The Wake Up Call - TWW S6E14

 

Original airdate: February 9, 2005

Written by: Josh Singer (4)

Directed by: Laura Innes (5)

Synopsis

• Tempers flare as CJ makes the decision to delay waking the President for an international crisis. Toby debates a constitutional scholar over the philosophy of a new government for Belarus. Miss World causes a distraction in the West Wing.
  

"All you have to ask yourself at the end of the day is would it have made a difference if he'd been awake?" 

It's not hard to understand that when you've been working closely with the same group of people for eight years, in a high-pressure high-stress environment, through crises and health scares and triumphs and tragedies, that you're going to start treating your work colleagues as your "family." You care about them, as people, not as co-workers ... you want them to do well, to be safe, to stay healthy and happy. Trouble is, sometimes treating your colleagues that way - or, in this case, your boss - may not be the best thing for the business. Particularly when your "business" is running the executive and foreign policy branch of the government of the United States.

 

That's what we're presented with here, as CJ finds herself trapped between doing what's best for the health of her friend Jed and doing what's necessary for the security of the country and its President, Josiah Bartlet. It doesn't help that President Bartlet's wife is also a doctor, and that Abbey is starting to go outside the chain of command and lean on people to get her husband rest in the middle of an international crisis.

 

What is the right thing to do? How does one decide how to make difficult calls like when to wake a President who suffers from multiple sclerosis, and who stayed up until midnight the night before talking about the basic framework of government philosophies? And, actually, who is responsible for a President's health ... is he on the hook for taking care of himself, or does he pass on that responsibility to others? It's a tough one, and it makes for an engrossing episode.

 

After the aforementioned long night of chatting about government, CJ is awakened by news of a British airliner lost over the Caspian Sea, with six Americans aboard. Obviously any overseas disaster with loss of American life is a priority for the US government, but CJ makes the decision to let the President sleep ... after all, he can't change the outcome at this point, anyway. As things develop, though, there's concern the Iranian military might have been involved in the crash, once we find the airliner had strayed off course into airspace sometimes used by American spy planes; and when Kate delivers satellite photos showing two Iranian fighter jets en route to intercept the British aircraft, CJ has to get the President involved.

(Make note, though, that even with this delay CJ ends up waking the President only an hour and a half after she first heard of the disaster.) 

 

(Also, this story of a civilian airliner being shot down by the military is eerily similar to a mirror-image of Iran Air 655, which was shot down by the US Navy destroyer Vincennes in 1988 with the loss of 290 lives ... an event expressly referred to by "Chet" during his meeting with CJ. I am also reminded of the 2020 crash of the Ukranian flight PS752, killing 176, which was mistakenly shot down by Iraqi air defense forces after taking off from Baghdad in the midst of high international tensions following an American missile attack that killed a key Iraqi military commander.)

President Bartlet is miffed about not being brought into the stream of events earlier, and when the British Prime Minister goes on TV to attack the Iranians for shooting down the jet, he's even more ticked off. He thinks he could have talked Prime Minister Graty down off the ledge, if he'd had the chance to speak with her before she spouted off on television. He shoots darts at CJ throughout the episode, causing her to second-guess her decision ... and when Abbey joins in, surprising CJ in her office and demanding to know why her husband only got five hours of sleep, CJ feels even more maligned.

Stakes grow higher when the British ambassador, Lord John Marbury, presents his government's position that if the Iranians don't apologize for the shootdown, they will have no choice but to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. President Bartlet, continuing to put his faith in the fledgling Iranian reform movement and knowing any outside military attack will set reform measures back and invigorate hardliners, is desperate to find a path to stop the British from making such a move.

Thank goodness for Leo. His wise counsel is balm for the souls of both CJ and the President, first assuring CJ that there is never a perfect wake-up call decision.

CJ: "I called Abbey last night. I thought we should wake him, but he'd been up til almost midnight --"

Leo: "I always thought the wake-up call was one of the hardest decisions to make. The President's always going to want the call ... but really, all you have to ask yourself at the end of the day is would it have made a difference if he'd been awake?"

And then Leo defuses the President's anger with a similar take:

President: "If an American dies and there's even the slightest suspicion of international intrigue she's supposed to wake me."

Leo: "Since when? If I'd used that rule you'd be dead by now from sleep deprivation."

President: "Damn it, Leo, five minutes ago you were telling me to leave it all out on the field, now you're telling me to stay off it?"

Leo: "I'm telling you to let her do her job so you can do yours."

Abbey remains prickly, though, and understandably - she has an entirely different viewpoint, with Jed being her husband, father to their children and grandfather to their grandchildren. She's thinking long-term about his health and well-being, and less about the foreign policy demands of the administration. But CJ finally steps up to have a serious conversation with the First Lady, making a clear delineation between her responsibility to the country and the Bartlet family's responsibility for the President's health.

CJ: "It's not a medical decision, it's a question as to whether the leader of this country needs to be informed about something that puts the country's citizens in jeopardy. What he does with that information, how he manages his disease, those are his decisions."

Abbey: "He was up until midnight. He's not managing his disease."

CJ: "You're going to have to take that up with him, ma'am."

The potential British attack on Iranian nuclear sites is defused when CJ comes up with a clever plan: intercepts of radio traffic from the Iranian Air Force show they were confused, and thought the airliner was an American spy plane. Telling the Ayatollah the United States would release that information publicly at the United Nations would shame Iran, painting their air force as incompetents with shaky trigger fingers, something that the Ayatollah wouldn't want to be made public - and therefore elicting a public apology from Iran.

But the conflict between Jed and Abbey won't be defused so cleverly. The episode ends with the two having a quarrel in the Oval Office, arguing over how Jed refuses to take doctors' advice seriously and try to manage his multiple sclerosis, and with CJ closing her door to the Oval in a vain attempt to shut out the noise of the two fighting.

