Walking And Talking And Yelling At Clouds: Transition

Original airdate: April 23, 2006

Written by: Peter Noah (8)

Directed by: Nelson McCormick (2)

Synopsis

An overstressed, overworked Josh faces ultimatums, both for his future with Donna and for his choice for deputy Chief of Staff. Helen tries to work through the adjustment to life as a First Lady. Matt may find himself in hot water over his Kazakhstan remarks to China's President. And is this the return of Sam Seaborn?

"When was the last time you took a vacation?"

Josh is at the end of his rope.

This isn't a new development: during his time as Deputy Chief of Staff in the West Wing, he was always driven, to the point where work always won out over any sort of personal/social life. With the exception of Amy Gardner (and let's face it, that pretty much proves the rule), we never saw Josh in a relationship, or having much of any life outside work. During the primary campaign Josh was on top of everything, making nearly every important decision on the direction of the operation, fine-tuning the ad buys, working on the nuts and bolts of the message; while in The Ticket and The Mommy Problem, we saw him even more overworked and stretched thin after Matt won the Democratic nomination, and Josh continued to micromanage the campaign down to which states to compete in and which to drop out of. Even Leo made the comment that after winning the election, the time commitment for Josh was only going to get worse.

And here we are.

Josh, on the plane heading out to California, a pile of folders and printouts on his lap tray:

Josh, in the car traveling from the airport, tapping on his Blackberry:

Josh, even after a night of lovemaking with Donna, up before dawn to work on education policy:

Josh, face down in his Blackberry while meeting with a Congressman:

With the Blackberry literally attached between his teeth:

With the Blackberry keeping him from convincing Sam to come work with him:

And even having that damn Blackberry distract him while he's talking to the President-elect:

The nonstop minutiae of the transition, the neverending discussions, the decisions on who to tap for administration positions, the thinking, the considering, the machinations - it's consuming Josh from the inside out. And everybody notices it. Sam comments on his pallor, his lack of a life. Matt asks Donna if he's doing anything outside of work to blow off steam. Even Louise, while Josh is asking her to join the administration, makes an obvious poke at Josh's monomania.

Josh: "Campaigning's about promise. Governing's about achievement. It's, it's tougher and a lot less romantic, but it's not boring. I already think you're smarter than everyone, that's why I want you down the hall. Come on, it's not like getting a life."

Louise: "That's true, look at you."

Which brings Josh up short to consider, at least momentarily.

Then there's Donna, who had a brief phone discussion about "the talk" with Josh while he was in California. Of course we remember the unspoken devotion and connection between these two, all the way from Pilot, the note in the skiing book that make Donna smile in In Excelsis Deo, the "If you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights" in 17 People, the dashing halfway across the globe when Donna was grievously injured in Gaza, the heartbreak on Josh's face when he turned Donna away from the Santos campaign in The Ticket, the unexpected kiss in The Cold - all culminating finally, finally, with Donna and Josh falling into bed together (twice) in Election Day Part 1. And now both of them are trying to navigate the tricky waters of defining and developing whatever relationship they might be able to build here.

Donna comes over after Josh returns from California. Not to talk, but for sex. Afterwards, she lays down her (perfectly reasonable) timeline to Josh:

Donna: "Be still and listen to me. I don't know what this is. And you don't either, which is perfectly fine and understandable. Whatever the buildup, it's all happening at absurdly heightened emotional circumstances, the election, Leo's death, there's been ... no moment to so much as, take a breath, much less figure any of this out. And now this roller coaster's plunging into the transition, with its time-pressure demands, and then the inauguration and it's hit the ground running and first hundred days and before you know it the midterms and the new Congress ... and then we're running again and four years becomes eight, and we've never had the talk. And you can lose that look of panic in your eyes, we're not gonna have it now, we don't ever have to have it. But there's a window. I'd say four weeks. If we can't get it together in that time and figure out what we want from each other, then clearly it's not worth the trouble."

So there's one ultimatum. He soon faces another ... but first, hey, I mentioned Sam! Yes, Sam Seaborn is back! His story with the Bartlet administration began in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, when Josh showed up at his New York law firm to convince him to leave the job he hated and come help Josh on the campaign. Of course, Sam was a key part of the West Wing staff until Season 4, when his thoughts turned more to getting his hands dirty making policy instead of writing speeches for those who were making it. He left the White House to run for Congress in a special election in California, losing that election and leaving the series in Red Haven's On Fire. And after that, apparently, he returned to practice law in a high-powered Los Angeles firm.

