Things Fall Apart - TWW S6E21

 

Original airdate: March 30, 2005

Written by: Peter Noah (5) 

Directed by: Nelson McCormick (1)

Synopsis

• The competing Democratic campaigns work feverishly to strike a deal and settle on a Presidential nominee to avoid chaos at the upcoming national convention. Charlie is caught sneaking around Zoey's room - by the President. And an oxygen leak on the International Space Station leads to a national security leak from the White House.
  

"Now that's the civilian shuttle."

"Sorry?"

Once again - and it should come as no surprise - as we hurtle toward the end of another West Wing season, we find ourselves swept along in a building torrent of events, leading us to what looks like another season-ending cliffhanger. We not only see the chaos of a brokered Democratic National Convention on the way, and the furrowed brow of President Father Bartlet considering Charlie's intentions towards his daughter, but the very serious likelihood of a national security leak coming out of the White House, from one of our very West Wing denizens.

 

There's a lot to take in here! First off, we have the continuation of what we saw in In God We Trust, a divided Democratic Party unable to settle on a candidate for President before the national convention. Both Vice President Russell and Congressman Santos are close to clinching the required number of delegates, but they aren't quite there yet - and former Vice President Hoynes is lurking as a kingmaker, or perhaps an option the party could "turn its lonely eyes to" if the convention stays deadlocked for too long. Attempting to avoid a chaotic, disorganized convention (especially as a reflection of the smoothly organized Republican convention we see going on during this episode), the top leaders of the Democratic Party - namely, President Bartlet and Leo - are anxious to clear up the uncertainty and get a candidate in place before the convention starts.

 

Russell wants to do that too. As the frontrunner, he feels he's holding all the cards, and he sends out a feeler to Pennsylvania Governor Eric Baker about his willingness to join the ticket as the VP. Baker, you remember, was the leading candidate for the Democrats before the primaries began, but dropped out due to personal family reasons, leaving the race wide open.

 

Baker is receptive, but it turns out he's the backup plan. Russell and his team think the first choice would be for Matt Santos, the neck-and-neck second place candidate, to come on the ticket. Once Will floats the offer to Josh, Josh takes it to Matt, interrupting a little "personal time" in the bargain.

(I have to say, the show's continued portrayal of the Santos couple as a young, vibrant, loving couple who really dig each other is pretty neat. I like that they still canoodle and enjoy each other's company!)

This is a tough offer to turn down, especially as Helen stands firm with her opinion that Russell can't win, would be a bad President anyway, and if the primaries had gone on for another week, Matt would have clinched the nomination. Remember, this campaign was a long shot from the beginning, back when Josh traveled down to Houston in Impact Winter to see if Matt was interested, and back in New Hampshire in Opposition Research when Matt figured he was just in this for a few weeks to get the topic of education on the table. But now things are "getting real," as they say.

Matt: "Hard to say no to the vice presidency."

Josh: "Well, it's not what you signed up for."

Matt: "No one signs up to come in second."

Josh: "Are you kidding me?"

Matt: "We didn't."

Then the White House itself comes down on all three candidates - stop the bickering over the convention, about who has the better hotels or which delegations will be up front, and act unified. Leo also has a message for Josh; get Matt to agree to take Russell's offer.

Interestingly, when Josh and Donna cross paths in a hotel bar, the discussion goes to Russell's offer, and it turns out Donna has a different take from her boss:

Donna: "You want him to accept?"

Josh: "You don't."

(pause)

Donna: "I have concerns."

(pause; then rapidly)

Josh: "He's not hit-man enough."

Donna: "Too much voltage at the bottom of the ticket."

Josh: "Overshadows the nominee."

Donna: "Gets people wishing the names were reversed."

Josh: "People willing to wait til next time. (they smile at each other) How'd you get so smart about this?"

Donna: "I had a good teacher."

But the meeting is set up, Matt and Russell retire to speak alone in Russell's suite (where Matt also offers to flip a coin to see which man would get to run as the Presidential candidate, a halfway-serious quip Russell does not find humorous) ... until the meeting quickly breaks up with Matt striding out of the room and into the elevator.

