Access - TWW S5E18

 

Original airdate: March 31, 2004

Written by: Lauren Schmidt (4) 

Directed by: Alex Graves (20)

Synopsis

• A documentary film crew covers a day in the life of White House press secretary CJ Cregg, which happens to be a day with a domestic crisis involving the FBI and a standoff in Washington state.

"This is a terrible idea. (laughs) I don't know what I was thinking, this is, let's ... let's call this off." 

This is a strange one. While I'm willing to give Lauren Schmidt and the West Wing crew some props for trying something entirely different, there are also a lot of things wrong with this attempt. A lot.

It's a documentary (on PBS, it's implied, although not expressly stated) about CJ and the role of a White House press secretary, filmed over two days in 2004 but then not shown until after the end of the Bartlet administration three years later. Which brings us to one of the problems with this episode; if you're pretending to show us something that actually doesn't happen until the future (like this documentary, apparently not airing until 2007), you run a risk. There are events that are going to happen between now and that time in the future that you didn't foresee and couldn't know about, so even though we are going to see those things happen over the next 2 1/2 seasons, they don't end up getting mentioned by the makers of this TV production who, if this program was actually being prepared and aired in that future, would obviously know about and mention those events. (Yes, there are some specific things I'm talking about that I won't bring up here as spoilers.)

This is an unsolvable problem, of course; you can't possibly know everything that's going to happen between your filming of this episode in 2004 and its supposed debut in the future, but it's Schmidt and the creators of this episode who put themselves in that position. The show nearly gets itself into the same trouble at the beginning of Season 7, when the opening pre-title scene of the first episode sets up the entire season as a flashback, but their choices don't turn out to be disastrous in that event.

The other big problem, and one that should have been avoided, is an apparently administration-defining moment that we are told happened during the first year of Bartlet's first term in 1999. This is how the documentary narrator describes it:

Voiceover: "Five years earlier the FBI's mishandling of a standoff in Casey Creek, Kentucky, which resulted in the shooting death of a suspect's wife, was a tragedy that haunted the new President's first term."

It was such an important and memorable event that the press can't stop immediately comparing the current Shaw Island standoff to that 1999 debacle ... yet we, the viewers, have never heard of this event before, even as our journey following the Bartlet White House started that very fall. An FBI siege of domestic anti-government radicals, during which safety protocols were not followed, ended in the deaths of two people. That created a scandal leading to congressional investigations in the fall of 2001, and somehow that's never come up - at all - in the past 4 1/2 seasons of The West Wing? Even though in that fall of 2001 we were seeing congressional investigations of President Bartlet's coverup of his health and the effects of those investigations on his re-election campaign ... one would think parallel investigations of an FBI operation resulting in the death of an American citizen might be tied into our storyline then?

The documentary goes on to tell us that CJ's handling of the Casey Creek event in the briefing room was also a defining moment for her, and one that affected her standing with the press corps:

Voiceover: "Casey Creek also haunted President Bartlet's young press secretary. CJ Cregg's naivete about the power of her podium led many to question her ability to deliver the news of the nation. It would be months before she regained the confidence of the White House press corps and the Bartlet administration."

Again, something this serious about CJ and her relationship with the press - something that regardless of when it happened in 1999 would still be reverberating when the series began in September of that year - would absolutely have been referenced for us at that time, if it had actually happened prior to Lauren Schmidt's making up of the Casey Creek event out of thin air. We actually do get a Season 1 storyline about the administration being wary of CJ's connection to the press, in Lord John Marbury, when the top staff keeps CJ in the dark about a border clash between India and Pakistan ... but it's explained to us that they're worried about her close relationship to Danny Concannon, not that a domestic FBI crisis had shaken their faith in her.

This totally out-of-the-blue Casey Creek event used as kindling in the firestorm of the Shaw Island standoff in this episode wasn't even necessary ... the series gave us a similar standoff with anti-government types in Season 1's The State Dinner. Why not use that event, which we were aware of and almost fits the timeline we were given here, instead of making up something entirely new that - if it indeed were as important and memorable as we're led to believe - we should have had some mention of in past seasons? And if Casey Creek had actually happened, it certainly would have come up during the discussions and negotiations of the standoff with Idaho militia in The State Dinner. (Maybe it was Mandy who kept Casey Creek out of it, I don't know, she's easy to blame). 

