Welcome To Wherever You Are - TWW S7E15

 

Original airdate: March 26, 2006

Written by: Josh Singer (6)

Directed by: Matia Karrell (1)

Synopsis

• In the frantic final Halloween of the campaign, just days before the election, Matt and the Santos team play "time zone hopscotch" from city to city and state to state, a day jammed with meetings and rallies and photo ops and rock stars and candidate's wives popping off about felon voting rights. Meanwhile, Toby faces off with the US attorney for DC in a standoff that could affect his relationship with Andy and the twins.
  

"The last five days, it's all about hustle." 

This episode is not for the calm, not for the relaxed, and definitely not for those with attention-span issues. It's frenetic, frantic, shaky-cam, overlapping dialogue, rushing from bus to plane to bus to tarmac to hangar to rally to ... well, trick-or-treating in a Dayton neighborhood. It perfectly encapsulates what the final days of a closely contested Presidential election must feel like, the exhaustion, the nonstop pace, the urgency and issues and people competing for attention and notice, the dropped meetings ... it's a crazily energetic episode, and we can't help but feel caught up in the rush and the scurry and feel like we're missing something somewhere.

 

Then, as a contrast to the moving, spinning Santos campaign, we also get Toby - facing off with US Attorney Peter Blake as he's offered a deal: give up his source for the classified military space shuttle information he leaked to the press, or see an additional indictment looping in more Bartlet administration Democrats on the eve of the election. These scenes, while containing tension and drama, are much calmer and smoother than what we see on the campaign trail, which is nice - we kind of need the break!

 

We begin with Josh and Louise setting the schedule for the final days of the campaign, with Matt, Leo, and the President himself dashing across the country to drum up as many votes as possible in the swing states that will make the difference this coming Tuesday. The blue arrows are for Matt, the green ones for Leo, the red for President Bartlet:

 

And the purple clovers keep Louise entertained while she waits for Josh to make his decisions. It's an exhaustingly difficult plan, made more difficult by Vinick's VP candidate Ray Sullivan showing up in Colorado and bringing Matt's numbers down there, and issues with Latino registrations in Florida. 

The time-zone hopscotch is on, with an added trip for Helen to Florida to try to pump up the Santos vote there and phone calls to Vice President Russell to try to get him to help out in Colorado. As Halloween begins, the dash kicks off with Matt going from Pennsylvania to Ohio and back again, and Helen off to Florida before she rejoins the family for a trick-or-treating photo op in Dayton. The pace is brutal: each gaggle with reporters seems to end with "Are you watching the game this weekend?" to which Matt answers diplomatically, "Philly and New York, both strong teams. I'm looking forward to it." Until the time Donna reminds him he's actually in Ohio, and he has to correct himself with "Go Buckeyes!"

 

As Josh finds himself stymied by all the Vice President's men, Helen gets in a bit of hot water in Florida by making a statement about voting rights for ex-cons. While Matt is in agreement with her, it's a dicey political issue that could hurt his campaign in some key southern and western states, so he has to put out that fire - another added complication to an already busy day. Which gets even tougher when the Santos children arrive in Ohio to get ready for trick-or-treating, without Helen (and with Helen's mother off to chat with Ben Affleck instead of watching the kids). Thank goodness for Jon Bon Jovi, on the Santos bus already, and his willingness to chaperone the kids as they get candy from the press van while they wait for their parents.

 

That turns out to be a bad case of "priming the pump," so to speak - Matt is delayed in joining the family on the photo op, Helen and Matt snipe at one another over the Florida thing, the kids are grumpy and full of sugar and ice cream, having already been to 60-some houses waiting for Dad ... and at the last house, the sight of caramel apples is just too much for the Santos son.

 

Kind of a fitting end to a day spinning out of control.

But at the end of this grueling, exhausting day, with four more of the same yet to come, even after the missteps and the travel and the arguments and the blowups, as a spent, haggard Matt, dark circles under his eyes, asks Josh for the bottom line, there's daylight at the end.

 

Matt: "You think we're gonna win?"

(pause - a tiny hint of a smile plays over Josh's face)

Josh: "I do."

