by Matthew Perry, with whom Donna flirted offscreen in Los Angeles back in Season 1): "There are some who would consider him handsome. I don't, personally, cause you're the only one I think is handsome."
Josh: "Uh-huh."
... (Later) ...
Josh (to Quincy): "Cause if you're a Republican, then you damned well better look like Ainsley Hayes."
Donna (indignantly): "He does!" (pause, sheepishly) "He will to others."
President (to Chigorin): "We're going to have to trust each other. Our two countries have stopped the world from annihilating itself for 60 years because of conversations like this one. Why don't you talk it over?"
-----
Josh: "There may not be anything any more that outpaces the hatred the right feels for the left or the tonnage of disrespect the left feels for the right."
-----
Josh: "Why haven't you signed the questionnaire?"
Quincy: "Because I can't."
Josh: "You lied on it?"
Quincy: "Yes."
Josh: "Which question?"
Quincy: "Number 75. 'Have you ever done anything that would reflect poorly on the President?'"
Josh: "What'd you do?"
Quincy: "I didn't vote for him."
Donna: "That's really very sweet." (Josh gives her a look) "Not to me."
——
Quincy: “Could I be any more of a Republican?”
(Sorry, not an actual quote, but I couldn’t resist a Chandlerism)
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- Yes, indeed, it's Matthew Perry (Friends) as Joe Quincy, the Republican candidate for Ainsley's replacement as associate White House counsel. Fun fact, in 20 Hours In L.A. at the fundraising party, Donna claims to see Matt Perry and heads over to flirt with him. Yet now, when Matthew Perry himself is sitting in the Roosevelt Room, she doesn't seem to recognize him as the Hollywood actor but instead as some Joe Quincy fellow (she does find him attractive, though, so that tracks):
- The wonderful Michael O'Brien appears as Secret Service chief Ron Butterfield. He has some good stuff coming up in the next few episodes.
- Speaking of Secret Service agents, here's former Olympic sprinter and NFL wide receiver Willie Gault. This is his third appearance with a speaking role in the series, with his first in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I.
- Bartlet's daughter Zoey (Elisabeth Moss, from Mad Men and The Handmaid's Tale), Charlie's former girlfriend and currently dating French royalty Jean-Paul, makes a quick appearance on the Portico. There's plenty more to come for Zoey this season.
- We first saw the President and the staff blowing off some steam with a weekend card game in Season 1 (Mr. Willis Of Ohio).
- Josh mentions Ainsley Hayes a few times, as the interview with Quincy is part of finding her replacement. Hayes was last seen in The U.S. Poet Laureate, and apparently she has now left the White House counsel's office (Emily Procter got a major role on CSI:Miami, which left no time on her schedule for appearances on The West Wing).
- Josh also brings up Oliver Babish in his interview with Quincy. Babish is the current White House counsel (portrayed by Oliver Platt), who played a key role in events at the end of Season 2 and into Season 3. He was last seen onscreen in Gone Quiet.
- Debbie's eagerness to join the Friday night poker party - and her success at the table - reminds us of one of her previous careers, professional gambler. She told Charlie about that when he was trying to convince her to interview for the Presidential secretary position in Posse Comitatus.
- Leo is seen fidgeting with his wedding ring. We saw his marriage fall apart in Five Votes Down, with the divorce becoming official in The Portland Trip. We've also seen him wooing his attorney, Jordon Kendall, in Bartlet For America and Process Stories. Yet he still wears the ring.
- President Bartlet and Russian President Chigorin developed a good deal of trust over stopping the spread of nuclear materials in Enemies Foreign And Domestic.
- Will's position in the Air Force Reserve was mentioned in passing by CJ in the previous episode, Angel Maintenance. Here he is in uniform.
- CJ also said in that episode, "I never imagine my life would be in danger with really uncommon frequency." In this episode, she's standing directly in front of a window hit by a rifle bullet.
- President Bartlet's collection of glass paperweights is still there on his Oval Office desk.