Matt: "Mad at me?"

Josh: "No. (pause) Oddly."

Matt: "Disappointed?"

Josh: "Proud, I think."

Josh has to face Leo again, telling him Matt turned down the offer, which gets Leo more than a bit peeved - but there's nothing he can do about it. 

Leo: "Matthew Santos has had a terrific ride. Improbable, impressive - and over. This is a return to reality. He's Russell's Vice President."

Josh: "It's not gonna happen."

Leo: "You are going to do this for the President. For your party."

Josh: "I'm not. I don't agree with it. I told him to say yes - I was wrong. He's twice the man Russell is on his best day. Ten times. And Russell doesn't have that many best days."

Leo: "I'll go tell the President."

The Democrats are going to the national convention without a Presidential candidate, and it's probably going to be a mess. 

The lighter plot thread of the episode consists of Charlie, back to seeing Zoey (and sleeping with her, right there in the White House!), and Zoey's dad President Bartlet catching him pretty much red-handed in the residence. We first see Charlie getting a secret message from someone (it's Zoey) on his phone, then later that night in Zoey's doorway:

After Charlie says his goodnights, he happily heads down the hall - until he hears a sound from behind:

As a father, Jed is less then enthused about his daughter having relations practically under his nose (even though Zoey is a college graduate and turned 25 in In The Room).

President: "I think perhaps the best thing is for us to carry on as if this encounter hadn't happened."

Charlie: "Due respect - I'm having a hard time exactly imagining that."

President: "It's one in the morning, we both have to be at work in a few hours, and you're standing outside my daughter's bedroom. I say we give it a shot."

When Jed brings this up with Abbey later, it turns out she's known for a while - they kept it a secret from Jed because, well ... dads, you know? The President calls Charlie in to the Oval Office for a meeting about it, where Charlie ends up making his case for having a more open relationship with Zoey instead of sneaking around, which Jed misinterprets as Charlie getting ready to propose, which leads to ... some confusion about the issue, which doesn't really get cleared up. More to come, maybe.

Meanwhile, in the storyline that's going to play out all the way through Season 7, there are life-and-death consequences in orbit above the earth. There's an oxygen leak on the International Space Station, and if the astronauts can't stop it they will suffocate in three weeks. The NASA administrator comes by to talk with the President, but when Bartlet's not available he meets with Kate and CJ instead - where his slip of the tongue proves consequential.

CJ: "Can't a shuttle be pressed into service notwithstanding the review?"

Administrator: "One's missing half its wing assembly, the other's undergoing tile replacement. Now, we can try and speed up repairs ..."

Kate: "The concern would be losing the shuttle crew and the station crew."

Administrator: "Now, that's the civilian shuttle ..."

CJ: "Sorry?"

There's another shuttle, a non-civilian military shuttle, that no one without top security clearance knows about? Well, now CJ knows, or at least uses the administrator's slip to figure out, along with reviewing Pentagon space-related budgets and a chat with Toby.

Remember, Toby's brother David was an astronaut in the space shuttle program; back in What Kind Of Day Has It Been Toby and everyone else was on edge waiting to see if David and his crew were able to return from orbit safely when that shuttle had some reentry problems. Toby is already dealing with an emotionally fraught situation with his brother, who took his own life after being diagnosed with cancer (Drought Conditions), so he's a bit taken aback when CJ brings him up. She wants to know if David ever mentioned the existence of a military shuttle, or even hinted at such a thing.

Toby admits that, yeah, occasionally his brother might hint at lording some secret like that over him - one more bit of information for CJ to confirm her suspicions. Eventually she's officially brought into the loop with the President, Kate, and Secretary Hutchinson, but what seems to her a no-brainer (just launch the thing and go save three lives) isn't such a quick decision for the President. Not only would using the military shuttle on a rescue mission expose its existence, but one of the men on the ISS is a Russian cosmonaut, who would undoubtedly gather as much intelligence about the ship as he possibly could.

