Two Weeks Out - TWW S7E14

Original airdate: March 19, 2006

Written by: Lawrence O'Donnell (15)

Directed by: Laura Innes (5)

Synopsis

• As the candidates' paths repeatedly cross over the frantic final weeks of the campaign, Matt's misplaced briefcase and Vinick's strategy battles with Jane Braun could change the course of the election. Josh turns to Toby for advice. Vinick's nonstop handshaking leads to a painful result.
  

"It can make you President." 

Since we first met Congressman Matt Santos in Liftoff, we've seen multiple instances of his savvy political instincts - oftentimes even more clever and effective than Josh's ideas - from his health care bill trickery in The Dover Test to his seemingly doomed, quixotic efforts resulting in the debate he wants in Freedonia to his hiding of Democrats inside the halls of Congress to fool Speaker Haffley in A Good Day, and many more. We haven't seen much in the way of similar political mastermind work from Senator Arnie Vinick; well, his using of the religious right for his own purposes in In God We Trust probably fits. Here, we get to see Vinick's instincts shine, as he fights against the efforts of both Jane Braun and Bruno, insisting on doing things his way in California, the state he knows best, and how he turns out to be right all along.

 

Of course, we also get Vinick going along with Bruno's somewhat shady motives in handling Matt's lost briefcase, in a move that makes us think a bit less of Vinick, but that just makes him all the more human, I guess. I mean, the argument that "the public will find this out eventually, better that it comes out before they vote for the guy" can hold some weight, and the fact that Vinick decides not to leak the info personally and instead urges Matt to come clean himself is at least a more noble way to get there, but still ...

 

This episode is pretty linear, without a lot of subplotting, so let's get right to it: we start with the nonstop campaign glad-handing and personal contact with voters on rope lines wearing on Vinick physically. Particularly, his hands.

 

 

He's reduced to sticking his right hand in an ice bucket after every public appearance, with that hand bearing the brunt of squeezing and shaking and greeting every voter he's able to - with, as Bob says, "only five thousand more handshakes to go."

 

Bad turns to worse when he comes onstage at a Chicago event, and the host - an NFL football player - ends up probably breaking a bone in his hand with his brawny handshake, as Vinick grimaces in pain.

 

The physical pain is also a symbol of the pain running through the Vinick camp. After the accident at the nuclear power plant in San Andreo - a power plant Vinick pulled strings to get online 24 years ago - voter sentiment has turned against the Republican and the national race is basically a dead heat; in fact, Santos is actually ahead slightly even in California, Vinick's home state. That poll movement brought a shakeup to the Vinick campaign, with his longtime trusted adviser Sheila resigning and party bigshot Jane Braun coming on to shore up the Republican base, as we saw in The Cold. 

After the Chicago event, there's a tense and rather pointed debate on the Vinick plane, with Braun strongly pushing Vinick to turn to "values" issues like gay marriage and campaign in the South in order to get more Republicans to turn out and support his candidacy. Jane is, well ... extremely in-your-face in this episode; I realize her job is to get Vinick elected, and she sees this path as the best way to do it, but let's be frank - her strategy ignores who Vinick actually is and instead tries to portray him as a "normal," "socially conservative," "right wing" Republican candidate, which he definitely is not. As we discover a bit later in the episode, Jane is pushing her plan for, well, selfish reasons too; she doesn't want Vinick (or Bruno) doing something that hurts the campaign's chances if she's going to end up taking the blame for it. Bruno isn't that thrilled with her ideas, but given his precarious standing with the party at the moment, he doesn't feel like he can push back. At least, not to her face (that much), but it's a different story in private:

Vinick: "We should have just put Jane out there in front of the cameras and let her energize the base and then ignore her."

Bruno: "We are ignoring her."

But this is where Vinick's political savvy comes into play. As he watches Matt on TV once again keeping the San Andreo accident (and Vinick's apparent culpability) in the forefront of the news, he decides he has to try to put the issue behind him. He'll do a press conference, in front of the power plant, proving his confidence in the cleanup and the safety of the site, and answering every question from the press until they drop - a last-ditch talk-until-they-give-up event that should finally bury the issue. Both Jane and Bruno strongly disagree. They see no political advantage in going to California and basically taking responsibility for the accident right there in front of TV cameras, and would rather have him go to Florida and other southern states to start drumming up voter support in Republican strongholds. But Vinick is adamant. He knows his state, he knows how to campaign there, and he's doing this no matter what his advisers say.

