Institutional Memory - TWW S7E21

Original airdate: May 7, 2006

Written by: Debora Cahn (15)

Directed by: Lesli Linka Glatter (7)

Synopsis

• With two weeks left in the Bartlet administration, CJ faces big decisions on her future - what to do with her professional life, her personal life, and her friendship with Toby, including whether she should advocate for a pardon. Will faces a big decision, too, whether to stay in DC and see where his relationship with Kate goes or to follow his passion and run for office in Oregon.

"It's hard to get excited about anything after this." 

Time running out has been a theme of The West Wing for a while now, certainly since Internal Displacement and maybe even since 365 Days - time running out on the Bartlet administration, running out on the White House staffers we've been following for seven seasons, and running out on the series itself. We've had wrap-up episodes, of sorts, with Josh (Transition) and Vinick (The Last Hurrah) and a farewell to Leo (Requiem). And with this episode, we turn to CJ, and her coming to grips with time running out both professionally and personally. It's a tour de force for Allison Janney, who received a well-deserved Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Performance by an Actress in a Drama Series for this episode. And it's a terrific entry by writer Debora Cahn, who sets up the drama of decision-making with some excellent structural script stuff.

 

We start with CJ and Danny - they've finally connected (after Danny had been romancing her since all the way back in Season 1) and are spending a lot of nights together. But CJ is still "the busiest girl in America," with her days fully scheduled and no time to talk about the future - well, not until after the inauguration, she tells Danny.

 

The rest of the morning sees those signposts of finality coming up right in CJ's face - "You're not filing, you're packing," she says to Margaret, as she sees the mountains of boxes piled up in her office. Two budget guys complain about her demand to include revenue enhancers in the final Bartlet budget in order to cut the deficit, a budget request that will never be considered by Congress and will hardly even see the light of day. And she's frustrated by West Wing staffers failing to submit their transition memos, guidelines for the incoming Santos staffers who will replace them.

 

And then CJ gets a surprise. The post-administration job offers have been piling up, mostly seats on corporate boards that would only require a few hours of work a month, which doesn't appeal to her at all. When a wealthy tech mogul stops by personally to give her another offer, she's expecting more of the same - but Franklin Hollis agrees that a board seat would only be a huge waste of her time. He has something else in mind.

Hollis: "I want to find a single problem I can attack, something which might have some kind of substantive effect. Maybe I should be ... fighting AIDS in Africa, or maybe it's malaria, could be clean air, or election reform, I don't know. But my sense is that you would have a unique perspective on what that could be and how to make it happen."

CJ: "A single problem."

Hollis: "It's a complicated question --"

CJ: "Highways. Is what you're looking for."

Hollis: "Really."

CJ: "It's not sexy. No one will ever raise money for it. But nine out of ten African aid projects fail because the medicine or the personnel can't get to the people in need."

Hollis: "Infrastructure's the problem."

CJ: "Blanket the continent with highways and then maybe get started on plumbing."

Hollis: "Also not sexy."

CJ: "Makes for a lousy telethon."

Hollis: "It does. Well, if you think that's what needs fixing, I'll give you ten billion dollars to fix it."

Now that's a job CJ actually might find intriguing.

 

On top of that job offer, she goes to Matt's office to listen to what she expects will be a pro forma obligatory offer to stay on with the next administration, one she'll politely listen to and then turn down. Matt comes at her from an unexpected direction, though - this is no pretense of a job, Matt absolutely wants CJ to stay on as a critical part of his agenda.

Matt (as Ronna interrupts his meeting with CJ): "I'd love to talk to you more about this, but they've kinda got me on a sprint today. So I see I'm gonna have to make this fast and dirty, I'm the President-elect of the United States, I'm asking you to help your country so I'm probably not going to take 'no' for an answer, so you go home and you think about it and you call me back with a 'yes.'"

Which seems like a lot less fun than Hollis' offer, but also more like a demand from the incoming President.

 

She also gets taken aback by a visit from Andy, the congresswoman from Maryland who is also Toby's ex-wife and the mother of their 3 1/2 year old twins. Toby is facing prison time after admitting to leaking classified information about a secret military space shuttle to the press, in order to force the President's hand to rescue astronauts suffocating on the International Space Station. With President Bartlet only in office for two more weeks, Andy has a request - would CJ please bring up the subject of a pardon for Toby with the President?

 

With Toby's leak being a betrayal of both the President and CJ herself (remember, CJ was being hung out to dry as the top suspect in the investigation, and Toby let her be the target for quite a while before he copped to the leak), it's a real long shot. But CJ promises to think about it.

 

So she's already got plenty on her mind when the clever structure of the episode brings Danny back around in the middle of the day. He drops by to take CJ out for lunch. Or for a hot dog, at least. Or maybe just for a walk, to get out of the White House for 20 minutes. "It's important," he says - although I think he means it's just important that they spend some time together outside the "booty calls" at his apartment, not that he has anything important he needs to bring up.

