The Dover Test - TWW S6E6

 

Original airdate: November 24, 2004

Written by: Carol Flint (4)
Directed by: Laura Innes (4)

Synopsis

• An attack on the Middle East peacekeeping force heightens the stakes on the entire mission. Leo gets a job offer, Charlie finds an office, and Matt Santos pulls a dazzlingly effective political juggling move to get a key health care bill passed.
  

"You're too good at this, you can't just walk away."

"Watch me."

Another episode that's mostly downbeat with flashes of optimism, kinda wonky and detail-laden, and featuring more of the powerlessness of this administration. It's not a great move, this Season 5 and 6 shift in Bartlet tactics - where we once had a group of savvy, creative firebrands who'd come up with new ideas to try to get their policies through, now we see a bunch of folks reacting to things getting pushed on them by outside forces, just trying their best to keep up. I guess after six years (or seven, yes, I know, we've jumped to 2005) of being in the White House you might start running out of steam, but I don't know why a lame-duck President who won a solid victory in 2002 and awed Republicans with his act of selflessness in Twenty Five and now has over half of the country's voters wanting him to run a third time can't, you know, buck the opposition and be more successful with bold things.

 

The main thrust of the episode comes from an attack on the American peacekeeping force, just starting to set up shop in the occupied Gaza Strip. This mission, remember, was Kate's idea in The Birnam Wood, using an Israeli offer from the 1967 war to trade peacekeepers for Palestinian access to holy sites in Jerusalem, and was the final necessary step in President Bartlet's peace plan. Well, no surprise, but Palestinian militants attacked workers building the complex to house the peacekeepers, killing one soldier and injuring another eight.

This has some Republicans and the press in a tizzy. Republicans - who've held Congress pretty much all through Bartlet's presidency, and have been throwing their weight around since Jefferson Lives - use the attack to criticize the entire Middle East peace plan in the media and score some political points. The press is upset that they don't get access to cover the return of the slain soldier's coffin to Dover Air Force Base. And the soldier's father is furious at the President for putting his son into harm's way, leading to his death.

Debbie's face as she tries to set up a call from the President to that father, and instead trying to calm down and negotiate with an angry man who blames the White House for losing his son, is some fine acting work by Lily Tomlin:

"I hate these calls."

At the same time, Donna is being pestered by suitors of some kind, with nonstop demanding phone calls and the delivery of flowers and notes. We, the audience, are led to believe the same thing that Josh thinks - somebody, perhaps our old Irish friend Colin from Gaza, is trying to romance Donna with unusual persistence. And Josh doesn't much like it. He snoops into the card included with Donna's flowers:

And when Donna is dealing with a phone call asking her for a decision on something, he jumps in and hangs up the phone for her:

"You could thank me for my chivalry."

It turns out none of these nagging calls and outreaches are from romantic suitors, but instead from TV newsmagazines and even TV movie producers begging Donna to tell her story of surviving a roadside bomb blast and thereby helping to spur the Bartlet peace plan summit. She tells Annabeth she's reluctant, because, well ...

Donna (to Annabeth): "The thing is ... I wasn't heroic. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It ... but the soldier who was just killed and the ones that were wounded ... those guys chose that. They volunteered for a job they knew would put them in harm's way. That's heroic."

You almost see a little light bulb go on over Annabeth's head after that speech. The soldiers killed and injured in Gaza, the ones returning for burial or medical care in the United States, those are indeed the real heroes, and they ought to be honored as such by the President himself. While the family of the killed soldier refuses the offer, the injured soldiers are okay with it. When the plan is brought to CJ, she's skeptical about how it might look (even given Toby's prescient remark, "I think we can trust this President to be authentic"), but she'll go along with it only if no cameras are present.

Of course President Bartlet is in his element talking with the soldiers and comforting them.

This whole operation leads to a meaningful discussion between Toby and CJ. Toby is concerned that CJ still has her hands on the wheels of the press office, even while she has much more important things to do as Chief of Staff. They earlier had quite a disagreement over Toby's demeanor in the briefings, as well as letting his personal ambivalence towards administration policy on Dover coverage show. Finally they talk it out a little.

CJ: "You think I'm micromanaging?"

Toby: "Yes."

CJ: "I don't want to let the President down."

Toby: "Me neither."

(long pause, as they look at each other and consider)

Toby: "How old do you think those guys are in there, 20, 22?"

CJ: "Tops."

(pause)

 Toby: "We're not going to let the President down."

Another big story line is Leo's. He continues to recuperate from his heart bypass surgery from Third-Day Story, and while he still has no appetite and doesn't eat at all, he does mollify his nurse by taking short daily strolls around the hallways of his hotel. Leo being Leo, he must wear a suit and tie, showing the world that he's still as nattily dressed as Leo ever was, even when he never leaves the floor he lives on. What he doesn't want to show, though, is his exhaustion at even taking a few steps.

On one of these walks, he encounters an old business acquaintance, Otis, who asks if he might be interested in getting back to the business world by joining the board of Cultico, a petrochemical/agriculture conglomerate. Leo thinks doing something besides breathing exercises, short walks, and not eating might be good for him, but his Indian nurse, Ms. Chakrabarty, is less than pleased. Thinking he understands her attitude, Leo brings up some kind of disaster apparently related to Cultico that killed "a lot of folks" in 1986.