Meanwhile, back in DC, Toby is facing yet another meeting with the attorney ready to prosecute him for leaking classified information to the press. Toby has been clear, he's not interested in making any deals, and he's not interested in giving up his source in order for a shorter sentence. The attorney is ready to up the ante - if Toby doesn't give up a name by the end of the day, he'll add on an indictment for obstruction of justice and subpoena Chief of Staff CJ, Vice Presidential candidate Leo, and President Bartlet himself. And he'll do it just days before a tight Presidential election, giving the impression that the Democratic administration and its current VP candidate are deeply involved in a coverup over sensitive classified military secrets, an event that can't help but have a hugely negative impact on the Santos campaign. Toby is livid.

Toby: "You're gonna sabotage a national election over this?"

Blake: "No. You are."

 

Toby takes some time, heading out to Maryland to his ex-wife Andy's place, thinking things over as they prepare for Halloween with their twins. We haven't seen much of Andy lately, not since the events of Gaza when the delegation she was with hit a roadside bomb, resulting in the deaths of two Congresspeople and retired Admiral Fitzwallace, as well as seriously injuring Donna. We also haven't heard much about the twins Molly and Huck - born during the events of Twenty Five, where Toby realized the deep importance of fatherhood and declared his devotion and love for those newborns (only to see that completely disappear with the new writing team after Aaron Sorkin's departure). 

Toby and Andy still have a complicated relationship (remember he bought a house for her in an attempt to get her to accept his proposal for remarriage in Commencement), made tougher by her running for re-election with an ex-husband under investigation for leaking government secrets. And once Toby mentions there's a deal on the table that might help him avoid jail time, it gets even more complicated:

Andy: "A Republican hasn't won the Maryland 8th in forty years ... I'm running neck and neck ... my campaign manager wants to make 'That's Why I Divorced Him' buttons ... just tell the US Attorney it was David and this will all be over. It's what he would have wanted you to do."

Toby: "Don't tell me what my brother would have wanted. He did nothing wrong, and I will not consider for one second defaming his reputation over something he had absolutely nothing to do with."

(pause)

Andy: "Is that what you're going to tell the kids?"

Toby is nothing if not consistent, though. He's going to stick to his guns, stick to what he believes is right, knowing that his leaking of info on that military shuttle saved the lives of the astronauts on the ISS and that it was the only moral path to follow. He calls in the attorney late on Halloween evening and tells him not only will there be no deal, but he knows Blake is bluffing on the indictments and the subpoena threats.

Toby: "I've dedicated my life to this country, to public service - and regardless of our different interpretations of the role of the federal prosecutor in our legal system, I don't think derailing a Presidential election is part of your job description. (pause) And I don't think you believe it is, either."

So, to quote a certain fictional President ... "what's next?" As Santos and Vinick sprint to the finish line, and Toby holds firm in the face of threats, basically all we have left is - who will the American people vote for?

That's what's next, coming up on The West Wing.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- This episode is clearly set on Halloween, October 31. That day in 2006 (which is the year of this election, mind you) was a Tuesday, exactly a week before election day, November 7. Yet for some reason, the onscreen graphic we're shown is that Halloween, October 31, is a Thursday, and five days before the election (which would mean November 5).

 

What. The. Actual. Hell.

 

I mean, fine, it's a fictional world, it could be any year, the dates could be anything ... except the events of the series explicitly began in 1999 (In Excelsis Deo included Christmastime discussions about the upcoming millennium celebrations, which had to mean 2000 was coming up), and the prior Presidential election we saw was clearly 2002 (Toby says so definitively in 17 People, with the line, "Leo, has there been a discussion in some room, someplace -- anywhere, on any level, about Hoynes being dropped from the ticket in 2002?"). There's simply no way this election wrapping up Bartlet's second term could be any year but 2006 - so Halloween could NOT be on a Thursday. The only choices for a calendar with October 31 on a Thursday would be 2002 (which, as I showed, already had a Presidential election taking place four years prior) or 2013 (which would mean President Bartlet has been in office for 14 years).

- There's a nice little blink-and-you-miss-it moment on the bus, where a TV monitor in the background shows Leo campaigning. John Spencer died the previous December, before this episode was filmed; since in the universe of the show Leo is still around and running for Vice President, this was a nice way to pay a little tribute to the late actor even after his passing (and, of course, much more tribute is on the way).

