Wrapping Up Season 5

Season 5 was a turning point in the history of The West Wing. Show creator Aaron Sorkin had departed, after receiving writing credits for 85 of the first 90 episodes of the series (and that's including Documentary Special, which we really shouldn't). John Wells, best known as the producer of ER, took over running the show and steered it into a slightly different direction, with more personal-relationship oriented plotlines and sometimes a more soap-opera-y feel. The show also suffered from a writing staff looking to find its footing without Sorkin, with a loss of a lot of humor and lightness his writing provided.

So it's not surprising that the ratings slide the series first encountered in Season 4 continued into Season 5. The show went from the 22nd most viewed TV series in 2002-03 to number 29 for 2003-04, dropping from an average of 13.5 million viewers per episode to 11.8 (in the show's heyday as a top 15 ranked series in Seasons 2 and 3, it averaged around 17 million viewers per episode). By comparison, though, in today's fractured broadcast/cable/streaming world of television, in 2021-22 the highest-rated non-sporting-event TV series, NCIS, averaged 10.9 million viewers, which makes The West Wing's numbers from 20 years ago seem pretty legit.

The season-opening 7A WF 83429 had over 18 million viewers watching, actually slightly ahead of the Season 4 debut episode 20 Hours In America, as people tuned in to see if there would be a resolution to Zoey's kidnapping cliffhanger ... but when that episode didn't resolve anything, people (including me) started tuning out. After that, viewers rarely cracked 13 million for following episodes, and after The Stormy Present aired to begin 2004 the numbers didn't even get above 12 million for the last twelve episodes of the season. Compare that to the past four years where only one episode in all four seasons (Privateers) had fewer than 12 million viewers.

It's difficult to maintain excellence (and it's difficult to measure excellence by simply numbers of viewers and Nielsen ratings), and that gets even harder when your creator and series guide moves on, leaving the creative direction to others. Now, I'm not saying Season 5 was bad - there were definitely high points like The Supremes and Separation Of Powers - but it was certainly different, and absolutely less consistent. It's completely understandable to see viewership drop under these circumstances.

The show also ended up considerably less critically lauded than in the past. After winning the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series the past four years running, with 10 other Emmys awarded in other categories, only Allison Janney earned an Emmy for this season - and that was actually for what's regarded as one of the poorer episodes of the year (Access). The show had won 14 Emmys with 47 nominations over the first four seasons; this year it was one win in seven nominations.

Once viewership starts declining in this way, producers often make changes in an effort to spur interest from new viewers, and/or bring lost viewers back. Sometimes these changes are subtle, sometimes they are radical, sometimes it means bringing in new characters (Cousin Oliver on The Brady Bunch, or Jonathan Winters in Mork & Mindy) or revamping the situations or the setting (Laverne & Shirley moving from Milwaukee to Los Angeles, for instance). Nothing quite so radical happened here, but we did see some personnel adjustments - Ryan Pierce, Josh's intern, and Rena, Toby's assistant, seemed to be brought in to add a "younger perspective" to the cast; and towards the end of the season we saw Mary McCormack's Kate Harper added to our story. While she remains a "Special Guest Star" at this time, along the lines of Gary Cole's Vice President Russell, she'll eventually become a full cast member and significant player in Seasons 6 and 7.

The big change in direction won't come until later in Season 6, with the shift to covering the campaign for the 2006 Presidential election (for a good part of Seasons 6 and 7 the episodes alternate between campaign entries and Bartlet administration goings-on), and we'll also get some of our characters taking on new and more challenging roles. We still have to live through episodes like The Hubbert Peak and Ninety Miles Away, but the overall quality, I think, takes a turn for the better with the campaign episodes and the show finishes strongly in Season 7.

My Personal Blogging Progression

Just for funsies, I thought I'd take a look at how long it's taking me to make my way through this rewatch as I blog my thoughts for you. Turns out I began this entire process back in April of 2017, mostly inspired by the podcast The West Wing Weekly, hosted by Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway. If you consider yourself a fan of The West Wing, I'd highly encourage you to give that podcast a listen ... heck, pair up their entries on each episode with my blog posts, for a double-your-pleasure kind of thing. I had only just finished up a rewatch of the show to help me get through what was going on in the political world of 2015-16 (a rewatch which, as I've mentioned, was the very first time I'd actually watched almost all of Season 5). Anyway, April 28, 2017, I published my first post on Pilot - immediately followed a few days later by another post with stuff I forgot to mention.

My formatting and structure have changed a bit from the beginning, plus back then I was still fully employed and often viewing episodes and taking notes during break time at my job. Add to that family time, my acting endeavors, my part-time football play-by-play gig on the radio, buying and selling a house and moving a year and a half ago (not to mention a devastating storm that knocked power out to my house for nearly two weeks and disrupted life in my city for months), and sometimes it took a little while to work my way through. I knew I could never commit to weekly posts, like Josh and Hrishi did for their podcast, but I just soldiered on the best I could.

So, how long has it taken me? This is now mid- February of 2023, so it took a little less than six years to cover five seasons of the show (69 months, to be exact). I certainly didn't intend for my blogs to take even longer than the actual broadcast time of the show, but what can you do? I'd hoped with my retirement at the end of 2018 I could speed up my efforts, but life continues to be, well, lived. I do feel like I'm stepping up a bit better going into 2023, my note-taking and blog structure is getting a bit more streamlined, so ... we'll see.

-Season 1: about 15 months (April 2017 to July 2018)

 

-Season 2: I raced through one of the best seasons in TV history in 12 months (August 2018 to July 2019)

 

-Season 3: again, 12 months from August 2019 to July 2020

 

-Season 4: things got bogged down a little, what with a derecho and moving ... this ended up taking about 19 months, starting in July 2020 and wrapping up in January 2022

 

-Season 5: despite the draggier nature of the season's episodes and the less interesting stories overall, I almost got back to my Season 2/3 pace, covering 13 months from January 2022 to February 2023 ... although I ended in quite a rush, with my last seven blog entries in just over ten weeks 

Where Have You Gone, Mandy Hampton?

This may be kind of silly, but I thought with five seasons under my belt it might be fun to reminisce about characters who have come and gone, perhaps to return later or perhaps not, and sometimes disappearing without a trace. After all, the series hit that magical 100-episode syndication mark during Season 5, so that's about a good a time as any.

• Let's start with the originator and first resident of Mandyville, Mandy Hampton (Moira Kelly). Second-billed as a regular cast member from the start, Mandy was intended to be a foil for Josh, an ex-girlfriend brought into the Bartlet White House as a savvy media specialist. Kelly and Brad Whitford never really clicked chemistry-wise (especially noticeable as Janel Moloney's Donna set off sparks playing against Whitford), and the writers struggled to find any real role for Mandy in the storylines. She was last seen in What Kind Of Day Has It Been discussing the President's visual look at an upcoming town hall, and perhaps most strikingly has never been seen or even referred to since - not even in flashbacks to the campaign or times when she and Josh would have been together. That's a really odd character ending for a series that's usually pretty good about keeping long-time references alive.
  