To me, it's an unforgivable direction to go, and just mars the entire timeline of the series for the writers of this episode to give us an entirely new "scandal" from five years ago that we've somehow never heard of before. It's really lazy, making up an entirely new justification that supposedly happened in the past to fit your story instead of using elements that have actually been dramatized previously in the series to build your episode around. And which would have worked! The Idaho standoff, CJ's troubles with the press over India and Pakistan, you'd have gotten the same effect in this episode without having to violate the continuity of the series.

There's really not a bunch to say about this episode. CJ is granting this documentary crew access to the West Wing for a couple of days as they produce a program about the role of the White House press secretary in today's media world. They interview other members of the staff, some reporters, some (fictional) previous press secretaries; we get some behind-the-scenes look at the day-to-day operations of the press office and the staff working under CJ's supervision; and some glimpses of CJ's personal family life (including home movies of a young Allison Janney!) and her relationship with her father, who is struggling with Alzheimer's disease. Then the crew is also involved in documenting the administration's response to what could be a terrorist standoff in Washington state.

That story, as it is, kicks off with CJ noticing the director of the FBI coming by the White House unexpectedly. She asks a couple of questions about why he's there, but Leo assures her it's nothing. Later Leo and Josh bring her in with FBI director Arnold to let her know that the FBI is trying to apprehend someone on Shaw Island, but only in case she gets press questions about it - it's no big deal.

Of course, it is a big deal - there's been an exchange of gunfire, a dog apparently shot, children are injured, news helicopters are overhead, and the press immediately connects this situation to the administration's handling of the five-year-old Casey Creek event (again, a serious federal law enforcement breach of protocol that resulted in deaths and Senate investigations but one we've never heard of before). When an ambulance is sent in to take an injured child to the hospital, the FBI uses that as cover to set up an assault on the cabin ... and most of that preparation for the assault is covered by TV news cameras on the scene! It turns out the suspect, Jamal Othman, was involved in domestic terrorist activities and had contact with several other possible Ba'ji terrorists, and his arrest leads to the arrest of about a dozen others wanted in suspicion of conspiracy to commit terrorism.

Yes, it's weird. It's weird to see an episode of The West Wing be presented to us as if it's actually a PBS documentary that's being aired a few years in the future. Again, I kind of applaud the audacity of it - it's different, it's outside the box, it's a bold attempt at something unusual - but the execution isn't all that great. For one thing, there's a line CJ says in the documentary that seems to sum up her view of the responsibility and perception of her role:

CJ: "There's a misconception that I'm here to stymie reporters or to mislead the public, to spin or even hide the truth, when in fact any good press secretary aims to do just the opposite."

Schmidt and the show's producers apparently think that quote is so important that they repeat it, at least three and I believe four more times during the episode. Does CJ spin the truth sometimes, to put the administration's actions in a better light? Absolutely, and despite what CJ says here, I think that is a job requirement for any press secretary. Does CJ hide the truth from the press? Well ... I think there's no doubt the series shows her with the very best of intentions, and she does continually strive to keep the public informed as best she can, but we've seen quite a few instances where she not only sidestepped questions from the press (I love the scene in 18th And Potomac where Steve asks about military operations in Haiti, CJ gives a response, causing Steve to say, "You didn't answer my question" and CJ replies, "How about that?"), but also where she tells flat-out lies in a necessary process to protect the secrecy of ongoing military operations (What Kind Of Day Has It Been and her brazen lying about preparations for the rescue operation to retrieve the downed pilot in Iraq is an obvious example). Is it CJ's goal to "stymie reporters" or "mislead the public"? No, absolutely not ... but she still does it sometimes, and sometimes she has to.

There are some things I like a little bit about this episode - as I said, at least it's a different choice in presentation; the stark bluish video-tape-like color balance and shaky hand-held camera sets the documentary part separate from our typical filming style; I also like the inside-baseball parts with CJ's assistant press secretaries, particularly the moment when Carol is chewing out Jack Sosa over something or other; it's cool to see these young staffers doing their job that we just have no awareness of in general, and how they really do like working for CJ - but there's just so much wrong with it, from the ignoring of the past history of the show's seasons to the made-up controversies and loss of trust with the press that was never seen at the supposed time it happened, to the mawkish and overly emotional juxtaposition of CJ's phone call with her dad as home movies of her as a kid play on the screen. That was truly a terrible choice, and one I'm pretty sure no public television documentary crew would have made.

