Original airdate: November 10, 2004
Written by: Debora Cahn (8)
Directed by: Alex Graves (23)
Synopsis
- CJ is overwhelmed by her first day as Chief of Staff, facing prank resignations, offers of uranium from a former Soviet republic, and conflicts with a smug Secretary of Defense. The search for a new press secretary gets complicated. And we meet a youthful, interesting congressman from Texas with big ideas who just wants to quit politics and go home.
So we can just call this "CJ and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day."
 |
| "We'll set aside some extra time." |
CJ finds herself underwater by 8:45 in the morning.
And things get worse from there. A representative of the Republic of Georgia shows up to give the United States an offer to take over some enriched uranium they have lying around ("It's just sitting there behind what he describes as a padlock"). Given that the emissary has also been meeting with the Iranians, the administration jolts into high gear trying to put together a plan to accept the gift and get the uranium stored safely.
This causes pushback from the smug, gruff Secretary of Defense, Miles Hutchinson. Hutchinson tries to do an end-run around CJ's office, finding ways to sneak into private meetings with President Bartlet and steer the uranium conversation away from bringing it back to the United States and cleaning up the site to instead securing it in Georgia, which is a far less safe (although cheaper) plan. When CJ has to deal with both a potential leak about preparations to store the material in Tennessee from the Secretary of Energy, which could ruin the entire operation, and a meeting of the top administration security advisers in the Situation Room, she's running behind and being led from crisis to crisis by Margaret - who has to take control to get her into the Sit Room in the first place.
And then CJ finds herself embarrassingly steamrolled by Hutchinson in that meeting. She's unprepared, she's reacting instead of leading, and she's being taken advantage of. And she doesn't much like it.
This horror show of a first day leads her to a late-night visit to Leo's hospital room, where she tearfully admits she doesn't think she's right for the role and it just isn't going to work out.
Day two goes a little better, and that's mostly thanks to Margaret. CJ asks her how Leo deals with "a son of a bitch" like Hutchinson or the Secretary of Energy, and Margaret gives her the advice to start dealing with the subcabinet policy wonks first. CJ gets her own policy wonks on the job - Toby, Josh, Will (she could really use Ed and Larry here, couldn't she?) - and slowly starts taking control of the situation. When Toby offhandedly mentions the Department of Defense is worried about their finances, having not budgeted correctly for the peacekeeping force in the Middle East, the light bulb goes on for CJ ... Hutchinson isn't being a jerk only for jerk's sake, he's afraid the DOD doesn't have the funds to handle the uranium extraction and the peacekeepers. Once CJ works out that they'll get the money from elsewhere and the Defense Department won't get stuck with the bill, the rest of the project comes together smoothly.
There are a couple of signs that show us CJ is settling into the Chief of Staff position. She finally realizes she has her own door to the Oval Office, and she doesn't have to ask Debbie or Charlie for time to see the President. The look on Charlie's face when he finally tires of telling CJ about the door and decides to escort her to it himself is priceless.
Another sign is CJ's speech to Margaret asking her to stay on. Margaret told her earlier she'd be leaving to stay with Leo, and CJ would need to find another assistant - but Margaret's invaluable help over the first two days have shown CJ her critical importance.
CJ (to Margaret): "You're an odd woman, and I've never quite understood you, but you're extremely capable and you run this office like a Swiss watch and you're tall, which is reassuring ... Leo may need you, and if he does, that's okay, but if he's willing to part with you I hope you'll stay."
And, perhaps most importantly, when CJ moves Gail's fishbowl from the coffee table to the desk, the desk that was Leo's and is now hers - that really shows she's making this office her own.
Meanwhile, Toby has been tasked with finding a new press secretary to replace CJ. That topic showed its urgency right from the start, with Toby's unhinged press briefing leading to shocked reactions around the West Wing, particularly this gem:
Toby (at the press briefing, as Margaret and CJ watch from Margaret's office): "CJ Cregg's not the only one working without a net."
Margaret: "Oh ..."
CJ: "Oh, no, no, no ..."
Reporter Mark: "You just said nobody has experience with this kind of military incursion."
Toby: "The Pentagon has experience, as do the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the NSC, but in the event they all lose their way the President can always send CJ Cregg to Ramallah to swat at suicide bombers with her purse."
That remark causes Josh to spring into action as he races for the briefing room. It's pretty funny to see him dash by in the background as Debbie, Charlie, and the President stare at the TV screen:
And then he slides right past the hallway outside the briefing room exit.
(Josh, or rather Bradley Whitford, has made it kind of his thing to slide along slick floors and then sometimes fall, as we saw in The Stackhouse Filibuster.)