"It's a different company now." "It has a different name."

(Cultico is apparently being used here as a stand-in for Union Carbide and Hariyana a stand-in for Bhopal. In 1984 a deadly gas used in manufacturing pesticides leaked from a poorly maintained Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, with over 500,000 nearby residents exposed and anywhere from 3,700 to perhaps over 10,000 Indians killed.)

As Leo ponders the job offer, Nurse Chakrabarty returns from a wedding she'd attended, bringing along not only her young daughter but also fresh naan. 

And for the first time in a month, Leo is hungry.

 

Nurse Chakrabarty takes the opportunity to explain agricultural geopolitics and the effect of GMOs on small Indian farms, noting that the financial incentives push farmers to grow more corn instead of crops their families could eat, and ending up with the requirements of chemical fertilizers and pesticides for that corn becoming an unbearable financial burden on those farmers. Which is probably something Leo should have known already, I'd say.

Anyhow, this leads to Leo throwing the Cultico information into the trash and turning to a more comfortable, casual style of dress for his daily walks.

For Leo, a sweater instead of a suit is a big deal - an obvious sign to us that he's leaving the opportunities and job offers of big corporate America behind. And he and Nurse Chakrabarty have a little conversation about healing ... going on.

And then, there's Matt Santos, the young, vibrant Congressman from Texas who's decided not to run for re-election in 2006 and instead go back home to his family. Josh had already leaned on Santos to stay in Congress in Liftoff, but when Santo's health care bill on patients' rights fails in the House it appears he doesn't have much reason to stay anyway.

Au contraire, my friends. Surprisingly, Santos signs on to a different, weaker, less effective health care bill, also doomed to fail, sponsored by a Republican. This irritates Josh because he doesn't want Democrats getting involved in bipartisan legislative efforts, even symbolic ones - but it really infuriates Will because patients' rights is a key plank in Vice President Russell's campaign for President, and having Matt Santos get involved with the GOP will take that campaign issue right out from under Russell's feet.

As a surprising number of other congressmen appear to join in on the bill, making its survival seem possible, Josh and Will head to the Capitol to confront Santos. They stop him in the hallway where he's trying to meet with some HMO representatives, sternly arguing for him to give up on this quixotic quest and accusing him of setting up a soft landing spot in the health care industry, but Santos gives back pretty good - particularly slamming what's seen as a joke of a VP who was forced on the administration by the Republicans in the first place in Jefferson Lives:

Santos: "What the hell do you think I'm doing here?"

Josh: "I think you'd settle for less on this bill to set up your next career move."

Santos (scoffs): "Settle for less. This is from the guys that are running Bob Russell for President?"

And Josh and Will are left speechless, standing in the hall as Santos and his guests walk away.

Josh is still frustrated with the entire process as more and more Representatives sign on and it actually passes the House, but knows President Bartlet will veto the thing anyway - until Toby convinces him to sit down and read the final bill.

Santos has turned what was a weak-willed symbolic gesture of a bill into something that's actually a workable first step to a real, solid patients' bill of rights. That makes Josh apologize, and he slowly comes to realize exactly how good Santos is at working the system to make a bad bill better:

Josh: "So, I think you got the cap to move by promising you'd deliver Chambers or you got Chambers on board by promising movement on the cap, or ... some --"

Santos (getting a beer from the refrigerator): "Glass, or you all right with a bottle?"

Josh: "Bottle's fine. Once the momentum got going, you called a couple of the friendlier HMOs to let 'em know for their own good that a five million cap is still a cap, and they sure didn't want this thing passing with the sky the limit - but what I'd like to know is, if you let your own bill self-destruct and joined with Strickman knowing there was an opening if you let them take the lead, or if it just started tipping that way and you went with --"

Santos: "It didn't hurt the other day in the hall when you, uh, demonstrated my independence?"

Josh: "Well, I'm always happy to do my part."

And once again, Josh comes to the realization that politicians like Matt Santos are a rare breed, and it would really help serve the country if he stayed in Congress.

Josh: "You're too good at this, you can't just walk away."

Santos (looks at Josh levelly, as he buttons his cuffs): "Watch me."

We've also got a humorous little D-plot, with Margaret trying to find an office for Charlie. In The Hubbert Peak CJ offered Charlie a job as Deputy Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff (President Bartlet insisted Charlie had to leave his position as the President's "body man" and move on after graduating from college, but he only asked people he already worked with). Well, now they need to find him a desk and an office, but Margaret insists it needs to be within 100 steps of CJ's office.

They try the basement, near where we saw Ainsley Hayes and Joe Quincy assigned (where is Joe Quincy, anyway? Isn't he still around?), and where the secret "Sagittarius" meetings about Bartlet's MS coverup and whether or not to run in 2002 were held. But ... too many steps away.

Margaret and Debbie find an available spot within the zone, but that turns out to be a storage closet.

 

And finally, as he did at the start, Charlie insists he'll just find a chair in the same office as the other five deputy assistants to the chief of staff ... no special treatment, no special preference, he'll just do the job as the job is set up.

As it should be.

So, a pretty convoluted episode, trying to tell three important non-connected stories at once. That can work - we've seen it work in previous seasons - and it's a great illustration of the fast-paced and almost out-of-control pace of life in the White House, but it's a tricky thing to do well. I don't know if they quite nailed it here.