Toby's storyline involves his working with esteemed professor Lawrence Lessig, a constitutional scholar who has been enlisted to help the republic of Belarus write a new constitution (and whose chance meeting with President Bartlet directly led to Jed's staying up late and talking government philosophy until the wee hours). Toby and Lessig find themselves at loggerheads: Toby doesn't want to encourage the Belarussians to incorporate a too-strong executive, like the United States, as their tradition of strongman dictators could take advantage of that type of government (a situation that the United States itself finds itself struggling with right here in 2023, as a matter of fact). Toby keeps trying to steer the discussion towards a parliamentary system, but gets no support from Lessig.

Finally, the professor enlightens Toby as to his purpose: not to write a constitution in a few days, but to instill the principles of sound government into these Belarussian leaders, so they can create the solid foundations any kind of written constitution needs to be based on.

Toby: "These guys have to walk out of this building on Friday with a set of laws to take back home to Minsk."

Lessig: "Not a set of laws, a sense of the rule of law."

Toby: "You're not planning on writing a constitution this week?"

Lessig: "Are you familiar with Meyer v. State of Nebraska?"

Toby: "Nebraska passed a law making it illegal to teach anything other than English during World War I, Meyer wanted to teach German, Supreme Court said that the law was unconstitutional."

Lessig: "Good. Now ... where in the Constitution does it say you've got a right to teach German in school?"

Toby: "You're saying the document is irrelevant?"

Lessig: "No ... I'm saying the document is just the beginning."

A neat little storyline, with Toby learning something and fine performances by guest character actors Christopher Lloyd and Elya Baskin. Speaking of neat little storylines, it turns out every Valentine's Week Leo liked to have the reigning Miss World stop by, to, uh, promote her particular passions for world improvement (and, for Leo, to perk up the looks of the place for a day). CJ is not interested in such a meeting, given the ongoing international crisis, but once she sees Toby up to his neck in constitutional studies, she foists the meeting off on him.

Which leads to a parade of gawkers coming by Toby's office to see the beauty queen, from Ed:

To Larry:

And even Margaret:

(Margaret can appreciate attractiveness among all genders of the human race, if you remember her leaning through a doorway approvingly watching Judge Roberto Mendoza walk down the hallway in The Short List.)

 

 

Annabeth is able to turn Miss World's distracting beauty into an asset when the reporter Gordon is demanding the "tick tock," the minute-by-minute description of the White House's activities that would show President Bartlet was still asleep and not involved in the early morning talks with the British Prime Minister over the plane crash. She brings Gordon together with Miss World, and they spend a good deal of the day talking about genome research.

And all the storylines draw together at the end of the day, as CJ tells Annabeth to give out the tick-tock and come clean on the fact that the President isn't necessarily involved in every single event during a day's 24 hours, Toby realizes building a new government for a nation takes more than writing out all the rules, and Jed and Abbey bicker just steps away from CJ's desk.

Some Valentine's Day, huh? Still, a good examination of the balance between taking care of a beloved co-worker's health (and who should be truly responsible for that, anyway) and doing what's necessary for the workings of the administration.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- There are references to it being Valentine's Day, so this is mid-February 2006 ... close to the time of year (but in 2005) when the episode aired.

- I don't know why the show producers decided to put a title on the screen saying "12:15 A.M." and then immediately have CJ look at a clock that reads 12:24. Why not just have the title say "12:24 A.M." and have everything match up? We are not led to believe that nine minutes pass between CJ collapsing on her bed and her looking at the clock.

- Kate tells CJ at 3:45 am that the United Brittania flight went off radar "about an hour ago." The tapes of the Iranian military transmissions are described by Secretary Hutchinson as happening at 0230 and 0233 Greenwich Mean Time. While the US military would say "Zulu time" or "Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)" instead of GMT, they're all the same thing, so that's not the issue. The issue is that 0230 Z/GMT/UTC would be 2130 Eastern Standard Time, or 9:30 pm ... not 2:45 am.

This also all pokes holes in Kate's remark about a "dark and stormy night" causing the Iranian pilots to be unable to identify the civilian airliner. If the shootdown happened at 2:45 am DC time, as we are first led to believe, that would be 10:15 am Tehran time: mid-morning. If the shootdown happened at 0230Z, as the radio transmissions tell us, that would be 5:00 am Tehran time: that would still be dark in February, I'll grant you, but that also means Kate didn't call CJ to relay the news until five hours later.

- Another little blunder by the showrunners, as they keep forgetting about their timeline. Miss Bhutan is supposed to be the reigning Miss World, crowned the previous December of 2005; this is February of a presidential election year, which has been established as being 2006 (in 17 People Toby explicitly comments on the 2002 presidential election). Why would her sash declare her as Miss World 2004 instead of 2005? (Yes, this episode aired in 2005, which would show the reigning Miss World from 2004, but we've skipped a year and we are now definitely in 2006).

 

By the way, the actual Miss World 2004 was Miss Peru, Maria Julia Mantilla.

- Gail appears to be celebrating Valentine's Day with some shiny red hearts in her fishbowl.

- I don't think we've ever seen an actual fire in the Oval Office fireplace before.

- Why'd They Come Up With The Wake Up Call?

The thought process on deciding when to wake up the President - making a judgment call between his resting to help deal with his MS or alerting him to breaking events - is the overriding theme of the episode.

Quotes    

CJ: "I hear we like him."

President: "What's not to like? Guy spent the last fifteen years studying the mating rituals of drosophila melanogaster."

CJ: "He likes ... fruit flies."

President: "And my daughter, hopefully not in that order."

-----

Toby (introducing Lessig to CJ): "He's a constitutional writer, he's helping the folks from Belarus write their constitution."

CJ: "I would have thought they would've written one of those by now."

Lessig: "They have - it's three lines pledging allegiance to the Supreme Soviet."

CJ: "Hence, the rewrite."