• Then there's Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), who was the first-billed regular cast member for the four seasons he was on the show. I've gone over some of the stories behind Lowe's departure (he and Sorkin apparently never got along, Sorkin started writing him out of main plotlines, Lowe felt disrepected and underpaid - there's some interesting background about that in my Season 4 wrapup post), but at least there have been a couple of mentions of Sam's existence after he left to run for Congress. He was last seen in Red Haven's On Fire, but don't be surprised if Mr. Seaborn pops up again before the series concludes.
  

• Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter) was a dazzling, spunky addition to the White House Counsel's Office starting with In This White House, and had some really fun storylines in her short time on the show. Unfortunately, Sorkin wasn't sure he could write enough stories for Ainsley to keep her as a regular cast member, and when Procter took a full-time gig on CSI: Miami (which debuted in the fall of 2002) she could no longer play the recurring role of Ainsley. Sorkin still regrets not being able to find a full-time role for her on The West Wing. Her final appearance was in The U.S. Poet Laureate, but like Sam, her existence has been mentioned in later episodes. Ainsley might also appear again in Season 7.
  

• Amy Gardner (Mary-Louise Parker) exploded on the scene in The Women Of Qumar flirting with Josh over water balloons. They had quite an on-again/off-again romantic relationship, which ends at one point over a political fight regarding a welfare funding bill (Josh weakens Amy's standing so much she has to resign her position at the Women's Leadership Council), but after Amy is hired as Abbey's Chief of Staff in Red Haven's On Fire they rekindle their relationship in Jefferson Lives. Amy leaves Josh and the White House for good in Constituency Of One after her efforts on behalf of Abbey get her chewed out by the President. Amy is another character that hasn't disappeared forever; she'll pop up again in the campaign episodes of Season 6.
  

• Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield) first appeared as the Washington Post White House correspondent in A Proportional Response. He and CJ had a flirty relationship throughout Season 1, then Concannon disappeared from the show after The Portland Trip. He came back in Holy Night, kissing CJ as Santa Claus and then explaining his dogged pursuit of leads in the story of Abdul Shareef's killing. After covering the events around Zoey's kidnapping in 7A WF 83429, Danny disappears again ... although like Sam and Ainsley he is still referenced as existing outside the events we see onscreen. Danny does make a significant reappearance in Season 7.
  

Then we have the deaths:

• Admiral Percy Fitzwallace (John Amos) first appeared in A Proportional Response as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and played his part as President Bartlet's friend and guide through the thickets of military brass throughout the first four seasons. Fitzwallace retired after The Dogs Of War, then was asked by President Bartlet to tag along on the congressional delegation to the Middle East, where he was killed in the IED attack on their motorcade in Gaza.
  

• Dolores Landingham (Kathryn Joosten) was President Bartlet's loyal personal secretary from the very start in Pilot (and we later were witness to their first meeting back at Jed's boarding school in Two Cathedrals). We learned her tragic family backstory of losing her twin boys in Vietnam in In Excelsis Deo; then were saddened by her death in a car accident in 18th And Potomac. We got to see Mrs. Landingham in Jed's mind as he pondered his future in Two Cathedrals, and we also saw her in flashbacks in Bartlet For America and Debate Camp. 
  

• Simon Donovan (Mark Harmon) had a short run as the Secret Service agent on CJ's detail after her life was threatened in Enemies Foreign And Domestic. It looked like he and CJ might have been able to start a relationship after the threat ended, kissing in Shubert Alley in Posse Comitatus, but Simon was later shot dead during a bodega robbery in New York City in that same episode.
  

And the supporting/somewhat recurring characters:

• Justice Roberto Mendoza (Edward James Olmos) played a key role in The Short List, as the President and his advisers turned to him as a bold Supreme Court nominee instead of the safer, more moderate choice they'd originally made. Sam and Toby made a trip to Connecticut to get him out of jail in Celestial Navigation, and that's the last we saw of Mendoza. He's been mentioned several times since, most recently in The Supremes, so we know he's still around, but he doesn't actually appear, not even in episodes like The Red Mass when Supreme Court justices are shown.
  

• Joey Lucas (Marlee Matlin) first appeared as director of a congressional campaign in Take This Sabbath Day, but by her next appearance in 20 Hours In L.A. she had become a polling expert. Her role as a pollster and possibility as a romantic partner for Josh continued through her most recent spot on the show, The Benign Prerogative, where a pregnant Joey took Toby along on her polling-delivery-of-the-State-of-the-Union mall tour. She'll be back as the 2006 Presidential campaign ramps up.
  

• I can throw in former Vice President John Hoynes (Tim Matheson) here, although his departure from the administration was pretty obvious. From our first meeting in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" we saw tension between President Bartlet and Hoynes, tensions that were prodded and gradually explained as the series went on (Bartlet For America, when Hoynes learned he had lost the nomination to a man who was hiding a serious health condition, was the most obvious bone of contention). After he was discovered spilling government secrets to a woman he was having an affair with was uncovered in Life On Mars, he resigned the Vice Presidency ... only to return in Full Disclosure with a book deal that almost ended up exposing a one-night-stand he had with CJ. Yes, John Hoynes will be back and running for President again in Season 6.
  

• Sam's assistant Cathy (Suzy Nakamura) was seen throughout Season 1, but disappeared after that. Nakamura got a role on the TV series Daddio in the fall of 2000 and left The West Wing.
  

• Bonnie (Devika Parikh) was an assistant in the Communications bullpen right from the start, often seen (along with Ginger) providing support for Toby. Bonnie's appearances began to trail off in Seasons 3 and 4, and her last appearance on the show was in Shutdown.
  

• Speaking of Ginger (Kim Webster), she first appeared in A Proportional Response as "Kim," then became Ginger in In Excelsis Deo. She was Toby's top assistant through the first four seasons, but with the new direction of the show in Season 5 only appeared twice that year (the last time in Han). Ginger isn't completely gone from the White House, but she only has a couple of episodes yet to show up in.
  

• And speaking of the new direction of the show in Season 5, we saw Ryan Pierce (Jesse Bradford) interning with Josh beginning in The Dogs Of War. He appeared sporadically throughout the season, with his internship (and role) ending in Talking Points as he becomes legislative director for a congressman. Even though the episode sets him up as a potential thorn in Josh's side, we never see Ryan again.
  

• Also, there's Rena (Melissa Marsala). She first appears in Shutdown wearing casual, revealing clothes as she picks up garbage, mysteriously still working on a government payroll even while all non-essential workers are sent home. By The Benign Prerogative she's Toby's new personal assistant, but after The Supremes she disappears without a trace, or a mention.  
  

• As long as we're in Season 5 additions, there's Angela Blake (Michael Hyatt). Her character was mentioned by Leo when he asked Margaret to get hold of her in 7A WF 83429; she first showed up in The Dogs Of War talking about polling numbers for President Bartlet during Zoey's kidnapping; then she was brought in to lead the budget negotiations with Congress in Disaster Relief, which end up in ruins until Josh manages to save the day in Shutdown. We learned her backstory as one of Leo's closest advisers at the Department of Labor when he was Secretary of Labor in the early 1990s, and she also pushes Charlie and her friend's daughter Meshell into dating in The Benign Prerogative ... after which she also disappears from existence.
  

