Impact Winter - TWW S6E9

 

Original airdate: December 15, 2004

Written by: Debora Cahn (9)

Directed by: Lesli Linka Glatter (5)

Synopsis

• The China summit appears stuck in neutral when President Bartlet's health makes talks difficult. Josh makes a decision about his plans for the 2006 campaign. Donna quits. And the whole thing is overshadowed by an asteroid possibly plummeting towards the earth.
  

"I'm not talking about Congress." 

There's a foreboding sense of doom over this entire episode. President Bartlet's worsening MS symptoms threaten to derail any real accomplishment in the China talks; Josh gloomily muses over the prospect of either Russell or Hoynes being the Democratic standard bearer in 2006; Donna quits (she quits!). And then Debora Cahn, who masterfully put together the madcap comedy of The Supremes and is responsible for some other pretty good episodes like No Exit and Liftoff, gives us a hacky, totally unnecessary symbol of doom - a giant asteroid possibly crashing down on the planet.

 

What this episode does give us, however, is another example of Jed's brilliance at negotiating and making personal connections, and the impetus (finally!) to get Josh off his wavering indecision and make the move to leave the White House and pick a guy to back for the upcoming Presidential campaign. Unfortunately, it takes Donna leaving for that to happen, but fear not - she's not gone for good.

The asteroid plotline is no big deal (spoiler alert: it misses the Earth) - it literally exists only as a giant symbol of possible oncoming doom, to go along with President Bartlet's frustration at his health and the failure of his advisers to pull off the summit, as well as Josh's malaise about Democratic prospects to succeed Bartlet in office. We do get some humor out of Margaret's plans to decide who gets the White House bunker spots since the highest-ranking members of the administration are out of the country (from Carol insisting on including Dan, the UPS guy "with the shorts" to Margaret's "Oh my God, I forgot the Vice President" to Will's insistence they include somebody who can reinvent the telephone).

Let's go to China. President Bartlet first showed signs of his MS worsening in A Change Is Gonna Come, when he lost the vision in one eye and then offended China by accepting a Taiwanese independence flag that he never actually saw. Leading up to the flight to China we saw in In The Room, he gradually lost use of his arms and legs, eventually ending up in a wheelchair (although the use of his arms did return). As the staff is debating how to get the President off Air Force One in Beijing with the hydraulic lift delayed, he works out a prison break with his new body man, Curtis, who literally carries him off the plane.

Now we learn he's going to have serious problems with fatigue and endurance because of this attack, and given Chinese President Lian's proclivities for long-windedness and ceremonial pomp, this could be a problem.

CJ, Toby, and Kate scramble to combine things up, to cut out as much unnecessary ceremony as possible, in order to get to the real nitty-gritty of negotiations between the Presidents. Bartlet is insistent on covering everything, even the parts they know they can't get the Chinese to move on, because his main goal is progress on the Chinese getting some control over North Korea. They come up with a signal - if the President is feeling like he needs a break, he'll tug on his earlobe.

Not long into the first day, it happens.

CJ - who was out of the room getting word of the oncoming asteroid from Leo - whips up an excuse to get the President out for a short break.

President: "The plan was flawed."

CJ: "It was."

President: "Ideally the recipient of the secret sign stays in the room."

CJ: "Yes."

President: "I almost pulled my ear off."

CJ: "I had to step out for a call from Leo."

President: "I thought he didn't work for us anymore."

CJ: "These things change. You should get back to him if you're up for it."

President: "Bound to be better news than what's happening here."

CJ: "Oh ... you'd be amazed."

(That "Oh ... you'd be amazed" about the asteroid news is pretty funny, I'll admit.)

Unfortunately, the 15-minute break they had expected turns into the President sleeping for four hours. Quickly the decision is made to have Toby and Kate and other staffers take over the meetings and handle the agenda items, instead of putting the President into long discussions he won't be able to focus for. Jed is not happy with how this turns out, forcing himself to try to brush his own teeth and demonstrate he can do this himself, that he can get things done instead of his staffers getting walked all over by the Chinese ... but then he falls.

And in a tense debate with Abbey, a frustrated Jed admits he can't do the job in this condition, and pounds futilely on his paralyzed legs.

Jed: "Decisions are made in the room. I am not in the room! I can't do the job, Abbey. Do you understand? I can't do it. I cannot do the job! Look at me! (pounding on his legs) Look at me!"

The summit wraps up, there's a signing ceremony for some small-potatoes agreements, but North Korea never even got into the discussions. As the two Presidents sit alone for a photo op at the table, Bartlet sneaks in a comment about the previous Chinese leader, one that was a rival to Lian but still holds his respect. Jed is playing his cards here, making it clear that he knows the political situation Lian is in, and zeroes in on what could be a way to get something important done.