Lessig: "Hence."

----- 

Zubatov: "Commander does not declare war?"

Toby: "Theoretically Congress needs to ..."

Zubatov: "Theoretically. So ... your habit is to ignore document?"

Toby: "No. (pause) Well, occasionally. (chuckle)"

-----

CJ: "Leo has been moved down the hall."

Lord John: "Oh, yes, I heard, demoted on account of a heart attack, yes, cutthroat even for American politics."

-----

Lord John (seeing Leo enter the room): "Gerald!"

Leo (under his breath): "Sweet Lord in heaven."

Lord John: "It's been too long!"

Leo: "Oh, I don't think it has."

-----

CJ (explaining to Leo): "Well, the President's in the residence, the Iranians are in the Mural, the French are at the gate, and (looking to Lord John) then there's Maude."

Leo: "I really can't believe that we still let him in the building."

Kate: "Tell me about it."

-----

President: "Diplomacy, John. The job of statesmen."

Lord John: "And I thought it was drinking and dancing."

(This reminds us of the President's comment to Lord John in The Drop In, when he said, "They say a statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years. I'd like us to be statesmen while we're still alive.") 

-----

Jed: "Is that what you're wearing to the opera?"

Abbey: "You have a 7:00 am call in the morning. I canceled the opera."

Jed: "The whole opera?"

Abbey: "No - just the part where we give the usher the tickets ..."

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

• The wonderful Christopher Lloyd (Back To The Future, Taxi, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?) appears as "constitutional midwife" Professor Lawrence Lessig.

• Alexander Zubatov, head of the Belarussian delegation, is played by familiar character actor Elya Baskin (True Blue, Homeland, Thirteen Days, Spider-Man 2 and 3).

• Fan favorite Lord John Marbury returns, for his final appearance on The West Wing, played by Roger Rees (Cheers, Frida, Warehouse 13).

• Nancy (Renée Estevez, Martin Sheen's daughter) shows up, apparently now farmed out of her Oval Office position to answer phones in the communications bullpen.

• This is the first mention of Ellie's boyfriend, a botanist she's dating in Baltimore. We will hear more about him in the future.
  

• Professor Lessig mentions having breakfast with Justice Lang, who would be Chief Justice Evelyn Baker Lang, played by Glenn Close in The Supremes.
  

• We see the White House reporters Gordon and Steve during Toby's briefing, and Gordon gets sidetracked by Miss World later on.

• CJ tells Leo about the meeting she and Abbey had with the doctors after the President returned from China, a meeting designed to give him more rest opportunities. We saw that meeting in Faith Based Initiative.
  

• A brief nod to the concurrent campaign storylines going on, as we see Senator Vinick on TV making a statement about Iran. President Bartlet also tells Leo "Hoynes, Vinick, Walken" are all attacking the administration over the handling of the aircraft shootdown, with Walken being Glenallen Walken, the Speaker of the House who took over the presidency in Twenty Five and is now apparently one of the Republicans in the running for the presidential nomination.
  

• It's been a while since we've seen President Bartlet smoke, and even longer since we saw him bum a cigarette from a Secret Service agent. He was first seen smoking in A Proportional Response, we heard about him asking a reporter for a cigarette on Air Force One in Celestial Navigation, and famously borrowed a lighter from a Secret Service agent in Posse Comitatus. 

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• At the start of the episode President Bartlet is listening to "Ave Maria" from Giuseppe Verdi's opera Otello, performed by the Orchestre National Bordeaux Acquitane & Alain Lombard (at least, according to Shazam). That's the same opera he intends to take Abbey to the following night.
  

• When the President jokes with CJ about grabbing Toby and heading out on the town, CJ responds with a bit about putting on sailor caps and chasing after Miss Turnstiles - elements of the plot of the 1944 stage musical and 1949 film On The Town.

• Toby is talking about "Shevardnadze" when he enters with Professor Lessig. Eduard Shevardnadze was president of the republic of Georgia shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Georgia's independence in the early 1990s. Shevardnadze had stepped down from that post two years before this episode aired.
  

• Toby is seen reading Constitutional Choices by Laurence Tribe.

• Margaret has a Cure Autism Now calendar. We saw Josh wearing a T-shirt from that organization in the previous episode.

• President Bartlet says Prime Minister Graty might get aggressive and start quoting Churchill. He later compares her belligerence to "Hans and Franz," the Saturday Night Live skit with Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon.
  

• Lord John says he has an uncle who performed in The Mikado with the London Opera Company. He later mentions the Greek historian Thucydides, whose writings shed light on the political behavior of states and human behavior during crises.
  

• Lord John is reciting the poem A Birthday by Victorian poet Christina Rossetti as he reclines on the sofa in CJ's office pestering Kate.
  

• Lessig brings up Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson as he debates Toby over the proper form of government for Belarus.
  

• Toby says not liking the White Album might be a reason for a tyrannical president to start locking people up.
  

• As Annabeth hands out Valentine's candies in the press cubicles, we see signs for the BBC, Newsweek, UPI, CNN, Time, and NBC. We also see the MSNBC logo during the shot of Vinick making a statement on TV. 
  

• "Chet," the Iranian diplomat who meets with CJ, brings up the downing of Iran Air flight 655, shot down by an American warship in 1988, and the fact the United States never explicitly apologized for that event.
  

• Leo says talking to the French is "like talking to Madame Defarge," a character in Charles Dickens' A Tale Of Two Cities.
  

• The Supreme Court case Toby and Lessig talk about, Meyer v. State of Nebraska, is an actual decision from 1923.
  

• The cigarettes President Bartlet borrows from the Secret Service agent appear to be American Spirit brand, specifically the yellow-packaged "Original Blend Mellow Original Taste."
  

End credits freeze frame: CJ and the President in the Oval Office, making the decision to leverage an apology out of the Ayatollah with the Iranian Air Force recordings.