We get a lot of shots of CJ brooding in this episode, brooding over the fate of the astronauts, sitting alone looking at the TV as the decision to save them or not isn't being made, staring at the news as those ISS crewmen are slowly being suffocated. Finally, we get a dramatic revelation - Annabeth bursts into Toby's office with word of Greg Brock's upcoming New York Times story exposing the military shuttle program, making the whole secret enterprise open to the world. And apparently someone with knowledge of the shuttle, connected to the White House, has confirmed the information with Brock, giving him the certainty to publish ...

A scene which is immediately followed by another shot of CJ, sitting alone in the dark, musing over ... something. What are Peter Noah and Nelson McCormick trying to tell us? There's one more episode of the season to come - will we get answers, or is it cliffhanger time again?

 

Tales Of Interest!

- Previous season-ending cliffhangers included the shooting at Rosslyn at the end of Season 1 (What Kind Of Day Has It Been); the unanswered question to President Bartlet about his intentions to run again (although we realize what his answer is going to be, it's not quite a cliffhanger) at the end of Season 2 (Two Cathedrals); what the fallout will be for President Bartlet ordering the assassination of Sharif at the end of Season 3 (Posse Comitatus); Zoey's kidnapping and Jed's stepping away from the Presidency at the end of Season 4 (Twenty Five); and the invitations to the Camp David Mideast summit and Donna's recovery from surgery at the end of Season 5 (Memorial Day). We are not quite to season-ending cliffhanger territory yet, but the setup is here.

 

- Leo's whiteboard, first seen in 365 Days, serves as a countdown of the final year of President Bartlet's administration, leading us to January 20, 2007. The 178 we see here makes this July 26, 2006 - which fits for the ongoing Republican convention and the upcoming Democratic convention.

 

- There's little doubt the show is leading us to the conclusion that CJ is the person who leaked the information about the military shuttle to Greg Brock. Not only do those two have a professional history (going back to Full Disclosure when Brock gave CJ a heads-up on his interview with Hoynes), but the repeated shots of CJ considering something deeply and seriously as word of the ISS crisis goes on are designed to take us there.

- It was just the previous episode where President Bartlet called in Russell and Santos personally to read them the riot act about not attacking each other after the New Jersey primary when neither of them locked up the nomination. This isn't too much later, but the campaigns get called on the carpet yet again (along with Hoynes), this time to hear from Leo.

- Here's Gail's fishbowl, but I can't tell what's supposed to be in it.

- Why'd They Come Up With Things Fall Apart?

William Butler Yeats' poem The Second Coming includes the famous phrase "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold." His poem serves as an allegory about post-World-War-I Europe, evoking images of the Apocalypse and the return of Christ. So, therefore, the chaos and uncertain future being presented in this episode - in both the prospect of a brokered convention and the leak about the military shuttle - certainly illustrates the phrase, "Things fall apart."

Quotes    

Josh: "Boil your message down to the title of a bad TV show."

Will: "Careful, it was formative for many of us."

Josh: "Formative?"

Will: "Crush on the mom."

Josh: "Very Mrs. Robinson. Were you, eight?"

Will: "Eh, she seemed knowing."

Josh: "Eight kids."

Will: "Maybe not so knowing about contraception."

-----

Josh: "The best argument is, it sets you up as the consensus front-runner in either four or eight years. The nomination would be yours."

Helen: "Or you're so tainted by association when Vinick cleans Russell's clock you can't run for dogcatcher."

(Matt turns, looks at Helen)

Josh: "I don't think anyone elects dogcatchers any more."

Helen: "My dad ran for dogcatcher."

Josh: "Really?"

Matt: "No!"

----- 

Kate (coming up behind CJ and Charlie): "Hey."

CJ: "Is for horses. Thank you, Granny Cregg."

Kate: "You can take a girl out of the Midwest ..."

CJ: "As fast as her little feet can fly, or not so little."

-----

Sullivan (on TV, speaking at the convention): "My fellow Americans, the body politic is ailing."