On the other side of the coin, we also see the return of Toby, providing some secretive behind-the-scenes advice to Josh on the course of the Santos campaign. 

Toby … er, I mean, “Bob”

This is quite the turn for Toby, who scoffed at Matt's chances from the very start, with Toby’s effort to promote a primary challenger helping lead to a physical fight with Josh in Drought Conditions. But, I suppose, now that Matt is the Democratic nominee and only chance to keep the White House out of Republican hands, even Toby is willing to put his efforts behind him.

As the polling numbers continue to move following San Andreo, Toby urges Josh to change his plans on having Matt stump in the Northeast and Florida and instead head to California, where his surprising edge on Vinick is well worth the trip to try to cash in on. We soon discover, though, that Vinick's unexpected simultaneous move to go to San Andreo and wait out the press questions is going to suck a lot of the media coverage away from Matt's swing through the state.

And not only that - as the campaigns criss-cross over the same territory, hitting events in the same cities in the same swing states, the tension grows in this nail-bitingly close contest. Both candidates speak at the same convention in Chicago, and both campaigns cross paths in a hallway in a Philadelphia hotel:

And, in that same hotel, Matt's briefcase gets left behind in the same holding room that Vinick's campaign later uses. And of course, it's Bruno - the hard-nosed, win-at-almost-any-cost political wizard - who finds it. And looks inside. And sees something he thinks could change the outcome of the election.

There's a checkbook in the briefcase that shows monthly payments to someone named Anita Morales, a young unmarried mother who had been hired for a city job by Matt when he was the mayor of Houston, whose daughter was born right around the same time he hired her. Naturally, with any young, good-looking political figure, there have been rumors of indiscretions and romantic entanglements of various kinds - and Bruno takes this as evidence of Matt paying off the mother of his secret, illegitimate child.

Bruno brings the briefcase to Vinick. Of course, Vinick is stunned, with his first instinct being to immediately give it back. He wants no part of any strategy that might look underhanded, or "dirty" in any way. But Bruno being Bruno, he has just the way to put it to sway Vinick, at least for the time being:

Bruno: "Just think about what other secrets this guy might have. This may be the tip of the iceberg about what we don't know about him."

The argument that the voters deserve to know about what the candidates are hiding - before they make their choice in the election, instead of afterwards, when that now-President may find himself distracted or ineffective in the face of major crises like the upcoming intervention in Kazakhstan - is enough to make Vinick reconsider. Hold on to the briefcase, he tells Bruno. Let me think on this overnight.

The next day, it's the "till they drop" press conference, which takes the Santos campaign by surprise as they see themselves losing the attention of TV coverage of their events. Josh and Matt fight to try to keep themselves front and center in the media, but everybody is in San Andreo covering Senator Vinick, standing there in front of that nuclear plant, taking uncomfortable questions from every reporter. Jane and Bruno are also aghast, watching it play out and thinking it’s a losing strategy ... for almost three hours.

Finally, there are no more questions. The reporters have talked themselves out. Vinick closes down his conference, and even Toby and Bruno are stunned by his savvy instincts.

Toby: "Damn, this guy is good."

Bruno: "Son of a bitch."

The bleeding has been stopped, the nuclear power accident is no longer a weight around Vinick's neck, and the campaign and the party finds themselves reinvigorated. Then, as the campaigns once again cross paths in Los Angeles, Vinick asks for a private meeting with Matt.

Vinick: "I want to give him back his briefcase."

Bruno: "I figured."

Vinick: "'When in doubt, do the right thing -'"

Vinick and Bruno (together): "'The rest of the time, get away with whatever you can.'"

Vinick: "Who said that? It must have been one of those Louisiana governors."

Bruno: "Yeah, probably from his jail cell."

Then Bruno goes on with his argument for using the checkbook:

Bruno: "You know, Santos never got the vetting a front-runner gets. He was never supposed to get the nomination. The press gave him a free ride in the primaries. Until now, he's been running way behind you, so the press still hasn't done their digging on him. But they will now. So, it really doesn't matter what you do with that briefcase. It's going to come out. If it comes out when Santos is in the White House ... I don't know what happens. All hell is going to break loose."

Vinick is unshaken. He's giving the briefcase back. He and Matt meet in a hotel storage room.

