Opposition Research - TWW S6E11

 

Original airdate: January 12, 2005

Written by: Eli Attie (13)
 

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (23)

Synopsis

• Josh and Matt lock horns over policy, methods, and style of the fledgling campaign in New Hampshire - not to mention their ultimate goals.
  

"Mostly cause they think he's nuts. But - they're curious. That ain't nothing." 

Josh has made his call on who "his guy" is, that guy (Matt Santos) has agreed to jump off a cliff with Josh, and Donna has moved on from Josh's assistant to being a valuable deputy for the Russell campaign. That's all been done, and now we begin the story of the 2006 Presidential campaign in earnest.

Trouble is, this all kind of happened fast, and Josh and Matt really don't know each other that well. The clash of their styles, their intentions, the ways they think their campaign should be run make up this episode as we get ready for the New Hampshire primary. Josh knows how early campaigns work, he knows it's important to get Matt's face out there in front of the voters, to tell his personal story and (in states like New Hampshire) get into retail politics, shaking hands and talking to voters one-by-one, even at the town dump.

And the hardscrabble beginnings of an underfunded campaign lead us to the former sporting goods store headquarters, marked with a handwritten cardboard sign.

Josh also wants to have Matt prepared for everything, including getting background information on the other candidates. Matt refuses to play along with the opposition research ploy, insisting he'll run nothing but a clean campaign and not attack his opponents with negative ads.

Will Bailey asks for a meeting with Josh, also to get a "clean campaign, don't attack the other guy" promise out of him. It can't be unintentional that Will calls in Donna as part of the meeting, which surprises both her and Josh.

 

 

It's their first meeting since Donna quit in Impact Winter, leaving Josh with Marla Worsky as his temp assistant, and you know Will did it to knock Josh off his game. Which it does, at least temporarily, but as the days go on Josh learns Donna is a key member of that Russell staff.

Josh: "What make-work job do they even have you doing over there?"

Donna: "Media targeting for the Northeast and Pacific Northwest."

Then she delivers a boatload of letters from Russell supporters to the DNC asking to protect the New Hampshire primary, using an old Santos quote against him (more on that later). Yeah, Donna is doing just fine.

Matt, meanwhile, also isn't happy with Josh's just-get-to-know-folks plan. He wants to jump right in with a big policy speech on education, his primary campaign plank, and set himself up as the "education candidate" right out of the box. He's got university professors working with him to develop this plan, and his staffer Ned hammering out some of the details.

Josh is taken aback, especially when Matt uses some of the early meetings with Democratic party influencers/fundraisers to outline the specifics of his plan - a plan that would require more school days, more federal control of schools, and more money to pay for it all. That's not a policy that will play well in income-tax-free New Hampshire, and Josh tries to steer Matt away from touting it everywhere.

The early campaign seems to be constantly tripping over its own feet, from a campaign headquarters that reminds people of sinking ships to setting up the media to cover a visit with New Hampshire's oldest voter (a visit that doesn't happen, since the man died a couple of days earlier) to attempting a photo opportunity with President Bartlet's son-in-law that turns into an attack on Santos. Oh, yeah, that thing ... more stories from Matt's past begin dripping out in the press, including a statement he made eight years ago that was critical of New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation-primary status. That's the comment that leads Doug Westin to demand Matt publicly apologize for, which he refuses to do.

Josh knows he's got to get a handle on Matt's background, so he goes ahead with the "opposition research" - only it's on his own candidate. Josh's old pal Joey Lucas comes by to drop off the information, chiding him with "You should have done this weeks ago." And when Josh confronts Matt with some of the information he's discovered, especially the fact that he is financially supporting his brother and Josh needs to know if Matt tried to get him a government job, Matt goes off and admits maybe he's not in this for the long haul.

Matt: "We're lucky if we have two months with this, I don't want to waste it shaking hands!"

Josh (shaken): "Two months? ... I gave up everything for this, you're not even in it to win?"

Matt: "Maybe we have a different definition of winning, Josh. Maybe that's what we should have talked about in Houston." 

But despite all the missteps, despite all the bad news, despite the fact Josh feels like they're spinning their wheels and falling behind, something strange starts to happen. Right after Matt appears to be throwing in the towel on trying to win, right after Josh in frustration graffitos a mustache on a Bob Russell cardboard figure,

Ronna appears with a stack of papers.

Josh: "These are ...?"

Ronna: "Statements from the other campaigns, promising education plans by next week. No one was talking about it, and now they all are. Hoynes challenged the whole field to debate education. (giddily) We're moving the debate, Josh."