Plenty of people call this the worst West Wing episode of all. I don't think I'd go that far (partial credit given for the imaginative format), but it ain't good. Plus, I give you Ninety Miles Away, if you want a ponderous, confusing, history-disregarding contribution to The West Wing oeuvre.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- With the HLN network running holiday marathons of The West Wing over this past Thanksgiving weekend and the week between Christmas and New Years, my wife and I have jumped back into a rewatch of the Santos-Vinick campaign episodes from Seasons 6 and 7. What is really illuminating is how good those episodes are, a real rebound from the struggle to find footing post-Aaron-Sorkin in Season 5 and the first part of Season 6. Some of those episodes in Season 7 match up well with the best of the series in Seasons 2 and 3.

Another interesting note: the background actress highlighted here, as part of the press group standing outside of the White House, actually reappears as a reporter for a very short yet integral scene in Season 7. 

I never would have made the connection that it was the same actress if I hadn't seen both episodes just a few days apart. (I have noticed, however, the older white-haired gentleman with a buzz cut that appears all the time in the background of scenes - usually in the communications bullpen - keeps up working in the West Wing all the way through the entire series. Props to the show for keeping an actor employed for seven years in a non-speaking role!)

And another thing about the HLN marathons: what the heck happened to HLN, anyway? Originally called Headline News when it began 40-some years ago, it had one purpose - to package world and national headlines, weather, and sports into a neat half-hour presentation and just keep doing that, every half-hour. It was a great way to check in on what was happening in the news. Now it's true crime TV shows and nonstop Forensic Files all the time on HLN (well, except for the West Wing marathons, now that Warner Bros/Discovery/HBO has consolidated the TV rights). Yes, I know about network decay (or channel drift) and how MTV (Music Television) hasn't had anything to do with music for decades and the History Channel runs speculative fiction and the SciFi channel started carrying professional wrestling and so on ... it's just weird.

- There is no "previously on The West Wing" to start the episode; we jump right in with the sponsors of Access, as if we are watching that public television show. It's definitely a stand-alone episode - there's nothing that ties this in with previous or future episodes (except for the passing nods to CJ's father and the upcoming congressional delegation to the Middle East).

- CJ's deputy Eric Schaeffer is heard saying the date is Wednesday, March 31, as he gives the daily presidential schedule over the phone. This matches up exactly with the broadcast date of the episode, Wednesday, March 31, 2004.

- For the first time we have confirmation that Richard Nixon was President in the West Wing universe. While Eisenhower has been talked about before, and some references to Kennedy and LBJ have been made that strongly implied their administrations, the series' only two prior mentions of Nixon didn't necessarily prove he had been President. Here we see video evidence of President Nixon and his press secretary, Ron Ziegler.

However, this doesn't really help us with the timeline of Presidents in this universe, or explain how Presidential elections got offset two years from how things go in the real world. From what we see in this episode, the most recent Presidents that are confirmed as existing in the series are Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and now Nixon - but we don't know exactly how things progressed between Nixon and Bartlet.

2002: Bartlet elected to second term

1998: Bartlet elected

1994: Republican elected (served one term, which we know from Supreme Court Justice Crouch saying he waited to retire until a Democrat was in in office in The Short List, and knowing Leo served as Secretary of Labor in a Democratic administration in 1993 in In Excelsis Deo)

1990: Democrat elected, or re-elected (was this Newman?)

1986: Unknown (could this have been Newman's first term?)

1982: Unknown

1978: Unknown

1974: Nixon had been re-elected in 1972, and resigned in 1974 - is this where a new Presidential election timeline began?

In The Stormy Present we learned of two prior Presidents between Nixon and Bartlet, the Republican Owen Lassiter and the Democrat D. W. Newman. Toby says he voted for Newman twice, so perhaps he served two terms between 1986 and 1994? Lassiter could have been the one-term Republican defeated by Bartlet in 1998, but I think if that were the case it might have been expressly stated in that episode, but I don't know ... it's possible. Anyway, this is what we know for sure at this point, with the added knowledge from this episode that Nixon did indeed serve as President.