Tales Of Interest!

- The last episode established that we've skipped a year and are now into 2005. Will confirms we're in the fall, late October or early November, when he says it's three months until the Iowa caucuses. The caucuses are typically held in late January or early February (the 2000 and 2004 events, the most recent prior to this episode, were January 24 and January 19, respectively).

 

Which still makes things sticky with Donna and Leo and their recoveries. While we can go back and forth on the year, it's absolutely certain that Donna's injuries happened in late May, before Memorial Day. Leo's heart attack came during the Camp David summit, which happened on the heels of that blast in Gaza (Donna was still in the hospital in Germany, still with unhealed facial injuries, so we've pretty much established the summit had to be in June). Now we see Donna still in a cast and on crutches, while Leo's nurse tells us it's been only one month since his bypass surgery. None of that makes sense if this is supposed to be around Halloween.

 

Donna on crutches in late fall after getting blown up in May

- Toby says they've gotten Santos "re-elected twice," which would mean the elections of 2004 (mysteriously missing from our timeline) and 2002 (seen in Election Night). That would mean his original term as a Representative began with the 2000 midterm election depicted in The Midterms.

- Leo is living in a hotel, as we can tell from the housekeeping staff in the hallway when he takes his walk. In Mr. Willis Of Ohio he tells the President he moved out of the house he shared with Jenny, his wife, after she asked for a divorce (from Five Votes Down). In Enemies he's having breakfast in a hotel restaurant with Mallory and tells her, "This is my hotel." So I guess he's been living in a hotel since late 1999?

- Gail's fishbowl has a miniature White House.

- Why'd They Come Up With The Dover Test?

General Ruiz explains the "Dover test" to CJ when she's trying to get some clarity on the missing numbers in the force depletion report. The general says it's too early to be concerned about "the Dover test," and when CJ asks what that is, he replies, "Erosion of public support based on arrival of coffins at our airbase in Delaware."

Of course, the press corps' questions about being excluded from the Dover arrival of the soldier's body from the Middle East and Toby's responses that only muddle the administration's stance play into this title as well.

Quotes    

Toby: "Oh, for God's sake, you're not still calling this guy."

Josh: "Matt Santos?"

Toby: "He's a quitter. We got him re-elected twice, and by huge margins."

Josh: "He's popular in his district."

Toby: "And a quitter. Don't waste our time."

-----

Charlie (in conversation with CJ, Toby, and the President): "Up to eight injured and one dead. The peace mission's first casualty."

Toby: "I'm going to work on a statement."

(The President and CJ head down the hall; CJ stops and turns around)

CJ: "Toby?"

Toby: "Yeah?"

CJ: "In our statement, when we say casualty ... don't say first." 

----- 

Leo (to his nurse): "You may browbeat me into using the breath spirometer, you may mother me about wound care, you may dole out the Vicodin like my AA sponsor. You may even entertain me with nutrition lectures --"

Nurse Chakrabarty: "You need to eat!"

Leo: "You may not - may not! - offer fashion advice."

-----

CJ: "The briefing room is not your bully pulpit."

Toby: "I got rattled."

CJ: "Yeah, you got rattled and your ambivalence toward policy came out. You had ambivalence toward the peace plan, is that --"

Toby: "Are you questioning my loyalty?"

CJ: "I'm questioning your self-control, if you can't stick to our message I don't care if that podium stands empty, I don't want you out there again."

-----

CJ: "Hutchinson said no to a Sunday spot?"

Annabeth: "We said no to Hutchinson because he won't let me prep him."

CJ: "You go, girl ... do people still say that?"

Annabeth: "Not really."

-----

Toby: "When were you going to loop us in on that?"

CJ: "I just did. Easier to say 'no comment' when you have no comment."

Toby: "That used to piss you off."

CJ: "And now it's pissing you off." (shrug)

-----

Josh (to Santos): "Nothing motivates Republicans more than a chance to hijack one of our issues."

 

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

• Terrance Sligh, the MSNBC reporter who proves to be a thorn in the White House's side, is played by Paul Schulze (Rambo, 24, Nurse Jackie, Suits).

• Leo's nurse, Ms. Chakrabarty, is played by Suleka Mathew (the TV series Da Vinci's Inquest, Men In Trees, Hawthorne).

• Leo is still wearing his wedding band. His wife, Jenny, moved out in Five Votes Down, and their divorce was finalized in The Portland Trip.

• Leo mentions his "AA sponsor" - we know from episodes like Five Votes Down and The Short List that Leo is a recovering alcoholic and prescription drug abuser, and he started attending AA meetings hosted by Vice President Hoynes in 1999. 
  

• We don't know a lot of details about Leo's business past, or what connections he might have had with Cultico or Otis. It's a given, of course, that Leo is quite wealthy (he's been living in an upscale hotel without there seeming to be a kitchen in his suite for five years now), and wealthy businessmen have connections and sit on each other's boards all the time - it's not surprising he would know someone high-up connected to the board of a firm like Cultico. What we do know about Leo is that he worked for the aviation-related defense contractor Mueller-Wright after serving in Vietnam (seen in An Khe), at some point was named Secretary of Labor in a previous Democratic administration in the mid-1990s (it's revealed he went to rehab in 1993 when he was still Secretary of Labor in In Excelsis Deo). All we need to know, I suppose, is that Leo is a man of wealth and privilege who's moved in high-powered circles most of his life, and has all sorts of connections with similar powerful men of business which would lead to offers of Board of Directors seats.
  

