Original airdate: December 3, 2003
Written by: Debora Cahn (5)
Directed by: Lesli Linka Glatter (4)
Synopsis
- As Christmas approaches, President Bartlet deals with an Attorney General grandstanding for political gain, a son-in-law who wants his backing to run for Congress, a hostage situation in Sudan, a daughter who may or may not show up for dinner, and a grandson who can't flip a switch in front of crowds. To make things even more festive, he also has to face his own mortality.
It's Christmas in the White House ... well, three weeks before Christmas, anyway. I've mentioned before how I have a soft spot for television shows that clearly set episodes during holidays, and tie the plots and themes into the season. There's just something about it that grounds the fictional world of a TV series into the reality we can relate to, I don't know.
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| There's holiday cookies there for Ted Barrow! |
We even get CJ's Christmas tree falling over on Toby.
Leo: "The voters of Oregon have declared the termination of life, pain, and suffering to be a legitimate medical purpose, and frankly whether they were right or wrong is none of the DEA's business. Assisted suicide should be --"
Fisk: "It's not 'assisted' anything. It's murder."
Leo: "Okay. We're done. You'll be hearing from the President."
In an effort to get attention on the topic away from the President, Toby asks Will to have Vice President Russell take the lead. Will - who, for some reason, still has his office in the West Wing next to Toby - finally agrees to take the proposal to the VP, but his obvious lack of enthusiasm linked with his motivation to help set up Russell as a 2006 Presidential candidate show Toby where Will's true loyalties lie.
Which leads to:
Toby's finally moving Will out of the White House. (Will seems unusually perturbed about this, although he should be happy with having an office nearer to his boss.)
Of course, there's an additional deeply personal angle for President Bartlet. As we've known since He Shall, From Time To Time ..., Jed suffers from multiple sclerosis, an incurable degenerative disease that will eventually debilitate him. No one knows exactly how long that might take, or how the effects will specifically manifest, but a physical decline almost certainly will happen, perhaps before his term is up. And as Toby points out, a significant number of those seeking help to end their lives have MS.
Toby: "One in five patients requesting aid in dying has MS. One in five. Do you know what the questions sound like?"
President: "I've got a pretty good idea."
Toby: "'How long does the President think he has before his MS will become debilitating?' 'Do the doctors anticipate a speedy decline?' 'Does he have a plan?' 'Does the First Lady have four glass vials and a syringe in a lock box in the nightstand?'"
President: "She may chicken out. Maybe I'll call you."
This does lead to a pretty funny line from Bartlet later:
President: "Toby asked me today if I have a plan for my death. Liz has never asked. Zoey. I understand Ellie asked her mother once, but I'm not supposed to know about it. I get Toby."
When it's later revealed the AG's support for prosecuting the doctor is being played up in the press in Fisk's home state of Mississippi, the staff figures out he's laying the groundwork to run for state office. President Bartlet takes time away from his family dinner plans to read Fisk the riot act. I'll include the entire conversation here, because it's well-said:
President: "You don't run for governor from my Cabinet."
Fisk: "You really think a run to the right on a couple of pro-life standards is going to win me Mississippi?"
President: "'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the States respectively.'"
Fisk: "How long before there's a lawyer arguing, 'We can't limit this to terminal patients.'? We ought to include the chronically ill? When is it allowing children to make the decision for their parents?"
President: "Yes. When is it allowing the state to decide, not families? We'll just start knocking off the weak and the indigent along with the sick and the dying. When does my administration completely deteriorate into the Third Reich?"
Fisk: "I'm not suggesting --"
President: "The federal government has no place here. The question is a moral one, an individual one. Grappling with the nature of life and the purview of God, in which the federal government has no ... Forget it. Do what you want. The courts are going to nail you. You're counting on my silence, and you just lost it."
Fisk: "Sir, a public debate --"
President: "Yeah, I didn't want to get on TV with Oprah and talk about who's gonna cut my meat when the coordination goes, but c'est la vie. The lid's off. (walking out the door) You pull this crap one more time, you're fired. Tell Janet Merry Christmas."
Back in the dining room, as Jed and Abbey wait for the rest of the family, Jed reflects on what Toby spoke about, and on his future and his mortality. And Abbey touchingly expresses her love and devotion to him.