Josh (watching at the hotel bar): "You're not going there."

Sullivan: "We have businesses paralyzed by overregulation."

Josh: "Tell me you're not going there."

Sullivan: "Our international profile is a shadow of our former strength."

Donna (coming up next to Josh): "Is he doing what I think he is?"

Sullivan: "Our foreign policy stumbling from one crisis to another."

Donna: "The MS, he's invoking the MS."

Sullivan: "... progressively falling apart before our very eyes."

Josh: "This is going to backfire."

Sullivan: "A Defense Department that's enfeebled ..."

Donna: "Maybe people won't get it."

Sullivan: "... so clogged with complications it's positively sclerotic."

Donna: "Okay, they'll get that."

-----

CJ: "Would he have been okay sacrificing himself for national security?"

Toby: "He would have insisted on it. (pause) But don't ask me what I would have insisted on."

 

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

• It's flashback time! Here's Michigan Rep. Darren Gibson (David St. James), who we first saw in Bartlet For America trying to out Leo's 1998 alcohol relapse during the hearings over Bartlet's MS coverup. We also saw him on MSNBC in The Dover Test ranting about the President's Gaza peacekeeping plan. It's so cool to have the same actor appear over different seasons to give us a feeling of reality and consistency.
  

• Governor Eric Baker (Ed O'Neill) reappears. First mentioned in The Hubbert Peak as the potential frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Baker first appeared in A Change Is Gonna Come when President Bartlet donated his 25th Amendment letter to the National Constitution Center, and again in In The Room when he announced he would not be running for President due to personal family reasons. Those reasons must not be stopping him from considering the VP spot, I guess.
  

• DNC chairman Steve Rorsche is played by Mark L. Taylor (Melrose Place, Saving Grace, Innerspace, Honey I Shrunk The Kids).
  

• Dylan Clark, Hoynes' representative at the meeting with Leo, is played by Tim Kelleher (Thirteen Days, Independence Day, NCIS, Dark Skies).
  

• I suppose she's still not all that excited about the prospect of becoming First Lady, but Helen instantly dismisses Russell's VP offer when Josh delivers it (remember, she was very reluctant about running at all in Faith Based Initiative, and leery about pushing too much and staying in too long in King Corn; she did agree to mortgage their house if need be before they won California in La Palabra, though, but that was to keep Matt in the campaign until Texas). Also remember Josh and Matt seemed to consider a VP offer totally out of reach in Opposition Research, yet here they are, and they're not instantly leaping on board (although with good reason, "too much voltage at the bottom of the ticket" and both of them recognize Russell can't beat Vinick).
  

• Kate makes a remark about taking "a girl out of the Midwest" when talking to CJ. As we saw in The Long Goodbye, CJ is a native of Dayton, Ohio.
  

• Ray Sullivan's thinly-veiled remarks on President Bartlet's weakness (pretty much explicitly bringing up his multiple sclerosis) is based on Jed's health arc that began in He Shall, From Time To Time ... and came front and center at the end of Season 2. The disease really had little impact on the President (except for Election Night) until A Change Is Gonna Come, and has been an important factor since then.
  

• Josh and Donna's conversation makes us think about their long history together, from Pilot when Donna brought Josh coffee for the first time (as he was facing his potential firing for something he said on TV) - or even from the first time she shows up in New Hampshire and just starts answering phones in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II. When Josh asks her how she got to be so good at political strategizing, she responds, "I had a good teacher," by which she means she learned it all by watching Josh work.
  

• Charlie and Zoey first met in The Crackpots And These Women, and began dating shortly after. Their relationship was the motivation for the Rosslyn shooters in What Kind Of Day Has It Been/In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, although Zoey pretty much disappeared after The Midterms. She returned for Holy Night, now in a relationship with the skeevy French royalty Jean-Paul; Charlie pledged to fight to get her back the rest of that season, especially in Inauguration: Over There, and was particularly distraught after Jean-Paul's drugging of Zoey was a factor in her kidnapping in Commencement. They seemed to be quite friendly in Abu el Banat; Charlie was trying to rekindle their relationship in The Hubbert Peak, and it must have worked as he was sitting next to Zoey at her birthday party in In The Room, and now they are in a full-fledged physical boyfriend-girlfriend thing that Charlie wants to move even further forward with.
  