• It's really neat to see when actors who played a role in earlier seasons pop back up as the same character, even for a quick one-off scene. We get that here with Rep. Darren Gibson (David St. James), seen complaining about the Bartlet peacekeeping force on MSNBC. 

Gibson was a key figure in Bartlet For America, where he had firsthand knowledge of Leo's alcohol relapse just before the 1998 election and wanted to use that to attack the administration in the hearings about Bartlet's MS coverup.

• Once again, the nation of Qumar has apparently disappeared entirely from the West Wing universe. First mentioned in The Women Of Qumar as the site of a key American military base, the country took a front seat in the series when its Defense Minister, Abdul Shareef, was found to be planning and funding terrorism aimed at the United States (The Black Vera Wang). This led to a secret administration plot to have Shareef killed after a visit to Washington, with his aircraft forced to land in Bermuda where the assassination took place and the evidence being dumped in the Atlantic in Posse Comitatus. The eventual public disclosure of the entire affair was a key factor leading to Zoey's kidnapping in Commencement, President Bartlet stepping away from the Oval Office temporarily in Twenty Five, and Abbey's resentment over his decision's impact on their family, which led to her retreating to New Hampshire between Jefferson Lives and Shutdown. So ... Qumar must be pretty important, huh? If that's true, why doesn't it exist on Situation Room maps any more?

Qumar was clearly shown to be directly across the Strait of Hormuz from the UAE and Dubai, in what is actually southern Iran, in episodes like College Kids and 7A WF 83429:

But after the tumult over the Shareef assassination/Zoey kidnapping story died down later in Season 5, Qumar has not been included on any maps of the region we see in the Situation Room. It's been ... erased from existence, to quote Doc Brown from Back To The Future.

• The usual White House reporters we see pestering Toby over the Dover issue include Chris and Mark, as well as the MSNBC newcomer Terrance Sligh (who we actually will never see or hear from again).
  

• Josh rants about "blarney boy" Colin, the Irish photojournalist that Donna grew close to during her trip with the Congressional delegation in Gaza. Although he's wrong about Colin being the one who sent her flowers ... Josh's frankly rude behavior toward Donna in general here reminds us about a few things: Josh has always taken Donna for granted, even though they do have deep semi-romantic feelings for each other; Donna has been nothing but loyal and devoted to Josh from the first time she appeared in Pilot (including her origin story in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II); and it hasn't taken Josh very long to forget the lesson Colin was trying to teach him about how to treat the ones who adore you in NSF Thurmont.
  

• It's Capitol Beat, the TV political talk show that nearly cost Josh his job in Pilot, saw Sam get schooled by Ainsley in In This White House, and hosted a live program from the White House after the State of the Union address in Bartlet's Third State Of The Union and The War At Home. Sometimes spelled Capital Beat and other times Capitol Beat, it's been a background presence from the beginning of the series.

• Speaking of The War At Home, that's the episode that saw President Bartlet going to Dover Air Force Base himself to see the coffins of the soldiers killed in ambush in Colombia returned to the United States - as far as a tie-in to "the Dover test." No press there at that time, apparently, in line with Toby's mention of restrictions being in place for 13 years. That episode also named the Colombian president "Miguel Santos," which is quite similar to Matt Santos, who is now quite important in the series going forward.
  

• Toby's gloating over Will (and the Vice President) getting upstaged on the health care issue by Santos goes back to his dismay at Will leaving his job as Toby's deputy to be Russell's chief strategist in Constituency Of One.
  

• There's another blink-and-you-miss-it look at the older background actor with the glasses and the flattop haircut. He's in an awful lot of West Wing scenes, if you keep an eye out for him.

• A potential candidate "Baker" gets brought up again by Will. A "Governor Baker" was mentioned in The Hubbert Peak as one of the favorites for the upcoming Democratic presidential nomination, should he choose to run.
  

DC location shots    

• None. There is one establishing shot of the Presidential motorcade going past a large columned building, which I'm almost positive is the U.S. Treasury Building along 15th Street NW.

• The scene where Josh and Will confront Rep. Santos is supposedly in the Capitol, but it was actually shot in the Los Angeles City Hall. That has stood in for the Capitol corridor in many episodes, including Swiss Diplomacy. 

 

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

• The opening sequence features a model of the proposed Bartlet Presidential Library, which he says will be in a restored section of "the historic Amoskeag Mills" in Manchester. The Amoskeag Manufacturing Company was an important mill operation in Manchester, operating the largest cotton mill in the world in 1911. The mill struggled after World War I, and the combination of the Great Depression and worker unrest led to its closure in 1935. The complex remained mostly abandoned until the 1980s (hence President Bartlet's quip about sneaking his first cigarette in the vacant buildings as a youngster), but has now been renovated into housing, offices, restaurants, and for other uses.