 

As they walk, he asks CJ about her day. She tells him she'll have to turn down the job with Hollis and agree to take the position with the Santos administration, because it's her duty to the country, I guess. Danny does not take this well, partly because it delays the discussion over their future past the inauguration into a poorly defined sometime down the road, but mainly because she's making these decisions about her life without even including him in the conversation.

CJ: "We don't have that kind of relationship yet."

Danny: "Apparently."

As their talk deteriorates into recriminations and acrimony, Danny tries to get down to brass tacks, to figure out exactly where he stands in whatever-it-is he and CJ have. The answer does not go well for him.

Danny: "Look, I'm not trying to turn you into Doris Day. I know, if we have a future together I'll be Mr. CJ Cregg, that's fine. But you don't even see me in the picture, do you?"

(CJ uncomfortably looks away and doesn't answer)

Danny (hurt): "Thank you. That's useful information." (he walks away)

So CJ is not in the best of moods when she returns to the White House. After dealing with Matt over the budget language (he's not a fan), she's confronted with the pardon issue again - and the necessity that she needs to talk to Toby.

CJ hasn't talked to Toby since the events of Here Today, when he confessed being the leaker to her and was then escorted out of her office. Even though they've been friends for years - we learned in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II that their paths had crossed prior to the first Bartlet campaign, and they've been very close (even flirtatious) pals throughout the entire series - the betrayal CJ felt was so massive and so complete, she just never felt like she could talk with him again. But since he hadn't personally requested a pardon from the President, she knows she needs to discuss the topic with him.

The meeting is touchy once the pardons come up - "For a moment I thought you came here because you gave a crap and wanted to see how I was doing!" Toby snaps at her - but they can't stay angry for long. Their friendship means too much, and with Toby set to head off to prison for a couple of years, they both realize this could be the last time in a long time they'll have this opportunity.

I love the image of CJ, who insisted she wasn't hungry and turned down Toby's offer of some chicken, just picking at the chicken and eating it the entire time anyway.

And as the conversation turns to the future, and CJ's decision on dealing with Santos and Hollis and Danny and, well, everything, Toby has perhaps the wisest counsel CJ has heard yet.

Toby: "I think you don't know why you came here. You're a woman with a lot of options - you're acting like the world's backing you into a corner, bouncing from one thing to the next, from Bartlet to Santos to Danny to me. Maybe you should stop bouncing and pick something. What do you want?"

CJ seems to realize she never has actually considered what she wants out of all the choices facing her, both professionally and personally. The final hug with Toby says a lot about how these two feel about each other.

 

 

And CJ heads out to her car, with her driver asking "Where to?" and her standing there on the sidewalk, considering.

 

To the only possible place, given the structure of the script. It started with Danny, it might have ended with Danny in the middle, but now it's back to Danny. CJ stands outside the door, swaying back and forth nervously on her feet while the Secret Service checks Danny's apartment, and then she admits ... she doesn't know how to do this. She doesn't know how to have a relationship. She doesn't know how to have a partner, how to share her life with someone else, she's missed her window and maybe she'll never be able to learn.

 

Danny says he'll train her (that goes over particularly well - "we'll call it something else," he says), but when CJ tries to start by flat-out asking Danny what job he wants her to take, he gets right to the point. It's not about him deciding for her - it's about them deciding together. And just talking about it. It's one of the sweetest moments in the entire seven seasons of the show.

Danny: "I want you to do what you want. Take the job at the White House, I just want you to talk to me about it, I want us to talk about what it would mean and how we'll make it work. I want us to talk like we're going to figure it out together. I want us to talk - because I like the sound of your voice. I just want to talk."

(pause. CJ and Danny look at one another)

CJ: "Franklin Hollis wants me to take ten billion dollars and go and fix the world."

Danny: "That sounds like fun. Does that sound like fun to you?"

(CJ nods)

Danny: "Do you want to work at the White House?"

(CJ stares at Danny, then slowly shakes her head. They smile at each other)

CJ: "There's a typo in the Constitution."

Danny: "Well, someone should look into that."

CJ: "Toby's going to deal with it."

Danny: "Okay. What else?"

(If you recall the opening scene of The Ticket, set a few years into the future at the opening of the Bartlet Presidential Library, we know CJ and Danny are together, have a child, and are living in California - apparently doing that work for Franklin Hollis.)

