Tuesday, February 22, 2022

The Dogs Of War - TWW S5E2

 





Original airdate: October 1, 2003

Written by: John Wells (2)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (15)

Synopsis
  • Tensions grow between Jed and Abbey over the implications of how his actions may have contributed to Zoey's kidnapping. Josh calls out a Walken aide over Republicans potentially using the crisis for political gain, only to get slapped down in response. A new intern arrives in Josh's office. A random encounter in Virginia brings Zoey's abduction to an end.


"A truly self-sacrificing act usually involves some sacrifice."




Another emotional downer of an episode tries to turn things around with the relief of Zoey's rescue, but John Wells can't let us even enjoy that for long as dark days in the administration and the Bartlet household are obviously ahead. I'm already starting to miss the touch of humor that Aaron Sorkin always seemed to bring at the right time.

It's dark, again - darkly shot, full of dark shadows, faces half-hidden in the dark. It fits the tone, but where's the joy? Even Zoey's rescue feels ... off-putting and strained. I have mentioned before
that President Bartlet's decision to step away from his office, leaving Speaker Walken in charge in Twenty Five, turned me off during the series' original run, and that I hadn't watched any of Season 5 when it actually aired. Thinking a bit more, I believe I may have given the show a shot at the beginning of the season, and I likely did watch 7A WF 83429 when it was originally broadcast ... but I am certain I was no longer tuning in by the end of this episode, and did not see any of the Season 5 episodes after that until about five years ago and my first full re-watch. The unrelenting darkness and sadness and sourness completely turned me off.

But don't let me talk you out of continuing with this run through Season 5! It's better if you don't go it alone, right? Let's hit the major themes - a couple of which will have some long-lasting impacts.

How about the Jed-Abbey relationship to start? There was obvious tension between them all the way back in Bartlet's Third State Of The Union and The War At Home ... that's when we first discovered that Jed, in exchange for not making his multiple sclerosis condition public, had promised Abbey he'd serve only one term. And so, by starting to govern in a way to gain reelection, he was going back on his word. Abbey was mad about that, rightfully so, as not only was she put in a position to continue her life in the public eye for another term, she'd also have to go through the scrutiny of her role in Jed's coverup (which ended up with her giving up her medical license, you'll remember).

Gratefully, Abbey came to terms with most of that by the time the campaign got into full gear (Manchester, Part II) but now ... it's not just herself she has to worry about. President Bartlet's decision to secretly kill the Qumari defense minister (Posse Comitatus) has become public, enraging Islamic terrorists across the globe - and now it seems some of those terrorists have kidnapped their daughter and are threatening her life. She directly blames Jed for all of this - his continued Presidency, (which he was supposed to have given up) which led to his decision to kill Shareef to protect American interests, which led to the kidnapping and possible death of their youngest daughter. Abbey cannot forgive her husband for this.

When the news breaks that Walken has ordered an attack on Qumar (in retaliation for the movie theatre attack in Turkey in the previous episode), the Bartlet family is watching TV together. Jed, helplessly watching his administration carry out the orders of another leader, launching an attack that results in the deaths of American soldiers and, quite possibly, his own daughter, hands clasped in front of his face, looks over to gauge Abbey's reaction:


Abbey hears the news on the television, but can't focus on anything - especially not Jed:


She tormentedly leaves the room, followed by Elizabeth and Doug, and finally, Ellie ... Ellie, who was one source of support for Jed in the previous episode, now leaving her father alone to mull over his decisions and cope with the results:


Even with what should be the joyous reunion of the Bartlet family when Zoey is rescued, Wells can't give us the "happy ending" we're yearning for. First off, Zoey is discovered purely by chance - a drunk couple having an argument, the wife calls 911, the trooper sent to pick her up can't find her, but pokes his head into a nearby barn and sees a suspicious white van, he calls the FBI ...


The FBI strikes quickly, as Agent Casper outlines the events to the Bartlets in the helicopter:


And Zoey is rescued with the kidnappers being killed.



Abbey finally smiles when she embraces her daughter:


Jed, too, gratefully relieved, kisses her head:



But all is not well. As President Bartlet takes back his office and speaks to the nation, his family (and Charlie) watches from Zoey's hospital room:


Except for Abbey.


Abbey, literally turning her back on her husband as he speaks to the nation.


It's hard for us to watch, and it's obvious it's going to take a lot of time to heal this rift.

The other sobering, intended-to-be-long-running storyline has to do with Josh. In 7A WF 83429 he was worried about the motives of the Republicans meeting with Walken and his staff, convinced they were planning to use this situation of temporarily holding the Presidency to make some moves for crass political advantage. On the Monday morning opening this episode, Amy (yeah, Amy's back!) ends up playing directly to his worst fears and stokes up his conspiracy theories to a dangerous level.