CJ is firm - the White House needs a new press secretary, and they need it now. She orders Toby to bring her a list of three to five potential candidates.
Toby and Donna find themselves auditioning spokespeople from the State Department, Interior, all kinds of government departments - and they're nearly all horrible (Toby's reviews are hilarious - "He's smart, he's articulate, and you can hear him, which is more of an issue than one might have thought" and "He mispronounced 'New York'"). When he does find a likely candidate, he thinks the job is done - but CJ insists on a list of applicants, so back to the auditions they go.
Enter Annabeth Schott. She's actually not interested in the press secretary job - she had applied for a media relations post to be a liaison between the White House and TV morning shows - but she's intrigued by what's going on and how she can be part of the process of moving on from CJ.
Annabeth: "You don't want a new press secretary. Not yet. Anyone who tries to stand in CJ Cregg's shoes will be eaten alive."
Toby: "And who exactly, do you think, is going to brief the press?"
Annabeth: "You. You need someone from inside the administration to get you through this transition period."
(Toby scoffs)
Annabeth: "Don't make a face. You were good."
Donna: "I saw it. He really wasn't."
Annabeth: "You just need a little grooming. I can take care of that. And I'll help you find a new press secretary. A real search, not some 24-hour emergency rescue mission."
When Toby brings this idea to CJ, she's actually surprised to find herself in agreement ("This is remarkably well thought-out") and so they'll go ahead with Toby briefing the big stuff, deputies handling the press most of the time, and Annabeth helping with the search for the next CJ.
And finally, the little bit of the episode that's going to resonate throughout the remainder of the series - we meet Congressman Matt Santos. Our lead-in to that involves a bit of a time skip: Josh and Toby are talking about all kinds of job offers as the administration winds its way down, which should be almost two years away but instead we're told the midterms have already happened and the Presidential election is "next year." As the Democrats start to discuss plans for the upcoming elections, congressional retirements, tough races, perhaps having Josh run for Congress from Connecticut, Josh finds one upcoming retirement particularly puzzling - why would Matt Santos decide not to run, after being a young, energetic, promising Representative who's moved up onto Ways and Means and has big ideas about health care?
A conversation in Toby's office gives us a lot of bread crumbs for upcoming storylines:
Will: "They love him in Houston, maybe he wants to run for governor."
Josh: "You think?"
Will: "Term or two as governor, he can come back here and run for the big chair."
Toby: "Are you high?"
Will: "People like him. Ex-Marine --"
Toby (scoffing): "He's not running for -- no."
Josh goes to visit Santos to try to get a fuller picture of his decision. While the congressman and his staff continue their work on a patients' bill of rights (which, I mean, even if we've jumped a year and it's the summer or even fall of 2005, he does still have over a year left in Congress), he tells Josh his decision is final - he misses his family, the job takes too much time away from his kids, and he can do great things and bring health care to Texans by working at home. Yet there's something about Santos that sticks in Josh's head ...
Our episode draws to a close with a golden setting sun shining through the windows, and CJ settling in to review her briefing materials, satisfied that she's been able to solve the Georgian uranium issue; the other staffers having a little celebration of CJ's new job, with her providing the refreshments; Toby getting ready to move the public face of the White House in a new direction with Annabeth's help; and Josh troubled by the nagging thought of how he might deal with a promising Democratic congressman giving up his seat to do something real and helpful.
It's no longer a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day ... but we're set on a promising path to something in the future.
Tales Of Interest!
- From here on out, my quote-gathering is going to take a lot more work. The site I get quotes from was filled with volunteer-supplied screenplay-style transcripts of the episodes (shoutout to westwingtranscripts.com), well-designed and searchable. There were a few episodes missing from Season 5, but almost everything else up to this episode is there. Unfortunately, though, it looks like nothing's been added to the site since 2008, this episode and the rest of Season 6 aren't there, and it has only the first 14 episodes of Season 7. So I'm going to have to resort to other sites that just have all the dialogue listed (a lot of it inaccurately, I'm finding), but not who says it or descriptions of what else is happening in the episode. Sad! If anyone reading has a tip for a better West Wing transcript site, please leave a comment for me on this post.
DCCC guy: "Thanks and adulations for all the help at the midterms last year, you guys were fantastic."
Josh: "Our pleasure."
DCCC guy: "We're looking at next year, our latest count was seven members of Congress retiring, and we've got twelve --"
Other DCCC guy: "Maybe thirteen."
DCCC guy: "-- vulnerable incumbents. We've got the Presidential race pulling the spotlight."