 

Speaking of futures and relationships, I also want to mention Will and Kate. They've been growing into some kind of a relationship for a while now: after casting curious glances at each other during the DNC gala in Drought Conditions, Will served as Kate's plus-one at Ellie's wedding, and then they had their first official "date" in Will's office watching the Vice Presidential debate. Now they're spending most of their nights together, and trying to figure out what their personal future might hold as their jobs in the White House end. Will actually has an interview at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where he'd help direct campaigns across the nation while staying in DC, where Kate is also expecting to stay with whatever her future career holds.

Will (talking about the job opportunity at the DCCC): "Nice place to work. I get my hands in a lot of races without the water torture of any one race, and I stay in Washington, which is nice."

Kate: "You think?"

Will: "Yeah. I mean, no pressure, but I like the idea of giving the future an opportunity to unfold of its own accord."

Kate: "Our future?"

Will: "Yeah."

Kate: "I like that idea, too."

So they're both definitely thinking along the lines of staying together for a while. When Will is at the DCCC, though, there's something about a House race in Oregon that seems to catch his attention, a district where a mean, son-of-a-bitch Republican holds the seat and Will thinks he's beatable.

 

 

But he's still figuring on staying with the DCCC in Washington, as he searches for a suitable candidate to run in Oregon. He has no luck, which starts to sour him on the whole job, until he talks things out with Kate.

Kate: "What are you looking for if Oregon weren't a factor?"

Will: "Race needs a fresh face. Somebody smart but not so wonky that you can't put him in front of a TV camera."

Kate: "Well, don't worry about that, find someone you like. You can always coach him through talking on the camera. I mean, after the press secretary stint you pretty much have that down."

Will: "More or less."

Kate: "And God knows you know all there is to know about policy and campaigning, and you can probably push a monkey through the process. Between your Washington experience and your local politics experience ..."

(Kate stops. She realizes something. She looks at Will. Will looks back, as the idea dawns)

Will: "No. It doesn't make any sense."

Kate: "Yeah, it does."

Will: "It doesn't. I'm not moving to Oregon, for one thing."

Kate: "Of course you are."

Will: "No, I'm not. We're --"

Kate: "We're what? You'll win, you should run."

Will: "No, I won't, and --"

Kate: "It's the right thing to do --"

Will: "No, seriously --"

Kate: "You'll win."

(pause)

Will: "You could ..."

Kate: "What? Move to Oregon?"

Will: "I don't know --"

Kate: "I'm not moving to Oregon --"

Will: "This is stupid, I'm not moving to Oregon either."

Kate: "No, I think you are."

So things might be up personally between these two, and Will may be running for the House. (Again, from the future-set scene in The Ticket, we discovered Will indeed becomes a Representative, and Kate is an author, and they do not appear to be together.) 

But in the end, as the clock continues to run out on the administration, these jobs, and this TV series: this episode belongs to CJ, as she faces down a long list of choices that will make up her future, and finally decides - instead of doing what's expected of her - to choose what makes her happy.

 

 

Tales Of Interest!

- We hear a couple of times that there are two weeks left until the inauguration. With January 20, 2007, being a Saturday (and one mention of someone moving on "Friday" but Will says it's happening "today" instead), this must be the first or maybe early in the second week of January.

- Still no sign of Josh and Donna - although, being a White House-centric episode with only a short scene in Matt's President-elect quarters, it's not that strange to not see them (you'd think Josh'd be there to welcome CJ to Matt's office, but he is pretty busy). Remember, Josh and Donna took a "week" off to fly to a beach somewhere in Transition, which was set in mid-November;  we didn't see them in The Last Hurrah (which was early December, just before the Electoral College met) and they would have been back by then, let alone January.

 

- You would think Sam would have been there to see CJ, though ... he came back to work for Josh in Transition, and we're led to believe he hasn't really seen any of his old West Wing pals since he lost his California special election run in Red Haven's On Fire. Wouldn't he want to see CJ, given the chance?

- CJ tells Kate "You've been here two years, it looks different on the far side of eight." Kate was first seen as Nancy's National Security designee in Talking Points, which aired in spring 2004 when the show was still pretty much aligned with the actual calendar, and was definitely before the roadside bombing that nearly killed Donna and before the 2004 midterms (that slipped into the "missing year" that happened in early Season 6). So she's been here almost three years of the administration, even though it's been just two years of the series.

- There's a sign on the "green grass" of Gail's fishbowl, which looks pretty much exactly how it looked in The Last Hurrah (the previous episode, about three weeks ago in show time). I can't read the sign, but it appears to be a "For Sale" type realty sign in the "yard."

 

 

- Allison Janney was nominated for the Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actress in a Drama Series Emmy for this episode - she's terrific (the swaying back and forth on her feet while she waits to come into Danny's apartment is just a fantastic acting choice, for one example). That award went to Mariska Hargitay for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. This was Janney's sixth Emmy nomination for The West Wing, with four wins (Outstanding Supporting Actress in Seasons 1 and 2, Outstanding Lead Actress in Seasons 3 and 5).

