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.
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.
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| "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:
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| "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.
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| "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).
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| Donna on crutches in late fall after getting blown up in May |
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."
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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."
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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."
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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)
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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.
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