Faith Based Initiative - TWW S6E10

 

Original airdate: January 5, 2005

Written by: Bradley Whitford (1)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (22)

Synopsis

• A Senator's move to outlaw same-sex marriages (as well as rumors about CJ's sexuality) threaten to derail budget negotiations. Matt Santos makes the decision to put his faith in Josh and run for President.
  

"I'm in - if you're in with me." 

Hey, remember my last episode recap, when I said Josh's visit to Houston was the beginning of the Santos for President campaign? How that was the turning point for Josh in his future plans? Well, as it turns out, we discover in the opening moments of this episode that Matt Santos said no.

 

But he's thinking about it, about Josh's nine-point plan and Helen's doubts and the sheer audacity of it all:

Matt: "Josh wants me to run for President."

Helen (considers for a moment): "Of the United States?"

Matt: "I'm pretty sure."

Helen: "Wow, they are hard up."

 

He's thinking about it so much, in fact, that he comes unexpectedly to Washington to tell Josh he's all in, as long as that nine-point plan becomes ten ... that Josh is a part of it. 

 

And now the wheels are turning, with Matt Santos and Bob Russell and John Hoynes all in the mix for the Democratic nomination and Arnie Vinick looming over the Republican side, and we are buckled in for the major arc awaiting us over the final 34 episodes of The West Wing.

 

On the current presidential front, CJ finds herself the target of internet rumors about her sexuality, and the timing of those rumors seem connected to a surprise budget amendment - a Kansas senator has come up with the Sanctity of Marriage act, a bill that would outlaw the possibility of same-sex marriages across the nation. We saw a similar move from Congress back in The Portland Trip, when Josh went back-and-forth with a gay Congressman who actually supported a bill to ban same-sex marriages (Josh even refers to that storyline here, along with President Bartlet's pocket veto) - but now, putting CJ front-and-center with rumors about her possible romantic interests just seems to be a dirty trick to help move this amendment along.

 

CJ also really struggles with the perception of these rumors. She asks Annabeth to help draft a statement that she can use to address the online comments:

CJ: "And the statement? I just want to be sure this doesn't distract from the business of, say, the government."

Annabeth: "Yeah, I've been struggling with this a bit. You want to emphatically deny something you have no problem with and make it publicly clear that this is a private matter."

CJ: "That'd be great."

(pause)

Annabeth: "Okey-dokey."

Annabeth (and Toby) try to dissuade her, telling her that addressing the comments only gives them more credence, and acts as another unintended criticism of gays and lesbians. CJ is kind of hung up on a new beau, a fellow she's really infatuated with after a few dates, and the fact he's not reaching out to her as the rumors fly is another factor that's really bugging her and knocking her off her game. Finally, finally, she realizes Toby and Annabeth are right, and just before reading her statement to the press she makes the right decision.

Chris: "Are you a homosexual?"

CJ (starts to look at her statement, then folds it up): "You know what, I spent the last ... fourteen hours being snickered at by United States Senators, being ostracized on the world wide web, having my own colleagues question my ability to do my job ... and I let it get to me. So I don't think it really matters whether I'm gay or straight, or just the best damn women's basketball player in Ohio Valley history, no one should be treated this way."

Reporter: "You didn't answer the question."

CJ: "That's right, because it's none of your business."

Just as in The Portland Trip, President Bartlet doesn't want this same-sex marriage ban bill to come to his desk, and especially not as part of a desperately needed budget bill. He exasperates Toby and Josh, though, by insisting they "get it off the bill" but not giving them the threat of the veto that they need to do that. Once again, as we've seen particularly often since the end of Season 4, the President seems only weakly committed to his own policy positions and somehow deathly afraid of the Republican Congress (at least Toby actually brings up the fact that Bartlet isn't running again, so he should be more forceful in trying to push his policies through, instead of more cautious and careful). It's a bit frustrating to see an administration that fired up the entire staff to "serve at the pleasure of the President" and run through walls for him in Let Bartlet Be Bartlet now be cowering behind the curtains when the prospect of a fight comes up.

Toby tries - he goes to Senator Wilkinson to try to talk him out of his amendment, but there's no chance of agreement there. Josh tries, too, doling out government funding to various congressmen in hopes of turning their votes around, but that also seems like a losing battle (not to mention it really gets Josh's temp assistant Marla bent out of shape about bargaining with taxpayer money).