- Why'd They Come Up With Institutional Memory?

The idea of "institutional memory," as Matt says directly to CJ, is to keep on some of the knowledge and background of a past administration or past business operation as the leadership changes, in order to make a smoother and better transition, instead of having an abrupt shift and having people come in to "reinvent the wheel" or learn how to do things on their own without help from those they're replacing. CJ also is dealing with lot of other "memory" issues, such as what she feels about Danny and her friendship with Toby.

Quotes   

Margaret (telling CJ her interview is in the Roosevelt Room): "It's not a headhunter from Hollis, it's Franklin Hollis."

Will: "Franklin Hollis is in the Roosevelt Room?" (He goes to look)

Margaret: "Yes."

CJ: "No, he's not."

Margaret: "What do I get out of lying in this moment?"

Will (looking into the Roosevelt Room): "Franklin Hollis is in the Roosevelt Room."

CJ: "Really?"

Kate (entering): "Hey. There's a guy in the Roosevelt Room looks just like Frank Hollis, the hair, glasses, whole bit."

Will: "It's Frank Hollis."

Kate: "Really?"

Margaret: "He just bought an island. And Montana."

CJ: "He didn't buy Montana, he bought ... most of Montana."

----- 

Toby: "I read the Constitution, I think I found a typo."

CJ: "In the Constitution?"

Toby: "Yeah."

CJ: "Did you call the publisher?"

Toby: "I think it's a typo in the original."

 

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

• The character actors David Hornsby (It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, The Goldbergs) as Fred and Matt Malloy (Alpha House, Six Feet Under, Election, Paradise, tons of other appearances) as Herb are seen as the budget guys reluctant to put CJ's "revenue enhancers" into the budget request.

• The wealthy tech billionaire Franklin Hollis is played by Xander Berkeley (Nikita, Air Force One, Apollo 13, The Walking Dead).

• Andy (Kathleen York) returns, to ask CJ to consider a pardon for Toby, her ex-husband and father of their twins. She was last seen at Leo's funeral in Requiem, then before that at Halloween in Welcome To Wherever You Are.

• The CJ-Danny romance has been sort of an on-and-off thing since the beginning, from Danny giving Gail the goldfish as a gift in Enemies to them flirting and kissing occasionally to Danny's request that they "jump off a cliff together" in Internal Displacement. 

• The Will-Kate romance has been going on since, well, Drought Conditions, when they stole thoughtful glances at each other at the snack table during the DNC gala. Kate then was seen watching Will's behind leave the room in Undecideds, in The Wedding Kate asked Will to be his plus-one for Ellie's wedding, they had a date (in Will's office) during the Vice Presidential debate in Running Mates, and by The Cold Kate was accidentally leaving her underthings in Will's apartment after staying the night.

• Andy's visit to CJ and the mention of the twins is a reminder of the Andy-Toby marriage that apparently dissolved between the events of the first transition (seen in Debate Camp) and Pilot, as well as the twins Molly and Huck that were born in Twenty Five.
  

• Toby's upcoming prison sentence and the anger at him from CJ and the President stem from Toby's leak of a secret military space shuttle to the press, so that astronauts could be rescued from the International Space Station. We first learned of the military shuttle in Things Fall Apart, and Toby confessed to being the leaker in Mr. Frost/Here Today. 
  

• Matt appears to be surprised by CJ's "good cop/bad cop" gambit over the budget (submitting a final Bartlet budget request that has some outrageous item like a 50-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax, so any Santos budget proposal will look better in comparison). He shouldn't be surprised, he's the master at that, and he literally just tried it with the Vice President situation and Arnold Vinick in The Last Hurrah.
  

• Speaking of Vinick, he's apparently accepted Matt's offer for him to be Secretary of State from The Last Hurrah. I also have to say, good job on not letting things leak: it's been about three weeks since Matt offered him the job (about December 12 to early January here), yet both CJ and Toby are caught by surprise with the news.
  

• Matt mentions upping the limit on income subject to the Social Security tax when he's asking CJ if there's some other budget requests they could have made instead of the huge gas tax increase. I thought that had already been done with Toby came up with his Hail Mary idea to fix Social Security in Slow News Day.

DC location shots    

• CJ and Will walk from the White House gate west on Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on 17th Street NW (in reality, people going from the West Wing to the EEOB would literally walk across the street between the two [W Executive Avenue NW], but that's all fenced off and unavailable for a TV series to film at).

• I think I found the street shown at the beginning of the episode, where Danny's apartment apparently is.

The only streets in the DC area that still have old streetcar tracks are O and P Streets NW in Georgetown, more specifically the blocks from 32nd Street to 35th Street. This appears to be looking west on O Street NW at the corner with 35th Street.