President (whispering): "You speak pretty good English, don't you?"

And Curtis rolls Bartlet off into a side room with Lian, no interpreters, no negotiators, just the two Presidents hashing out the primary purpose of Jed's visit. 

CJ, Abbey, and the Surgeon General are concerned as the two continue to talk for almost two hours ("How long can he sit up?" "Doctor said maybe 30 minutes. What are we at now?" "Seventy-two."), but they eventually come out with an agreement to meet on North Korea the following spring. The President got what he wanted, on probably the final big-time foreign summit of his presidency.

But that long meeting has a cost. As CJ delightedly relays word of the success back to the White House, a stream of doctors and medical personnel heading to the President's Air Force One quarters draws CJ's and Toby's attention. And in a shot reminiscent of the end of The Godfather, we see Abbey closing the door, shutting out the staffers from whatever medical crisis Jed is going through.

The other big story of this episode is Josh's. The day begins slowly, "take out the trash" day, with the only news being the President in China. Then he and Donna get the first word of the President's MS attack on the plane, and quickly Josh knows he needs some experienced help.

The hubbub of the President's health crisis sidelines Donna's plans to talk to Josh. She's been looking to get more responsibility, more career growth and progression out of her position as Josh's assistant (at least since Angel Maintenance). Even though Josh got her on the CoDel to the Middle East that nearly got her killed in Gaza, she's still not satisfied, as Josh returned to his old take-Donna-for-granted ways pretty quickly after that. She keeps setting up lunch meetings to talk it over with Josh, but he keeps canceling - which is not helping Donna's mood.

Meanwhile, even as Josh and Leo are trying to handle the fallout from the President's health issue with the press in DC (plus deal with a Vice President eager to flaunt his tennis-playing health by setting up a Cabinet meeting, and then the asteroid, eventually), Josh is also still sullenly depressed over the the upcoming presidential campaign. He's been asked by both former Vice President Hoynes and current Vice President Russell to run their campaigns - but he's not enthused about either one. He uses Leo as a sounding board to try to figure out what he should do:

Leo: "You pick your dream candidate yet?"

Josh: "I don't know how all this works."

Leo: "You pick the smartest, most capable, most honorable individual you can think of and you have a conversation ... ideally, before the New Hampshire filing deadline."

Josh: "I can't pick up and leave the White House to go run a campaign for some dark-horse I pulled out of a corn field."

Leo: "I did."

And he questions whether he should even go work on a campaign and leave the White House before the job is done with President Bartlet. But Leo is wise:

Josh: "I gotta stay here, and finish what I started."

Leo: "It doesn't finish, Josh. It keeps going."

Even that isn't enough to prod Josh into action. What is enough, though, is the fact that Donna has finally had enough.

Donna: "I quit."

Josh: "What? God, no you don't, walk with me."

Donna: "Look at my face, I'm not messing with you."

Josh: "Donna -"

Donna: "There's going to be a temp here tomorrow."

Josh: "Oh, for God's --- we were supposed to have lunch, I canceled, it was crappy of me --"

Donna: "This is what we were going to talk about."

Josh: "Uh, um, uh, tomorrow, we ---"

Donna: "We were going to talk about where my job was going, because that working for you is an honor and a privilege I'm ready for more and it's not happening here and I've started looking and I'm ---"

Josh: "Slow down, slow down. We'll talk about it, absolutely, you're right, tomorrow, lunch, you and me."

All the delays, all the cancellations, all the taking-her-for-granted has finally been enough for Donna, and she's out the door. Josh still doesn't believe she's gone, even the next day when there's a temp sitting at her desk - he thinks Donna will be back.

It finally sinks in when Josh tells Leo that Donna left. You can see the exact moment in Josh's face when he decides what his future is going to be (and that it took Donna's departure to give him that kick in the butt to make up his mind). It's actually a very nice little moment of acting from Bradley Whitford - you literally see his eyes change at the moment he decides.

Leo: "See, I tried to tell you this. People move on."

Josh gets a flight to Houston, and he shows up at Matt Santos' house. Santos, if you remember, was first seen in Liftoff, as an up-and-coming House member from Texas who worked some really clever political levers to get a health-care bill passed that Josh never thought was possible. Santos, though, is tired of spending time in Washington away from his family and insists he's not running for another term in the House ... but after Leo told Josh to find "the smartest, most capable, most honorable individual you can think of" this is the man. Josh sees promise in Santos, a promise of getting things done in a new way, a promise of rising above partisanship and bringing youth and vigor and change to government.

Santos: "I'm not running for Congress again, Josh, now you came a long way, I'm sorry about that but it's just ---"

Josh: "I'm not talking about Congress." 