I won't even get into Separation Of Powers when we are told Supreme Court Chief Justice Ashland had served under 22 Congresses (which puts his confirmation to the post around 1961) and "the last five guys" hadn't been able to name a Chief Justice (there's no way to make it any fewer than six guys between then and Bartlet) - and which also ignores the fact Nixon named Warren Burger Chief Justice in 1969.

- The FBI director, George Arnold, is seen in file footage testifying before Congress about the Casey Creek event, which took place sometime during President Bartlet's first year in 1999 (and apparently before the series timeline began in the fall of that year). That would mean he has been Director of the FBI for Bartlet's entire administration ... yet in A Proportional Response the President says this to Charlie:

President: "Listen, Leo McGarry filled me in on the situation with your mother, I'm so very sorry. I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of calling Tom Connolly, the FBI Director."

Come on, showrunner people, don't you guys have a "bible" or something for the series to keep everything straight?

- Gail's fishbowl features a television camera.

- Somewhat surprisingly given the mixed reviews for the episode, Allison Janney won an Emmy for her performance. It was her fourth award in five seasons, receiving her second Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Emmy Award after earlier taking two Supporting Actress Emmys and losing in the Lead Actress race the previous season. I don't mean to belittle Janney at all and I would never do that, because she's always awesome and she does an excellent job in an episode designed to showcase her, but this isn't your typical award-bait kind of episode here. SPOILER ALERT: this will turn out to be the only Emmy Award the show gets for the season, and the first time in five years the series would fail to win the Outstanding Drama Series award.

- Why'd They Come Up With Access?

The program airing this documentary is called Access. The initial screen listing the major contributors to the program make it appear as if it's a PBS production - although the in-program breaks ("When we come back") aren't something typically seen in a public television production that doesn't actually have commercial breaks.

The title is also, of course, a reference to the access CJ and the White House is giving to this documentary film crew. 

Quotes    

CJ: "I can't let this project in any way compromise my obligations to the President of the United States. That was bragging."

-----

CJ: "What have you got?"

Chris: "Well, you're not gonna like it."

CJ: "I never expect to."

Chris: "At last year's inaugural the First Lady wore a burgundy Richard Taylor gown, satin, off the shoulder. I have a source that says she accepted that gown as a gift from the, uh, the designer, the ethics rules are pretty clear."

CJ: "Looks like I'll be rifling through the First Lady's closet this afternoon."

Chris: "Yeah, you could get fired for that?"

CJ: "If I'm lucky." 

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

• The FBI Director, George Arnold, is played by familiar character actor Michael Kagan (Providence, How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives). The implication is that he's been in the post as long as President Bartlet has been in office (given his involvement with Casey Creek in 1999), but we've never seen him before (and in fact in Season 1 the FBI Director had a different name). Arnold will pop up again.

• Whenever the FBI is involved, it's always good to see Special Agent Mike Casper (Clark Gregg).

• Ivan Allen appears as a TV news anchor again, which is his go-to role in most of his appearances on TV or film. His first time popping up on the series happened in A Proportional Response, and he'll end up credited in 27 West Wing episodes.

• Wilson Cruz (My So-Called Life, Star Trek: Discovery, 13 Reasons Why) appears as Jack Sosa, part of CJ's staff.

• There's an early shot of CJ through the viewfinder of a TV camera, a little gimmick this series loves to do.

• Some of our usual White House reporters Greg Brock, Steve, Chris, Katie, and Mark all are seen.

• CJ tells the documentary crew, "My commute's the one time I can be by myself, gather my thoughts." In Pilot she was telling the cute guy on the treadmill next to her (before she fell off) that 5 to 6 am was the one hour that belonged to her, which she used to exercise. I guess her self-care schedule has changed. Or perhaps not; she says she's awake before 5 am, and arrives at the White House between 7 and 7:30, so maybe she still has that hour to work out.

• The process of keeping CJ out of the loop with what's happening on Shaw Island can't help but remind us of Lord John Marbury, when CJ was kept in the dark about the Pakistan-India border conflict, which hurt her relationship with the press. At that time, she was assured something like that would never happen again ... yet here we are. We even get confirmation from Josh and Toby that sometimes they have to keep information away from the press secretary, which is a direct reversal of how things ended in that Season 1 episode.

• In The Portland Trip Leo's office number was shown as WW-111. Here we get a good look at the sign for his office with his name on it, and it's now WW-115.