 

 

Here you can see the passageway door between the red building and the blue building in the original shot; also the one tree trunk that leans further out over O Street.

Passageway & tree in Google Street View

Looks like the same doorway & tree from the shot in the episode

(It helped that I had to track down streetcar tracks in the street to find Jeanane's apartment, where Sam and Laurie were caught by the photographer, in Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics, which was literally just a block east of this location in the 3400 block of O Street NW - so I had a head start about where to look for this location. I know, I know ... nerd.) 

• I'm not sure about the street scene with Danny and CJ discussing their future. It certainly appears to be the same look/season as all the DC location shots we've seen since Requiem (which would have all been done during the same location shooting trip), but I don't see anything definitive. Actually, the newspaper machines seen next to CJ when she's deciding where to go after talking to Toby look to be the same as the ones we see on the street when Danny and CJ are walking - which makes me think these were both studio-shot scenes in California (they wouldn't have flown the Secret Service agent-actors cross country for that nighttime scene; plus there's really no reason to have Timothy Busfield flown to DC for that one street scene, either).

 

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

• Danny mentions going to "Barton's" for dinner. I couldn't find a history of any Barton's restaurant in the DC area.

• There are some fleeting glimpses of the MSNBC logo on TV screens.

• CJ is carrying a Seattle's Best coffee cup when she arrives at work.

• CJ says Margaret should get Hollis a Coke while he waits for her.

• The New York Times Magazine is brought up by Andy as she argues for Toby's pardon.

• We've seen things that look like proclamations on the West Wing walls before (both with photos of George HW Bush and Dan Quayle and with Bill Clinton and Al Gore). Here's one with Clinton and Gore. Of course, there was no Clinton-Gore administration in The West Wing universe.

• There are references to Mao Tse-Tung, Doris Day, and Freud over the course of the episode.
  

• CJ says Toby is sentenced to Petersburg. There is a federal low-security prison called FCI Petersburg between Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia, not all that far from Washington.

End credits freeze frame: CJ and Matt meeting in his office.

Previous episode: The Last Hurrah

Next episode: Tomorrow

The Last Hurrah - TWW S7E20

 

Original airdate: April 30, 2006

Written by: Lawrence O'Donnell (16)

Directed by: Tim Matheson (1)

Synopsis

• As Senator Vinick faces unemployment, a surprising offer from Matt sends him in an unexpected direction. Matt and Helen deal with big decisions on schools, staff, and renovations.

"You can enter the history books as maybe the last honorable Senator and a great Secretary of State. Or, you can be the guy who just didn't know when to quit."

You really gotta feel for Arnie Vinick.

 

Here's a guy who spent decades in public service, ran and won multiple campaigns, dedicated his life to politics, served his constituents for many years as Senator from California - and if it weren't for a couple of stuck valves at a nuclear power plant a couple of months ago, he would be preparing for his first term as President. Instead, his time in the Senate will be ending in a few weeks, and he's got, well ... nothing but time on his hands.

Vinick (on the phone with Sheila, waiting to see Goodwin): "Just keep talking to me, as though I'm too busy to sit."

Sheila: "Okay."

Vinick: "What do I have tomorrow?"

Sheila (looking at planner): "Uhhhh, you have a haircut at ten."

Vinick: "Okay, then what?"

Sheila: "That looks like it."

Vinick: "For the rest of the day?"

Sheila: "For the rest of the year."

For a guy like Vinick, this will not stand. Knowing how razor-thin the election was, and knowing the reason he lost wasn't his campaign or his proposals but just because of an uncontrollable outside event, he immediately puts his mind towards going after the Presidency again in four years. When he's offered seats on boards of directors, he turns them down because "it wouldn't look good." When a list of university lecturer offers is given him, he says he'll take only the jobs in the electorally important states of Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. He's calling Republican donors and governors and elected officials, ostensibly to thank them for their support, but also to lay the groundwork for trying it all over again. His staff is concerned.

Annie: "Who's gonna tell him?"

Sheila: "What?"

Annie: "That the campaign is over."

But there are gears turning in places other than Vinick's soon-to-be-vacated Senate office. Matt is still finalizing his Cabinet nominees, as well as a Vice President to replace the recently departed Leo. His choice for VP, Pennsylvania Governor Eric Baker, might prove to be a problem with Congress, if Matt asks them to confirm his pick (Barry and Amy think since Baker would be a strong, obvious choice to replace Santos in eight years, congresspeople who want a chance themselves might not want to put him in the VP position - a situation we saw play out once before in Jefferson Lives). And the option to just give Baker's name to the Electoral College for their approval in a week might not seem the open, transparent, democratic way to fill such an important post.