Matt is upset that it took an entire day for Vinick to return the briefcase, and he knows Bruno has rummaged through it. Vinick says he's not going to use that information against him, but he sticks with the argument Bruno made - whatever scandal is revealed in that checkbook, it's going to come out, and it would be better if Matt comes clean now instead of waiting until he's President, having to deal with a personal scandal on top of the serious business of guiding the nation.

But Bruno and Vinick have it all wrong. Anita Morales' daughter isn't Matt's; it's his brother who is the deadbeat dad, the guy who got Morales pregnant and then didn't provide any support or live up to the responsibility. Matt gave her a job and a monthly stipend because he thought it was the right thing to do as a family member. Vinick is skeptical about his explanation:

And Matt shows stone-faced fury (frankly, unusual for him in the political arena) realizing he's not believed:

He leaves with a biting retort.

Matt: "You don't believe me."

Vinick: "Doesn't matter what I believe. You know the truth."

(Matt starts to leave, then turns back to Vinick)

Matt: "This is a family thing. This has nothing to do with what kind of President I would be."

And the episode closes almost as it began, with Vinick rubbing his painful right hand, musing over the course of the election as it barrels to a close.

 

It's interesting to me, to see Vinick shine with the political instinct to just talk his way out of the San Andreo problem, and then act more like a standard politician in trying to use a potential personal misstep against Matt politically. I think that final shot shows he regrets it, a little - but in any event, the slippage in the polls over blaming Vinick for the nuclear accident has stopped, and we've got about ten days left before the voters make their choice clear in what's obviously an incredibly tight race.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- We have not only the episode title to guide us, but an onscreen graphic right up front says "14 Days Until Election." So the day the candidates are in Chicago (and Vinick gets his hand squeezed by that Chicago Bears player) is Tuesday, October 24, 2006.

- A probably intentional little thing we're given to notice is how the candidates come onstage at the Chicago Small Business convention. Vinick (the Republican) comes on from stage right, while Santos (the Democrat) enters from stage left. Get it?

- I have my doubts that there'd actually be that much continued coverage of a Vinick press conference at San Andreo for almost three hours. Okay, maybe C-SPAN would stay for the entire thing, and that could explain Toby and Josh and Bruno and Jane still having it on TV to watch, but the local California stations and the cable news channels wouldn't keep broadcasting that live for multiple hours.

- Why'd They Come Up With Two Weeks Out?

It's two weeks before Election Day, duh.

Quotes    

Doctor: "We really need a set of X-rays."

Bruno and Vinick (together): "No."

Vinick: "No way."

Bruno: "No no no. Doctor, we've got a busload of reporters following us. We stop for an X-ray, the headline's gonna be 'Handshake Breaks Vinick's Hand.'"

Doctor: "I can't say for sure without an X-ray, but ... I think you got a metacarpal fracture and you're gonna need a cast."

Vinick: "No cast."

Doctor: "Senator, you have to --"

Vinick: "I can't look like an old man falling apart on the campaign trail."

Bruno: "And he's got a crowd waiting for him in Pittsburgh right now."

Doctor: "Well, I -- I guess I could realign the bone and ... give him a cast that he can take off in public."

Bruno: "Welcome to politics, doctor."

Vinick: "Anyone asks what you were doing in the car with me, we were discussing health care policies."

Doctor (pause): "Well, actually, I do have some suggestions about Medicare."

-----

Braun: "Bruno's 50-state strategy was ridiculous even before the accident."

Bruno: "Republicans have won 49 states twice in the last 30 years."

Braun: "Yeah, I've heard you say that a thousand times on TV. So you think nothing's changed in the last 20 years in the Republican Party?"

Bruno: "Yeah. People like you have taken over."

-----

Louise (on the phone with Josh, about the briefcase): "So there's nothing bad in there?"

Josh: "Like?"

Louise: "I don't know, heroin? Porn?"

Josh: "No, that's all mine."

-----

Braun: "A Republican can win the Presidency without winning California."

Vinick: "And a Democrat can't. This isn't some sentimental, home-state thing. This is about winning. I don't have a 50-state strategy any more. I have a one-state strategy - the one state that has everything; big cities, small towns, mountains, deserts, farms, factories, fishermen, surfers, all races, all religions, gay, straight ... everything this country has. There's more real America in California than anywhere else. If I can win California, I can win the country."

Braun: "That's a nice speech, just don't say it into any microphones cause everybody in the 49 other states thinks that California is a giant psycho ward."