 

An offhand comment from Josh gets Toby on the track of where this same-sex marriage complication came from ... and he gets John Hoynes to admit he cooked up this plan along with his former colleague Wilkinson as a way to force Vice President Russell further to the right. Hoynes' plan was to make Russell come out in favor of the amendment, giving Hoynes space on the left of the Democratic party to get an advantage for the nomination. While Wilkinson is a true believer, Hoynes is just using the issue as a crass political tool - which unfortunately ended up with CJ caught in the undertow.

With all their cards played, Josh and Toby finally have to ask President Bartlet (still recuperating from his MS attack in China) to meet with Wilkinson, and somehow he gets the Senator to take the amendment off the budget. We don't see how that happens - in fact, we see Wilkinson recall a statement by the President that actually seemed to put him on the side of supporting the marriage ban. Which is not at all the position we saw back in The Portland Trip, or with the issue of gays in the military in 20 Hours In L.A.

It's almost like different people are writing the show now or something. Oh, and we also find out what Donna's new job might be, the one she told Josh she already had in the previous episode - she's interviewing with Will for a spot on Russell's campaign.

And Will is smart enough to tell her she won't be anybody's assistant here.

So, we struggle through the administration looking weak and unprepared when it comes to Wilkinson's amendment; we see Josh and Toby clash a little over Josh's plan to leave the White House and go out on a quixotic quest for the presidency with Matt Santos: we see Donna making a serious career move; we see CJ struggling with her romantic life, both fact and fictional; and we see President Bartlet continuing to fight back against his failing body. The final montage covers most of these points, as Josh gathers the courage to tell the President he's moving on and leaving the White House:

 

 

Donna opens a new chapter by opening the door of the Russell campaign headquarters in New Hampshire:

The President fights his way across the Oval Office, using his crutches and trying to regain his balance by the Resolute desk:

And Matt Santos announces his candidacy in front of a school in Houston, establishing his priority as an education candidate, with hand-drawn signs of support behind him, a determined Josh applauding along, and Helen by his side:

 

 

It's an episode that takes a convoluted path, and it's still not always making the points I think the Bartlet White House used to make, but it finally puts a lot of pieces together and I think now we can shift into gear and roll into the fun of the upcoming campaign.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- The scriptwriting debut of Bradley Whitford.

- The cold open (with Matt and Helen Santos) occurs immediately after the events of Impact Winter, right on the heels of Josh's visit to the Santos home. The rest of the episode happens a month later (as we see CJ first reacting to the internet rumors about her we can hear a news report in the background saying President Bartlet's visit to China was "last month").

- Another pointed mention of "seven years" as we are reminded yet again that the series skipped ahead a year somewhere around the Camp David Mideast summit and Liftoff (the DCCC staffers saying the midterms already happened in Liftoff makes it clear we skipped past the fall/winter of 2004, but the events of the Gaza blast and Donna's recovery, the summit, Leo's heart attack, and CJ's elevation to Chief of Staff couldn't have taken 10 months as they'd have us believe). Anyway, no way to solve it, just go along for the ride.

Toby is upset at Josh leaving to run the Santos campaign, saying "Seven years, you're gonna leave us with a candygram and a get-well card?" Interestingly, Will says Donna has "six years on the front lines," so I don't know why that is (we know Donna has been along from early in the first campaign from In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II). We get another reminder of the skipped year when Josh asks Will about "Orange County, three years ago" when the events of Election Night happened in Season 4, just two years ago.

- The hallway scenes where Annabeth surprises CJ really show off the difference in heights (Allison Janney is six feet tall, while Kristin Chenoweth is just 4 feet 11 inches), but the show didn't play fair. Chenoweth was in her stocking feet while Janney was wearing boots.

CJ (to Annabeth): "Really? Four-ten?"

Annabeth: "Me? I'm four-eleven."

CJ: "I can't believe we're the same species."

- It's a somewhat spooky is-that-what-he-really-said prophetic moment in the discussion between Vice President Russell and Toby. Russell warns Toby that handling the same-sex marriage issue wrong could set back those rights by decades, while doing it in the right way could get the question settled in ten years. The Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the court found the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees same-sex couples the right to marry, was decided in June, 2015 ... ten years and five months after this episode aired.