Amy: "They're going to start legislating again, Josh. Partial birth, federal funding for family planning clinics --"

Josh: "Walken does anything by executive order, we overturn it as soon as we get back."

Amy: "A cheering thought to the women whose lives are ruined in the meantime. Do you even know when you'll be back?"

Josh: "Not exactly. Damn it."

Amy: "If Walken's holding partisan pep rallies in the West Wing, leak it."

So Amy gets Josh completely worked up about what the Republicans are doing, and how they're using this tragic national crisis to gain political advantage. I mean, political advantage is Josh's wheelhouse, so he was already heading in that direction - but Amy gives him a huge shove.

This eventually leads Josh to take a Republican press release and read it with the worst possible motives, which then leads us to the one and only White House restroom scene ever filmed in The West Wing.


Josh accosts Walken's aide Steve Atwood as he's trying to take a leak, accusing him of undermining the Bartlet administration under cover of the kidnapping crisis.

Josh: "You're campaigning in the middle of a national tragedy. Zoey Bartlet's out in a field, breathing through a straw - you're test-driving sound bites for the next election? Straight answer, Steve, once in your life: what are you guys up to? Closed-door meetings, planting quotes in the Times ... What's next? Spontaneous speeches on the House floor questioning President Bartlet's fitness to lead?"

Atwood tries to set him straight:

Atwood: "You don't get it, do you? Republicans are in awe of Bartlet. He recused himself in the only way he could. In the way envisioned by the Constitution."

Josh is not mollified, but Atwood has a particularly telling way of describing how far off the deep end he has gone.

Atwood: "No. You beat the terrorists at their own game. We're not stupid, Josh. We try to use this to our advantage, it'll blow up in our faces. We'd seem callous and unfeeling, in contrast to Bartlet's extraordinary gesture of courage and patriotism. And anyone who thinks otherwise ... has a particularly craven way of looking at politics."

Josh has always been a political operative first, perhaps always starting out from a, well, "craven" way of looking at situations, but he's also always had the humor and humanity and soul to overcome it. That appears to be melting away, and it's not going to get better for a while.

Speaking of Josh and longer-running story threads, he gets a new intern. A brash, privileged Ivy League youngster is sitting in his office on Monday morning, awaiting instructions. Ryan Pierce is his name, Harvard graduate and self-described descendant of a former President, and we can tell right away he's going to clash with Josh, not to mention Donna:

Donna: "Am I being passed over?"

Josh: "What?"

Donna: "If you're going to bring someone in over me, you can at least have the common courtesy --"

Josh: "I don't even know who that guy is."

In my view, I see Ryan as an attempt by Wells and the producers to entice younger viewers to the show - much in the way the addition of Chekov and his Beatle-esque haircut to the cast of Star Trek in 1967 was meant to do. I don't think it was a particularly smart move, not least because Ryan doesn't prove to be a very sympathetic or likeable character, but that's just my opinion. He sticks around for quite a while, so you'll get your opportunity to make up your own mind about him. 

A few other things happen in this episode - the opening scene, with Leo's surreptitious meeting with the mysterious Angela Blake, is just set-up for storylines to come (although her line, "If she dies, his approval ratings will go through the roof" is certainly something); the revelation that Admiral Fitzwallis is hoping to retire and go sailing in the Caribbean; our first meeting with Secretary of State Berryhill, mentioned many times before but never seen until now; the continuing search for a new Vice President

(You might notice that Berryhill is featured prominently among these final five options, even with a dart in his photo - the options are trimmed to four at the end, as Josh removes one of the candidates - but if you will recall in Commencement Josh had added Leo to his list. I guess he's taken him off by now.)

- but let me spend just a moment on the speeches.

Leo mentioned to Toby in the previous episode that he needed to get to work on two speeches - when Will asked why two, Toby explained they'd need one if Zoey was found alive and another if, well, she wasn't. Toby starts on the first muscular, revenge-oriented option, but Will has a few ideas that Toby finds ... lacking.

Will: "It's a new and difficult time. He needs to acknowledge that we've all been visited by our own mortality."

Toby (reading Will's edit): "'I know I am not alone in thinking how fragile is the safety and security we all take for granted.' You're leading with failure. What kind of message is that? If we go two lines without using the phrase 'unimaginably large military arsenal' we're out of our minds."

Will: "You want me to start on the second one?"

Toby: "You're already doing it!"

Later, as Bartlet wanders the West Wing, he stops by Toby's office and asks to see the speech he knows they're working on. Jed takes a look at Toby's work, then, without looking up, he quietly asks:

President: "Where's the other one?"

Toby: "What other one?"

President: "The other speech."

Toby: "We only wrote one."

Bartlet levels a steady, wordless gaze at Toby. Toby pulls Will's second speech out of a drawer and hands it over.