-----

Vinick: "Please don't try to turn mud-slinging into a 'respect the voters' spiel."

Bruno: "Don't tell anyone, but I do respect the voters. That's why I win. I find out what they care about. I don't try to tell them what they care about."

Vinick: "That's not exactly my idea of leadership."

Bruno: "It's my idea of democracy. The voters get to set the terms of the elections, not us. They get to decide what's important, not us."

 

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

• Look, there's Danny Pudi (Abed from Community, which - thanks to his connection with the Community-producing Russo brothers who went on to direct a couple of Marvel Avengers movies - led Pudi to a small role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier; he's also in the upcoming TV series Going Dutch)! As a matter of fact, this appearance in The West Wing is Pudi's very first entry on his IMDB page. He also appeared in an episode of ER (continuing the ER/West Wing pipeline) and had a short run on Gilmore Girls that year.
  

• Matt Welsh, the fictional Chicago Bears player introducing both Vinick and Santos at the Chicago event, is played by Matt Willig (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Young Rock). Willig actually did play in the NFL for 14 seasons, including for two Super Bowl teams.

• The fact that Toby is now secretly in touch with Josh as a campaign adviser for Santos is interesting, given that Toby's outright hostile dismissal of Matt as a serious candidate was a big part of the wedge driven between he and Josh (not to mention the fight they had in Toby's office in Drought Conditions). Of course, seeing as how Matt is now the nominee and the only candidate the Democrats have got, I guess I could see Toby coming on board and doing his part to help the campaign.

• Toby tells Josh he's running on three hours sleep a night and not thinking straight; the commentary on Josh pushing himself too hard during the campaign and not accepting help goes all the way back to at least The Ticket, and will continue until after the election.
  

• Matt's brother has been a thorn in the side of the campaign before. We saw Jorge in Running Mates, where he was pushing Matt to arrange a meeting with some of Jorge's business associates.
  

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• A player for the NFL's Chicago Bears introduces the candidates at the small business owners' event in Chicago (and crushes Vinick's hand in the process).
  

• We see onscreen representations of news organizations MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN, and USA Today.

  

 

 

 

• Bruno says Republican presidential candidates have won 49 states twice in the past 30 years. This is accurate (kind of) in reality: Richard Nixon won 49 states (only losing Massachusetts) in 1972, while Ronald Reagan won 49 states (except for Walter Mondale's home state of Minnesota) in 1984. Bruno's "30 years" is an approximation, as Nixon's win would have been 34 years prior to the events shown in this episode.
  

• Jane pushes Vinick to go to his hometown, Santa Paula, to remind voters of his roots in a farming community. Santa Paula is a small city (about 29,000 residents at the time) in Ventura County, about an hour northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The town calls itself "The Citrus Capital Of The World."
  

• Some fictional broadcast stations portrayed in this episode include KTML TV in Fresno, WPML, and KZPZ. WKZM is a radio station in Sarasota, Florida, run by the Moody Bible Institute. KPPO are call letters actually used for a non-commercial radio station in Pago Pago, American Samoa - but I doubt that either station would be covering an event in San Andreo, California.

• Jane Braun makes a statement about "drinking the Vinick Kool-Aid," which is not only a remark about the very real beverage Kool-Aid, but also a reference to the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana. "Drinking the Kool-Aid" became shorthand for buying into a doomed or dangerous idea after that tragedy, where nearly a thousand followers of Jim Jones drank a poisoned beverage in a mass murder-suicide.
  

End credits freeze frame: Vinick and his staff encountering Santos and his staff in the hotel hallway in Philadelphia.

Previous episode: The Cold

Next episode: Welcome To Wherever You Are

The Cold - TWW S7E13

 

Original airdate: March 12, 2006

Teleplay by: Debora Cahn (13)
Story by: Debora Cahn  & Lauren Schmidt (5) 
 

Directed by: Alex Graves (30)

Synopsis

• New polling numbers after the San Andreo incident give a jolt of excitement to the Santos staff, while the Vinick campaign tries to change the subject. President Bartlet makes the decision to send troops into Kazakhstan, with long-term effects on whomever wins the election. Will and Kate take their relationship to another level, while Josh and Donna consider what theirs might mean. And Vinick has a cold.
  

"What's your exit strategy?"

"I don't have one. I suggest you both start giving it some thought."