And immediately after that, Elizabeth Bartlet Westin arrives. She'd already chewed Josh out for his attempt to stop Doug's run for Congress a year ago, and dismissed any chance Santos has ... but she's back, she admits Matt is the only one talking about real issues, and she has a check for Josh.

Josh: "You're giving Matt Santos $2000?"

Elizabeth: "Yeah. Sorry, that's the federal limit."

Josh: "Liz, this goes on a publicly disclosed donor list. This is a Bartlet family contribution to Santos for President."

Elizabeth: "Funny thing about the FEC ... they really like it when you report this stuff."

She knows exactly what she's doing. Once the FEC reports come out with a Bartlet family member making a contribution to Matt Santos instead of Bob Russell, some eyebrows are going to be raised.

And finally, things between Josh and Matt begin to come together. Josh sees that Matt can be himself, he can push the policies he wants as his priorities, but he can tie that directly into his own life story, his own background. And Matt begins to understand that by following Josh's plan of introducing himself on a small-level "retail" basis, by telling his personal story of how education turned his life around, he can accomplish both the small-scale and big-picture things they both want out of the campaign.

Josh: "I don't know what you want my job to be ... for days now, I've been trying to get my head around this rationale. I used to tell candidates, make it about the voters, not about you. But the difference is you are them. Working-poor background, kids in public school, brother with a high-school diploma, he can barely read."

Matt: "And what does all that amount to besides a lousy stereotype?"

Josh: "It's why you're in this, it's why you're talking about education, what's wrong with telling people that?"

Matt is still not happy about the next event, "another three-person grip and grin" at Phil Hawk's house - it's not the big-group open venue he wants in order to promote his plans. But then, they go inside.

Josh: "This is more people than we expected."

Ronna:  "Yeah, some of the neighbors came."

Josh: "Because?"

Ronna: "Mostly cause they think he's nuts. But ... they're curious. That ain't nothing."

Josh: "Nah, that ain't nothing."

Josh's campaign experience and smarts were good enough to recognize he could take Matt's energy, drive, and enthusiasm over policy and combine that with his personal story, and now the Santos campaign actually is creating interest and forcing action by the other Democratic candidates. That, indeed, "ain't nothing." 

And the campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination is off and running.

Tales Of Interest!

- A rare case of the title screen being something other than white type on a black background. While there have been a couple of instances of the episode title being shown over the onscreen action of the show (Third-Day Story and Liftoff), the use of black letters on a white background is used for particularly significant episodes - Twenty Five, for example (the end of the Aaron Sorkin era) and Tomorrow (the final episode of the series). In this case, it's actually more of a grayish background. I think it serves two purposes - to indicate the beginning of the non-White-House presidential campaign episodes that will be more and more a focus of the series into Season 7 ... and also to bring us into the cold, gray, New Hampshire winter of the primary campaign.

- And, yes, this is the first of the campaign episodes that take place apart from the Bartlet White House and have very little connection to the administration storylines. We only see Toby and the President briefly, as the other end of telephone conversations with Josh; we don't see CJ or Leo at all. For a while the series will basically go in a pattern of alternating campaign episodes with White House episodes.

- The first episode of the series where John Spencer does not appear. Heck, he even showed up in a short non-speaking scene in The Long Goodbye, the CJ-centric episode where she was in Ohio the whole time.

- With this episode actually being shot in early December, that explains the Christmas decorations along the town's street. Although, true, sometimes those don't get taken down until later in the winter, so if this was January in New Hampshire, they might have still been up.

- Christopher Misiano gives us an extreme close-up of the New Hampshire license plate on the minivan Josh is riding in.

- Why'd They Come Up With Opposition Research?

Of course, because of the necessary research into the past positions (and sometimes personal lives) of your opposition that you need in order to run a campaign - or, as we find out here, research into your own candidate's past.

Quotes    

(Josh is looking at the cardboard Bob Russell standups at the Russell campaign headquarters)

Staffer: "Folks love taking pictures with those. Almost like the real thing."

Josh: "Almost."

Staffer: "They talk a little less."

Josh: "Don't say that too loud, his wife is going to want one." 

-----

Donna: "Hi."

Ronna (shaking hands): "Hi. Ronna."

Donna: "Actually, it's Donna."

Ronna: "Oh, no, it's Ronna."

Donna: "No, really, it's Donna."