- With the story about the Vinick "Made In America" bus tour buses being built in Canada, we do see that the Santos bus was built by MCI (Motor Coach Industries). That company is headquartered in Illinois, but at the time had factories in both Winnipeg and in North Dakota (so it's unclear in which country this particular bus might have been produced).

- Toby remains adamant - to both Andy and the US Attorney - that he didn't get the secret military shuttle information from his brother, from CJ, or from Leo. This does make us wonder, where exactly did he get it? His brother, being a space shuttle crewman for NASA, seems like a logical source (especially given the conversation he has with CJ in Things Fall Apart where he implies his brother might have let something like that slip, to lord it over Toby) - but if it wasn't David, and it wasn't CJ, or Leo ... who was it? There's a serious conspiracy theory community among West Wing fans that believes it was actually CJ who leaked the information to Greg Brock, and Toby just took the fall for her. My opinion is that's hogwash ... just look at how the two react at the end of Mr. Frost and the beginning of Here Today, when Toby admits to CJ that he was the leak, and there's nobody else in the room; if CJ had actually done it and Toby was covering for her, that scene would simply not exist. And another theory, that President Bartlet himself had set up the leak with Toby to give the President political cover to use the military shuttle to rescue the ISS astronauts, that doesn't really line up with Bartlet's hard line to Toby in Here Today when he was dismissed; and even if you shrug that off as Bartlet acting for Oliver Babish's benefit, the struggle we see the President dealing with over whether or not to pardon Toby on his way out of the White House in Tomorrow happens with no one but Bartlet in the room. The events of the show simply do not agree with either the CJ leaker/Toby covering for her theory, or the President Bartlet using Toby to leak the info for him theory. Anyway ... Toby is eliminating potential suspects right and left, so I don't know who gave him the information if it wasn't David.

- Why'd They Come Up With Welcome To Wherever You Are?

The title not only illustrates the frenetic nature of the final days of the campaign - who knows where we are right now? Where are we going to next? - but it's also the title of a Bon Jovi song, and Jon Bon Jovi appears in this episode. The song had just been released in December 2005, only months before this episode aired. It did not chart in the United States. (The song is from the album Have A Nice Day - Louise tells Jon at one point how she loves the “new album,” and there are also references to the album Slippery When Wet and the song Livin’ On A Prayer.) 

Quotes    

Reporter: "How many states are you hitting today?"

Matt: "Uh, I think Josh Lyman over there is shooting for about fifty."

-----

Helen (on the phone with Matt): "He does remember I'm white?"

Matt: "He does now."

Helen: "Whiter than white? White Album white?"

Matt: "Believe me, this wasn't --"

Helen: "White devil, white dahlia, the white-white witch who lured a big gorgeous Latino man away from --"

-----

(After Jon Bon Jovi says he'll look after the Santos kids trick-or-treating at the press van)

Louise: "He's fantastic."

Matt: "An international rock star looking after my kids. Yeah. It's like a dream come true."

  

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

• Toby's lawyer Alana Waterman, played by Lee Garlington (Sneakers, Dante's Peak, the "Nazi cow" in Field Of Dreams) appears. Alana was last seen in the Roosevelt Room telling Toby to stop talking about his leak of the classified military shuttle in Here Today, but first appeared in Red Haven's On Fire when Amy Gardner dissed her (at Abbey's request) during a fundraiser for Sam's House campaign in California.

• Peter Blake, the US Attorney prosecuting Toby, is played by Matt Letscher (Almost Perfect, Good Morning Miami, Eli Stone, The New Adventures Of Old Christine [along with Agent Casper himself, Clark Gregg]).

• Good old Ivan Allen (Sicario, Apollo 13, News Radio), consistent news anchor on movies and television, shows up again. This is his 24th credit on The West Wing, with his first appearance back in Season 1's A Proportional Response.
  

• Toby's ex-wife Andy Wyatt shows up (in her Halloween witch costume, va-va-voom), along with their children Huck and Molly. Andy is played by Kathleen York, and her last appearance was in Gaza, when she narrowly avoided being hurt in the roadside bombing that injured Donna and killed Admiral Fitzwallace.