That's where Josh finds him at the start of the episode, giving us all kinds of flashbacks to that first time Sam left the law for politics, as Josh asks him to be his Deputy Chief of Staff, "your me to my Leo." But this time, Sam is less eager to leave. He's making a ton of money, he's gotten the firm to do a lot of good things, and he's engaged. Josh doesn't let up, though - he keeps after him, telling him to just come out to DC and get a feel for the Santos bunch before he decides.

Naturally, being Josh, once Sam does arrive, he jumps eight steps and anoints him with the job.

Josh (handing a pile of binders to Sam): "I've got a thing. I've starred which are meetings, I've X-ed out which are blow-offs."

Sam: "I haven't officially said I'm in."

Josh: "Yeah, no, absolutely. (to everyone) Ladies and gentlemen, Sam Seaborn, our new deputy chief of staff. (they applaud) Knock 'em dead, tiger."

Sam's path and Josh's headlong race into exhaustion and collapse come together near the end of the episode. Josh, frantic as the pace of what he sees as his essential nonstop work just keeps ramping up, explodes at Otto, for no reason, and all because of that damn Blackberry.

Josh (frantically searching for something): "Otto!"

Otto (enters the office): "There's an intercom."

Josh: "Yeah, if I wanted to use the intercom, I'd use the intercom, I can't find my Blackberry."

Otto: "I've got it."

Josh: "What?"

Otto: "I'm updating it."

Josh: "I've been looking for it for an hour!"

Otto: "I just took it ten minutes ago --"

Josh: "Were you planning on telling me?"

Otto: "You handed it to me."

Josh: "Why would you think it would be okay for me to be cut off from the world like that?"

Otto: "Well, I figured you had your office phone --"

Josh: "Don't figure, okay? Don't use initiative. It's a highly overrated quality when it comes to assistant work."

Otto: "Well, I don't want to be an assistant --"

Josh (yelling): "You want to know how to get to not be an assistant, by doing it great. Not by leaving your boss electronically stranded for ten minutes, it feels like an hour, this isn't a campaign, this isn't airplanes and hotels and 'guess where I am now, ma,' this is grind-it-out time! It's three yards and a cloud of dust, and if you can't hack what I need from you now you sure as hell aren't going to be asked to do anything more, get the Blackberry now. Go."

Otto, who's been trying his best to show his worth and gain a position of responsibility in the administration, is crestfallen.

The rest of the staff watches in silent amazement and fear at Josh's outburst. Sam steps in, taking the Blackberry from Otto and laying down yet another ultimatum to Josh.

Sam: "I didn't come here cause you're such a silver-tongued recruiter or cause I got tired of summer in January. Santos may be a future this country wants: for all the partisan noises made on the margin we're a nation of centrists, and he may just be the right man with the right message at the right time and if he is - I want to be a part of it. But he can't do it without you. Liberal Democrats are going to try to force him left, moderate Republicans are going to fence-sit as long as they can, you're the one who's gotta make this go, who's gonna cut through the reflexive demagoguery and timidity and make people do what they were sent here to do - actually govern. Serve the voters' interests. Instead of striking poses and playing gotcha. And it's going to be next to impossible if you're at your best and, what may only be news to you at this point, you are nowhere near your best.

"Take the vacation. I haven't said I'm signing on but I can tell you this: I won't stay unless you go. One of us is getting on a plane tonight. If it's you, you're back in a week, if it's me I'm gone, adios, for good. Your call."

That finally gets through Josh's head. Both Louise's comment and Sam's threat to leave if he doesn't take a break dawn on him, he'll be no good to Matt or to the administration if he stays on the path he's been on. He'll take that week off, if it's okay with Matt (spoiler alert: it is).

Josh (explaining his plan to take a week off): "Lou's right, I have no life. And I don't know if that's really how I want it or if it's just some borderline, or not-so-borderline pathetic pathologic avoidance thing. If it's, you know, okay with you."

Matt: "If it didn't involve a motorcade, I'd drive you to the airport myself."

And quite smartly, Josh also realizes he can meet both Sam's and Donna's ultimatums with the same move.

Donna: "May I just say, a truly excellent notion."

Josh: "Sam's."

Donna (chuckling): "Of course."

Josh: "The vacation. Going with you part was all me."

There are a couple of other storylines in this episode. Helen, overwhelmed by the oncoming rush of what it means to be a First Lady, asks Donna to be her Chief of Staff. And Matt, who has never been comfortable with President Bartlet's military adventure in Kazakhstan that's laid on the new President's doorstep, goes outside the bounds of protocol to complain about Bartlet's move to the President of China - a complaint that's intercepted by the National Security Agency and quickly relayed to the President as a serious breach of international relations and a possible betrayal of the current administration's foreign policy.