 

Matt asks to see Vinick. The Santos staff and Vinick himself think this is just a photo op, a "unifying moment" after a bruising campaign and election. But Matt has other plans ... he brings up the Vice Presidential dilemma to him, asking if he'd consider the role if Matt offered it.

 

Vinick knows that's a gambit, an offer Matt would never actually make, and it's a play to try to help Baker's nomination get through Congress. But Matt has another offer up his sleeve.

Matt: "I'm going to need another cop when Bartlet leaves office. (pause) How about Secretary of State?"

Vinick: "You gonna go with Reynolds?"

Matt: "Maybe. If I don't get my first choice."

Vinick: "Who's that?"

Matt: "That would be you."

It's a brilliant move. Both Matt and Vinick agree for the most part on foreign policy, the idea of a strong Republican serving in an important position in a Democratic administration can only help bring the country together, and it gives Vinick a sense of purpose and motivation again. (I mean, it also helps reduce the chances of Vinick trying to run against Matt in four years, but I don't believe that's a major motivation for the offer.)

 

As the idea rolls around Vinick's head, he's reluctant. So Matt switches gears, showing him the latest intelligence report from Kazakhstan and feeling Vinick out over ways to approach negotiations with the Russians and Chinese. This is right up Vinick's alley, and as the two stand before the fireplace in Matt's office and talk out matters of international diplomacy, we know in the end Vinick is going to take the job.

 

 

It's a tour de force for Alan Alda, who - let's face it - has been knocking it out of the park all season as Vinick. Alda earned the final Emmy Award in West Wing history for this episode (along with Two Weeks Out, but he was so great in The Cold and Message Of The Week too, plus others). Just to see his face when he's alone in Matt's office, as he looks around at the desk - you can read the emotion in his eyes, the knowledge that this should be his office, it should be him as President-elect. He doesn't need to say a word, it all plays out in his expression. Great stuff.

 

In addition to the primary Vinick plot, Matt and Helen (after seeing the Secret Service impact on keeping a split household through the spring) make the big decision to pull the kids out of school in Houston and move to the White House. They tour some high-priced private schools, but none of them feel right to Matt; so they look at a public school, which surprisingly seems just perfect. The notion of Presidential children attending a public school in Washington DC doesn't appear to be realistic to our eyes, but as recently as the 1970s Amy Carter went to Stevens Elementary and Rose Hardy Middle School while her father was President. So it has happened (even though things have changed a lot since the late 1970s).

 

Helen also abruptly faces what life in the White House will look like. She comes to CJ's office when she has a meeting with the decorator; Margaret points her to a door, which unexpectedly leads Helen into the Oval Office. That takes her aback.

 

And then when CJ brings her to meet the White House residential staff, it's another moment that sends Helen's mind reeling.

 

Helen: "This is too much, I don't need all these people."

CJ: "Okay. Which ones do you want to fire?"

So things are starting to get real for the Santos family: the living arrangements, the staff, the schools, and for Matt, choosing the right people to fill the roles to keep his administration humming along. And time is counting down for those currently in the West Wing, as well. The next episode helps move that topic along, so stay tuned.

Tales Of Interest!

- The previous episode was set "ten weeks" before the inauguration, or in mid-November, probably the week of November 12 (Election Day was November 7, Leo's funeral in Requiem was three days later, or Friday November 10, so Transition would have been following on a few days after that). In this episode we hear the Electoral College is voting "next week." That vote is always on a Tuesday in mid-December (specifically the Tuesday after the second Wednesday of the month, which would have been December 19 in 2006), which places this episode somewhere in the week of December 10, 2006.

 

- One would think Josh and Sam would be deeply involved in the Vice Presidential/Secretary of State picks, given their critical importance and how the pieces fit together to help get Baker's nomination through Congress. You might also think Donna, as Helen's Chief of Staff, might be deeply involved in her meetings with the decorator and the staff, not to mention the school choice. But Josh, Sam, and Donna do not appear in this episode at all. If you're saying, "Well, in the previous episode Josh and Donna were taking a vacation, that's why they're not here" you're exactly where the episode's creators want you to be ... but Josh and Donna were going away for one week. The previous episode was mid-November, meaning they should have been back no later than Thanksgiving weekend, and as worked out above, we're in at least the week of December 10 here. They would have been back by now! And Sam was supposed to be taking care of things while Josh was gone anyhow - where is he?

- The Secret Service model of the Santos residence is obviously not to scale, but it doesn't look anything like the house we saw in Running Mates.

 

 

- As Vinick mulls over another run for the Presidency, he mentions the "seven dwarfs" he beat in the Republican primary. Methinks he's confused - there was talk of "seven dwarfs" among the Democratic field in Freedonia, but the only Republican candidates we heard about during the primaries were someone named "Allard" (in 365 Days) and former Speaker and Acting President Glenallen Walken (in King Corn and Ninety Miles Away). Vinick had a slow start, not doing well in Iowa, but otherwise we heard he was "sweeping the primaries" in La Palabra and won the nomination fairly easily. We actually did see someone who was described as one of his primary opponents, Rev. Don Butler, in In God We Trust, but we'd literally never heard of him before and only once since (brought up by the American Christian Assembly guy in Message Of The Week). 