The library model doesn't appear to be a real section of the actual mill complex. Here's what we can see of the model: 

And here is a Lego representation of the mill as it looked in about 1910. I mean, it looks similar, brickwork and smokestacks and turrets, but I can't see two particular turrets located like the ones in the model:

• The MSNBC logo is prominent in TV coverage of the attack on the peacekeeping mission.

• Nurse Chakrabarty brings up Gandhi in a discussion with Leo about why he dresses up so much just to walk down the hallway.
  

• In his conversation with Otis Leo mentions he thought Otis had "upgraded to the Ritz" - there are luxury Ritz-Carlton hotels in Washington DC, Georgetown, and Pentagon City, and obviously those aren't where Leo is living. The (Mandarin) Oriental hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, also gets a shoutout.
  

• Cable TV news anchor Bill Hemmer is seen on a TV in Josh's office. Hemmer, currently with Fox News, was a member of the CNN staff in 2004.

• Will mentions the Roll Call newspaper as he complains about Santos' move on the patients' bill of rights.
  

• Apparently Dateline is one of the network news shows that's going after Donna to appear. Also Annabeth says the talent agency CAA is asking about representing Donna.

End credits freeze frame: Josh stopping by to apologize to Santos after Santos' expert political moves got the patients' bill of rights through.

Previous episode: The Hubbert Peak

Next episode: A Change Is Gonna Come

The Hubbert Peak - TWW S6E5

 

Original airdate: November 17, 2004

Written by: Peter Noah (4) 

Directed by: Julie Hébert (3)

Synopsis

• The failure of a bill increasing fuel efficiency standards, coupled with Josh's SUV colliding with a Prius, brings about increased talk of alternative energy sources at the White House. Charlie half-heartedly looks for a job to fulfill his promise to move on from tending to the President, Annabeth helps Toby get better at briefing the press, and playing chess becomes a medical necessity.
  

"Then maybe we can stop thinking of it as something to fool people and think of it as a way to maybe get something done." 

This episode boils down pretty simply - just make the least possible effort you can and hope your favorable intentions will carry you along when the results can't.

 

From the administration making a half-hearted effort to look like they're supporting higher fuel efficiency requirements even though they know Congress will never impose them, to Charlie "looking for a job" by handing out his resumes only to his friends in the West Wing, to Annabeth convincing Toby to stand up straight behind the briefing room podium, that's the lesson we're apparently given. Just half-ass it, it's okay, people will give you credit for trying, even a little bit.

 

It also doesn't help that the main storyline of the episode is pretty wonky, even though developing renewable energy resources is more important now in 2023 than it was even in 2004. Kate's talk of the Hubbert Peak and a nightmarish world where the increased demand for fossil fuels coupled with a disappearing supply of that finite resource leads to war and misery ... not a feel-good storyline of sunshine and rainbows! Josh's online-publicized mishap of driving a giant fuel-hog SUV into a hybrid Prius right on the dealer's lot puts the White House into a tough spot, particularly as a bill that would force automakers to make their vehicles more fuel-efficient goes down in Congress with the administration only putting up token support.

So CJ orders Josh to put together an alternative energy task force, with a statement to be ready by the end of the day, to show the country that the administration is really, truly, honestly cross-our-hearts-and-hope-to-die behind renewable energy and conservation. Huh. All that leads to, though, is representatives from the solar, wind, ethanol, and hydrogen energy fields talking up the benefits of their own particular industries while poking holes in all of the others.

One funny little bit, though, comes as the meeting begins and Josh says he's going to have trouble remembering who is arguing for what:

Josh: "I'll try to keep everybody straight. Should've made little symbols - a picture of the sun, ear of corn, cloud blowing out its cheeks, and for hydrogen ..."

Anders: "The Hindenburg?"

And what's funny is when we check in on the meeting later in the day, there are indeed little signs exactly like what Josh had described:

(No Hindenburg, though, I don't think the hydrogen guy gets a sign.)

Nothing comes of this meeting. Josh is resigned to the fact that every alternative energy source has big problems of its own, there's no magic bullet. The President, though, decides he's going to veto the transportation bill - even though it will easily be overridden - just to make a point about higher fuel efficiency standards. Which means ... nothing really comes of this storyline. They make a point, they lose the battle, and there's no real progress in the war. Least possible effort.

Charlie has finished his studies at Georgetown and will get his degree, which means according to his agreement with President Bartlet he's now going to have to go out and get a job on his own. Charlie has been serving as the President's "body man" since he was asked to come aboard in A Proportional Response - basically the go-to assistant and handler for Bartlet in matters big and small. The President knows Charlie is cut out for bigger things than just being a glorified servant, so he's pushing him and his new degree out the door to make a career for himself.

Charlie's resumes, from the President himself

Charlie is reluctant. He likes his job, the President is a father figure to him, and with Leo out of the picture he doesn't think it's the right time for him to move on. So his big effort to get a new job is to ... hand out his resumes to Josh, Toby, and CJ, while asking them to not really consider hiring him at all. Toby has no problem with that request:

Which leads to quite the side-eye from Charlie:

I really do not think President Bartlet's idea of Charlie going out into the world and doing great things meant he should look for a new job right there in the same White House he's been working in for five years (or is it six now? It's not seven as we're told multiple times in this calendar-shifting episode, not for Charlie, because he didn't come on to the staff until almost a year into the administration). But there's no sign Charlie has any interest in actually looking for work outside.