The President looks it over, his breath catching as he reads a speech intended to be given after the death of his daughter. It's a fine bit of acting from Martin Sheen.

"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away ..."

Bartlet asks to keep the speech, and ends up using it as the basis for the address to the nation after Zoey is rescued.

The twin crises of Zoey's abduction and the related constitutional handover of Presidential power finally come to a close - although too late to keep me as a viewer during the show's original run! What we, the audience, are left with is a broken relationship between Jed and Abbey, and a top adviser who's obsessively consumed by his mental image of how the Republicans are trying to screw over the administration. Not exactly the groundwork for thrilling, uplifting storylines as we move ahead into Season 5, in my opinion, but let's see together. After all, it's dangerous to go alone. 


Tales Of Interest!

- Another episode full of darkness and shadows and tough-to-see scenes, which is kind of a thing for Season 5, it seems.

- It's approximately 72 hours from the morning of Zoey's graduation, which was Saturday, May 7, until President Bartlet's reclamation of his office after her rescue on the morning of Tuesday, May 10. The actual time it took for viewers to see these events over four episodes (created by two separate show runners) covered almost five months (from Commencement airing on May 7 to this episode's debut on October 1).

- When the administration needed secret polling in The Fall's Gonna Kill You, to measure public opinion over the possible reactions to President Bartlet's revelation of his MS coverup, Leo trusted Josh to go to his pollster, Joey Lucas. Now, when Josh thinks the administration could use secret polling about the electorate's reactions to President Bartlet's stepping away from the office, Leo brushes him off - only to contact a different secret pollster, Angela Blake.

- Walken's mention of being a "Truman fan" is fitting, considering Walken is from Liberty, Missouri - which is only about 10 miles north of Independence, where Harry Truman lived much of his life and where the Truman Presidential Library is located. His comment about Truman being a Republican if he were alive today is way off base, though, for anyone who's read anything about Harry Truman.

- With all the focus on Qumar (on and off ever since The Women Of Qumar, and certainly a geopolitical hot spot in episodes like College Kids and Debate Camp, where we saw maps of the country), isn't it odd that we see a Situation Room map that doesn't include Qumar at all? (Remember, according to the maps we've seen before it should be located in what is southern Iran, along the Persian Gulf directly across the Strait of Hormuz from the United Arab Emirates.)

Here's a good look at a map of Qumar from 7A WF 83429:



And here's a map in the background of the Situation Room from this episode ... with no Qumar shown!




- Why'd They Come Up With The Dogs Of War?
"Cry 'Havoc!' And let slip the dogs of war" is a line spoken by Mark Antony after Caesar's death in William Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. President Bartlet quoted that line to Leo as he asked about President Walken's attack plans in the previous episode, 7A WF 83429. 



Quotes    

Blake: "The people need to believe that when he comes back he'll be able to govern effectively, even if he can't secure the safety of his own family. They need to know he's willing to sacrifice his own child's life for his country."

Leo: "Would you be?"

Blake: "I wasn't stupid enough to run for President." 

-----

Ambassador Yusef: "We are one of the only friendly governments you have left in the region that is growing younger, poorer, and more radical every day. If you undermine us, who do you think will take our place?" 

----- 

Donna: "You have 132 phone messages."

Josh: "Half of them want me to switch my long-distance carrier."

Donna: "There'd be at least as many faxes if we had a fax."

Josh: "We don't have a fax?"

Donna: "The FBI boosted it for evidence."

-----

Ryan: "You guys always walk so fast?"

(He trips and falls)

Josh: "Yes." 

-----

President Walken: "If Truman were alive today, he'd be a Republican."

Debbie: "Oh, I doubt that very much."

President Walken: "You know, it's funny. This was never an ambition of mine. I never wanted to be President of the United States."

Debbie: "Neither did Mr. Truman."

-----

President Bartlet: "You going to run again?"

Walken: "I haven't decided."

President: "If you do, let me know. I'll come campaign for you."

Walken: "I'm not so sure that'd be a plus in my district, Mr. President."

President: "You stick around for the press conference?"

Walken: "Thank you, sir, but I think the nation's best served by seeing only one President at a time." 

 

Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
  • Our first look at Angela Blake, played by Michael Hyatt (The Wire, Nightcrawler, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend). Leo asked Margaret to set up a meeting with her in the previous episode, and she plays a big role in upcoming storylines.

  • We finally get to meet Secretary of State Will Berryhill, whose name has been mentioned many times over the past four seasons. He's played by William Devane (Knots Landing, 24, Marathon Man). No stranger to political drama, he played President John F. Kennedy in the 1974 TV movie The Missiles Of October - which also featured a young Martin Sheen as Robert F. Kennedy.