Jed: "I'm putting together a panel on assisted suicide. If you got any names, medical ethicists."
Abbey: "Your position has changed?"
Jed (shakes his head): "Uh uh. ... No syringe in the nightstand. It'll get ugly and that's that. (pause) You gonna be there?"
Abbey: "Yeah."
The Sudan incident turns out to be another minor irritant on the day. The President, assured by the aid organization that the workers were not missionaries, sends a strongly worded message to Sudan about detaining American citizens. Which would be great, until they find out the two workers had indeed smuggled in Bibles and were, in fact, breaking Sudanese law by promoting Christianity:
Leo: "They never identified themselves as evangelists. Never mentioned religion."
President: "So they're undercover agents?"
Leo: "Spies for Christ, yeah."
As is the usual custom with these issues, the US government directs some back-channel economic aid to Sudan in exchange for the release of the two women, and that's that.
The Bartlet family issue gets complicated, not only by Ellie's delayed arrival, but by Jed's son-in-law having an unexpected political agenda of his own. Doug Weston stops in to see Josh, who is involved in finding Democratic candidates for national office, and tells him he would be the perfect choice for New Hampshire's 1st District seat in the House of Representatives.
This turns out to be a problem. The Democratic Party has plans for that seat, they already have a candidate groomed, and having the President's son-in-law (who has no experience in running for political office at all, as well as some dicey issues with a failing business) asking for the White House's endorsement is not in the cards. Josh is told to nip Doug's effort in the bud, but he's not very good at that:
Josh: "What about the state legislature? It's the place to learn, the President started there --"
Doug: "Come on. I run while Jed's in office, I've got a leg up like no two terms, six terms as a state legislator ever's gonna give me. What kind of fool is gonna let a moment like that sail by?"
Josh: "I don't know."
After getting chewed out by Leo, Josh calls Doug back in, telling him in no uncertain terms he won't get the President's endorsement if he decides to run. In the meantime, Jed, Abbey, Zoey and Liz are waiting for Doug (and Ellie) in the dining room.
When Doug sullenly shows up at the dinner table, Liz is miffed with how things played out, and she heads upstairs to start packing up Gus' clothes.
Jed follows.
Jed: "He's a great guy and a fantastic father. You're the politician. Why the hell don't you run?"
Liz replies with the weight of motherhood, of family responsibilities, of the impossibility of doing it all.
Jed: "We all made sacrifices, but Elizabeth, when Annie and Gus watch you walk onto the floor of the US House of Representatives --"
Liz: "I don't want my son to be part of my entourage. A photo op is not his idea --- I don't want it."
Jed: "Then why would you let Doug?"
Liz: "Because he's my husband, and he asked me to."
Finally - at last! - Ellie arrives ... finding the dining room empty.
The Bartlets just can't catch a break for this holiday meal.
But things aren't all bad. For the first time in the series, I believe, we get to see all three of the Bartlet girls together, smiling and hugging as they enjoy some carols in the atrium:
And the President rousts Gus out of bed. Gus, upset and frightened by the crowd, ended up not helping with the tree lighting ceremony (Zoey filled in instead), but Jed now has decided to give him the chance to flip the switch anyway. Alone, in the dark, grandfather and grandson trudge through the snow to the Christmas tree, and Gus happily turns the lights off and on, watching them glow in the winter sky.
Like I said, this one is really about family.
- It's three weeks before Christmas (CJ says as much in her phone call to her father's facility), which is exactly when this episode aired in 2003.
Let's let President Bartlet explain it: "You know, 15 years ago, we took a trip to Egypt, all five of us, saw the pyramids and Luxor, then headed up into the Sinai. We had a guide, a Bedouin man, who called me Abu el Banat. Whenever we'd meet another Bedouin, he'd introduce me as Abu el Banat. The Bedouin would laugh and laugh and then offer me a cup of tea. And I'd go and pay them for the tea, and they wouldn't let me. Abu el Banat means 'father of daughters.' They thought the tea was the least they could do."
Quotes
Toby: "This is fine. I just cut some of the naked gloating."
CJ: "We restarted the government, Toby. There was a showdown at the OK Corral, and we gunned down the Clantons. We're heroes."