• Ben (Brian Kerwin) pops up as a romantic partner for CJ. First referred to in Constituency Of One as someone CJ lived with for six months back around her college days and is now trying to reconnect with her, Ben actually appears in Carol's office (with one of the slowest camera reveals in series history) in An Khe. CJ plans to try to make an effort to build a relationship with him as he shows up in a couple of later episodes, and is last spoken of in No Exit when CJ has to cancel a camping trip with him when the West Wing is locked down. He is never spoken of again.
  

• Hmm, seems that Season 5's new show runners threw a lot of new and different characters at the walls of the West Wing to see what would stick, and ... nothing much did.
  

2004 EMMY AWARDS

The West Wing was a critical darling for its first three seasons, winning 12 Emmys and the Outstanding Drama Series award in those three years. In Season 4, while the show was named the outstanding drama of the year for the fourth consecutive time, it only received one other statuette, and not for acting (it was a directing Emmy). Now, in Season 5, with Aaron Sorkin gone and the consistency faltering, there was only one Emmy win on tap out of seven nominations (after earning an average of nearly 12 nominations in each of the first four seasons).

The lone Emmy Award went to Allison Janney:

• Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, for her performance in Access, her fourth Emmy win for the show. Janney earned the Supporting Actress award for Seasons 1 and 2, and a Lead Actress Emmy for Season 3. She was also nominated in that category in Season 4 but did not receive the trophy.
  

The other Emmy nominations the show received for Season 5 included:

• The series was nominated for Outstanding Drama Series for the fifth year in a row, but for the first time it did not win. The HBO drama The Sopranos took home the statue.

• Martin Sheen earned his fifth straight nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (Memorial Day). James Spader took the Emmy home for his work on The Practice.
  

• John Spencer was nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for An Khe and Memorial Day. It was the fifth straight nomination for Spencer, who won in the category for Season 3. This year's award went to Michael Imperioli for The Sopranos.
  

• Both Stockard Channing (7A WF 83429/No Exit) and Janel Moloney (No Exit/Gaza) were nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. Channing has been nominated in the category all five seasons of The West Wing, winning the award for Season 3, while it was Moloney's second nomination. The award went to Drea de Matteo for The Sopranos.
  

• Matthew Perry got his second nomination in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series category for Separation Of Powers, after also being nominated for his appearances in Season 4. That Emmy went to William Shatner for The Practice.
  

2004 GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS

The 2004 Golden Globes were held in late January, as the Hollywood Foreign Press Association honored performances from the end of Season 4 and the first part of Season 5. The West Wing earned three Golden Globe nominations, but once again didn't take home any awards.

The nominations:

• The series earned its fifth consecutive nomination for Best Television Series - Drama, which was won this season by 24.

• Martin Sheen got his fifth straight nomination for Best Actor in a Drama Series but the trophy went to Anthony LaPaglia for Without A Trace.

• Allison Janney got her first Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Series (after several previous nominations for Supporting Actress), but that award was given to Frances Conroy for Six Feet Under.

2004 SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS

The SAG awards were held in late February 2004, with nominations coming midway through the 2003-2004 season. The show, Martin Sheen, and Allison Janney had all won SAG awards at both the 2001 and 2002 events - the same three nominees fell short in both 2003 and 2004.

• The show's cast received another nomination, their fourth, for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. The trophy went to the cast of Six Feet Under.

• Martin Sheen was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series. Kiefer Sutherland got the award for 24.

• And Allison Janney was again nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series, but saw the award go to Frances Conroy for Six Feet Under.

Season 5 saw some big changes in the series - the departure of Aaron Sorkin, the arrivals (and then departures) of several younger, hipper characters trying to pull in the younger demographic, episodes that ranged from pretty darned good to fairly dreadful, a change in direction to more dour, personal relationship kinds of story lines - but still remained among the best dramatic series on network television. Season 6 will continue a sort of bumpy start as we negotiate the resolution of the cliffhangers (Will Jed finally get us peace in the Middle East? Will Donna stick with the dashing Irish photographer or finally express her unspoken love for Josh? How will Leo cope with Jed turning away from his advice?), but the early stages of the beginning of the next presidential campaign will eventually bring us some fresh blood and fresh air. And some of our characters will find new jobs and new directions ... stand by and see.

Memorial Day - TWW S5E22

 

Original airdate: May 19, 2004

Written by: John Sacret Young (2) & Josh Singer (2)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (20)

Synopsis

• As calls for a retributory military strike in Gaza mount on all sides, President Bartlet desperately looks for a peaceful resolution, which frays the relationship between Jed and Leo. A mysterious note to Josh from an unexpected source may offer a path away from a military response. Josh meets Colin, and Donna takes a sudden turn for the worse.
  

"I'm the one in office. I'll be the one who's judged." 

Leo: "You get the best information, you consider all your options, you look at the potential good ... and you do what you think is right."

The problem facing President Bartlet here is that it's not always easy to do what's right - in fact, it's not always easy to even figure out what's right. That's particularly difficult when it comes to the harsh reality of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which seems to be locked in the unending cycle of death followed by retribution followed by revenge for the retribution, on and on into infinity. As his military officials and closest advisers and Congress and the American people call out for the administration to strike back and answer for the IED attack that killed two Congressmen and the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, President Bartlet keeps searching for another way, a way that won't result in the deaths of innocents, a way to serve justice on those responsible without harming others who weren't.

 

Unfortunately, almost every direction the President turns is cut off by that unending cycle of violence. The FBI thinks they've located the leader of the Palestinian splinter cell responsible; President Bartlet asks Chairman Farad, head of the Palestinian Authority, to help apprehend him; but Israeli bombs an apartment building in Gaza, killing not only their terrorist target but also children. That inflames Palestinian anger, resulting in a suicide bomb attack on a bus killing at least a dozen Israelis and wounding a hundred more. In turn, that leads to the Israelis surrounding and cutting off Farad, keeping him out of the negotiation loop entirely.

The options presented to the President are limited - an assault on the splinter cell's hideout to capture the leader, which likely would result in many American military deaths; or a missile strike on the apartment building where he's hiding, which would kill dozens of innocent Palestinians. The President keeps demanding limits; he can't accept 50 excess deaths, even 20 or 30 makes him reluctant.

And that's basically where we are early in this episode, which I think is actually a pretty fine entry in Season 5. That may surprise you, given my criticism of how The West Wing usually superficially deals with big geopolitical problems in my entry for Gaza, but this is different. We're not given the whole massive problem of Israeli settlements taking over Palestinian territory and the Palestinians fighting for a state of their own and all the various factions and their points of view and the seemingly intractable problem of how the Israelis and Palestinians can ever coexist ... it boils down to a moral decision by the President, how best to respond to a horrific situation, how many lives ought to be spent, and isn't it somehow worth it to go that extra mile and try to reach for a less violent solution, no matter how unlikely? Then add in the spy-thriller elements of the secret message to Josh in the flowers for Donna leading to an undercover restaurant meeting in Germany, and the whole episode really hangs together well.