Okay, hold up. According to our established West Wing calendar, the midterms would be in 2004, coming up in November of this year, five months after the events playing out in this episode (but also right at the time this episode aired). Bartlet was elected in the Presidential election of 1998, the first midterms occurred in - surprise! - The Midterms in 2000, we had another Presidential election in 2002 in Election Night, that means 2004 is the next midterm cycle and the Presidential race they're talking about as "next year" would actually be 2006. Somehow we're supposed to believe that we've transposed from the spring of 2004 to sometime in 2005 (since the midterms are referred to as "last year" and the upcoming Presidential election is "next year"). Given Leo is still in the hospital and Donna is still in a wheelchair, the events of this episode are inextricably tied to the end of Season 5, only weeks after the Gaza blast ... is it possible somehow that we jumped a year somewhere after Christmas 2003?
It's not likely. I don't think the writers put in a time leap in Season 5, they're awkwardly doing it now in order to build a Presidential campaign storyline a year early (particularly since the show runners weren't sure they were going to get a Season 7, let alone a Season 8, I can understand that). It's just inartfully done to try to force in "oh hey, remember those midterms that happened last year?" when you're still dealing with storylines from the end of Season 5 that clearly happened before the midterms.
The word "liftoff" is specifically spoken by Staff Sergeant Kelty when he's giving CJ the rundown of her emergency evacuation - "There won't be more than three minutes from code call to liftoff."
The title, of course, actually pertains to CJ's "liftoff" in her position as Chief of Staff, as she's thrown into the tumult from the start of day one.
Quotes
Ssgt. Kelty (showing CJ a diagram of the White House): "You're going to have to time that, but in the event of a situation, we'll need you to exit here."
(CJ looks around at the hubbub happening in her apartment)
Kelty: "Ms. Cregg?"
CJ: "I'm listening. What kind of situation?"
Kelty: "A nuclear attack."
CJ: "Are we expecting one?"
CJ (walking into Margaret's outer office, seeing the array of flower arrangements): "Wow! People shouldn't be sending me flowers!"
(She leans down to smell one of the bouquets)
Margaret: "They're for Leo."
-----
Margaret: "CIA briefer's on his way, security will be by for a palm print and an eye scan. President's got Treasury in ten minutes, you're on the call. EPA's waiting for feedback on the Clean Air markup, Armed Forces is coming to talk about a budget boost for the peacekeeping tour because they forgot to factor in food, for the troops."
CJ: "And this gets us to ...?"
Margaret: "8:45."
Mindeli: "President Rustaveli wants to offer United States gift of uranium. Highly enriched. To your government."
CJ: "Uranium? Like, to make bombs?"
Mindeli: "We do not wish to make bombs. We give to you, you make what you want!"
-----
President: "You putting together a tiger team?"
CJ: "Uh, I'm not quite sure what that is."
President: "Four or five agencies on one project, particularly something this complicated, they pass it around like a hot potato, fourteen months from now we'll wake up having accomplished absolutely nothing. You're gonna have to spearhead the project yourself."
CJ: "Sure, I'll .. tiger team. Grrrr!"
(President looks at CJ questioningly)
President: "What was that?"
CJ: "Nothing."
-----
Margaret: "It's first priority."
CJ: "For the day?"
Margaret: "For 1:45."
CJ: "Three hundred pages on snowmobiles?"
Margaret: "The President's got lunch with Interior tomorrow, Yellowstone's going to come up."
CJ: "And there's no one else in the building that can position us?"
Margaret: "Toby and the policy shop are split."
CJ: "All right, get me the rest of --"
Margaret: "We've now talked through the snowmobile window. You have to leave."
CJ: "Where am I going?"
Margaret: "The Georgian thing."
CJ: "Where's the nonproliferation --"
Margaret: "I have one."
CJ: "-- and the uranium repatriation study?"
Margaret: "You really have to start walking now."
-----
Toby: "I misspoke, okay. No one thinks you can't handle foreign policy."
CJ: "We all think it. Had you thought any differently, it would have been, 'she's been involved in foreign policy decisions for five years,' not 'she'll bounce every question to somebody at NSC,' it never crossed your mind to reject the premise of the statement."
-----
CJ: "Not a bad idea."
Toby: "It is, actually, but can we focus on --"
CJ: "On you as spokesman for the ship of fools? It's a dream come true."
Toby: "The deputies can handle most of it, I'll just do the high-profile stuff."
CJ: "Like this morning?"
Toby: "Yeah ... No. Slightly better."
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- I've already mentioned Jimmy Smits as Matt Santos, but we also meet a couple of his staff members who will be seen plenty as the remaining 40 or so episodes play out. Karis Campbell (Boston Public, Rizzoli & Isles, one episode of ER in the ER-West Wing pipeline) plays Ronna:
- While Evan Arnold (Spider-Man, Suburgatory, 9-1-1: Lone Star, also an episode of ER) is seen as Ned.