 

But can he convince the Congressman? The long silence as they regard each other makes us think maybe he can.

 

 

Here begins the Santos campaign, that will sweep us through the remainder of the series as he jousts with Russell and Hoynes in the Democratic primaries, with the specter of Arnie Vinick awaiting as the possible Republican candidate. I think the campaign storyline through the next season and a half is really compelling and well-done, and the show does a pretty nice job of alternating between campaign episodes and White House episodes for a while before going full campaign later in Season 7.

So, anyway - Merry Christmas. Our heroes have eleven months to go (of series time) before the nation decides who will follow Jed Bartlet in the White House.

Tales Of Interest!

- It's the final Christmas episode of The West Wing, which (even though the holiday is barely acknowledged here) is kinda sad. Especially during the Sorkin years, the Christmas episodes were among the best of the series, with classics like In Excelsis Deo, Noël, and Bartlet For America. Even last season's Abu el Banat was centered around the holiday celebration, but this one ... not so much. We get a few mentions of Christmas shopping, a "happy holidays," a "feliz Navidad," a "seasons' greetings," and finally a "merry Christmas" - and a few shots of decorations going up around the White House as well as the Santos' trimming the tree - but it's definitely not Christmas-centered.

A Santa hat in the background as staffers hang garlands.

Holiday lights in the hallway, and a poinsettia going by.

Lots of lights on the tree in the foyer.

Christmas at the Santos house.

 

Anyway, with the series wrapping up Season 7 at the 2007 inauguration (hope that's not a spoiler for you) that means episodes of the transition between the election and that inauguration would be airing in the spring of 2006. Since that's where Christmas would occur, I guess it's understandable that they wouldn't figure on forcing a holiday episode into that spring window.

 

- We also definitively say goodbye to the gingerbread White House. We saw one of those in each of the first four Christmas episodes, but it did not show up in last year's Abu el Banat, nor did we see it in this episode. A sad, unremarked end to a West Wing holiday tradition.

 

- A cute little moment as Annabeth is "taking laps" to psych herself up before going into the briefing room. We already know Kristin Chenoweth is a little pixie, but it's still humorous to see her duck under an open filing cabinet drawer as she scurries around a corner.

No, it's not quite the same as Joan Cusack's frantic slide beneath a filing cabinet drawer in Broadcast News, but it did remind me of that (and if you've never seen Broadcast News, you should ... Albert Brooks is terrific and Holly Hunter kills it ["It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room." "No. It's awful."]).

- We see Gail's fishbowl on CJ's desk from a distance, when Walter Sprout from NASA is telling Josh about the asteroid. We can't get a good look at it, but it just looks like a big rock - which would make sense in connection with an asteroid hurtling towards the earth.

- Why'd They Come Up With Impact Winter?

President Bartlet's musings to Curtis about the asteroid worst-case scenario - setting the Russian forests ablaze, causing the northern hemisphere to be blanketed in smoke - lead him to call that "impact winter," similar to the predicted "nuclear winter" scenario after an exchange of nuclear weapons. The overall gloom of such an event, of course, looms over the entire episode, from the China talks appearing to fail to President Bartlet's futile rage at his condition to Josh considering the political and personal landscape.

Quotes    

Will: "The VP's on his way, he'd like to make the statement."

Josh (referring to Annabeth): "She's got it."

Annabeth: "No, not really."

Will: "People find it reassuring to hear from --"

Josh: "The President can't walk. Resist the temptation to treat this like an opportunity."

-----

CJ: "We cancel the military greeting on the tarmac, the welcome ceremony tomorrow morning, the First Lady's flight from New Delhi lands before ours does, so we'll see her just as soon as we touch down.

President: "She's gonna be cranky. (to Millie) I think she should ride with you."

----- 

Toby: "Maybe we let go of the Tibet conversation, cut straight to the --"

President: "No."

Toby: "They're not gonna budge on Tibet anyway."

President: "We talk about Tibet so they can be implacable. We talk about Taiwan so that they can hold the line against the capitalist, imperialist foe. We do it all so that when we get to North Korea, and they agree to do our dirty work, they won't have lost face at every other step along the way. Cancel the banquet, cancel whatever the hell you like - but we do not skip one step, not one moment of my negotiation with President Lian."

-----

(Kate has just had a conversation with the Chinese aide about getting the President off Air Force One)

Toby: "Pretty snazzy with the language, there."

Kate: "Um, not really. Second-grade vocabulary."

Toby: "'Compressor starter' and 'hydraulic lift' is second grade?"

Kate: "It is in China."

-----

Margaret: "There's someone here from NASA, he needs to speak to whoever's in charge and at this point I have no idea who that is."

-----

Leo (as Josh is considering running Hoynes' campaign and asking about his chances): "It could happen. But you gotta want to work for him, and you gotta want him to win. You want that?"