Previous episode: King Corn

Next episode: Freedonia

King Corn - TWW S6E13

Original airdate: January 26, 2005

Written by: John Wells (6) 

Directed by: Alex Graves (25)

Synopsis

• Three different versions of the same day on the Iowa campaign trail play out, with the candidates making decisions over how to address the state's primary issue of corn-based ethanol fuels. The long day ends with some thoughtful discussions and some poignant moments. And an ice cream sandwich.
  

"Telling people what they want to hear is the easiest thing you can do in politics." 

One day. Three candidates. Three varying approaches to an issue critical to success in the early decision state of Iowa. That's what we've got in this involving, well-constructed campaign episode that's probably one of my favorites, certainly of the post-Sorkin era.

The overarching theme of the episode - and hence the title - is ethanol, a fuel additive made from corn, and whether these candidates will "take the pledge" at the Iowa Corn Growers Expo. Will they stand before these farmers and agribusiness owners and promise to support government subsidies for ethanol production, subsidies that are so popular in Iowa that they become almost a requirement for winning support in the caucuses? Or will they tell these farmers what they don't want to hear, that ethanol is a financially and environmentally poor direction to go with the nation's energy policy? The three candidates we follow, as we see the day unfold in three different ways, each find a different direction to go.

We start with Vice President Russell. He's a realist, he's aware of the importance of ethanol to Iowans and the importance of scoring well in the Democratic caucuses. While he discusses with Will the problems he sees with ethanol subsidies, he doesn't hesitate to get up in front of the corn growers and pledge his support. It's a no-brainer for him; the biggest question he and Will have about the subject is whether or not John Hoynes will also promise to support these subsidies.

Matt Santos looks at the subject a little differently. He's even more skeptical of government funds propping up ethanol production, particularly when he can see so many other areas that money could help improve. Helen is right there with him, really snapping back at Josh as Josh insists that Matt has no choice but to appeal to these caucusgoers in Iowa. Even as he takes the stage to speak, we're not sure where Matt will decide to come down - and he bites his tongue and ends up taking that pledge, even though he doesn't believe it at all.

Senator Vinick is our third example. We find out that he's having trouble gaining much traction with his campaign in Iowa (we don't have any idea who the Republican frontrunner is at this point, but it's not Vinick). As a California senator, he's been against ethanol subsidies from the start - but his campaign staff, like Will and Josh on the Democratic side, know his only hope of jump-starting his chances with Iowa voters is to come on board with this most vital of local issues. The speech is written, the excuses for his flip-flop are on the prompter, but as he comes to those words in front of the corn growers, he can't do it. He stays consistent, he rails against these subsidies, and he lectures the Iowans about how they should be ashamed of the policy. Good for his image as a politician committed to his stances; not so good for his chances at doing well in the caucuses.

There's so many other things going on in this first-rate episode. The very structure - starting each act in a hotel room at 5:45 am on this January Wednesday, first with Donna, then with Josh, then with Vinick, and following each campaign on their busy day in Iowa - is a great way to illustrate the non-stop hectic nature of campaigns. We also get the ironic juxtaposition of Josh, as he comes to the Cedar Rapids hotel to get ready for this day of campaigning, finding himself in the room directly across from Donna's.

 

 

We are all aware by now of the past these two share, with Donna spending years as Josh's right-hand assistant, their unspoken deep feelings for one another, and how her desire to get more responsibility and grow in her career led her to quit that job and join on with the Russell campaign. Josh's feelings of abandonment by Donna - even though he didn't really come through on helping her career grow - and his reluctance to talk to her about that, or his real feelings for her, come out as he strides toward her door but then stops himself, afraid to confront her or his true emotions.

 

 

On a more general note, Donna's meetings with the various fringe nutcase candidates are a hoot, and the visual comparisons between the campaigns are so well done. 

 

Right from the start we see how a well-funded, professional, yet still frantic campaign setup like Russell's has a conference room to gather in at the hotel and a wide range of young, energetic staffers. Will has done small-scale campaigns before, he gets how to motivate his people, and having the money available from a sitting Vice President and Democratic front-runner makes a difference. Compare that with the underdog Santos campaign, which has to meet in Matt's hotel suite with the kids watching cartoons in the next room, and most of the staff being Matt's congressional staffers. Both those Democratic campaign scenes are shot with shaky hand-held cameras, jammed into tight spaces and giving us a sense of urgency and impulsiveness. Then director Alex Graves gives us a completely different look with Senator Vinick - no more hand-held shots, the camera is smooth and steady. Arnie wakes up in a much more luxurious hotel room than we see from the other campaigns. While the staffers are still busy and fast-moving, they seem on top of things as they have a campaign headquarters room with plenty of TVs and laptops. Sheila and Bob, the leaders of the staff, are competent, self-assured political types (and being played by the excellent Patricia Richardson and Stephen Root, we can't wait to see more of what they have in store).

Not only do we get little things like the Santos campaign team all using random differently decorated umbrellas at the Hamburg Inn stop (just grabbing whatever umbrellas the staffers had access to) compared to Vinick's team all with identical black no-nonsense umbrellas, I really liked the contrast of each campaign's travel methods. First off, Russell in a well-decked-out tour bus:

(In the DVD commentary we find out that very bus was used by Britney Spears during her 2004 Onyx Hotel Tour immediately before The West Wing rented it, and it had more TVs and video players installed than they could ever use.)