An episode that begins on a couple of high notes - the polls showing the Santos campaign catching Senator Vinick in the wake of the San Andreo nuclear accident, the prospect of Irish rock star Bono meeting with Matt, not to mention Josh and Donna falling into each other's arms as the emotions swell with all the good polling news - takes on a much more sober, dramatic turn. The situation in Kazakhstan forces President Bartlet to order in American troops while Senator Vinick sees a trusted staffer fall on the sword in an effort to change the course of his campaign. All in all, it really highlights how political campaigns can find themselves at the mercy of unexpected events outside their control, particularly in the closing weeks as the election looms.

We start with Annabeth, Bram, Ronna and the other staffers breathlessly search out the latest tracking polls, polls that show a dramatic increase in support for Santos in important swing states in the wake of the San Andreo nuclear accident and essentially resetting the entire Presidential contest. The looks on their faces tell it all:

As Donna and the rest pound on doors, awakening everyone on the floor of the hotel to the good news, she reaches Josh's room to let him know. The celebration of the moment starts with a quick friendly kiss, and then:

 

 Hubba, hubba.

 

Viewers of the show have known since Pilot that Donna and Josh (thanks to the acting of Janel Moloney and Bradley Whitford) have a tremendous chemistry together. Moloney famously said she started from the beginning playing the role of Donna with the subtext of being desperately in love with Josh, and the moments they've shared together have become almost legendary: the (unseen) note Josh wrote in Donna's Christmas gift in In Excelsis Deo; the "If you were in the hospital I wouldn't stop for a beer"/"If you were in the hospital I wouldn't stop for red lights" exchange in 17 People; Josh's willingness to breach ethics and maybe even the law to save Donna from embarrassment over her diary in War Crimes; Josh's reassessment of their connection after she nearly dies in Memorial Day. They always seemed to be dancing around their personal relationship, which made sense considering the workplace supervisor/assistant framework they were in. And of course Josh not doing enough to help Donna advance in her career caused her to leave her post in the White House and work for Will Bailey and the Russell campaign, to Josh's regret and anger (anger that really came out once she came back looking for a job with Matt Santos).

That all comes to an emotional head now, driven by the huge rush of emotion and endorphins they get by seeing that maybe they've actually got a chance to win this thing in the final weeks. They both seem a little surprised by it, and Donna actually, maybe, tries to talk it out and talk herself out of it in a conversation with Will:

Donna: "If something had happened with us, when we were working, romantically, would that have been inappropriate?"

Will: "Wow, uh ... I'm flattered ... but --"

Donna: "Oh, no, no, no."

Will: "I'm actually seeing someone in a nonpublic and very poorly defined way."

Donna: "No, not you. I was talking about someone like you with your job in relation to me."

Will: "You're talking about Josh?"

Donna (two steps behind): "You're seeing someone?"

Will: "You're seeing Josh?"

Donna: "No."

Will: "Then who?"

Donna: "I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

Will: "Yours is Josh. You're not cryptic."

Donna: "And yours is ..."

Will: "Classified."

Donna: "Nothing happened with me and Josh, at all. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought this up. We should drop it."

Will: "Good idea. (pause) It's not inappropriate. Seeing someone. It's weird, maybe. But you'll figure it out."

But by the end of the episode, after many exchanged glances and unfinished conversations, we see Donna is okay with continuing this path. She slides her hotel room key across the table, pointedly indicating to Josh that he should use that key to visit her later that night. Their eyes connect.

 

But then Ronna notices the envelope and thinks Donna just forgot the key. The look on both of their faces as Edith returns Donna's key to her and they watch that opportunity slip by says volumes.

 

 

Will these two youngsters ever get the chance to experience true love? There's only nine episodes left, we're running out of time!

 

While we're talking about lovebirds, the awkward relationship between Will and Kate continues to ... well, get more awkward. Now they're spending nights together, as revealed by the fact Kate left her bra behind at Will's apartment. 

Will: "I have a thing of yours."

Kate: "My Pyongyang book, good, I tore up my whole office looking for it."

Will: "It's not that."

Kate: "Really?"

Will: "Really."

Kate: "It's in a blue binder. It may not be --"

Will: "Nothing in a blue binder."

Kate: "Are you sure? I mean, picking it out --"

Will: "It's a bra."

Kate: "Oh, okay."

Will: "I put it in a padded envelope, which seemed appropriate."

Kate: "Really?"

Will: "You want it now?"

Kate: "No! No. Yes? (pause) It's in your office?"