• There's an offhand mention of Abbey's inaugural gown, a burgundy Richard Tyler off-the-shoulder design in satin. I have no idea if it's a Richard Tyler, but in Inauguration: Over There Abbey was indeed wearing a burgundy off-the-shoulder satin gown. (Sure, the showrunners made sure they got that little fact right from a previous episode, they couldn't do that for the main plot?)

Abbey and Jed at the inaugural

• There's also an offhand mention of the press claiming Congresswoman Wyatt (Andy Wyatt, Toby's ex-wife and mother of their twins) is getting "chummy with the Palestinians." This goes along with the upcoming congressional fact-finding trip to the Middle East that was first heard about in the previous episode, The Supremes, and will continue as an important story thread into Season 6.

• CJ's father's struggle with Alzheimers is recalled. She first mentioned his difficulties with his memory in The Two Bartlets, and we saw CJ visit her father in The Long Goodbye.

• CJ's frizzier hair in the 1999 press conference scenes is a shoutout to her hairstyle from flashback episodes like In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II and Bartlet For America - that was how CJ looked pre-West Wing September 1999 debut! However, while this clip did show Carol acting as CJ's assistant back in 1999, we first saw Carol working for Toby in early Season 1, with other staff appearing to serve as CJ's assistants. Carol is seen helping CJ with a press briefing in The Crackpots And These Women and is definitely CJ's dedicated assistant by The Short List - all of which happened after this clip from earlier in 1999.

• We saw Toby go to California in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II to recruit CJ for the Bartlet campaign, in what would have been late 1997 or early 1998, and it's shown that the two knew each other a little. At that time CJ had just been fired from her PR post at an entertainment promotion firm. In this episode Toby tells us they first met at an unspecified earlier time, when Toby was running an unsuccessful Senate campaign in New York and CJ came over from a New York PR firm.

• We see a box of Goldfish crackers in CJ's office. We learned from Josh in The Short List that CJ loved "goldfish" - Danny Concannon took that to mean the actual fish, which is why he gave her Gail as a gift, but Josh meant the snack crackers.

• Leo's quiet reference to some of those arrested after the Shaw Island standoff as having connections to the Ba'ji terrorists tie us right back to the five sleeper agents who disappeared and were thought to be in the Pacific Northwest back in Season 4 (Commencement).

• The final voiceover for the documentary says CJ Cregg was the only woman to have served two terms as White House Press Secretary. Not to spoil too much for the future, but CJ doesn't actually serve two entire terms in that post. Again - the risk you run writing a TV episode that purportedly exists in the future, without you knowing everything that's actually going to happen in that future.

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• A lot of real-life file footage in this episode, at one point coming from Pathé News.

• We also see logos from C-SPAN, MSNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, and even C-SPAN 2 (which covers the Senate, C-SPAN covers the House). The two television stations we see, WRQE (the logo we see as the station airing this documentary) and WKPJ (seen on TV screens in the West Wing covering the Shaw Island story), apparently are fictional (both are currently radio station call letters, but not TV).

(The Working Towards Independence Act seen on this screen was before the House in the spring of 2002, or two years prior to this episode)

• Speaking of CNN, here's former CNN and current Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer in the background.

• Newspapers seen or mentioned include the Chicago Tribune, the Orange County Register, USA Today, and the (former) Washington Evening Star.

• Here's a look at an AOL (American OnLine) screen. Eric is doing background work using AOL Research & Learn!

• Former Presidents and press secretaries seen or mentioned include Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower (and his press secretary Jim Hagerty), John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson (and the press secretary for both JFK and LBJ, Pierre Salinger), and Richard Nixon (and his press secretary Ron Ziegler).

Eisenhower and Hagerty

Kennedy

Johnson

Salinger

Nixon

Ziegler

• CJ brings up the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, although the "observer effect" she's referring to isn't quite the same as the Heisenberg Principle (from Wikipedia: "Historically, the uncertainty principle has been confused with a related effect in physics, called the observer effect, which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the system, that is, without changing something within a system").

• The press secretary flak jacket story with the notes left for future press secretaries is true, although it never was an actual "flak jacket" but began as a men's vest with a bulletproof lining. Ron Nessen, President Ford's press secretary, first handed down the jacket to his successor in 1977.

End credits freeze frame: Carol and CJ at a press briefing.

Previous episode: The Supremes

Next episode: Talking Points