- The wonderful Kristin Chenoweth joins the show as Annabeth Schott. Chenoweth earned fame on Broadway on shows like You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown and Wicked, and gained TV and film stardom in Pushing Daisies, Bewitched, Glee, and Schmigadoon!
- The familiar face of Bill Birch is seen as DCCC guy Len Segal. You might recognize Birch from tons of commercials as well as appearances on NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, and Just Shoot Me!
- We haven't seen Nancy McNally (Anna Deavere Smith) for a while, but she's got CJ's back here.
- We also haven't seen Defense Secretary Miles Hutchinson (Steve Ryan) lately, but he's just as much of a jerk as ever.
- The Bartlet/Sheen jacket flip is here again, with CJ's head getting caught in his jacket this time. Martin Sheen's left shoulder was injured at birth, making it difficult for him to raise that arm above the shoulder, so he came up with this over-the-head technique to put on coats and jackets.
- Chris and Mark are the long-time press room reporters seen in this episode, while Greg Brock gets talked about.
- CJ's objection to a Secret Service detail takes us right back to Enemies Foreign And Domestic, when it took the emphatic demand of the President to get her to agree to Secret Service protection after she received death threats. Given that experience, though, and knowing that CJ is aware of the importance of the Chief of Staff position, I don't think she would actually try to stop the Secret Service from just doing their jobs.
- Toby's disastrous press briefing reminds us of The Long Goodbye, when Toby handled the briefings when CJ was out of town at her high school reunion. CJ's father famously said of Toby's performance then, "That man lacks grace and charm."
- Toby mentions "spending time with my kids" after the mass resignation prank. His twins, Huck and Molly, were born in Twenty Five, and while Toby pledged his everlasting devotion to them in that episode, according to his ex-wife Andy Wyatt in The Supremes he really hasn't spent all that much time with them.
- The talk about funding for the peacekeeping troops, and the reluctance of some NATO nations to go along, is a reference to Kate's gambit in The Birnam Wood, when she salvaged the Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David by coming up with a plan for giving Palestine limited control over holy sites in Jerusalem in exchange for an outside peacekeeping force.
- Remember the whole Josh-Donna thing? How she's totally devoted to him, perhaps secretly in love, and how he definitely needs her by his side yet is sometimes cruel and thoughtless about her feelings? How he takes her competence and her loyalty for granted, relying on her to do his grunt work? How he's promised (more than once!) that "this time he's changed" and he does realize what he's got with her, and her career and future is important and he's going to help? Even just a couple of episodes ago, when he was by her side at the hospital in Germany, wondering if she was going to survive emergency surgery or if she might suffer brain damage, the Irish photographer Colin took him to task for not paying enough attention and possibly losing the most important person in his life. Remember how Josh took that to heart? Remember how he took Donna aside and gave her a gift of the pen from the peace deal signing? Remember how it seemed maybe Josh really got it this time, and he was going to start treating Donna like a promising professional worthy of advancement and respect? Well ... as soon as Toby asks him for help in the press secretary auditions, Josh dumps that job right off on (a still wheelchair-bound) Donna.
It doesn't appear he's learned or changed much at all.
- There's also a mention of conservative TV show host Taylor Reid ("this administration's most vocal and effective critic"), who was seen (played by Jay Mohr) verbally jousting with CJ on his show in An Khe and Full Disclosure.
DC location shots
- None.
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- During the hubbub in CJ's apartment with the Army sergeants and the Secret Service, someone is removing CJ's iMac G3 computer. We saw a similar Apple iMac at Amy's Women's Leadership Coalition offices in The Women Of Qumar. This model of iMac was actually discontinued a year and a half before this episode aired.
- CJ steals Toby's bottle of Aquafina water to get a drink before going into the briefing room.
- The logos for MSNBC and C-SPAN are featured.
- After Toby's comment about "swatting suicide bombers with her purse" Will says CJ is "like a ninja with a Prada clutch."
- The older background actor with the flattop buzzcut (the one that pops up in almost every episode) is seen walking in the hallway.
- There's talk of an outbreak of Marburg virus in Ecuador, although Marburg is generally thought of as an African virus.
- CJ calls the emissary from Georgia "Inspector Clouseau" when she suspects Josh sent him as a prank.
- Toby makes a reference to "the lone man facing down the tanks in Tiananmen Square," which means the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the "tank man" exist in the West Wing universe.
- CJ's critique of one of the press secretary candidates includes, "He has no soul ... he'd front for the Gotti family if you asked."
- Once CJ gains her confidence she tells President Bartlet he should read the new Benjamin Franklin biography instead of DOE reports she should have been screening all along.
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