 

Compare that to the shoestring Santos campaign, tooling around Iowa in a shabby RV (although Matt gets to fly some of them around in a rented aircraft, which is pretty cool):

And then Senator Vinick, longtime national political figure from California, with his motorcade of black SUVs:

 

There's other background tidbits - the pending execution of a woman in Turkey, the train derailment and explosion in Louisiana - but mostly those serve as signposts to remind us, the audience, that these three separate acts of the story are actually taking place at the same time. The real meat of the episode rests with the Santos campaign, I think, with a bit of a tie-in with Vinick in the final act. It's that Helen-Josh dynamic that I find truly compelling. While Matt and Josh push back-and-forth on the ethanol pledge, it's Helen that's truly unwilling to bend, even up to those moments just before Matt takes the stage at the expo. Helen really, really doesn't appreciate Josh's pushing to get Matt to give up his principles on this one.

Then there's the little scene between the two of them in the hotel bar at the end of the day. Helen is still upset about why they're giving in on what they believe just to try to get a minuscule bit of support in the Iowa caucuses, but Josh has an answer - he's thought a lot more about this than Helen realizes (and this planning multiple steps ahead reminds us of that scene in the Bartlet New Hampshire campaign headquarters back in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II, with the grand plan to leave New Hampshire early all to set up Illinois eventually).

Josh: "We're letting people know there's an alternative to Hoynes and Russell. Matt Santos - making sense, talking about ideas."

Helen: "Making sense about ethanol?"

Josh: "Makes sense in Iowa, yeah. Russell's a house of cards. His support's a mile wide and an inch deep. We can't compete with him on endorsements or institutional support, but we don't have to worry about Russell. Hoynes'll find a way to take him down."

Helen: "This the famous Josh Lyman nine-point plan?"

Josh: "Hoynes is smart, he has access to money, plenty of chits he can call in. Once Russell crumbles, his support'll flow to Hoynes - unless someone has established himself as not-Hoynes."

Helen: "Not-Hoynes?"

Josh: "So you need lots of primary activists who are very uncomfortable with an adulterous moderate DLC candidate --"

Helen (chuckling): "Oh my God, you actually stay up nights thinking this stuff up?"

Josh: "It's a living."

Then, as Matt returns to the Cedar Rapids Holiday Inn, regretting his caving on his ethanol stance, in walks Arnie Vinick. He stood firm on his ethanol opinion, but he knows it'll cost him the state in the caucuses. Matt and Arnie settle in at a table, talking over ethics and education plans and sticking to your guns even when it costs you votes ... and for those of us who know how things wrap up at the end of Season 7, this is kind of a neat moment.

The episode wraps up with poignancy and emotion and longing and a tinge of sadness, in yet another excellently constructed montage. As Ryan Adam's song Desire plays over the soundtrack, we see some of our characters dealing with their desires, desires of a more personal than political nature. Vinick, alone in his hotel room, gazes wistfully at a portrait of him with his wife, a wife who has passed away and left him to face the world by himself.

 

Matt returns to his hotel room following his talk with Arnie, following Helen's discussion with Josh, finding Helen asleep in bed with their kids. As Matt looks lovingly at his family, Helen opens her eye and gives the faintest little smile.

And then Josh and Donna ... coincidentally thrown in hotel rooms literally across the corridor from one another, with their unsaid personal longings over the past six seasons, Josh comes to his door and pauses, looking over his shoulder thinking of Donna - as Donna, hidden behind her door, watches him through the peephole.

Just a masterful example of visual TV drama, elevated by the soundtrack and the song.

Then there's Will, who's apparently just longing for an ice cream treat from a vending machine.

We think the episode has wrapped up, but then -- a figure in bed, a phone ringing, another 5:45 am wake up call, and we realize it never ends on the campaign trail. Every day starts early, every day is grueling, every day is another step on an unending march toward that political goal. And there's just hardly a moment left for those personal, emotional, human yearnings that all have.

It's really a great episode.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- This episode was not filmed in Iowa, but as part of the December, 2004, production trip to Dundas, Ontario that also include filming of Opposition Research. The Plainsman Country Buffet was located in Hamilton, Ontario (that's also where the interior scenes of the senior living home were filmed for that earlier episode). The opening establishing shots of all the hotel marquees welcoming the Iowa Corn Growers were probably shot in California: The Carlton Motor Lodge and Best Western Carriage Inn are located in Studio City and Sherman Oaks, respectively. 

 

- What's also strange is the "Welcome Iowa Corn Growers" signs are all over Cedar Rapids, apparently, yet the Corn Growers' Expo with all the candidates' speeches is in Council Bluffs ... almost four hours away from Cedar Rapids. And our candidates make that trip back and forth in this one day (over seven hours of pure road trip) in addition to several other side trips we're told about.

- Both Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits get spots in the opening credits. Smits has been in the credits for episodes he's appeared in since Liftoff. Alda was previously only listed as a "Special Appearance By" in In The Room, but now he gets his own time to shine in the credits, too.

- There's waaaay too much light in those hotel rooms for Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at 5:45 am in January. In the last couple of weeks of the month, sunrise is between 7:30 and 7:20 am ... there'd be absolutely no light in the sky before 6:45 or so. I suppose you could explain it by outside parking lot/artificial lights, but how annoying is that?

- Will says it's five days to the Iowa caucuses and 19 days to the New Hampshire primary. While The West Wing universe is two years off the actual election calendar, in the most recent cycle of 2004 the Iowa caucuses were on Monday, January 19, and the New Hampshire primary was eight days later, on January 27. While the previous episode, 365 Days, took place on January 20 (exactly a year before the inauguration), it's not exactly necessary that this episode takes place after the events of that one - so we're somewhere in mid-January (if the fictional 2006 caucuses were on Monday, January 23, this would be Wednesday, January 18, and the New Hampshire primary would be Monday, February 6).

 

- Also, Iowa's pheasant-hunting season ends on January 10 each year. Josh tells Matt he's got a photo op set up for him to go pheasant hunting with a county supervisor, so given that, this would have to be no later than January 10 (which would make the caucuses no later than January 15 and the New Hampshire primary no later than January 29).