That moral issue for Bartlet, by the way, is much more significant than we might first think as he urges the military options to risk fewer and fewer lives in Gaza. He knows missile strikes by the United States in that region are likely to spur terrorist attacks right here at home - it's not just Palestinian lives he's concerned about, it's the protection of American lives as well, and he drives that home after Leo calls him "gun shy":

Leo: "Your priority should be the security of this country. I think you're gun-shy, sir. The most important moment of your Presidency and you're going to blow it because you're human. You're a father who almost lost his --"

President (forcefully): "You think this is about Zoey? You're damn right it's about Zoey, and Ellie, and Elizabeth and Mallory. It's about bombs in Penn Station, in Macy's, in Starbucks. Bombing Gaza could be the most dangerous move this country has made in two centuries."

Leo: "Or not."

President: "In 75 years we'll know whether we're right or wrong, but no one standing here today can tell me that with any certainty. I'm the one in the office. I'll be the one who's judged."

This brings us to what actually is at the heart of the episode, and a theme that's going to carry us right into Season 6. The relationship between Jed and Leo has been the foundation of the administration and of the TV series from the start, with the flashbacks of Bartlet For America showing Leo's inspiration for Jed's Presidential run. Like any long-lasting relationship, things aren't always perfect - but we haven't seen the cracks between them quite like we do here.

John Sacret Young and Josh Singer try to make this growing division sharper by flashing us back to a few days after the election in 1998, when President-elect Bartlet has to deal with a military adventure being left on his plate by the outgoing administration. Leo provides some good counsel there, and Jed's reliance on his advice and opinions prove to make them a great team, so much so that Jed tells Leo, "It should be you, Leo. You, not me" as President.

Leo's reaction then is the first time we see any trace of his desire for higher office. In Bartlet For America when he first brought up the idea of Jed running for President, Jed thought maybe Leo could run for a House seat, knowing his addiction issues would be a problem in a campaign, but Leo never appeared to think about office for himself. Anyway, what these scenes prove is how much Bartlet counts on Leo everyday, for guiding him on decisions big and small.

And now, when the decisions may be the most significant of the entire Presidency, the President isn't so quick to go along with Leo. It all begins with the President's address to the nation, offering his words of solace and resolve after the Gaza attack killed four Americans. Looking over the address at the last minute, Bartlet takes a pen to the script, taking out some of the most inflammatory language.

 

Both Toby (who wrote the address) and Leo are less than enthused with what looks like a weakened response to the bombing of Congressmen.

Later, in the Situation Room Secretary Hutchinson and the military advisers present the options of an attack on the splinter cell leader in Gaza. The President balks at the potential number of "collateral damage" deaths, asking for other options, and Leo takes notice.

As the situation continues to develop and the President is searching for a non-military option (perhaps having the Palestinian Authority help on their end), he begins listening to advice from Kate Harper, the relatively new adviser from the National Security Council who is keeping her mind open on possibilities. Leo doesn't care for that.

"What do you think you're doing?"

What I find interesting about this little chewing-out of Kate is when Leo tells her "we don't push agendas here," he's actually been pushing his own agenda. He truly believes the only possible course of action is a quick military response, showing Congress and the American people that the administration will repay the killing of Americans in Gaza with force. But it's still an agenda, ignoring any other potential directions - and it's also directly in opposition to Leo's 1998 advice, the quote up at the top of this post, the one where Leo tells Jed to take in as much information as he can and then "do what you think is right." Leo doesn't want Jed to do that now, he wants him to do what Leo thinks is right.

 

When another possible direction comes up - a secret message from the Palestinian Prime Minister, a man the administration had always thought of as in Farad's pocket, but who is now offering to go around Farad and provide another avenue to capture the splinter cell leader - Kate thinks there's a small possibility of success. Leo thinks it's a waste of time.

I thought the staging of this scene in the Oval Office was pretty neat; Kate and Leo, framed as if they're on the President's shoulders whispering in his ears, like the trope of the devil and the angel:

The President ponders, fiddling with a baseball. He decides to follow up on Prime Minister Mukharat's offer and delay the military strike. Leo doesn't agree, but Jed dismisses him with a curt "Thank you."

 

This literally may have never happened to Leo before. He's obviously dumbstruck, wondering if his counsel is being heard or if he's being sidelined. Keep on watching, folks, this is a pretty engrossing storyline coming in future episodes.

About that secret message ... let's go to Germany. In Gaza we saw Josh fly across the Atlantic to the hospital where Donna was recovering after being seriously injured in the bomb attack. Now Donna is finally waking up, leading to this response from Josh:

Donna seems to be recovering well, with her collapsed lung repaired and her broken femur healing. She and Josh continue their usual banter, and then ...

Colin arrives, the Irish photographer who grew close to Donna on her trip, guiding her to interview people on all sides of the conflict, and eventually spending the night in her bed. As this is the first Josh is even aware of the fellow, he's a bit taken aback by the affection and the kiss.

Does Josh actually love Donna? Is Donna secretly in love with Josh (a question Amy drunkenly asked in Commencement, but was never answered)? Well, we know what we think ... but Josh and Donna don't seem to know what they think. Colin awkwardly tries to explain that Donna never said anything about another guy, Josh denies it's even an issue, but ... yeah, awkward fits the bill.

Then some flowers arrive with a mysterious note.

It turns out to be a coded message, using terms for the sons of Prime Minister Mukharat, with the Arabic message being a time and a restaurant. It's a back-channel offer to the administration via Josh, as the Prime Minister wants to try to help defuse the tensions in Gaza without the interference of Chairman Farad, who is not only currently isolated incommunicado by the Israelis after the bus bombing but also has never followed through on his promises for peace.

That's the direction the President decides to go with Kate's information, the direction that leaves Leo behind. President Bartlet says reach out to Mukharat, behind the scenes, and see if he might be able to help solve the dilemma. Meanwhile, in Germany, things take a dramatic turn. Josh comes back from his secretive diplomatic mission to find Donna's room an empty mess.

She's developed a blood clot, a serious complication that could be life-threatening, and she's in surgery.

 

And then the potential secretly negotiated route to peace might end in disaster when Chairman Farad gets in front of TV cameras with a statement that could sink the whole thing:

Toby (on phone with Leo): "Chairman Farad, he's on TV, he's thanking us for inviting him and Prime Minister Mukharat to a summit with the Israelis."

Leo (livid): "We didn't invite him! We haven't even formally invited Mukharat!"

There's our Season 5 cliffhanger. Donna's life hangs in the balance, with Josh and Colin both there by her side, and the prospect of bringing the murderer of Americans to justice in Gaza without civilian casualties may be ruined by a power struggle between Palestinian factions. And looming over it all, the growing fracture between Jed and Leo, devoted old friends and political partners, dealing with the potential of it never being the same between them.

Tales Of Interest!

- We roll right into what is Memorial Day Monday (which was May 30 in 2004), which means the bombing in Gaza occurred over the weekend prior. The episode begins where Gaza left off, with the President and Kate leaving Fitzwallace's house after consoling his widow - that had to have been Sunday evening, May 29th. All of the following events take place during the same day, with President Bartlet's appearance at the Orioles game set for that night.

- This does cause us to take a look at the different times between Washington and Germany. They are six hours apart, so the morning scenes in the White House would have been afternoon for Josh and Donna ... then Josh's secret "diplomatic meeting" at the restaurant that evening would have been midday for Kate and the White House. I guess things could have timed out as we see them play out here - it's more unbelievable to think Josh could have gotten to Landstuhl as quickly as he apparently did in Gaza.