• Speaking of Huck and Molly, the twins were born in May, 2003, in Twenty Five, during Zoey's kidnapping crisis. In that episode, Toby declared his undying love and devotion to the twins and pledged to be a good father - but we rarely heard a mention of them again after that, discovering in The Supremes that he hadn't actually been around much and wasn't much interested in taking care of them while Andy would be out of the country on her Mideast trip. In this episode, there's plenty of tension between Toby and Andy (admittedly, a lot of that because of the political fallout for Andy should she be seen in public with someone charged with leaking government secrets). Also, given the timeline of when the twins were born, at Halloween 2006 they'd be 3 1/2 years old. That actually does fit pretty well with the actors they chose to play the kids.
  

• There's a mention of Presidential daughter Zoey Bartlet doing some womens' issue appearances in Florida for the Santos campaign. We haven't seen Zoey onscreen since the convention in 2162 Votes. 
  

• We hear the name "Berryhill" a couple of times. Berryhill is the Secretary of State (only seen once in the series, as the potential Vice Presidential replacement played by William Devane in The Dogs Of War). 
  

• We also hear a lot about Matt wanting to be briefed by Nancy McNally over Kazakhstan. Josh calls her the "former" national security adviser to President Bartlet, so she's apparently been replaced (Kate Harper is basically doing her role now, I suppose she's formally now the NSA?). We saw McNally many times earlier in the series, but not since Liftoff (ironically, Matt Santos' first appearance on the show).
  

• There's also some references to Vice President Russell, who of course lost the Democratic nomination to Matt in 2162 Votes; as the "congressman from Western Colorado - the mining company, not the state" Josh is hoping Russell could help reverse Santos' sinking numbers in Colorado, but he's obviously not keen on helping out.
  

• Oh, so many story threads from the past:
• Pretty much the entire Santos campaign staff is aware Annabeth is sweet on Leo; we saw that first in Mr. Frost, when Annabeth called Leo "fabulous," fell asleep on his shoulder while holding his hand, and told him they needed to keep their distance "because of the tension." They flirted more seriously in Running Mates, and now it appears Annabeth is singing Stevie Wonder songs about her feelings for Leo.
• Toby's leak of the classified military shuttle to the press, leading to the rescue of astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, the suspicion falling on CJ, and the following investigation and Toby's confession and dismissal from the White House (Mr. Frost/Here Today) is front and center as he deals with the US Attorney on the case. Naturally, Toby's brother (a shuttle astronaut we first heard of in What Kind Of Day Has It Been, and a possible source of the classified information whose death by suicide was a huge part of Drought Conditions) is also a topic.
  
• Toby's fraught relationship with his ex-wife (first seen in Mandatory Minimums; he bought a house for Andy in a bid to get him to remarry him in Commencement) and their twins (seen as newborns in Twenty Five) runs throughout this Halloween night.
• At last, there's reference to the US troops serving as peacekeepers in Israel. That was a huge element of the Mideast peace agreement in the wake of the bombing of Donna, Fitzwallace, and two Congressmen in Gaza, an agreement we saw come together in The Birnam Wood - but hardly heard a word about since. Finally, here's a reference to those troops and that responsibility, as Matt shows his frustration over having to move some of those peacekeeping troops to Kazakhstan to cover President Bartlet's intervention there.
  

DC location shots    

• None. We do get an establishing shot of what's supposed to be the US Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (and was also shown as the place where Donna was giving her deposition in War Crimes - in fact, it's the exact same video shot they used in that episode, and also the exact same footage they used to show what was supposed to be the Senate office building housing Vinick's office in In God We Trust) - but that building is actually the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency, in the 300 block of 12th Street NW.

Those people have been sitting on those benches for a long time.

This episode, the US Attorney for DC's office

 

In God We Trust, apparently the Senate office building where Vinick's office is located

War Crimes, where Donna gave her deposition to the House committee investigating the MS coverup

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

• Annabeth is singing the song For Once In My Life (made most famous by Stevie Wonder's 1967 version) on the St. Louis airport tarmac to open the episode, and we discover Stevie Wonder himself performed at the Santos rally that evening. Matt says Wonder recorded the song when he was just 17, which is true. (Kristin Chenoweth, of course, was a well-known and highly lauded Broadway musical star before joining The West Wing cast, so the girl can sing.)
  