- The actual geography of the day makes this grueling for everyone. The Russell plan - Cedar Rapids/Centerville/Des Moines/Council Bluffs - is almost seven hours of just travel time; then it's almost another four hours just to get back to the Cedar Rapids Holiday Inn so Will can get his ice cream sandwich. The Santos travel plan - Iowa City, Ames, the big bull in Audubon, hunting in Osceola County, then Council Bluffs for the speech - is a longer travel time with that trip up to the Minnesota border, but at least Matt is going to fly some of it, so that'll help. Still, the motor home/campaign mobile unit with Helen goes from CR to Council Bluffs and back during the day, and that's over seven hours just to go back and forth. 

 

- When Matt takes the stage at the Corn Growers Expo, Josh calls out to him, "Take the pledge." The audio for this line sounds odd, as if it was looped/rerecorded later ... and the closed captioning actually reads, "Take the oath." I wonder if the line was spoken as "oath" and later it was decided to stick with "pledge" as it was used throughout the episode.

 

- We already know the campaign for President is pretty wide open, in both parties. We've known for a while that the Democrats have Vice President Russell as the frontrunner, and former Vice President Hoynes making a strong run as well, and of course we know about the guerrilla campaign of Matt Santos. On the Republican side we've already been introduced to Senator Vinick announcing his candidacy, but even though in this episode we hear he's struggling to gain traction in the Iowa polls we haven't really heard of any other GOP candidates yet. Finally we get to hear names of some other presidential candidates, including Clarkson and Atkins on the Democratic side (with Atkins being referred to as a minority, with Russell saying, "Atkins and Santos get to stand up there, holier-than-thou, rail against racial injustice, while the rest of us loiter around looking like those two albino twins from The Matrix") and Allard on the Republican side. The coffee-bean caucus jars at the Hamburg Inn also include names like Johnson and Walken (for Glenallen Walken, the Republican Speaker of the House who served as President for two days during Zoey's kidnapping). I just hope that "Johnson" isn't the same Mr. Johnson that Donna talked to while he was feeding his pigs ("Are you sure you're a Democrat?").

- The cable TV news screen showing Toby (probably talking about the peacekeeping troops in the Middle East, considering the chyron) also shows Omaha with a high temperature of 67 degrees. In January. It has been that warm there in January at least five times since 1981, but considering the chill and the snowflakes seen at the Jefferson Cattle Barn in Council Bluffs (literally across the Missouri River from Omaha) that seems doubtful.

 

Also this onscreen shot of Toby is all we see of anybody in the Bartlet White House in this episode - no President, no CJ, no Leo, no Kate, no Charlie. As John Wells and Alex Graves say in the DVD commentary, this is where they realize they're actually producing two separate West Wing series for a while, the usual administration episodes in the White House that we've been used to for six years alternating with a completely different story on the campaign trail.

- Let me take a moment, as an Iowa resident and native, to address the downright egregious Iowa disrespect shown here in John Wells' teleplay. First, it's valid to criticize Iowa's place in the presidential nomination process (or at least its place prior to 2024, when both the Democratic and Republican caucuses were the first contest in the nation; disastrous Democratic fumbling of the process in both 2016 and 2020 may have ended that for that party). It's more of an oddity than anything else, when the 1976 Iowa caucuses unexpectedly boosted the campaign of an unknown governor from Georgia, Jimmy Carter, who went on to win the election and thereby hyped the importance of Iowa on the political scene. But the caucus bashing going on here is just being done for bashing's sake:

Christine: "Don't you think it's weird your out-of-the-way, nickel-and-dime, penny-ante state gets to go first?"

Trevor: "Well, we ... we always go first."

Christine: "Yeah, and why is that?"

Donna: "Iowa's first because it's first."

Christine: "Says who?"

And then:

Vinick (to Sheila): "You know, if Iowa weren't first, but were third, you know what it would be? The South Dakota primary."

This isn't nuanced debate about the nomination process; it's just slamming Iowa for being rural and too big for its britches.

Then there's all the nutty fringe candidates Donna goes to talk to. I won't deny Iowa has folks holding the positions held by these nuts, but they don't generally announce their candidacy for President, and the range of nutcases running for President aren't exclusively from Iowa. Donna talks to all these guys in the same morning while driving around the state, which makes West Wing viewers think Iowa is full of raging lunatics. 

Then there's the whole ethanol thing. Ethanol is a bigger subject than I want to get into here - as the son and grandson and brother of Iowa corn farmers, I admit I have some implicit bias, but I do acknowledge subsidies for its use as an alternative fuel are open to debate and its value as a more environmentally advantageous fuel than fossil fuels can be argued. But very little of that is really done here (Matt and Helen make some good points, Vinick's are a little less sound). For one thing, the attacks on ethanol as using almost as much fuel to produce as it replaces are a little unfair, given those critics don't apply the same production-cost standards to gasoline. I get that ethanol may not overall be as great as Iowa farmers think, given they're making money off government subsidies, but it's also not as bad as Hollywood screenwriters like John Wells make it out to be - and despite what Wells and other west-coasters might want to focus on, there's absolutely some value in the fact that ethanol fuel is renewable, unlike fossil fuels. There's a more substantive, nuanced argument to be made here - but then again, viewers would fall asleep from boredom in the middle of that episode, so we get this one instead.

- And speaking of candidates with nutty positions, Donna's line to Will about "a fascist who was arrested for brandishing a rifle calling for overthrow of the Republic" hits a little bit too close to home considering the events of January 6, 2021. In 2005 the idea of a fascist running for President calling for the overthrow of democracy was a joke; in 2023 there's a real danger that guy could actually get elected by his Republican cultist fans.

- Alan Alda was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Emmy for this episode and the upcoming In God We Trust. The award went to William Shatner for his work on Boston Legal.

- Why'd They Come Up With King Corn?

The power of ethanol (and therefore agreeing with its support in order to court corn growers in Iowa) and its influence on the caucus and political viability in the state is the main theme of this episode.