Will: "It is."

Kate: "You keep it."

Will: "Permanently?"

Kate: "Mail it to me, your home address to my home address."

Will: "You don't think that's a little complicated?"

Kate: "It is, isn't it."

Will: "I'll hang onto it until we ..."

Kate: "Okay."

Will: "We'll get better at this."

Kate: "We can only hope."

 

When CJ has them come to her office together to put together a press briefing plan for Kazakhstan, even she notices things are a little weird.

CJ (seeing the awkwardness): "Is something weird happening?"

Will: "Nnnnnope."

CJ: "I feel like I'm the heroine in the movie who doesn't know there's a guy behind the refrigerator with an axe."

Kate: "Maybe it's the weather. People feel that way when it's ... damp."

CJ: "Thank you. Both."

(Will and Kate leave CJ's office)

Will (whispering): "We're really bad at this."

Kate (whispering): "Really bad."

Then we've got the opposing campaign, with Vinick, Bob, Bruno and Sheila trying to figure out how to respond to the San Andreo disaster bringing the national race to a dead heat. Turns out, though, it's not just up to them. The head of the Republican National Committee, Steve Hodder, comes by to have a meeting with Vinick, Governor Sullivan ... and none of the staff. And he brings along Jane Braun, a top fundraiser closely connected with the religious conservative right-wing of the GOP. Bruno is convinced the fix is in, he's going to be blamed for Vinick losing his lead, and the party is pushing him out.

Sheila knows he's right, and she knows there's another path. She tells Vinick on their way to his evening appearance - she's resigning. She'll take the fall, she'll take the blame for the "50-state strategy" and the appeal to moderates, and she insists Braun be brought in to shore up support with the conservative wing of the party and to fire up voter turnout. It's a tough pill to swallow for Vinick - Sheila has been by his side for years, his most trusted adviser - but he knows deep down this is the only path to follow.

The shadowy shot of Vinick after he gets out of the car, standing in the street contemplating his future before he goes into the event, is a striking image well-constructed by director Alex Graves.

The biggest story, of course, is President Bartlet's plans to commit American troops into Kazakhstan in an effort to stave off an all-out war between Russia and China. We can trace this story all the way back to Message Of The Week, when Vinick's new national security liaison, Charles Frost, mentions an issue in Kazakhstan as one needing particular attention. In the following episodes, we learned of a presidential assassination there, Russian interference in the ensuing election that installed a Russian-leaning candidate, a repudiation of an oil deal with China, and the attacks on ethnic Chinese in the country that followed. Those events led to the Chinese army gathering on the border, with the Russian army responding in kind - and now that both armies have advanced into Kazakhstan itself (delayed only temporarily by Ellie's nuptials in The Wedding), President Bartlet believes the only way to avoid war is to put American forces in between the opposing armies.

Of course it's a daunting task. Bartlet's advisers tell him it's going to take some 150,000 troops over at least 18 months to stop the advance and help Kazakhstan conduct free and open elections, and worst of all, that means this "intervention" (as Secretary Hutchinson calls it) will be a problem for whomever ends up winning the election in three weeks. The President calls both candidates in for a face-to-face meeting and lays out the facts. The news does not go over well.

Vinick: "What's this going to cost?"

President: "It depends on how long we stay."

Matt: "It doesn't matter. The first 100 days in office are the most productive of the whole term and there's no way we can extricate ourselves from something like this in three months."

Followed by:

President: "First twelve months - 70 billion."

Vinick: "I can say goodbye to my tax cut. Your education plan is certainly off the table."

So we're left with the final three weeks of the campaign, Vinick and Santos squaring off in a virtual dead heat, but both of them knowing the winner will have the military operation in Kazakhstan looming over them and their priorities throughout the years to follow. It's certainly a downer.

And even though we get the bittersweet image of Josh and Donna, yearning for each other while their plans are foiled by well-meaning friends, playing along with Billie Holiday on the soundtrack, the episode ends in the Situation Room as President Bartlet gives the order for the "invasion" (as he puts it), knowing he's doing the right thing for geopolitical reasons, yet leaving a giant mess financially and politically for his successor. For an episode that starts on such an emotional high, this is really a downer of a conclusion.

Kinda like life, right? At least in the United States in early November, 2024, know what I mean?

Tales Of Interest!