  • We meet Josh's new intern, Ryan Pierce (Jesse Bradford, known for Swimfan, Bring It On, and the Marvel One-Shot Item 47), apparently an effort by the producers to draw in younger viewers with a fresh, young, wisecracking face. It's ... not really a successful effort.

  • We haven't seen Nancy in a while (played by Martin Sheen's daughter Renée Estevez).

  • Blake throws out a mention of a "failed Mars probe," which we saw in Galileo.

  • The "brutal assassination" of Defense Minister Shareef is brought up by Ambassador Yusef. That happened in Posse Comitatus, with the fallout continuing throughout Season 4. We also hear the five Ba'ji sleeper agents that went missing in Commencement are still at large.
  • We get to see Andy and the twins, Molly and Huck. She apologizes for what she said "Saturday," when she turned down Toby's offer of marriage and the house - which happened only two days before the events of this episode (but was broadcast five months prior in Commencement).
  • Donna says the FBI took their fax machine for evidence. The picture of Zoey with a ransom note was sent to Josh's fax machine in Twenty Five. Now, why the FBI would need the actual fax machine for evidence seems a little bit tenuous.
  • There's recall of the search process for a new Vice President, something that's been underway since Vice President Hoynes resigned in Life On Mars.
  • President Bartlet's glass paperweights remain on the Oval Office desk.

  • We get a reminder that Josh graduated from Harvard as Ryan examines his diploma, with the additional information that he graduated cum laude (even though, as CJ says in A Proportional Response, he missed the dean's list "two semesters in a row"). When Josh goes on to say his girlfriend earned summa cum laude that year, we might be led to believe he's talking about Amy ... but Amy wasn't his girlfriend in college (she was dating Josh's roommate, as we were told in H. CON-172) and we learned in Red Haven's On Fire that she did her undergrad at Brown, not Harvard (both Josh and Amy did go to Yale Law School, however).
  • The West Wing tradition of "walking and talking" gets a shout out as Ryan has trouble keeping up with Josh and Donna walking through the halls ("You guys always walk this fast?").
  • One last fleeting look at President Walken's dog Bess, as she stretches across a chair in the Oval Office while he calls the parents of soldiers killed in the Qumar attack.

  • President Bartlet says he'll bum a smoke off one of the Secret Service agents. In Posse Comitatus we famously saw him toss a borrowed lighter back to one of the agents after telling Governor Ritchie, "In the future, if you're wondering, 'Crime, boy, I don't know' is when I decided to kick your ass."


DC location shots    
  • The parking ramp where Leo and Angela Blake meet must be somewhere in DC, considering the shot of the Capitol dome in the background. This was confirmed by director Christopher Misiano in the DVD commentary, who said they filmed scenes for five different episodes during that trip to Washington ... including several episodes that didn't yet have complete scripts.



They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing    
  • The parking garage meeting between Leo and Angela Blake is meant to remind the viewer of the clandestine meetings of Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward with their Watergate scandal source "Deep Throat," described in the book and movie All The President's Men.
  • Blake quotes a New York Times/CNN poll; later we see a front page of USA Today, as well as a mention of Roll Call. Interesting choice for the prop USA Today to feature the Jefferson Memorial photo on a story about the new Speaker of the House of Representatives ...

  • Blake has a retort about Bartlet's constitutional maneuver involving the Dean of Columbia Law.
  • Berryhill's line to Leo about informing Qumar of the American attack as it's happening ("Doesn't it remind you a little of the Japanese on December 7th?") is a reference to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, and the Japanese diplomatic message delivered to Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the attack had already begun.
  • The MSNBC logo is seen several times, as NBC continues with their synergistic decision to feature their real 24-hour cable news network instead of the previously used fictional CND network.

  • Andy mentions finding a house that's a three-minute walk from the Rayburn Building, which houses offices for Representatives just south of the Capitol Building. The building is named for former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn.
  • Ryan Pierce appears to claim that President Franklin Pierce is his "great-great-grandfather." This is actually impossible, for a couple of reasons. Franklin Pierce left no direct descendants; his three children all died in childhood. Also, for Ryan to be his great-great-grandson means Franklin Pierce would have to have been born around 1875 (using a rough 25 years per generation). He actually was born in 1804 and died in 1869, which would seem to work out to something like a great-great-great-great-great grandfather.
  • There also does not appear to be a "Pierce bedroom" in the White House, as Donna refers to.
  • Presidents Truman and Eisenhower are mentioned, as well as Truman's documented reluctance to be President.
  • The Al Jazeera news outlet has the new demands from the kidnappers with Zoey's picture.
  • We see a can of Hype Energy drink on the table in the Situation Room.





End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet leading Toby and Josh on the way back to the Oval Office to sign the 25th Amendment letter.







Previous episode: 7A WF 83429
Next episode: Jefferson Lives


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