That ends up paying off for him when CJ offers him a position as Deputy Chief Assistant to the Chief of Staff. It's actually a good idea for CJ - she's overwhelmed with the amount of work on her plate every day after taking over for Leo, she could use a capable, sharp assistant like Charlie - but it's still not really fulfilling the President's wishes. Once again - least effort possible, hoping "good intentions" carry you the rest of the way. Charlie seems inordinately proud of this new job, steps away from the desk he was working at, and the move spurs him to ask Zoey out to dinner, hoping to rekindle the spark they had back in Seasons 1 and 2.

Toby is still carrying on with the press briefings after CJ left the press secretary post. Much like in Liftoff, things aren't going very well, as the press has pretty much abandoned even listening to Toby's bland, information-free briefings:

CJ - who was totally onboard with the Annabeth/Toby plan from Liftoff to slow down the press secretary search - now wants to kick that into high gear.

CJ: "Where are we on finding a new press secretary?"

Toby: "Getting up to speed."

CJ: "Time for a turbo boost. No one, and I don't mean this unkindly, no one is anxious to have you keep briefing."

Toby: "Just curious, but how would you have put it if you meant it unkindly?"

Annabeth, though, insists Toby can be serviceable if he just ... I don't know, stands up straighter and delivers some funnier lines. Weirdly, that seems to work. Least possible effort, you know.

The element that doesn't really fall into the least-possible-effort theme comes from Leo. 

 

 

He's home in his apartment recovering from heart surgery, a nurse by his side, but sending word that the President needs to be reminded to play a weekly game of chess. CJ gets the brush-off when she mentions it, and doesn't think it's all that important, but at a lunch with Leo he illustrates why it's vital for Jed to keep those weekly matches:

Leo: "MS is a disease of the central nervous system. It can affect cognition, perception, reasoning, judgment - what the doctors actually term 'executive function.' As President of the United States this needs to be monitored on a weekly basis. You need to get the President to play chess."

CJ, who isn't much of a chess player, brings in a government employee who was on the Stanford chess team and clears an hour of the President's schedule to get him a match. Bartlet, naturally, turns the tables on CJ and makes her sit down to play, with some help from the Stanford guy. This chess-playing, and its connection to President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis, is the opening salvo of that MS playing a more important role as the final seasons of the series play out. (We haven't heard much, if at all, about the effects of the disease on Bartlet since Election Day of 2002, and here we are in 2005, apparently.)

There's also Kate's efforts to reach out to Donna and give her some support (a minor yet nicely played PTSD storyline by Mary McCormack and Janel Moloney) and Gail Addison's attempts to redecorate CJ's office and Vice President Russell needing briefings from Kate to keep his countries straight and his acting kinda creepy toward CJ ... but no matter to all that.

Lip service to alternative energy and higher fuel standards; a token effort to comply with a promise to the President to find a new job; standing up a little straighter to talk to the press. That's the kind of bold, energetic, outside-the-box action we're used to seeing out of the Bartlet administration ... wait, no, it's exactly the opposite. This is a weak, overly talky episode showing a lot of weak motivations and weak decisions by our heroes, with weak outcomes they just seem to be resigned to. I like the show better when these folks are trying to make big things happen with big, unexpected tactics. Is that too much to ask?

 

Tales Of Interest!

- I hadn't mentioned this yet, but Stockard Channing has joined the regular opening credit cast list, instead of just showing up for episodes she appears in. That brings the number of actors pictured in the sequence to 11 (12 when "with Jimmy Smits" appears, which for now is only the episodes he's actually in). That compares to just eight in the first season opening credits sequence. Remember, the opening credits music doesn't change, so they're adding more people in the same amount of time - and they're not done adding yet.

- The West Wing timeline has now officially become unhinged from the actual calendar. For the past five-plus seasons, events depicted in the series have tracked with when the episodes actually aired: Christmas shows were seen in December, a couple of good Thanksgiving episodes ran in November, we had unusual tropical storms and graduations and baseball games and Memorial Day in springtime episodes. We also know the years tracked along with the actual year of airing, from talk of the upcoming millennium in 1999's In Excelsis Deo to Toby's question about a possible change to the  2002 presidential ticket in 2001's 17 People.

Well, that's now changed. I mentioned in my recap of the last episode that even though there were references to "five years" (CJ saying Toby should have told the press about her involvement in foreign policy decisions for that long) and "six years" (Toby said he'd been doing his job that long when he handed in his prank resignation, and CJ told the press she'd been talking to them for that long), we also had the weird revelation that somehow we'd skipped the midterm elections that would have been held in November of 2004, and now we're just a year away from the 2006 presidential election. That five and six year stuff is no longer the case ... we are seven years into the Bartlet administration, and we know that because it gets pounded over our heads time and time again:

Will: "This administration's had seven years to make better fuel efficiency a priority --"

Toby: "Seven years --"

Will: "Don't take your guilt out on me."

Toby: "Seven years of a hostile Congress."

And:

Annabeth: "What CJ did for seven years wasn't combat, it was charm and disarm."

And:

Josh: "Thank you all for coming. Particularly on such short notice."

Anders: "I've been wanting to have this meeting for seven years."

And:

Leo: "So, how's it going?"