- I don't believe we've ever had a mention before of who the Secretary of Education is in the Bartlet administration. We're told here it's Jim Kane.

 

- Amy says they'll need five GOP votes "at least" to get a VP confirmed in the Senate. That must mean the Senate is split 54-46 in favor of Republicans. Five Republicans joining Democrats to confirm would make the vote 51-49.

- Tim Matheson (who plays former Vice President John Hoynes on the series) directed this episode. An actor since the early 1960s, he has a long list of directing credits for TV movies and series since his first directing job with an episode of St. Elsewhere in 1984.

- In Gail's fishbowl there looks to be the White House on a bright green lawn with a For Sale sign in the yard, a symbol of the Bartlet administration getting ready to move out of the White House.

 

- Alan Alda received an Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in this episode (and Two Weeks Out). He'd also been nominated the year before, losing to William Shatner for Boston Legal. Alda's win was the only Emmy going to the series this season (The West Wing won 10 total Emmys in its first four years, but only two in the final three seasons).

- Why'd They Come Up With The Last Hurrah?

A "last hurrah" is defined as a last act, or final effort. We can see this in both the outgoing Bartlet administration with barely a month left in office, and more importantly, Senator Vinick coming to grips with the realization that his losing run for the Presidency is essentially his "last hurrah" (although not without a fight, even if only in his head).

Quotes    

Vinick: "I won't do lobbying, it wouldn't look good."

Sheila: "You wouldn't have to do any lobbying."

Bob: "Wouldn't look good?"

(pause)

Sheila: "Lecturing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida? You thinking about running again?"

----- 

Barista: "What size?"

Vinick: "Uh, whatever's biggest."

Barista: "Name?"

Vinick: "Sen --  (pause) Arnie."

Barista (calling out): "Venti coffee of the day for Ernie."

 

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

• Amy Gardner seems to have taken Matt up on his offer of a job as Director of Legislative Affairs that he offered in Requiem.

• We haven't seen head of the White House Secret Service detail Ron Butterfield (Michael O'Neill) in a while. Here he's introducing part of the Secret Service detail to the Santos children, as well as coordinating the protection plan for the Santos home in Houston.

• Our favorite news anchor Ivan Allen returns. First appearing in A Proportional Response, we've seen him many, many times on the series (sometimes playing a reporter named Roger Salier, sometimes with a network called CND, sometimes at MSNBC, once at a local Washington DC station, mostly at a generic news network). This is actually his 27th and final time with a credit in the cast.

• Vinick's lawyer is played by David Clennon (The Thing, thirtysomething, Gone Girl).

• The Secret Service agent explaining the Houston situation to Matt and Helen is played by Paul Keeley (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, Desperate Housewives, Mission Impossible III).

• Curtis Schaefer, the White House Head Usher, is played by Van Epperson (The Green Mile, Documentary Now!, The Middle).

• The barista at the coffee shop who calls Arnie Vinick "Ernie" is played by Parvesh Cheena (Outsourced, Barbershop, The Goldbergs, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend).

• We've seen the White House decorator who met with Helen in the Oval Office before. Gail Addison (played by Bonita Friedericy, seen in Chuck, Preacher, and Chicago Med) had ideas to help redecorate CJ's new office after she became the new Chief of Staff in The Hubbert Peak.

• The public school principal showing Matt and Helen around, Cathy Holland, is played by Maria Broom (The Wire).

• We see the President-elect meeting with generals and head military officers, but there's no sign of General Alexander, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Played by Terry O'Quinn, he was last seen in The Birnam Wood, and I don't think has even been mentioned since.
  

• "Royce" is mentioned as the Senate Majority Leader. We first saw Rep. Robert Royce as a House member from Pennsylvania in On The Day Before; by his next appearance on Jefferson Lives he was a Senator, and already the Republican Majority Leader. He's been in that post ever since, apparently (last seen in In God We Trust).

• During Vinick's physical we learn that his hand has healed "faster than we expected." He broke bones in his right hand in Two Weeks Out, which would have been Tuesday October 24 (although we saw no signs of that hand injury in Election Day Part 1 or Election Day Part II). With this episode the week of December 10, this would be seven weeks later, at which time you'd probably expect a broken bone to be healed.
  