• Matt appearing with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show is a running subplot of the episode. Annabeth later confuses David Letterman's Top Ten list with Leno's show. The literary characters Robin Hood and Zorro come up in talks about Matt's appearance.
  

• There are a couple of references to polls by Zogby, which was an important and respected pollster in the early 2000s. We hear about the news outlets AP, Reuters, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and there's the MSNBC and C-SPAN logos seen. We also get mentions of Drudge (Matt Drudge, who ran a popular political blog/website at the time) and a Rasmussen poll. CNN is also mentioned late in the episode.

• Jon Bon Jovi not only performs for a Santos rally in Pennsylvania, he rides on the bus and helps take the Santos kids trick or treating to the press bus. As a personal note, I saw Jon Bon Jovi appear and sing at a rally for John Kerry in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the last week of October, 2004 (just over a year before this episode was filmed) - so Bon Jovi's bona fides as a supporter of Democratic presidential candidates rings true.

• Louise talks about Helen's felon-voting statement with the term "a universal suffrage, free-Capone kind of way." Al Capone was a famous gangster in Chicago in the 1920s, finally convicted of tax evasion and jailed in 1931.
  

• Toby jokes about dressing up as Julius Rosenberg for Halloween. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and executed in 1953.
  

• Huck and Molly are wearing Baltimore Orioles uniforms as their Halloween costumes (with their mother being a congressperson from Maryland, makes sense). Toby replaces one of their hats with a New York Yankees cap when he puts them to bed. As far as sports references go, Matt also says, "Go, Buckeyes!" meaning the Ohio State University football team.
  

• Andy mentions she's the Representative from Maryland's 8th congressional district. At this time, between 2003 and 2013, that district (located immediately north of the District of Columbia) took in parts of Frederick, Prince George's, Montgomery, and Carroll counties. Andy's remark about a Republican not winning the district in 40 years is incorrect, though - Republican Connie Morella actually held the seat from 1986 until she was voted out in 2002, just four years/two elections before what we see portrayed here. (This also indicates the house Toby bought for her in Commencement, which was located south of DC in Alexandria, Virginia, would have been a long way away from her district.)
  

• Matt and Helen's son is dressed as Harry Potter for Halloween. The events of this episode were taking place between the release of the book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in 2005 and the final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, which came out in 2007. As far as the films go, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire had come out in 2005.
  

• We can see Paula Zahn on a TV monitor in the background on the Santos bus. At the time this episode was filmed in early 2006, Zahn was host of the show Paula Zahn Now on CNN.

• Donna says Matt's son eating Graeter's ice cream ("a Cincinnati delicacy") made for a great photo op.
  

• We have a mention of Helen's mother chatting with Ben Affleck.
  

• Toby picks through Mars bars and Bit-O-Honey as Halloween treats. 
  

• We see Barry Goodwin talking about all the lawyers the campaign has ready in Florida and other states in case election results need to be contested. The legal side of Presidential election outcomes was hardly a thing before Bush-Gore in 2000 (a case that ended up in the Supreme Court, where it was decided in favor of Bush), but is essentially a fact of life now, with the Trumpian policy of suing, complaining, and bringing out lawyers to bear on any vote result that doesn't go in his favor.

• During Toby's scathing takedown of Peter Blake he refers to Blake's Rhodes Scholarship.
  

• Toby quotes "Justice Robert Jackson" as he calls out Blake; Robert H. Jackson was indeed a Supreme Court justice between 1941 and 1954. The full quote, from a speech Jackson made in 1940, is "(T)he citizens' safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility." Toby continues to quote Jackson's speech as he goes on ("Your positions are of such independence and importance that while you are being diligent, strict, and vigorous in law enforcement you can also afford to be just").
  

• Annabeth is trying to hide the logo, but we do get a glimpse that proves the water bottle she's holding is Dasani water.

End credits freeze frame: Donna, Helen, and Matt on the airport tarmac in St. Louis.

Previous episode: Two Weeks Out

Next episode: Election Day: Part 1