CJ: "It's overwhelming. The amount there is to tend to. I ... I thought I was busy before. How in the world did you manage it for seven years?"

So yeah ... we have now officially skipped an entire year. Even though Donna is still on crutches for her injuries that happened in May 2004, and Leo is still recovering from his surgery that happened in June 2004, we're now past the midterm elections and somewhere in 2005. Just go with it, I guess.

- Car dealerships don't have actual, regular license plates on the vehicles on their lot. They use temporary dealer plates for test drives, and the usual state-issued plates aren't put on until after a vehicle is purchased and registration is complete. So the DC plates on the SUV Josh is taking for a drive shouldn't be there.

 

 

- Speaking of that SUV, it's said a couple of times that Josh "totaled" the Prius when he ran into it. When you see the actual collision, the damage doesn't appear that severe - in fact, the only body part we see break loose and go flying is the SUV's license plate frame.

 

- Josh’s talk about gas prices was in the ballpark of being correct. In 2004, when this episode was shot, average gasoline prices in the U.S. were $1.92 per gallon, on their way to an average $2.34 in 2005. The price of gas in 1981 ($1.35) adjusted for inflation to 2004 was still only about $2 per gallon. As he says, though, 1981 does appear to be the adjusted peak of gasoline prices prior to 2010 or so (1981 gas prices in 2022 dollars would be $4.46 a gallon). The new peak, according to what I found online, appears to be 2012’s $4.69 (in 2022 dollars). That year, remember, was when gas prices skyrocketed mainly due to speculation and market manipulation leading up to the 2012 election. 

- There's a pretty good look at Gail's fishbowl on CJ's desk, but I can't tell what kind of decoration is in there.

- Why'd They Come Up With The Hubbert Peak?

Kate explains the Hubbert Peak theory to Josh, which basically says the supply of a finite resource like crude oil will eventually run out, and that available supply will look like a bell curve - there will be some point at which the remaining amount of oil available to extract will begin to fall, and it will continue falling as the resource is exhausted. The theory was named after geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who developed a method for modeling such a curve and predicted the beginning of the drop in global oil production would come around the year 2010 or so. As it turns out, development of new technologies to extract oil in unconventional ways (such as fracking and use of tar sands) has made Hubbert's predictions inaccurate.

Quotes    

Josh (on the phone): "You should see this thing I'm driving. It's a monster."

Donna: "What?"

Josh: "My testosterone is flying."

Donna: "Try not to get any on anyone."

-----

Kate: "What kind of SUV?"

Josh: "A humongous one."

Kate: "Excursion, Expedition, Escalade, what?"

Josh: "One of those ... I just wanted to drive it. Like a Hummer. Wouldn't you want to experience that once?"

Kate: "Yeah, I've had the pleasure. It's less of a giggle when you're taking automatic weapons fire."

----- 

Toby: "Not counting today, today was, uh -- I don't know what today was, but the briefings?"

Josh: "Yeah, they're getting better."

Toby: "Good. On a scale from one to ten, ten being CJ and one being a chimp throwing feces, where do I rank?"

Josh: "You're getting better."

-----

Annabeth: "Smart and funny, seduce them. It worked on your wife."

Toby: "We're divorced."

Annabeth: "Living with you is a whole 'nother ball game. I get that already."

-----

Toby: "How do you get women?"

Josh: "Huh?"

Toby: "Smart and funny? Right?"

Josh: "Plus I got that, you know, boyish thing."

Toby: "I don't have that."

 

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

• The Bartlet daughter Zoey (Elisabeth Moss) is back, and we discover she's the one who told President Bartlet about Charlie finishing up his studies at Georgetown. Zoey, of course, was first seen in The Crackpots And These Women and began dating Charlie soon after, which led to Charlie being the target of white supremacist assassins in What Kind Of Day Has It Been. They broke up sometime after the 2000 midterms, Charlie was trying to win her back around the 2003 inauguration, she was dating French layabout Jean-Paul and graduated from Georgetown in the spring of 2003 (either one or two years prior to this episode, it's getting hard to tell), after which she was kidnapped, rescued, recovered, and was last seen at the Bartlet family Christmas gathering in Abu el Banat. That Christmas it did appear she and Charlie were still on somewhat warm terms, and Charlie is trying to rekindle their relationship now.

• Wallace Langham (The Larry Sanders Show, Veronica's Closet, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) pops up as solar energy proponent Terry Anders.

• Rachael Harris is another one of those character actresses who works steadily and has been seen in shows like Modern Family, Suits, and Lucifer and movies such as The Hangover and Best In Show. Here she's Corinne McKenna, the wind energy expert in Josh's meeting.

• This unnamed reporter was seen in the background as part of a group of reporters in Access. I know from an earlier rewatch that she plays a small but integral role in a Season 7 episode. So I guess she's kinda part of the White House press corps now.

• Gail Addison from the Office of Administration appears, trying to convince CJ to redecorate. Played by Bonita Friedericy (Chuck, Preacher, Christmas With The Kranks), we'll see Gail again in about a year.

• Josh tells CJ "I don't wear jammies" - yet we saw him wearing the too-big pajamas CJ gave to him in The Midterms and again when Amy shows up at his apartment early one morning in The Two Bartlets. So he used to wear jammies, even if he doesn't any more.
  