- It's understandable that Josh wouldn't have brought flowers when he first appeared at the hospital in Germany - Donna's condition still wasn't known, he was racing the clock to get there - but it goes a little bit deeper to see his reaction to Colin's arrival with an armful of flowers. After his restaurant meeting with a representative from Mukharat's team, Josh returns to the hospital with not just a giant bouquet ... but a giant bouquet of red roses, which could be construed as romantic, perhaps?

- I mentioned this fellow a few entries back, but didn't get a good look at him until this episode. This older gentleman with white hair and a buzz cut has been seen as a background actor in White House scenes throughout the entire course of the series. Once you notice him, you'll see him walking by again and again - he gets a special call-out in the final episode of the series.

 

 

-I'll throw the baseball stuff here in this section. Presidents throwing out the first pitch at major league games has been a thing since Taft in 1910, although it's often been the first pitch of the season's home opener for a Washington baseball team, instead of a Memorial Day first pitch as we see here. Washington, though, hasn't had a baseball team based there since the Senators moved to Texas after the 1971 season, leaving the nearby Baltimore Orioles as the "DC area" team. (That did change in 2005, when the Montreal Expos moved to DC and began play as the Washington Nationals.) 

 

Toby and Charlie (and Josh) all have ideas to help President Bartlet cope with throwing a baseball while wearing a bulletproof vest without looking like he's totally incompetent, and Toby and Charlie insist he practice so he doesn't sail the pitch over the backstop and give the image of not being in command during this time of national tension. So they mark off the distance in a White House hallway.

 

 

 And just as Toby suspected, the President needs the practice - even at a much shorter distance.

 

Everything appears to work out by the time the President offers up his pitch at Camden Yards as the episode ends (we hear a pretty solid thump in a mitt as the pitch lands).

 

- Leo calls out, "Jed!" at the end, after getting Toby's frantic phone call about Farad as the President is heading out to the mound at Camden Yards. Leo never calls the President "Jed," only "Sir" or "Mr. President." You could take this as a symbol of Leo feeling like he's losing his grip on his understanding of Jed, or a reflection of how Farad's announcement is going to ruin this entire delicate balancing act, but I don't think it's that complicated - it's just the writers' way to tie in that scene to the flashback of Leo calling out "Jed!" before that New Hampshire press conference in 1998.

 

- Martin Sheen was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in this episode. It was Sheen's fifth nomination (with no wins) for that Emmy in the five seasons of The West Wing. The award ended up going to James Spader for The Practice. John Spencer also got his fifth nomination for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Emmy, for this episode and An Khe. Spencer won the Supporting Actor Emmy in Season 3. The award this year went to Michael Imperioli for The Sopranos.

- Why'd They Come Up With Memorial Day?

Most of the episode takes place on Memorial Day, which in 2004 was on May 30, a week and a half after this episode aired.

Quotes    

(President Bartlet begins making edits on his copy of the address)

CJ: "Sir, Carol's circulating the draft already."

President: "'Tyranny of terror'? 'Death mongers'? What is this, Tolkien?"

Toby: "The stronger your language now, the more leeway --"

President: "I'm not saying it."

-----

Jed: "So you're telling me, with less than three months left in office, the President and Admiral Fitzwallace are going to saddle me with a war in the Philippines."

----- 

Jed (to Leo): "Admiral Fitzwallace ... remind me to fire that guy."

-----

(Donna has just awakened from being unconscious)

Josh: "Hey."

Donna: "What happened to you?"

Josh: "To ... me?"

Donna: "You need to shave."

-----

Toby: "He wants to throw from the mound? Have you ever seen him throw a baseball?"

Charlie: "Yeah."

Toby: "I'm not sure he can throw 60 feet without the vest."

Charlie: "It's actually longer when you factor in the vertical --"

-----

Donna: "How long are you staying?"

Josh: "I don't know, I figured if I hang around long enough one of the nurses is bound to give me a sponge bath."

Donna: "Leo doesn't need you to --"

Josh: "I'm here as long as I need to be here."

-----

Josh (to Kate on the phone): "You want me to have a secret meeting with the Son of the Sword?"

Donna: "I must be high from the morphine."

Josh (on phone): "You know, stealth isn't exactly my strong suit."

Donna: "He's very clumsy."

[...]

Donna: "Is this dangerous?"

Josh (to Donna): "No, it's a diplomatic meeting. It's not dangerous." (thinks - to Kate on the phone) "Donna wants to know if it's dangerous."

Kate: "You flew Lufthansa, you've been wandering the streets alone - if someone wanted to kill you, it would have happened already."

Josh: "Yeah, that's not so reassuring."

  

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

• There's Nancy! She's played by Martin Sheen's daughter Renée Estevez.

• The Israeli ambassador played by Natalija Nogulich (Star Trek: The Next Generation, Days Of Our Lives, Fuller House) appears. Her character will continue into the first few episodes of Season 6.
  

• Gerald McRaney (Simon & Simon, Major Dad, NCIS: Los Angeles) appears via flashback as Air Force General Alan Adamle. There was a passing mention of an "Adamle at the Pentagon" in A Proportional Response, then we met General Adamle (and learned about his Vietnam service as a combat flight controller for pilot Leo) in War Crimes. Now we discover he was advising President-elect Bartlet immediately after the 1998 election.

• The issue of an outgoing President leaving an overseas military adventure for the next President to deal with (as in President-elect Bartlet finding out about 1000 peacekeeping troops on the way to the Philippines) might be something you viewers want to keep in the back of your minds.
  

• Bartlet's discomfort in dealing with the military and his relative inexperience in military matters early in his first term was a big part of episodes like "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" and A Proportional Response.
  

• Chris is the only one of the regular White House reporters that we see in this episode.
  

• Speaker of the House Jeff Haffley reappears, urging Leo to get the President to strike back in revenge for the congressmen killed in Gaza.

• Jason Isaacs (the Harry Potter films, The Patriot, The Death Of Stalin) continues his multi-episode arc as Irish photojournalist Colin Ayres, who developed a romantic relationship with Donna during her few days in the Gaza.

 

• I won't stand for this Qumar erasure. That Middle Eastern country (first mentioned in The Women Of Qumar) was a huge part of the storyline from The Black Vera Wang all the way through Season 4 and the beginning of Season 5. Its Defense Minister Abdul Shareef was killed by President Bartlet's order after Shareef organized attempted terror attacks in the United States, and the country was bombed by Acting President Walken in The Dogs Of War after Zoey's kidnapping and the killing of American sailors in Turkey. We saw where Qumar was located during some episodes back then, in what is actually southern Iran right across the Strait of Hormuz from Dubai.

From 7A WF 83429

Well, guess what ... the Situation Room maps completely ignore the existence of Qumar now.

Do you suppose Walken literally bombed it right off the map?

• Charlie brings up Notre Dame, President Bartlet's alma mater, with this quip about preparation for the first pitch at the Orioles game:

Toby: "Mr. President. You'll be on national TV. Millions of Americans will be watching. Given their current state of mind, I'd rather not have you walk into a stadium of 40,000 people and hang a curveball over the backstop."