- The last appearance of John Spencer before his passing in December, 2005. You'll remember the first episode that aired after his death, Running Mates on January 8, had an opening message from Martin Sheen acknowledging his passing. This was the final episode Spencer had filmed, and this is the last shot of him in the series.

- Our timeline is clearly set as 21 days prior to the election, from a caption at the start of the episode. That puts us at Tuesday, October 17, 2006. That would also fit with the San Andreo accident happening around the previous Friday into Saturday (remember from Internal Displacement, CJ's dinner date with Danny where she first learned of the accident would have been a Friday night), given the Gallup three-day tracking poll after the event. We'll just have to disregard the caption from Duck And Cover telling us that happened on a Wednesday ...

- Lots (and I mean lots) of the trademark West Wing camera-spinning-around-the-characters here. It is an Alex Graves-directed episode, so that tracks.

- Gail's fishbowl appears to have perhaps a medicine bottle in it, reflecting Vinick's battle with his cold symptoms.

- Why'd They Come Up With The Cold?

As usual, multiple reasons. The obvious one, of course, is Senator Vinick beginning to suffer from cold symptoms during the episode. We also get the chill coming over the Vinick campaign from the tightening polls, as well as the consideration of how American troops headed to Kazakhstan need to be prepared for a Central Asian winter, and the cold setting in for both candidates as they realize what will be facing them if they win the presidency.

Quotes    

President: "I want to see invasion plans as soon as possible."

Hutchinson: "We wouldn't think of it as an invasion, sir, we'd call it an intervention."

President: "Show me a plan that doesn't look like an invasion and I'll call it whatever you want."

-----

Bruno: "The undecideds are moderates. They're not Bible thumpers. He's got to speak to their issues."

Sullivan: "What's he going to do? Suddenly pull the Arnold Vinick health care plan out of his tailpipe?"

Vinick: "Would that qualify as a miracle? They like the miracles, your people."

----- 

Bram: "Bono called."

Ronna: "Bono?"

Josh: "Really?"

Bram: "Yeah. He's in New York this weekend, he wants to have dinner with the congressman."

Donna: "Do it!"

Bram: "We're not in New York this weekend --"

Ronna: "Change his schedule!"

Donna: "Bono wants to meet him?"

Ronna: "Does he want to perform at a rally?"

Bram: "We didn't get into specifics --"

Donna: "He doesn't have to sing, they could just talk about debt relief."

Ronna (breathlessly): "Oh, did you talk to him?!?"

Bram: "I talked to a guy named Phil."

Josh: "Okay, invite him to San Diego."

Bram: "Phil?"

Josh: "Not Phil."

-----

Debbie (showing Vinick and his staff into the Mural Room): "Make yourselves comfortable."

Vinick: "Thank you."

Debbie (as she turns to leave): "Not too comfortable."

Vinick: "Excuse me?"

Debbie: "Hmm?"

Vinick: "Did you ..."

Debbie: "What?"

Vinick: "Nothing."

Debbie: "If there's anything I can get you, please let me know." (exits)

  

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

• Dean Norris (Breaking Bad, Under The Dome, The Big Bang Theory) reappears as Republican Party chairman Steve Hodder.

• Melinda McGraw (The Commish, The X-Files, The Dark Knight) makes her first appearance as GOP strategist Jane Braun.

• When Donna comes to Josh's hotel room in the morning with the polling news, we see Josh's chest ... there's no scar there (remember Josh had surgery for his serious injuries after being shot in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen). We'll actually get a better view of his scar-free chest in a few episodes.

• And of course, the kiss between Josh and Donna (and her conversation with Will, and her attempt to get her room key to Josh) is a kind of culmination of the long-standing chemistry between the two, all the way back to Pilot (and Donna's statement, "If you were in the hospital, I wouldn't stop for red lights" in 17 People).

• Donna's conversation with Will, by the way, reminds us of earlier days in the Russell campaign, when Will and Donna seemed to be the only two people on the campaign trail who weren't young, college-age enthusiastic volunteers, and who spent a lot of time and meals together.
  

• There's a van for TV station WPKW seen in the background of the park scene: WPKW is a fictional TV station, and we'd actually seen a van for that station previously covering the Santos campaign in Florida in The Mommy Problem. Those call letters later were used for a TV station in the CW series The Vampire Diaries that aired between 2009 and 2017.