• In the meeting with Annabeth we see the usual reporters Chris, Steve, and Greg Brock. In addition there's the female reporter played by Joyce Guy I first remember from Access (but she's actually credited for five appearances before this, back to Constituency Of One).
  

Chris

The reporter billed as Charlayne and Steve

Greg Brock

• A quick shot of Nancy ushering Leo into the Oval Office. Played by Martin Sheen's daughter Renée Estevez, Nancy is credited for appearing in 44 episodes.
  

• The Jed Bartlet jacket flip appears. Martin Sheen's left shoulder was injured at birth, making it difficult for him to lift that arm above this shoulder, so he developed this method of putting on jackets.
  

• When the campaign representatives are fighting in front of Leo, we hear Josh asking for the California delegation to be up front, reminding us that Matt won the California primary in La Palabra; we also discover Russell won Texas, Hoynes' and Santos' home state, which is a bit interesting considering the importance Matt put on staying in through the Texas primary.

EDIT: I completely messed up the Texas reference. Josh is pulling for Texas to be up front ("spirited, boisterous") because Matt won his home state; it's Will who's dismissing them to the back. And Dylan's remark about disrespecting Hoynes' home state (Texas) followed by Will saying, "The Vice President won his home state" means he's referring to Russell's home state of Colorado, not Texas. So I read that totally wrong.
 

DC location shots    

• None, although there are several establishing shots of the White House used in this episode. In case we forget where we are, I guess ...

 

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

• Josh says about the Ohio governor's speech at the Republican convention, "It's Lincolnesque - boil your message down to the title of a bad TV show." By which he means ...
  

• Eight Is Enough, which is part of the chant Governor Reed starts at the convention and was an ABC TV show from 1977 to 1981 (although as Will says, it wasn't exactly bad).

Gov. Reed (on TV at the convention, leading the chant): "What say we?"

Leo (watching TV with Charlie in his office): "Would eight, perhaps, be enough?"

(We hear the convention goers shouting "Eight is enough!")

Charlie: "Uncanny."

Leo: "Psychic."

• Josh then goes on to compare Will's attraction to the mother in the show with Mrs. Robinson, from the 1967 film The Graduate.  
  

• There are cans of A&W soda and Diet Pepsi on the table in Matt's suite.

• Ronna says guys Josh's age have a thing about (Bob) Dylan when he says something about "if wishes were horses." Josh and Matt turn that back on Ronna:

Josh: "And yes, I believe, that somewhere in the back of his deeply deluded political mind he imagines, 'Deadlocked Convention.' A nation turns its lonely eyes to Hoynes."

Matt (to Ronna): "Simon and Garfunkel."

• There's mention of last week's Time cover (exploding donkey, Dems in disarray). The MSNBC logo appears, and Annabeth says Brock's story on the military shuttle will appear in the New York Times.

MSNBC

• President Bartlet mentions Wernher Von Braun's autobiography, I Aim For The Stars. And then added Mort Sahl's joke that the title should have continued, "Only sometimes I hit London."
  

• CJ makes a quip about Grand Ole Opry broadcasts in the Situation Room.
  

• A Dunkin Donuts coffee cup is seen on the table with the reporters and Annabeth. 

• Leo compares the chaos of the upcoming convention to professional wrestling, then mentions how nobody runs out and votes for the "the loudmouth in a leotard," to which Josh responds, "Outside of Minnesota." This would appear to be a reference to former professional wrestler Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who was elected governor of Minnesota between 1999 and 2003.
  

• CJ exclaims to Leo, "This is Alice in Wonderland" as she's talking about the refusal to use the military shuttle to rescue the ISS crew.
  

End credits freeze frame: Donna, Russell, Santos, and Will all reacting to Josh's joke about "three feet on the floor at all times."

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