Charlie: "He's right, sir. Everyone agrees."

President: "Everyone?"

Charlie: "Leo, Josh, your wife, the Notre Dame athletic department ... "

• We get the Bartlet jacket flip, only this time with an overcoat in one of the 1998 flashbacks. Martin Sheen's left arm was injured at birth, making it difficult for him to lift it higher than his shoulder, so he developed this method of putting on coats and jackets.

• In the flashback scenes Jed says to Leo, "I can't do this without you," leading Leo to reply, "You think I'd let you? There's a reason I stayed sober." We discovered Leo's past as an alcoholic and drug abuser who went through rehab in 1993 in The Short List.
  

• Leo brings up the fact that Jed is a father who almost lost his daughter, which refers to Zoey's kidnapping in Commencement. President Bartlet lists the names of all three of his daughters (Zoey, Ellie, and Elizabeth) as well as Leo's own daughter Mallory.
  

• Toby shouldn't have been quite so shocked at Farad's gambit of inviting himself to Camp David; he did essentially the same thing in Ellie when he had CJ announce Seth Gillette had agreed to be on the Blue Ribbon Commission on Social Security ... without actually asking him and giving him a chance to publicly turn the White House down.
  

DC location shots    

• The final scene of President Bartlet throwing out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game was shot at Camden Yards in Baltimore. That was filmed before the Orioles game against the Toronto Blue Jays on April 23. The Orioles were the only Major League Baseball franchise in the Washington, DC, area at the time - the announcement that the Montreal Expos were moving to Washington (eventually becoming the Washington Nationals) came in September of 2004, four months after this episode.

 

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

• The MSNBC cable news network continues to get a lot of exposure, though we also get some looks at the CNN logo as well.

• President Bartlet brings up Tolkien as he complains about the strident tone of his address to the nation.

• Secretary Hutchinson mentions the option of a Tomahawk missile strike from the USS Carney. The Carney is a US Navy guided-missile destroyer commissioned in 1996.
  

• Previous Presidents mentioned include Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and William Howard Taft (derisively referred to as "Fatty" by Bartlet). President Bartlet connects Wilson to the Treaty of Versailles (which ended World War I but it can be argued the treaty's measures laid the groundwork for World War II); FDR's beaning of a photographer actually happened (sort of; Roosevelt's toss hit the photographer's camera, and it was in 1940 instead of 1937 as Josh said); and Charlie was right, Taft was indeed the first President to throw out the first pitch at a major league game, in 1910.
  

• Toby compares the slow decision-making of President Bartlet to Hamlet. 
  

• Josh says to CJ that Donna is "singing tunes from My Fair Lady" and is doing "a whole Julie Andrews thing" (which would mean he's referring to the Broadway show and not the movie starring Audrey Hepburn); he later tells Donna that Colin is charming in a "bodice-ripping, Heathcliff-on-the-moor, I'm-too-sexy-for-my-camera sort of way."
  

• Former baseball players Cy Young and Stan Musial are mentioned ("I thought Stan Musial was a pediatrician in Abbey's medical school class").
  

End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet getting advice on options in the Situation Room (with Qumar not appearing on that map in the background).

Previous episode: Gaza

Next episode: NSF Thurmont

 

 

Gaza - TWW S5E21

 

Original airdate: May 12, 2004

Written by: Peter Noah (3)  

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (19)

Synopsis

• After an explosion in Gaza kills two congressmen and Admiral Fitzwallace while seriously injuring Donna, tensions grow over an inevitable military response and the prospect of more violence in the Middle East. In flashbacks we see Donna get insights from both Israelis and Palestinians, and watch her grow close to an Irish photojournalist. Josh shows his devotion to Donna by flying to her side overseas.

"After 50 years of strife and futility, there's no dishonor in failure. The only dishonor might be not to try." 

With nearly five full seasons under its belt, The West Wing has settled into a fully realized, matured TV series, and in doing that it's developed some traditions of its own. One of those is ending seasons with a cliffhanger and/or a story arc covering several episodes. Season 1 ended with the Rosslyn shooting of What Kind Of Day Has It Been, and we had to wait until Season 2 to find out who'd actually been shot. Season 2 ended with maybe the greatest run of episodes in any dramatic TV series ever: the epic six-episode arc covering President Bartlet's health revelations and the "will-he-or-won't-he-run" plotline, although if you were paying attention Two Cathedrals wasn't really a cliffhanger in that respect. Well, the resolution of the attempted coup in Haiti didn't come until the next season, but that was hardly the main point. Season 3 had the arc of the death threats/Secret Service protection for CJ starting with Enemies Foreign And Domestic, Abdul Shareef's terrorist plot first revealed in The Black Vera Wang, and culminated with the Bermuda assassination of Shareef in Posse Comitatus. Not much cliffhanger there, either, except for how and when the killing of Shareef might be uncovered and what that would mean for the administration. Season 4, of course, had Commencement and Twenty Five - Aaron Sorkin's final episodes depicting the kidnapping of Zoey and President Bartlet stepping away from the Presidency, which were not just a cliffhanger, but quite the "here you go, guys, hope you can figure it out" that Sorkin dropped in the lap of the writers on his way out the door.

 

We are down to two episodes left in Season 5, and we're off and running again. The congressional delegation to the Middle East, to talk with both Palestinian and Israeli groups not necessarily connected with their respective governments, was first mentioned in The Supremes. It held no real significance until we discovered Josh was sending Donna on the trip in Talking Points, which certainly made us think this trip was probably going to turn out to be meaningful plot-wise. And right off the bat, we see congresspeople and Admiral Fitzwallace in the Gaza heat talking about Arab-Israeli tensions, Donna batting her eyes at a cute photographer, and suddenly:

As the photographer fights through his emotions, he snaps some pictures of a gravely injured, bloody Donna in the vehicle:

And we realize, yep, we're in season-ending cliffhanger territory again, what with the prospect of America getting involved militarily against the Palestinians and what's going to happen with Donna.

It's a combination of the "big issue" - working toward peace in the Middle East when it seems every hand reached out ends up getting blown off - and the "personal" - what's going to happen to Donna and how will Josh deal with his unspoken feelings for her. Frankly ... maybe not the best approach for the series to take. The West Wing is a political animal, always has been and needs to be, considering its very genesis; but it's not always very effective when it tries to take on huge real-life geopolitical issues. The conflict between Arabs and Israelis has been intractable since 1948; I don't think some TV-show writers in Los Angeles in 2004 are going to come up with the magic solution that's evaded diplomats and politicians for over 50 years. And the personal, soap-opera-y "relationship" approach to characters that has been successful for John Wells in shows like ER doesn't fit very well in this show, at least not for me. Sure, Sorkin had some relationships built into his stories in the day: Josh and Amy, CJ and Simon, even Donna and Jack Reese. But they just feel different now under the new showrunners. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, we're back to an episode structure that plays with time. After the explosion in Gaza, we see a quick shot of Josh on an airplane, then we go back in time at the White House, where Josh is complaining about the long e-mails Donna has been sending that he doesn't have time to read, and Toby is complaining that Andy keeps nagging him to see his kids. It doesn't take long for word of the explosion to arrive, as beepers go off all over the building, fatalities are reported but nobody knows who, exactly. Toby, with the fate of his ex-wife and mother of their two children unknown, is as emotional as we've ever seen him.