Ronna: "I'm quite certain it's --"

Josh (exasperated): "Ronna, it's Donna; Donna, it's Ronna."

-----

Matt: "Well, you know, if we're going to do this I'm not going to make it easy. I'm going to give the big speeches, I'm going to push every limit, and that's the campaign you get to run."

Josh: "But what if I can't make that work?"

Matt: "Well, then no one can."

  

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

• Matt Santos' staffers from his congressional office, Ronna (Karis Campbell, from Rizzoli & Isles, The Fosters, an episode of ER) and Ned (Evan Arnold, from Spider-Man, Suburgatory, Veep, Close To Home) reappear. We first saw them in the background working in his office in Liftoff.

• New York Times White House reporter Greg Brock (Sam Robards) is in New Hampshire, covering not the Santos campaign but why in the hell top Democratic operative Josh Lyman is hitching his wagon to a completely unknown candidate. Brock first appeared in Full Disclosure, as the new White House correspondent who gave CJ an advance look at his article on John Hoynes' upcoming book.

• First Daughter Elizabeth Bartlet is here at home in New Hampshire. Played by Annabeth Gish (Mystic Pizza, Barry, The X-Files), she was last seen in the Christmas episode Abu el Banat, where we first discovered her husband Doug Westin was planning a run for Congress.

• Speaking of Doug Westin (Steven Eckholdt, known for Melrose Place, Friends, The L Word), here he is, campaigning for that congressional seat and trying to score some points at Santos' expense at the Fickle Pickle.

• Joey Lucas (Marlee Matlin) and her interpreter Kenny arrive, giving Josh the opposition research on Matt's background. We haven't seen Joey since her (very pregnant) appearance in The Benign Prerogative. It's also interesting that Josh has her doing background research on Santos, given that Joey's expertise is in polling (except for her very first appearance in Take This Sabbath Day when she was a campaign manager for a House candidate in California).

• A callback to Pilot and the general public's confusion over the term POTUS (President Of The United States) when one of Josh's volunteers calls up to him, "Mr. Lyman ... a call for you, a Mr. POTUS on the line?"

• As mentioned, Doug Westin's run for New Hampshire First District congressman - and Josh's opposition to him being that candidate - was a topic in Abu el Banat.
  

• Donna's departure from her job as Josh's assistant happened in Impact Winter, and in Faith Based Initiative we saw her hired by Will to join the Russell campaign.
  

DC location shots    

• Shot almost entirely in Dundas, Ontario, Canada, a suburb of Hamilton and not that far southwest of Toronto. This episode was filmed over a week in early December, 2004, with regular cast members Bradley Whitford, Janel Moloney, Joshua Malina, and Jimmy Smits making the trip. The production ended up using Canada to stand in for the winter scenes of campaigning in New Hampshire and Iowa, both for this episode and some upcoming ones - filming in Canada is considerably cheaper than shooting on location in the United States.
  

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

• Marshall Crenshaw's 1982 song "Someday, Someway" is heard as Josh and Matt drive into town. We never know which town, by the way ... it's probably got to be Manchester, as Russell's headquarters are right there, too, plus the Democratic bigwigs at Phil Hawk's house, but only the Litchfield dump gets specifically mentioned. Litchfield, New Hampshire, is a few miles south of Manchester.
  

• Matt mentions professors at Boston College and UNH (University of New Hampshire) who are helping with his education plan.
  

• Sporting goods store references and advertising signs include the Titanic, Under Armour, Sevylor, and Sportcraft. There's also a box of Dunkin Donuts donuts and a container of coffee seen.

• Josh's volunteer (the one who has to stop off and pick up dry cleaning) is driving a Chevrolet Venture minivan. The vehicle used to drive the Santos campaign staff around is a Jeep.

• Josh compares Doug's campaign to a "bad Grizzly Adams spinoff."
  

• Real life newspapers include the New York Times, the (Washington) Post, the (Manchester) Union-Leader, and the (Concord) Monitor.
  

• Former Presidents Jefferson and Madison and Chinese leader Mao Zedong are mentioned.
  

• There are references to the Mayflower and the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.
  

• The author Dr. Seuss comes up in conversation between Josh and Donna, with the two making goofs on the titles of his books One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish ("One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, We-Fought-The-Good-Fight Fish"), The Cat In The Hat ("The Cat In The Imitation Cowboy Hat Fell Flat"), and Hop On Pop ("Hop On Bob").
  

End credits freeze frame: Josh and Matt having their moment outside Phil Hawk's house.

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