Quotes    

Russell staffer: "We're sure Hoynes is going to flip?"

Will: "Believe me, Hoynes is taking the ethanol pledge. This is a guy who if he was speaking to a group of cannibals would offer them missionaries."

-----

Donna: "Mr. Johnson, your platform would include paying the President, the Cabinet, and all members of Congress a salary of one dollar a year?"

Johnson: "Hell, yeah. Make 'em get a real job."

Donna: "And you want to ban motorcycle helmets, color television, drop out of the UN, and abolish Medicare and totally privatize Social Security."

Johnson: "We gotta get the government out of our damn pockets!"

Donna: "Sir, are you ... sure you're a Democrat?"  

-----

Donna (to Will): "We can't put these fringe candidates on a stage with serious candidates. We've got a fascist who was arrested for brandishing a rifle calling for overthrow of the Republic, a delusional preacher, a guy who just needs a job, and a refugee from The New Christy Minstrels."

-----

Josh: "We wrangled you an invitation to go pheasant hunting with one of the Osceola County supervisors. Get into camo gear, sling a 12 gauge over your shoulder, get a few photos for the AP."

Matt: "With a gun?"

Josh: "You were in the Marines, you know how to shoot, right?"

Matt: "Yeah, a 20 millimeter chain gun, but it might be a little hard on the pheasant."

-----

Vinick (to the corn growers): "I know what you want to hear. Telling people what they want to hear is the easiest thing you can do in politics. But that's not why I'm here. That's not why I'm running for President. Now, I know that the ethanol subsidies have been good for some of you. But mostly, it's a windfall for huge conglomerates. I'm embarrassed by it, and I think you should be, too."

 

 

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

• The familiar TV news anchor Ivan Allen returns, for the first time since A Change Is Gonna Come. Usually billed as "Roger Salier," Allen's first appearance as a news anchor on the show came all the way back in A Proportional Response, and this is his 18th credit on the series. He's been seen as a local news reporter, a network cable news anchor (including with MSNBC), and now he's on the generic logo-less TV news channel that The West Wing is using these days.

• Our first meetings with the Vinick campaign staffers, including the wonderful Patricia Richardson (Home Improvement) as Sheila.

• And Stephen Root (Office Space, NewsRadio, Barry, O Brother, Where Art Thou, the list is long and legendary) as Bob. Root elevates everything he's a part of, I really do like his work.

• Trevor, the volunteer who's driving Donna around, is played by Aaron Ashmore (Smallville, Warehouse 13).

• Christine, one of the Russell staffers, is played by Miriam Shor (Younger, The Americans, The Good Wife).

• Will and Russell talking about Hoynes taking the ethanol pledge takes us back to 20 Hours In L.A. and In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I - in both episodes we see Vice President Hoynes standing against an ethanol tax credit. 
  

• Helen's debate with Josh over the Turkish woman facing execution for adultery has a flashback to Season 3:

Helen: "They're executing her because she slept with her fiancé, thank God she didn't cook him breakfast."

Josh: "Hey, we execute minors. The rest of the world thinks that's barbaric."

Helen: "I'm with the world."

That reminds us of The Indians In The Lobby, where Italy was refusing to extradite an American minor accused of murdering his teacher because he could face the death penalty. Josh was able to talk the Georgia DA out of using the death penalty to fix the situation.

• Another flashback involving Josh and Donna comes when Josh is trying to convince Matt to take the ethanol pledge, with Josh saying, "What is this, the insult and injury tour? We going to North Dakota next, tell them South Dakota has a cooler sounding name?" In We Killed Yamamoto Donna went to a Democratic meeting in North Dakota on Josh's behalf, during which some North Dakotans lobbied to change the state's name because, well, they thought South Dakota's name was cooler (or at least brought in more tourism).

•  I mentioned the Walken coffee-bean jar at the Hamburg Inn; of course that reminds us of the events of Twenty Five through The Dogs Of War when Glenallen Walken, the Republican Speaker of the House, served as President when Bartlet stepped away during Zoey's kidnapping.

• When Vinick and Santos meet in the hotel restaurant, Vinick talks about Matt's education plan he introduced in New Hampshire. We saw that happen in Opposition Research.
  

• The chyron on the cable news screen with Toby's press conference addresses the United States peacekeeping force in Gaza and the West Bank, part of the peace plan that was introduced in The Birnam Wood.
  

• Helen references Josh's "famous nine-point plan" that he used to try to convince Matt to run for President in Impact Winter (and Matt mentioned to Helen in Faith Based Initiative).
  

DC location shots    

• None in DC, but lots of Canada location spots. I actually pinpointed the turnoff where Donna and the other staffers meet the first nutty candidate, with the long lane and all the guns. We see a road sign denoting the turn to Sydenham Road and Dundas:

Notice also the Iowa license plate, nice detail

• That's Highway 5 north of Dundas and Hamilton, Ontario. Just east of the Sydenham Road turnoff is a long driveway to a farm. That's where this was filmed.

• The Hamburg Inn No. 2 exteriors (a restaurant which actually exists in Iowa City, Iowa) were filmed at a restaurant in Pasadena (complete with fake snow), but they did bring in a copy of the real Hamburg Inn No. 2 sign to put on the outside wall.

Actual Iowa City Hamburg sign

Pasadena restaurant with Hamburg sign

• The airport scenes were filmed at the Hamilton International Airport in Ontario. The huge sign for "Glanford" on the hangar is for Glanford Aviation Services, a fixed-base operator/fuel supplier at the airport. 

• If you notice the registration numbers of some of the aircraft in the background begin with "C," which indicates Canadian registration (United States-registered aircraft begin with "N"). Interestingly, the first character of the registration number of the airplane Matt is flying is covered up with white tape.
  