- Gail's fishbowl is basically empty, except now there are two goldfish in there. Is this a nod to same-sex couples, CJ's rumored lesbianism, or just two fish swimming around?

- Why'd They Come Up With Faith Based Initiative?

The specific phrase is never said in the episode, but the obvious connection is to the Wilkinson amendment to ban same-sex marriage. In conversations with both Toby and the President, he makes it clear it's his Christian faith that drives him to oppose such unions. As a more thematic intention, though, it's Matt Santos' faith in Josh and his drive to help make him President that fits the title better - Matt is putting his faith entirely in Josh and his own personal desire to improve America by taking the initiative to run for President.

Quotes    

(CJ takes the gag gift basketball on her desk and smoothly shoots it into the wastebasket)

Josh: "I've never been more attracted to you in my life."

CJ: "Restrain yourself."

----- 

Toby: "Do me a favor, hold off on the statement, let me make some calls."

CJ: "Fine, but I think you're drastically overestimating the political potency of my sex life."

Toby: "Not possible." 

-----

Vice President Russell: "I've got a nephew who's gay. I love this kid. His name's Todd. I want him to have the same rights and opportunities as everybody else. He wants to go to West Point, and it makes me sick to think that we would send him into battle to defend the Union, but he can't enter into one."

Toby: "Then come out against this amendment."

Vice President Russell: "We're not there yet. Five thousand years of socialization didn't go out the window with the first Village People album - you do this wrong and there'll be a backlash that sets us back fifty years, you do it right we'll be there in ten."

-----

Toby (talking with Josh about Santos): "Why does he want to go to New Hampshire?"

Josh: "To run for President. (pause) I kinda talked him into it, I think I gotta go with him. I laid out a nine-point plan."

Toby: "Is one of the points a military junta?"

-----

CJ: "I'm a heterosexual. I-I don't know why I just said that, except that as of this morning I'm the most famous - not famous, but apparently the most powerful lesbian on the planet. And the fact of the matter is I'm crazy, absolutely crazy about this particular man I just met and had two fabulous dinners with in the space of one week, a man who hasn't had the courtesy to call me today, probably because he's simply of the undependable gender or, come to think of it, maybe he has even less of an idea about how to deal with my alleged and fictitious lesbianism than I do. So he'll just, remain silent, like a submarine under the ice cap and drift away. Just drift away like the legion of other cowards whom I spent my young life staring at the phone panting like an exquisite collie hoping for table scraps - until I became successful, and suddenly started to scare them, scare them with the very independence they required me to have, so that now, I'm looking at some bad numbers. Really rough stuff, if you know what I'm talking about. But what was I supposed to do, turn down an opportunity to serve the President of the United States, who I believe in and adore? You just want to share it all with someone, you know?"

(pause, as Leo takes it all in)

Leo (uncomfortably): "So, if you want to send down any more call sheets?"

----- 

CJ: "So we should do what, fight an amendment with no practical impact and massive popular support?"

Toby: "Yes, we should fight it, fight the symbol. Yes. Symbols matter. And if they didn't why would you care about what they say about you on the internet."

 

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

• It's Teri Polo (Meet The Parents, The Fosters, Northern Exposure - also appeared in 8 episodes of Aaron Sorkin's earlier series Sports Night) as Helen Santos. I am a huge fan of her performance as Helen - I'm not particularly a big Teri Polo fan in general, but I think she knocks it out of the park in The West Wing. It doesn't hurt that she and Jimmy Smits seem to have an abundance of chemistry together. 

• Marla Worsky is still Josh's temp, replacing Donna. She is ... pretty tough ("step away from the door!").
  

• Reed Diamond returns as Dr. Mike Gordon. We saw him as the doctor in the bunker during the anthrax scare in No Exit.

• Josh mentions a "Marriage Recognition Act" that President Bartlet used a pocket veto on during his first term. We saw that play out in The Portland Trip, with Josh debating his friend Congressman Skinner over the bill.
  

• President Bartlet is seen in his Notre Dame sweatshirt. Before accepting the role, Martin Sheen insisted Jed Bartlet be a Catholic and a graduate of Notre Dame.

• There are references to many, many storylines we have seen earlier in the series:
• President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis (first revealed in He Shall, From Time To Time ...) 
  