The WPKW news van from The Mommy Problem

• Likewise, WBJH and WKZN (seen on other news vans) are also fictional TV stations, although both call signs have been used by radio stations in the past. WPFW is another fictional TV station, although the call letters do belong to a listener-supported "Jazz and Justice" radio station in Washington, DC.
  

• President Bartlet, who had been using a cane for several past episodes, particularly after his MS attack on the trip to China in In The Room and Impact Winter, hasn't been seen with that cane for quite a while. It's back here (mainly, I think, to provide Debbie with a comment about it and his official portrait).

• Will and Kate have been dancing around a flirtation ever since Drought Conditions, and it's been growing bit by bit recently (with them sharing a meal on Will's desk during the Vice Presidential debate in Running Mates). It's full-out serious now, with Kate leaving her underthings at Will's apartment.
  

• Josh mentions Joey (Lucas), his trusted pollster first seen in Take This Sabbath Day, and Lou (Thornton), the campaign strategist he hired in The Mommy Problem.
  

• The situation in the Middle Eastern nation of Qumar played a major role in Seasons 3 and 4, with President Bartlet ordering the killing of Qumari Foreign Minister Shareef in Posse Comitatus, and the fallout from that reverberating through Season 4 all the way to Zoey's kidnapping in Commencement through her rescue in The Dogs Of War. Yet, since seeing Qumar on Situation Room maps in Season 3, that country has ceased to exist on maps since that time. Still no evidence that Qumar ever existed with the quick view of the Situation Room displays here.

Qumar as it was seen in 7A WF 83429

• Russian President Chigorin is mentioned again. He first came to power as a moderate reformer just before Enemies Foreign And Domestic, where he signaled his intent to cooperate to shut down an Iranian heavy-water nuclear reactor, then met with President Bartlet in a summit in Finland immediately afterward. He also agreed to let the United States retrieve a secret military drone that crashed in Russian territory in Evidence Of Things Not Seen. Here he's less inclined to cooperate with the Americans given the Russian interference in the Kazakh elections.
  

• President Bartlet's decision to send troops into Kazakhstan kinda-sorta reminds us of the Bartlet Doctrine unveiled in Inauguration Day: Over There, when he pledged to use American political and military force to address attacks on human rights anywhere in the world. Of course, we've seen multiple situations since then where the doctrine should have been warranted (most recently in Sudan in Internal Displacement), but was never mentioned, let alone considered. Here it's less the attacks on Chinese nationals after Russian-rigged elections causing President Bartlet to act, than it is the threat of a major war between Russian and China over oil. But, still, you can trace a thread back to the Bartlet Doctrine, if you squint your eyes and turn your head a little (thanks for that, Bob Russell).
  

DC location shots    

• None. The fountain we see in the background when Josh gets the call from President Bartlet asking - no, telling - him to bring Santos to the White House looks to be the Friends fountain on the Warner Brothers lot (which was also seen in War Crimes, when Josh and Donna turned over her diary to Cliff Calley).

 

The same fountain in War Crimes

The same fountain in Friends

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

• Annabeth mentions numbers from the Gallup poll; there's a little drama about trying to get the New York Times website to come up on a computer.
  

• Vinick says the medicine Sheila is trying to get him to drink looks like Hawaiian Punch.
  

• The lead singer of the Irish group U2, Bono, excites the women of the Santos campaign when they discover he's called to see if Santos would have dinner with him. Matt later tells the crowd at the rally Dave Matthews is going to come up on the stage.
  

• Donna says reporters from the Sacramento Bee have called with rumors about Vinick's cold; we see MSNBC coverage on TV screens.

• The medications Vicks VapoRub and Sudafed are mentioned in connection with Vinick's cold symptoms.
  

• While the Santos staff is in the Roosevelt Room, Bram hands out hotel keys/menus saying they're in the Marriott (there's a host of Marriott brands fairly near the White House, including the Washington Marriott Metro Center, the JW Marriott, and the Washington Marriott Capitol Hill). But, when Donna tries to leave her key for Josh later that night, the key envelope says Capitol Grand Hotel. That hotel is fictional, but it was also used in pilot of the TV series Covert Affairs, which aired on the USA Network from 2010 to 2015. Fun fact: that pilot episode was directed by Tim Matheson (who plays John Hoynes on The West Wing).

• We hear Billie Holiday singing Body and Soul over the Santos staff and the Donna attempted key handoff at the hotel.
  

End credits freeze frame: Vinick standing alone outside the venue after Sheila resigned.

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Next episode: Two Weeks Out