Toby: "And yet, self-effacing."
Debbie: "Did she tell you about the walkthrough at 11:00?"
CJ: "No. Can you maybe handle that?"
Debbie: "She asked for you."
CJ: "I've got a meeting. Could you tell her?"
Debbie: "You can't say no to her, can you?"
CJ: "Not really."
Debbie: "I'll see you at 11:00."
President: "All right. Push the rehearsal. I need to stop at Nancy McNally's. Is Ellie even coming?"
Debbie: "She's working on it."
President: "One would never know that the leaders of powerful nations respond to my call on a moment's notice."
Debbie: "Not at first glance, sir, no."
-----
President: "Three point two billion men in the world, she picks him."
Debbie: "I hear he had a great pitching arm."
President: "When he was 19, sure. She dumped a Rhodes scholar for this guy. Zoey left Charlie for the frog. Ellie and the guitar player with the purple van. My children choose morons, every one."
Debbie: "They say daughters look for their fathers."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- The wonderful Dylan Baker appears as Attorney General Alan Fisk. I think Baker is good in everything he does, from Owen, the tobacco-drooling pickup driver in Planes, Trains And Automobiles ("She's short and skinny, but she's strong. Her first baby - come out sideways. She didn't scream or nothin'") to the hospital administrator in The Laramie Project (2002) to Murder One and Spider-Man 2 and 3 to many, many, many other TV and movie appearances.
- Ron Canada returns as Assistant Secretary of State Ted Barrow. You remember Barrow was a real jerk to CJ in Han; he'll be sort of a recurring character from now on.
- Mark Moses (Platoon, Mad Men, Desperate Housewives) appears as Congressman Donald Richter. He's one of those character actor faces that shows up in all sorts of TV shows and movies, and you know you've seen him somewhere before.
- I think every Christmas episode of The West Wing has included a shot of a gingerbread White House. This one is no exception.
- At the very beginning of the episode, as CJ is trying to set up her tree, we get a mention of "restarting the government" and being "heroes," which is a direct reference to the previous episode Shutdown.
- We get a reference to Liz and Doug's daughter, Annie (although she's missing the tree-lighting festivities because of a swim meet and a pierced eyebrow). Annie was actually mentioned in Pilot, receiving threats from a religious group after stating her opinion on women's rights to choose in a magazine interview. She was 12 then, which would make her about 17 now.
- This also means the President's story about going to Egypt with the girls 15 years ago would have been after Liz and Doug were married and had Annie. So I guess Annie stayed home with Doug while Liz made the trip with her parents and sisters?
- Ellie's medical school work at Johns Hopkins - and her complicated relationship with her father - was addressed in the episode Ellie.
- Toby's role in setting the agenda for the State of the Union address ties into his request to have a bigger role in administration policy that he first brought up to Leo in Han.
- Toby spars with Will over the Vice President taking the hit for the assisted suicide story, and that argument brings up the memory of Russell's nomination as VP from Jefferson Lives as well as Will leaving the Communications Office to be Russell's top aide in Constituency Of One:
Toby: "We didn't ask you to groom Russell for a Presidential run. He asked you."
Will: "He was chosen by the President."
Toby: "He was chosen by the Republicans!"
- Toby also reaches all the way back to when Will came aboard the Communications Office in Arctic Radar, after his dedicated campaign work got a dead Democrat to win a House election in California:
Toby: "You're the guy we pulled out of Botox Babylon out there, brought to work for the President."
- There are callbacks to Zoey's relationship with Jean-Paul between Holy Night and Commencement (or, as Jed calls him, "the frog") and her previous relationship with Charlie (those two are still close, as you can see by Charlie's teasing her about everyone telling her she looks good - "You don't look that good," he jokes, and she responds with a smile and a playful tap).
Charlie also offers his coat to Zoey when she decides to go help her father with the tree lighting.
- We hear references to National Security Adviser Nancy McNally and Secretary of State Berryhill, but we don't see either of them.
- There's a deep dive into Margaret and her complicated relationship with muffins. In Let Bartlet Be Bartlet, she locked up the White House e-mail system with a question about the calorie content of the raisin muffins in the Mess, giving Toby a golden opportunity to prank her:
Margaret: "IT support is now accusing me of being a hacker. They're accusing me of spamming or smurfing. They asked me if I was running a Trojan horse. I said no, I ... I was simply informing the others that the calorie count in the raisin muffins was wrong. And it is, Toby. You don't believe me ... you should take one of those muffins and, you know, take it down to the lab."