• Toby's marital background ("I've been married almost twice - to the same woman" meaning Congresswoman Andy Wyatt, first seen in Mandatory Minimums)
• Donna's desire for more responsibility and career growth leading her to quit working as Josh's assistant
• Leo's background as a former Secretary of Labor
• When Josh asks Leo to come with him and work on the Santos campaign, Leo's "I already found my guy" takes us back to Bartlet For America and In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I, and Leo's involvement in the first campaign
  

• Some background on Will comes up a couple of times: Toby's remark that he's "not as obedient as he used to be" reminds us that Will worked as Toby's deputy between Arctic Radar and Constituency Of One, when he quit to go work for Vice President Russell; and Josh's comment about "Orange County three years ago" takes us back to Game On and Election Night, when Will ended up running a successful campaign for a House candidate who had died.
  

• Chris is one of the longtime White House press corps that we see in this episode, as well as the press cubicle areas first seen in Access.

• Nancy is back, played by Martin Sheen's daughter Renée Estevez.

• Senator Wilkinson reminds the President of a comment he made at the National Prayer Breakfast six weeks ago that led the Senator to believe he'd support a ban on same-sex marriages. The National Prayer Breakfast was the same event where President Bartlet (accidentally) accepted a gift of the Taiwanese independence flag that caused a diplomatic issue with China in A Change Is Gonna Come.
  

DC location shots    

• None. The street scene with Toby and Hoynes, with steam visible in the air, was almost certainly filmed on the Warner Brothers lot.
  

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

• CJ and Margaret talk about CJ's dates with Tommy at the Oval Room. The Oval Room was a DC restaurant near the White House that closed in late 2020 after 26 years in business. The site is now the French restaurant La Bise.
  

• It's an official two-color WNBA Spalding basketball that CJ shoots into the trash can. Spalding was the official basketball of both the NBA and WNBA between 1983 and 2021, when Wilson took over as the supplier.
  

• CJ compares Toby to an overly protective "dog in Pompeii." This would appear to be a reference to a short story called The Dog Of Pompeii, written by Louis Untermeyer in 1915, a fictitious story of a blind boy and his dog in Pompeii around the time of the city's destruction by Mount Vesuvius' eruption in 79 AD.
  

• We see a clip that clearly is from CNN on the TV in Josh's office, with former CNN anchor Jack Cafferty visible.

• Annabeth has a long list of real-life publications covering the rumors over CJ - The Advocate, Out, The Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Times, the Boston Globe, MSNBC, Fox News, and Soap Opera Digest. Goddess Monthly and the Nantucket Republican appear to be fictional. There's also a nameplate for Newsweek in the press cubicle room.
  

• While talking about Fox News, Annabeth mentions "both mean Irish guys." I'd assume one of them would be Bill O'Reilly and the other Sean Hannity.
  

• The Village People get a shout-out, as well as the Washington Mystics of the WNBA.
  

• Leo says he's almost up to the Hoover administration in his review of his old documents.
  

• Leo brings up the National Enquirer and Elizabeth Taylor while he's trying to cheer up CJ over her internet rumors.
  

• When CJ tells Josh to start handing out spending projects to help get the Sanctity of Marriage act off the budget bill, he says, "Maybe Sioux City needs a monorail." To me, this sounds like a reference to the classic Simpsons episode Marge Vs. The Monorail, from 1993.
  

• Another one of the pork-barrel projects Josh talks about handing out is "an indoor rain forest in Iowa." That was an actual proposal in the early 2000s, first slated for downtown Des Moines, then for Coralville near Iowa City, and finally destined for Pella, Iowa (which is where I went to college in the mid-1980s). After much controversy and opposition federal funding was totally withdrawn in 2007 and the project remains dormant, although the Earthpark website is still up and running.
  

• President Bartlet quotes Theodore Roethke's poem Infirmity when he says, "How body from spirit does slowly unwind, until we are pure spirit at the end." The poem was published posthumously in Roethke's 1964 collection The Far Field.
  

• Tommy Keller sends CJ a rose and a dinner invitation inside a Nike sneaker.
  

End credits freeze frame: The President and Senator Wilkinson having their discussion in the Oval Office.

Previous episode: Impact Winter

Next episode: Opposition Research