• The decision between sending a Vice Presidential name to the Electoral College or having Matt's choice go through Congressional confirmation was first brought up in Election Day Part II. Also, Eric Baker, Matt's choice for VP, was seen originally as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in The Hubbert Peak, announced he was withdrawing from consideration due to "family reasons" in In The Room, jumped back in when he saw a chance to steal the nomination at the convention in 2162 Votes, but then saw his chances evaporate when word of his wife's treatment for depression was leaked by Will and the Russell campaign.

• The concern over a Republican Congress possibly refusing to vote to confirm a Vice Presidential nominee was a primary plot point in Jefferson Lives, which led to the Bartlet administration meekly accepting a list of names the Republicans were willing to support and eventually naming Bob Russell as VP. This discussion, after Goodwin brings up a possible Senate filibuster against Baker, is nearly a perfect description of what we saw then:

Amy: "Not if you talk to the Majority Leader, give him the feeling he's being consulted, let him suggest some names."

Matt: "No, that'll give him the chance to try to jam me into taking someone I don't want."

Of course, Royce, still the Majority Leader, was actually in the room back in Jefferson Lives and went along with Speaker Haffley's ploy to deny President Bartlet his choice of Berryhill as Vice President and offer up that list. He saw it work once, he certainly might try it again.

• The look on Amy's face when Matt confirms Baker as his choice for Vice President reminds us that in Requiem Amy was pushing hard for a Florida congresswoman to be Matt's pick instead.

• Ray Sullivan is brought up as the presumptive favorite for the Republican nomination in 2010. Sullivan, the governor of West Virginia, was Vinick's running mate in the 2006 campaign.
  

• Vinick and Bob discuss the nuclear accident that cost him Nevada and other Western votes, and therefore the election. The San Andreo nuclear plant, one that Vinick had pushed to open 20 years prior, suffered a serious accident that threatened a massive release of radioactivity over California in Duck And Cover. 
  

• Matt shows off his Naval Academy class ring to Helen when he says he got a paycheck while attending Annapolis. This reminds us that he's a Naval Academy graduate who is still in the Marine Corps Reserves (as seen in The Mommy Problem).

• Vinick brings up the "good cop/bad cop" routine President Bartlet and Matt are playing to try to get Russia and China to negotiate over Kazakhstan. We saw that gambit begin in the previous episode, Transition. 
  

• The combination of Nancy McNally being nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and Vinick getting the Secretary of State offer reminds us that Josh went to Vinick to offer him the post of UN ambassador in In The Room. As Matt tells Barry, Lou, and Amy, "He never leaked that Bartlet offered him that UN job."

• Vinick says he "wouldn't lift a finger" to help Baker get confirmed. In In God We Trust we learned it was Baker who helped Bruno join the Vinick campaign, vouching for him with the Senator. So Baker and Vinick apparently got along well then.
  

DC location shots    

• The shot of Matt outside his car on the street was shot where 15th Street NW and New York Avenue NW meet, not far east of the White House. You can see the Treasury Building in the background, which is located between the White House and 15th Street. There's also a sign for Sun Trust Bank on the National Savings and Trust Company building on the northeast corner of the intersection, which now is Truist Bank.

The "Do Not Enter" signs are in the same place

Google Street View from near the corner seen in the episode

Google Street View looking down New York Avenue

• The exterior shots of the school visits were done in the DC area. It appears the production unit made a trip out east to film scenes for episodes from Requiem through Tomorrow, so these location shots were all from that trip (in February or March of 2006). I haven't been able to uncover the location for the Santos "private school" visit; the public school location was Eaton Elementary, at 3301 Lowell Street NW (near the National Cathedral, not really that close to the White House).

Mystery private school

In front of Eaton Elementary

Google Street View of Eaton Elementary

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

• There's a shot of the Washington Post on Vinick's doorstep.

• Other newspaper/media outlets mentioned include the New York Times, the Kansas City Star, CNN, and the Drudge Report.

• CNN Headline News anchor Chuck Roberts is seen again on a TV monitor in the background. I'm pretty sure the "LANDMARK EVOLUTION CASE" chyron across the bottom of the screen is exactly the same we saw in last week's episode; probably the exact same bit of video being re-used.

• The list of universities offering faculty jobs to Vinick includes NYU, Princeton, Penn, UVa, Duke, Emory, Florida State, Ohio Wesleyan, and William & Mary.
  

• Among the schools mentioned during Matt and Helen's tour are St. Albans (a prep school for boys only in grades 4-12, located near the National Cathedral) and Bancroft - while there is an expensive private school named Bancroft in Massachusetts, the school named Bancroft in DC is a public elementary school, not private.

• Adlai Stevenson is brought up by Vinick, who did indeed win back-to-back nominations to be the Democratic candidate for President in 1952 and 1956 (only to lose both times, as Sheila points out).

End credits freeze frame: Helen meeting the White House residential staff.

Previous episode: Transition

Next episode: Institutional Memory