- Josh talks about hearing a brass quintet playing The First Noël when the shots were fired, a direct callback to the PTSD he was suffering after the Rosslyn shootings (Noël). Donna actually gets Dr. Stanley Keyworth (from that episode, also Night Five) on the phone to help him if he needs it. His comment also leads to this snarky reply from Quincy:
Quincy: "Did you hear the shots?"
Josh: "No, but I heard a brass quintet playing The First Noël, so I just assumed somebody somewhere was locked and loaded."
Quincy: "You know, not for nothing, but the people that I talk to don't believe that story, and the people that you'd like don't care."
- There are a couple of other references to the attempt on Charlie's life that led to the President and Josh being shot (seen in in What Kind Of Day Has It Been and In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen). Zoey says to Charlie, "Sorry you got shot at again," and at the poker table Larry says to CJ, "You know, you're particularly upbeat for someone who's been shot at twice in four years."
- Here we see Nancy, played by Martin Sheen's daughter Renée Estevez.
- UPDATES, DECEMBER 6:
A couple of things I forgot as I rushed to publish last week - Debbie's whispered reminder to the President about checking his blood pressure after shots were fired at the White House recalls President Bartlet's health issues. Remember, he's suffering from multiple sclerosis, first detailed in He Shall, From Time To Time ... and a key part of Season 2. The most recent mention of the disease's progression was in Election Night.
Also, Josh tells Quincy he hears the song The First Noël when he hears gunshots. The story we've had before, stretching all the way back to The Crackpots And These Women and Josh's guilt over surviving a house fire as a child that killed his sister, was that it was Ave Maria running through Josh's head during times of stress. In Noël, in Josh's talks with Stanley Keyworth, it was that he was associating music (Christmas music in that episode) with sirens, following his near-fatal shooting at Rosslyn depicted in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen.
DC location shots
- None. The episode takes place entirely inside the White House (except for Charlie and Zoey talking on the Portico).
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- Leo lovingly describes the pastrami from Krupin's - "it's tissue paper thin" - which was a DC deli at the time. Mel Krupin had taken over a deli and named it Krupin's in 1993, after which it went through several owners (including Mel's brother Morty) until it closed in 2010.
- Will says he's been stationed at Bolling Air Force Base since he moved to Washington. That was a real air force base located across the Potomac from Reagan National Airport until it combined with Naval Support Facility Anacostia to become Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in 2010. Fixed-wing flight operations ended at both facilities in 1962 due to the airspace constrictions with a major commercial airport literally a mile away. Will says he is going to Cheyenne (Wyoming) to defend an airman in a court-martial, although he might mean the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado, headquarters of NORAD at the time.
- The SF-86 form Josh keeps bugging Joe Quincy to sign is the real Questionnaire for National Security Positions, but instead of a form with numbered questions it's more of an in-depth record of previous addresses and jobs, connections with friends and family members, and descriptions of financial backgrounds and possible foreign or mental health-related entanglements. I don't believe there's a question asking "Have you ever done anything that would reflect poorly on the President?" although the form does ask if you've ever belonged to a terrorist organization or a group advocating for the violent overthrow of the US government.
- Joe Quincy takes a gander at the bust of Teddy Roosevelt as well as Roosevelt's Nobel Peace Prize.
- The MSNBC cable news network gets their logo shown (good synergy, there, NBC). President Bartlet also tells Chigorin he'd be up to date on the events at the White House if he was watching CNN International.
- Charlie refers to Jean-Paul as "Chef Boyardee." The schools George Washington University, Georgetown, American University, Catholic University, University of Virginia, and Johns Hopkins University are also mentioned as Zoey's information-gathering network to keep track of Charlie's dates.
- Joe Quincy says he has an interview lined up at the law firm Debovoise and Plimpton in New York. Not only is that an actual law firm, as Josh says (and we first learned in Six Meetings Before Lunch) that is the firm where Josh's father worked.
- Product placement:
- There's a bottle of MBC beer on the poker table. I seem to faintly remember this as a variety of Miller beer (MBC = Miller Brewing Company) but my google-fu is unable to find any historical mention of this brand, only Miller High Life, Miller Genuine Draft, and of course Miller Lite.
- President Bartlet once again is wearing his Notre Dame sweatshirt.
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