Josh: "I want to get Jed Bartlet a third term."

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

• We haven't seen Ginger for a while (not since Han, as a matter of fact - this is just her third appearance in the post-Sorkin era, and fourth since Privateers), but here she is, with Carol and Margaret, making a list of the men they want in the bunker to help "repopulate" - like Dan, the UPS guy ... with the shorts. Unfortunately, this is Ginger's last appearance in the series until the final episode.
  

• When Annabeth asks Josh to do the press briefing, Donna remarks, "They don't like him." That reminds us of his disastrous briefing in Celestial Navigation, with the President's "secret plan to fight inflation."
  

• Annabeth's reference to "put out the garbage week" - corrected by Josh to "take out the trash" - reminds us of the episode Take Out The Trash Day, where stories the administration wanted to bury were put out in bunches on Fridays.
  

• Of course President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis diagnosis has been an undercurrent of the series since we first found out about it in He Shall, From Time To Time ... Symptoms of the disease have not really appeared much, though, prior to the previous couple of episodes (with the exception of Election Night).
  

• This conversation:

Margaret: "The doctors say the paralysis is temporary but I think they're lying."

Leo: "They can't lie about the President's condition, that would be a crime, and one we've committed before, to boot."

reminds us that the President, Abbey, Vice President Hoynes, and a few doctors kept the diagnosis of Bartlet's multiple sclerosis secret during his first campaign and a good amount of his first term.

• CJ apologizes to Leo about bringing him back to the White House to work, hoping she doesn't cause the need for another bypass. We saw Leo's heart attack and recovery starting with The Birnam Wood.
  

• Josh and Leo discuss Vinick's announcement speech, Josh tells him about the offers from Russell and Hoynes to run their campaigns, and Leo refers to Baker dropping out (we saw the Hoynes offer in A Change Is Gonna Come and the Vinick/Russell/Baker stuff in In The Room).
  

• Donna's dissatisfaction with her career growth working for Josh has been a long time coming. One of the first instances where we saw her asking him for more responsibility was in Angel Maintenance, and he gave her the busy work of researching the maintenance practices for Air Force One. In The Benign Prerogative he basically foisted off the hard work of actually reading through all the pardon requests on her, which she accepted but didn't like. By the end of Season 5 Donna was really pushing for more than Josh was giving her, and was particularly peeved when she wasn't included on the trade talks trip to Belgium in Talking Points. That's when Josh pulled some strings to get her on the delegation to the Middle East and be the White House's eyes and ears on the trip to Gaza, which led to her defending Josh in the face of CJ's rather clear-eyed dissection of why Josh was holding her back in No Exit. At the end of Season 5, of course, Donna barely survived the bombing of the congressional delegation convoy, which seemed to lead Josh to understand her importance (not only to his job, but to him personally) - but that really didn't last very long once Donna returned to work (Josh even passed off a pile of work that he was supposed to do into Donna's lap as she was in a wheelchair). In the previous episode, Donna mentioned she was trying to carve out time in Josh's schedule so they could have a serious face-to-face discussion about her future; here we find out those meetings have already been canceled and pushed back seven times, and Josh puts her off a couple of times after that ... until it's one time too many.
  

• We get Walter Sprout ("I loved a man once. I never told him.") and the NASA administrator - too bad we don't get assistant NASA administrator Alex Moreau, who took Josh stargazing and then gifted him a telescope in The Warfare Of Genghis Khan.
  

• Leo's breezy "I did" response to Josh's lament that he can't just leave the White House and run a campaign for some "dark-horse I pulled out of a cornfield" takes us back to Bartlet For America and Leo's first conversation with then-Governor Bartlet about maybe running for President. You remember, the one with the napkin.
  

• Charlie mentions to Josh that they've got "preliminary budgets from everyone except Transportation." In In The Room we saw Josh leaning on the Secretary of Transportation to get their budget request in ... guess they still haven't done it.

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• Josh and Donna sing a little duet of Monday, Monday by The Mamas and the Papas at the start of the episode.
  

• Josh confuses the President's physician Dr. Strenlow with he movie character Dr. Strangelove (from Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb).
  

• When Josh is talking about the press rumors that President Bartlet may be in a coma, he mentions a wax mockup of Chairman Mao.
  

• Walter Sprout tells Josh the incoming asteroid is "twice the size of the Astrodome."
  

• Leo talks about Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower being chosen as presidential candidates by "a couple of hacks with cigars in a smoke-filled back room," as Josh puts it.

End credits freeze frame: Presidents Bartlet and Lian at the signing ceremony, before Jed sneaks them both off for private talks over North Korea in the next room.

Previous episode: In The Room

Next episode: Faith Based Initiative