Canadian registration C-FSAL

Canadian registration with the "C" covered up

•  The DVD commentary gives us some more insight about where parts of this episode were filmed. Of course, the rural exteriors, Donna's car trip (and her meetings with most of the fringe candidates), and the airport scenes were filmed in Canada during the show's production trip to Dundas in December 2004. As I mentioned above the Hamburg Inn exteriors were shot at a restaurant in Pasadena, during a California rainstorm.

- The Josh/Donna Russell/Santos hotel scenes were filmed at a Holiday Inn in Burbank.

- The scenes inside the Russell bus and the Santos RV were filmed in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Zoo on a 90-degree day (with everyone wearing coats pretending to be cold).

- The Iowa Corn Growers Expo speeches were filmed in the Forum, previously home of the Los Angeles Lakers, Kings, and Sparks. At the time of production, the venue was owned by Faithful Central Bible Church. In more recent years, the facility is generally used for large-scale concerts and events like WWE or UFC competitions.

- The scene in the barbershop with Vinick and the farmers was filmed in an old disused set on the Warner Brothers backlot.

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

• The restaurant/hotel marquee shots at the beginning show us some actual hotel chains, including Ramada Inn, Best Western, and Holiday Inn. Donna also says she stayed at the Marriott in Charleston, South Carolina. As mentioned above the Plainsman Country Buffet and the Carlton Motor Lodge actually existed, as well.

Located in Studio City, California

Located in Sherman Oaks, California

If this is the same Holiday Inn used for interiors, it's in Burbank

• The songs Walkin' After Midnight by Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash's version of Green, Green Grass of Home are heard as music audible to the characters, or diegetic music. One of the fringe candidates Donna talks to also sings his version of Peace Train by Cat Stevens. In the DVD commentary writer John Wells and director Alex Graves talk about how they were unable to get the broadcast rights to the folk song they used while filming the scene in Canada, so they had to reshoot an actor strumming Peace Train only three days before the episode aired. The reaction shots of Donna, Trevor and Christine were from a different performance by a different actor in a different country. Crazy, huh? Ryan Adams' Desire, which plays at the end of the episode, isn't actually diegetic, so it doesn't necessarily exist in the universe of these characters.
  

• The acrobatic group the Flying Wallendas get a mention from Will.
  

• A couple of references to the farm implement maker John Deere, including some tractors on display at the expo.

• Turkey's application for membership in the European Union (mentioned in TV coverage of the woman sentenced to death for adultery) is still ongoing. Turkey was recognized as a candidate for membership in 1999, and negotiations for full membership started in the fall of 2005 (several months after this episode aired). Those negotiations stalled in 2016.
  

• The Dairy Queen chain gets mentioned a couple of times, including supposedly the "nation's oldest" one somewhere in Iowa. While there is a Dairy Queen in Cedar Rapids that's been continuously operating since 1947, only seven years after the chain started in Joliet, Illinois, I wasn't able to confirm that's the oldest one still in operation. Best as I can determine, though, it might be ... there's apparently one in Roseville, Minnesota, that's also been operating since 1947, and a Springfield, Missouri, DQ has been in business since 1946 (but changed locations in 1968).

First Avenue Dairy Queen in Cedar Rapids, since 1947

• Russell brings up the albino twins from The Matrix (although those characters didn't appear until the sequel, The Matrix Reloaded), so that movie franchise exists in this universe.
  

• Donna describes one of the fringe candidates as a refugee from The New Christy Minstrels.
  

• Russell drinks from a bottle of Dasani water.

• Josh is wearing a "Cure Autism Now" T-shirt. Bradley Whitford has been a longtime supporter of autism research and awareness efforts, and was one of the drivers helping to develop the autism subplot in The Stackhouse Filibuster.
  

• The Santos children are watching Looney Tunes cartoons, a Warner Brothers property (as is The West Wing).

• Matt and Helen are looking at a copy of the Des Moines Register, helping set the scene in Iowa. Helen also mentions a Register poll putting them at 3 percent.
  

• There actually is a statue of Albert, the world's largest bull, in Audubon, Iowa.
  

• The Hamburg Inn No. 2 is a real restaurant in Iowa City, and it was famous in the early 2000s for being a political campaign spot (and really did have a coffee-bean caucus). Unfortunately, at this writing the restaurant is closed and its reopening is uncertain.
  

• Matt complains to Josh about ethanol subsidies going to Chevron and the John Hancock Insurance Company.

• Matt also references the Oxford English Dictionary and its definition of "pandering."
  

• There's talk of "C-SPAN viewers" as well as the Spanish-language cable network Telemundo.
  

• At the airport Josh and Ned talk about Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper. As Ned says, both those musicians (along with Richie Valens and the pilot) were killed in a 1959 plane crash in Iowa, near Clear Lake.
  

• Those are actual Iowa State Patrol uniforms seen on some of the patrolmen at the corn expo.

• There really is a General Mills plant in Cedar Rapids. Sheila tells Vinick that he's got a meeting with managers there to talk about tax reform.
  

• Bob tells Vinick that General George Patton would have pandered on ethanol.
  

• The NAFTA deal (North American Free Trade Agreement) is criticized by the farmers talking to Vinick. 
  

• WalMart gets brought up by Vinick when he's speaking at the Hamburg Inn.
  

• Vinick tells his granddaughter he's no Mantovani after singing Happy Birthday to her on the phone, which is a little weird since Mantovani was a conductor, not a singer.
  

• The MSNBC logo is seen. 

• Will gazes longingly at a Nestlé Carnation brand ice cream sandwich at the Holiday Inn in Cedar Rapids. On the DVD commentary it's mentioned that a funky vending machine like this was spotted in a California Holiday Inn Express when the producers were scouting for locations, and they insisted they had to add a scene with this machine somewhere in the episode.
  

End credits freeze frame: Donna and Josh meeting in the Holiday Inn elevator.

Previous episode: 365 Days

Next episode: The Wake Up Call