• The longtime press corps reporters seen in this episode include Steve, Mark, and Katie.

• Will and Josh, and later Josh and Toby, talk about a "Governor Baker" who they think is the frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination, even though he hasn't announced his candidacy yet. Governor Baker will be a presence through the upcoming campaign.

• Josh's heedless urge to respond to anonymous online blog comments about him remind us of The U.S. Poet Laureate and his reaction to the LemonLyman website, which led him into a rabbit hole of escalating attacks and responses. He was severely chewed out by CJ for that - surprising she doesn't go after him again here.

• Donna is still in a wheelchair, or in crutches when she ditches the electric wheelchair for energy conservation reasons. She tells Kate she'll be out of her cast "soon." Given that broken bones generally heal in around six weeks, and Donna was injured in the blast in Gaza just before Memorial Day, this still would be summer - even if we give her extra time to heal due to the severity of her injuries and her consequent surgery, we couldn't really be much into August at the latest. But again, as we've discussed earlier ... time is getting pretty flexible here, what with skipping the midterms and the constant references to seven years passing and everything being done to rush us into the upcoming presidential campaign. So maybe Donna's bones take a year to heal, who knows.

• Annabeth is seen settling into what was originally Sam's office, then Will's before he left to go work for the Vice President (but is he really gone if he's still hanging around the West Wing all the time?). The office has been empty since Toby moved Will's stuff out in Abu el Banat, which means - since we are apparently in 2005 sometime now - it's been vacant for over a year.

• Toby's ex-wife Andy Wyatt gets a quick mention, as Toby is gobsmacked that Annabeth had asked her what had originally drawn her to him ("smart and funny").

• When CJ visits Leo, he mentions he's on the painkiller Vicodin after his recovery from heart surgery. It was a different V-drug, Valium, that he had abused (along with alcohol) back in the mid-1990s, a huge storyline in Season 1.
  

• President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis pops up as Leo tells CJ she has to insist the President play chess every week, as a way to monitor the disease's effect on his executive function. We first learned of the President's diagnosis in He Shall, From Time To Time ...; the public revelation of that disease and the coverup during the 1998 campaign played out over the last episodes of Season 2; and we noticed Bartlet suffering some symptoms in Election Night. There's been little talk of the disease since then, but this chess-playing story is laying the groundwork for more progression of that MS on the way.
  

• President Bartlet has been seen as an active, enthusiastic chess player before, in episodes like Hartfield's Landing. So it seems a bit odd that he'd try to pass on the opportunity to play when CJ first brings it up.
  

DC location shots    

• None. I figure the car dealership scene at the opening was filmed in southern California somewhere, although when I search automobile dealers with "Kira" in the name (as that's what I can see on the signage) I only find what looks like a somewhat disreputable used car dealer in Los Angeles.
  

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

• The Toyota Prius gets talked up a lot, with a starring role in that opening sequence. The Prius (a gasoline/electric hybrid vehicle) has been available in the United States since 2001, and the 2004 model (shown here) was the new second-generation redesign.

• SUV models that get mentioned include the (Ford) Excursion, (Ford) Expedition, (Cadillac) Escalade, (Toyota) Land Cruiser, and Hummer, which was still manufactured by the builders of the military HUMVEE, AM General, in 2004 while the brand name was owned by GM. The show removed the badging from the grill of the vehicle Josh drove, so you can't obviously see the car brand ... but in the shot of Josh colliding with the Prius, you can freeze the screen and see the "Excursion" badging on the fender.

Just ignore the arrow pointing to the license plate, note that there's no grill badging

• Toby satirically wonders if it's the birthday of Baltimore journalist and scholar H. L. Mencken  when he wonders why most of the reporters have abandoned the briefing room.
  

• CJ is seen carrying a Starbucks cup when she's ambushed by those reporters in her office.

• Birkenstock shoes gets mentioned (as shorthand for liberal eco-loving hippies, I guess) in connection with Josh's meeting with alternative energy proponents.

• Josh makes a comment about "rats of an unusual size," which is almost identical to "rodents of unusual size" seen in the 1987 movie The Princess Bride.
  

• A mention is made of not having time to learn to program a TiVo at Charlie's graduation celebration.
  

• We see a CNN logo and former CNN reporter Aaron Brown on the TV in Josh's office.

• Later in CJ's office, in the background we see Bill Hemmer, who at the time was a CNN anchor. Hemmer now works for Fox News.

• Annabeth brings up the looks of the actors Jude Law and Denzel Washington in comparison to Toby's methods of getting women ("smart and funny").
  

• The German zeppelin Hindenburg and its unfortunate explosive demise in 1937 are criticisms of the hydrogen alternative energy possibility at Josh's policy meeting. 
  

• A can of Diet Pepsi is seen on the table of the alternative energy meeting.

• The Italian restaurant Terrazzo in Chevy Chase, Maryland, was listed in Washingtonian magazine's 2004 list of the 100 best restaurants in the DC area. So at the time of this episode, it was a real restaurant that no doubt featured gnocchi that was "very gnice."

• Dolley Madison and her desk get mentioned by the designer hoping to de-militarize CJ's office.
  

• The ringer CJ brings in to play chess with the President was a member of the Stanford chess team in college.
  

End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet, CJ, and the guy from the Stanford chess team settling down to their match.

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