Josh, urgently watching TV coverage and hoping for some word on Donna, gets a supportive squeeze of his arm from CJ.

(It's really awesome to catch little things like this that show us how these characters feel about each other.)

Bouncing around in time some more, Josh (sitting in that airplane) opens up the e-mails from Donna that he hadn't read before.

 

 

This gives us a chance to see Donna's impressions of the delegation's trip, her growing connection to the Irish photojournalist Colin Ayres, and his help getting her in touch with some of those dealing with the day-to-day challenges of life in Gaza. There's the Palestinian electrician who can't work when Israel shuts down the border checkpoints, who knows others in his position who turn to terrorism to get money for their families:

There's the Israeli settler family in Gaza, dealing with mortar attacks on their homes and willing to shoot every Palestinian they see:

Colin shows Donna a videotape statement from a young Palestinian suicide bomber, who didn't even tell her husband her plans and left behind two young children. And they talk with a young Israeli soldier working at the checkpoint, who has seen the ugliness and atrocities committed by both sides:

Each visit gives Donna additional background that she includes in her e-mails that Josh is finally reading on the plane; and each time we see Donna in Gaza Colin is there, getting closer and more intimate, and finally we see him in Donna's bed as she types up her last report to Josh.

This is designed to give us, the viewer, more background and information about the conflict between Arabs and Israelis - but it's not very deep, doesn't provide a lot of understanding, and only serves to try to elicit some surface sympathy for all sides. Again, this show isn't going to solve a "tribal" problem (as Toby calls it) like this that's existed for a very long time, not in 43 minutes, so I give the writers a break on that front. At least they're trying to be a little bit balanced in their approach - suicide bombers aren't "heroes," but here's some background about their desperation and why they might think it's their only option; Israelis may be trying to protect their very existence, but they're also building homes on land that isn't theirs and shooting Palestinian children in revenge for attacks.

Okay, I'm not going to solve peace in the Middle East either (and this storyline actually is part of the season-ending cliffhanger, as President Bartlet grabs the issue by the horns to kick off Season 6). It's all a framework to build around the IED attack on the congressional delegation that kills two congressmen and Admiral Fitzwallace while seriously injuring Donna. The unprecedented attack on American lawmakers brings calls on the administration to retaliate, to get payback for the killing of congressmen - President Bartlet doesn't want to just go striking back blindly, he demands some evidence of who is responsible ... but also informs his military advisers to get an attack plan ready.

The staffers have a debate over the issue as well, as they wait to see the President in the Oval. Kate Harper actually tries to take a clear-eyed, pragmatic look at things, while Will is much less even-keeled:

Kate: "I'm not sure any credible Arab leader truly expects Israel's demise anymore, not even the Chairman."

Leo: "Don't be so sure."

Kate: "Well, there's a view that --"

Will: "Don't keep saying 'some argue' and 'there's a view.' Can we restrict it to your view?"

Kate: "Okay. Palestinians are no longer fighting to destroy the Jewish state. They're fighting for a state of their own, a revolutionary struggle against an occupying force, and revolutionaries will outlast and out-die occupiers every time."

Will: "I don't know if that's more simplistic or naive."

This discussion triggers Josh, but there's a lot more on his mind than conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Kate: "Or we use this as an opportunity. Employ the moral authority to re-engage in aggressively pressing both sides for peace."

Josh (with an outburst): "We need to kill them. We need to find them and kill them. We kill them. Then we find out who sent them and we kill them too."

Leo: "Josh ..."

Josh: "You kill the people who did it. You kill the people who planned it. Then you kill everyone who is happy about it ..."

(Charlie tells the group they can go into the Oval)

Leo: "Josh."

(Leo takes Josh into the Mural Room)

Josh: "An opportunity?"

Leo knows Josh very well. And he knows what's really taking up all the space in Josh's head.

Leo: "Where's Donna now?"

Josh: "She's being medevaced to Ramstein then transferred to Landestuhl for further treatment."

Leo: "An operation?"

Josh: "I don't know."

Leo: "We've got excellent people in Germany. (pause) If there is some place you'd rather be, everyone would understand."

Josh: "I'm fine."

Josh: "Thanks."

(Josh rushes out)

 And that's why Josh is on the plane, flying overseas to be at Donna's side - Donna, his loyal assistant, Donna, who's been a key part of his life since showing up at the New Hampshire campaign office in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II, Donna, who he's pestered and overworked and underappreciated, yet he's been there when it counted every time. And he's going to be there for her now.

He gets to the hospital in Germany, and is told her injuries are severe but not life-threatening (a compound fracture of the femur and a collapsed lung). He goes into her room.

And he settles in, by Donna's side, as we prepare for the season finale.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- I've mentioned before how the change in the direction and writing of the series at the beginning of Season 5 turned me off so much that I stopped watching the show in 2003. While I had been a dedicated West Wing fan from early on in Season 1, either making time to watch every Wednesday night or recording it on my trusty VCR, seeing President Bartlet turn over his office to Speaker Walken in Twenty Five basically did me in. I think I started watching the Season 5 premiere of 7A WF 83429, but the moody, sullen Bartlet and the continued presence of Walken in the Oval did nothing to keep me interested ... so I quit. I saw nothing else of Season 5 during its original run, not Shutdown, not The Stormy Present, not Full Disclosure, not The Supremes, not Access ... none of it. Not even the one with the Muppets! I spent the 2003-04 TV season watching other stuff, like The Drew Carey Show and Will & Grace and Frasier. Actually, looking back on what was on television that season, I didn't watch that much network TV at all, I guess, as nothing much rings a bell. (I was kind of busy at the time with kids getting into middle school activities and my air traffic control career, so ...)

I still remember the exact visual that brought me back.

I saw the NBC promo on TV for this episode, which featured this explosion of the motorcade. That spurred my interest enough to tune back in, and so I stayed with the series for the rest of the run. Even so, those episodes of Season 5 that I missed in 2003-04 remained unseen by me until I did a full rewatch of the entire series more than ten years later, so it wasn't until the summer of 2016 that I finally got to see them. And now even with this blogging rewatch you are following along with, it makes a total of just two or three times I've seen Season 5 (with the first four seasons, I've probably seen most of those episodes a half-dozen times at least, and the campaign episodes of Seasons 6 and 7 almost that many).

- In The Dogs Of War, Admiral Fitzwallace says he promised "Laura" a month on a boat for their honeymoon when they were married 32 years ago, a promise he wants to keep now as he retires. In this episode President Bartlet calls Fitzwallace's widow "Gail."

 

- It's not exactly funny given the circumstances, but what a great acting choice by Richard Schiff. After Andy gets in touch on his cell phone, and then she appears on the MSNBC television coverage, she waves at the camera, knowing Toby and the others are seeing her on the screen. Toby instinctively waves back a little, then, embarrassed,  moves his hand to his head as he realizes she can't see him. 

 

- There's a yellow school bus seen in the background of one of the Gaza scenes; those don't really exist in that part of the world.