Toby: "I'll do that."
Margaret: "You will?"
Toby: "Get me a muffin. Be careful not to handle it yourself. You want to use gloves. Slip it to me in a plastic bag. I'll send it off to the lab."
Margaret (realizing): "You're mocking me, aren't you?"
And in this episode, when Margaret is complaining about Leo's "maybe" responses to Christmas party invitations, she goes back to the muffins in the Mess:
Margaret: "I think we shouldn't go with 'maybes' on the Christmas parties this year because 'maybe' means I RSVP yes, and you cancel ten minutes before it starts, and I have to call and say the honored guest isn't coming, and you remain lovable Leo McGarry, and I'm the dope who couldn't accurately assess the constraints of your schedule."
Leo (hearing the news announcer on the TV): "'Hostages'? Did he just say 'hostage'?"
Margaret: "And by New Year's, I'm a pariah. People hexing my muffins in the Mess ..."
I guess Margaret just really likes muffins.
- Of course President Bartlet's health condition and his ongoing multiple sclerosis has been part of the story since He Shall, From Time To Time ...
- CJ's father and his struggle with Alzheimer's disease had an entire episode devoted to it (The Long Goodbye).
- Josh's teasing of Donna over her Christmas present reminds us of In Excelsis Deo, when Donna really wanted a pair of skis but Josh ended up giving her a book about skiing instead. But the real gift was the note Josh wrote to Donna inside the book. We never know what he wrote, but we saw her reaction and her beaming smile when she read it.
- At the Bartlet dinner table there's a throwaway discussion about the Weston's nanny and what her job entails (and her chin status). It's also mentioned she's Swedish. This nanny will come up again in the future.
DC location shots
- None.
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- In the past The West Wing would sometimes invent a fictional nation in order to have storylines play out without offending a real country (Equatorial Kundu and Qumar are the two obvious examples). Post-Aaron Sorkin it appears that's no longer a concern, as Sudan is definitely on the hook here for holding American Christian missionaries prisoner.
- Speaking of real nations, President Bartlet mentions "193 countries." According to Wikipedia, they name 194 widely recognized sovereign states in the 2000s. So we're in the ballpark here (and 193 may have been exactly correct for 2003).
- The tree-lighting ceremony includes performances by the Three Tenors and the singing of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus.
- Attorney General Fisk's daughter was in a performance of Verdi's opera Aida at the Kennedy Center. Aida was actually part of the Kennedy Center's 2002-03 season, so that's factually accurate (although it would have happened well before the events of this episode, maybe Leo and Fisk hadn't had a chance to catch up since then).
- Leo comes up with the song title "Grandma Got Run Over By The Bartlets," a reference to the real novelty song "Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer."
- Liz has offered CJ's name to replace her on a charity board that should be working with the World Food Programme (but isn't).
- Toby compares Will's efforts to change Vice President Russell's image to what happens with Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady.
- President Bartlet mentions a "Fisher-Price gizmo" on Gus's crib with "more cranks and levers than a DC-10."
- Gus's Secret Service code name is Tonka, which is obviously related to the toy company with the metal trucks.
- We get the MSNBC logo onscreen, as the NBC network has realized they can promote their own 24-hour news network on their shows. Although, would the Christmas tree lighting ceremony actually be billed as "BREAKING NEWS"?
- As the President chews out the Attorney General for getting involved in the Oregon assisted suicide case, he talks about the government and not the families making decisions about who lives and who dies, comparing it to the Third Reich (Nazi Germany). He goes on to say, "Yeah, I didn't want to get on TV with Oprah and talk about who's gonna cut my meat when the coordination goes, but c'est la vie."
- Liz brings up the feminist icons Ms. Steinem (Gloria) and Ms. Friedan (Betty) in her conversation with Jed over who should really run for Congress.
- Josh jokingly tells Donna he got her a Tower Records gift certificate for a Christmas gift.
- Abbey says to Jed they've never been the traditional Currier and Ives family at the holidays.
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