- Janel Moloney was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Emmy award for her performance here and in No Exit. The Emmy would end up going to Drea de Matteo for The Sopranos.

- Why'd They Come Up With Gaza?

The Congressional delegation trip is to an area called Gaza, a Palestinian enclave in Israel that borders Egypt, which has been a focal point of Israeli/Palestinian conflict for over 50 years. At the time of this episode, the area was governed by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, with the rival Hamas party fighting for power. There were Israeli settlements in Gaza at that time; however in the fall of 2005 Israel unilaterally withdrew its settlers and its armed forces from Gaza (a process initially agreed to by the Israeli Knesset in February 2005, not quite a year after this episode aired).

Quotes    

Donna: "Black cars? Good choice for this climate."

Fitzwallace: "Everybody's this angry now, what must it have been like before air conditioning?" 

-----

Josh: "You hear from Andy?"

Toby: "Concision's not her problem. Every day the same three little words: 'see your children.' Before e-mail it was a lot harder for your ex-wife to hock you from 6000 miles away."

Josh: "Are the kids with Andy's mom?"

Toby: "The very definition of an approach-avoidance situation." 

----- 

Toby: "Maglie from the DNC, wants to talk about who to run for the two vacant House seats."

Will: "You're joking."

Toby: "They're still picking up pieces of these guys over there, he's talking about DeSantos' poachable district."

Will: "What's he calling you for?"

Toby: "He thought Josh'd be upset about Donna being in the car. I guess he figured since my ex-wife was only almost blown up that I'd only be almost upset." 

-----

Will: "President giving an address?"

Toby: "Tonight."

Will: "The Vice President would like to see an advance copy."

Toby: "To check my spelling, correct errors in syntax? Noted grammarian that he is."

-----

President: "Charlie, when your mother was killed, you got one of these calls?"

Charlie: "Yes, sir. Her captain."

President: "It make you feel any better?"

Charlie: "Not really, sir. Nothing makes you feel better. But it did make me feel proud."

-----

 (Donna and Colin are watching the VHS tape statement of a Palestinian suicide bomber. He shows her photos of the bomber's two small children)

Colin: "Families of suicide bombers get showered with gifts. It's customary at the funeral to hand out sweets."

Donna: "It's unimaginable."

Colin: "Well, you don't have to imagine it, do you? It's real."

 

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

• There's a few scenes with Rep. Andy Wyatt, the congressperson from Maryland who was once married to Toby. The pair had twins together, newborns in Twenty Five, and their existence gets a bit of a mention here (Toby: "Every day the same three little words - see your children").

 

 

• Speaking of the twins, we saw Toby in Twenty Five give a heartfelt speech pledging his life and his loyalty to those newborns. Well, as Season 5 has rolled along, the writers have tended to forget Toby even had kids, unless they brought Andy in to take him to task (as in The Supremes, where she noted he'd never asked where the children might be during the two weeks she was in the Middle East, saying, "You say you want to be involved, it doesn't come with an embossed invitation. You involve yourself or you don't"). Seeing Toby's reluctance to brave the wrath of Andy's mother, even to check on his own kids, seems like quite a character switch from the end of Season 4.
  

• This is our final look at Admiral Fitzwallace (John Amos), President Bartlet's friend and guide through the thickets of military tradition as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He retired from that post earlier in Season 5, and was personally asked by the President to tag along on this trip.
  

 

 

• Jason Isaacs (the Harry Potter films, The Patriot, The Death Of Stalin, a surprising amount of voiceover work for video games and animated projects) is seen as Colin Ayres, the Irish photojournalist who takes a shine to Donna and shepherds her around to see both the Israeli and Palestinian points of view in Gaza. He also winds up in her bed, I suppose as she takes CJ's advice from No Exit to heart ("have one-night stands with reporters from the Post-Intelligencer").

• The usual suspects are seen in the Situation Room, including new Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Alexander (Terry O'Quinn), Undersecretary of State Ted Barrow (Ron Canada, first seen admonishing CJ in Han), Secretary of Defense Miles Hutchinson (Steve Ryan), and CIA Director George Sliger (Ryan Cutrona, who first appeared in the role of CIA director in Lord John Marbury but didn't have another speaking role in the show until The Stormy Present).

General Alexander

Ted Barrow

Hutchinson and Sliger

• We still see beepers being used by White House staffers. Beepers were generally falling into disuse by the early 2000s given the rise in cell phone availability - though in some instances requiring extra security, beepers were still seen as useful. Apparently the West Wing is one of those instances.

• The reporter Gordon is seen in the press room. You should remember Gordon from Slow News Day, who was questioning CJ about the Bartlets possibly planning to adopt a child, and CJ responded by intimating that she wanted Gordon to help her have a child of her own before kicking him out of her office. Now in the midst of dead congressmen and violence in the Middle East he's asking about FDA regulation of Canadian drugs.
  

• Our usual reporters Katie and Steve are seen.

• The President asks Charlie if official condolence calls made him feel better after his mother was killed. We learned in A Proportional Response that Charlie's mother was a police officer killed in the line of duty in the spring of 1999.

• Josh's outburst in reaction to Kate's analysis calling for a push for peace ("you kill everyone who is happy about it") is somewhat reminiscent of his blowup in the Oval Office in Noël ("you have to listen to me!"). In both cases he's kind of out of his mind, in Noël from his PTSD from being shot in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen and here because of his distress about Donna's condition and his deep feelings for her.
  

• I mentioned the connections we've seen grow between Josh and Donna over the past five years. Donna, who had been asking Josh to give her more responsibility so she could grow in her career, was included in this Middle East trip only because Josh put her on it in Talking Points, giving him an additional edge of guilt as the reason why she was there to be hurt in the first place.
  

• Also, Admiral Fitzwallace was personally asked by the President to go along on the trip in Talking Points, to try to keep the congresspeople from going too far afield from the administration's position on Israeli-Palestinian issues. That hits Bartlet pretty hard, knowing it was his request that ended up in Fitz' death.
  

• The Jed Bartlet jacket flip makes another appearance. Martin Sheen's left arm was injured during birth, making him unable to lift the arm above the shoulder. He developed this move of flipping the jacket over his head in order to put on a jacket or coat.

 

DC location shots    

• None. The Gaza scenes were filmed near the Salton Sea/Indio areas of California, in the deserts southeast of Los Angeles (and not far from where the Coachella music festival is held).

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

• Colin quotes the 1974 song Same Old Song And Dance, leading Donna to say she didn't expect to meet many Aerosmith fans in Gaza.

• The MSNBC logo gets a lot of screen time in this episode. It took the NBC network until the very end of Season 1 to figure out they could use their own 24-hour cable news channel synergistically on a fictional show being aired on their network. I think they've got that all straightened out by now.
  

• Toby mentions the Hatfields and McCoys, a symbol of unending conflict and resentment between families that came from an actual family feud in the 1800s.

• Chevy Suburbans are seen (and referred to) as the typically used vehicles for official American visits to the Middle East.

• Toby quotes the former Israeli diplomat and politician Abba Eban, who said in 1973 that the Palestinians "never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity" when it comes to a peace agreement.

End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet and Katie Harper meeting with Mrs. Fitzwallace (either Laura or Gail, whichever).

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