It's a neat little trick when we eventually learn Matt and the President have cooked up this little maneuver together. Both of them are frustrated by Russia and China refusing to negotiate, even with American troops in between their forces, and they figured having the incoming President make his displeasure known and hint that he might give those American forces something offensive to do in Kazakhstan might help bring them to the table. Knowing the NSA was listening in on calls to the Russian and Chinese governments also gives cover to the whole deal; any checks by the Chinese or Russian security people to their counterparts in the administration are going to confirm that Matt is being a loose cannon and could mean what he says, there's no chance of someone leaking the fact it's a planned gambit, because they don't know. I like that secret calculated move; it keeps President Bartlet out of it, but gives Russia and China a real incentive to solve their differences before a new President starts pushing their armies around.

But this is all about Josh, and his slow realization that both his political goodwill and his emotional, relationship goodwill can only suffer if he doesn't take a breath, step back from the breakneck pace, and relax while working on what it means for him and Donna. The final shot is inspired - Josh's Blackberry, left behind, buzzing away with messages and calls ... and finally falling off the desk.

Tales Of Interest!

- The most specific mention we have of a setting is that it's ten weeks until the inauguration. Given that would be Saturday, January 20, 2007, we are somewhere in mid-November. The previous episode, Requiem, was specifically set three days after the election (so Friday, November 10) ... this must be sometime in the following week.

- Sam makes the statement that his fiancée would have to take the bar exam again, if she picked up and moved from California to DC. I only know this because my attorney son passed the DC bar (and California, too, actually) - but the District of Columbia offers what's called reciprocity for all 50 states plus Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. If an attorney is accredited in any of those jurisdictions, they can practice in DC without having to pass the DC bar exam.

- The exterior scenes with Josh and Sam outside of Sam's law firm were shot at Warner Bros. headquarters on Warner Boulevard in Burbank. The Warner Bros. Studio Tour is literally across the street from where this was filmed. The "Wilshire Studio Plaza" sign was added, no such place actually exists.

The Warner Bros headquarters entrance from Google Street View

- We get a fleeting glimpse of Gail's fishbowl when Josh comes to visit. It's hard to see what's in there, except for half a fishbowl of sand ... is that the White House on the sand?

- Why'd They Come Up With Transition?

The obvious meaning is the Presidential transition between administrations, from November's election to the January inauguration, but there's a lot more going on here. Josh is dealing with the transition from the campaign to governing; Helen is dealing with the transition from Congressman's wife to First Lady; Sam is dealing with the transition from private practice to the Santos administration; and of course, there's the whole transition of Josh/Donna from "fling" to perhaps something more long-term and serious.

Quotes

Sam: "I thought you'd never call."

-----

Donna (as her phone rings): "Excuse me, ma'am."

Helen (reacts): "Did you just 'ma'am' me?"

Donna: "I, I seem to have."

Helen (smiling): "Don't do that again."

-----

Helen: "You get all the cool names."

Matt: "Mr. President."

Helen: "Hmm."

Matt: "Commander in Chief."

Helen: "That one, that's kinda hot."

Matt: "Yeah?"

Helen: "Mmm ... got time for a little incursion?"

(Matt looks at his watch, Helen pushes his arm down)

Helen: "No."

Matt: "Not even for a surgical strike."

Helen: "I had in mind more of, shock and awe."

Matt: "Oh, yeah? After fifteen years of marriage I'd be shocked if you were awed."

-----

Sam: "When was the last time you took a vacation?"

(Josh looks at Sam blankly)

Sam: "Vacation? Time off from labor? Thought to be restorative, salubrious for body and soul? Not to mention, mental health."

Josh: "I don't remember."

Sam: "Okay, if I'm your boss that's really the wrong answer."

-----

Donna: "One thing I know for sure is I can't work for you. If something's happening with us personally, it won't work, and if something isn't, well, that won't work so good, either."

Josh: "Yeah, about that, um, things are insane, there's no way I'm going to be able to get a handle on what's going on between the two of us in the time frame you laid out."

Donna: "Three weeks, six days to go. We'll see."

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

Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) returns to The West Wing, for the first time since losing his California congressional special election in Red Haven's On Fire.

Secretary of Defense Miles Hutchinson and (former?) National Security Adviser Nancy McNally are both seen in the Situation Room. Hutchison has been Secretary of Defense through probably the entire Bartlet presidency (his name first came up in A Proportional Response, but he was first seen onscreen in Inauguration: Part I). Before Leo's funeral, McNally was last seen in Liftoff, and was referred to as the "former" NSA in Welcome To Wherever You Are (Kate Harper seems to have taken over for her in the White House, but here's Nancy again).

When Sam tells Josh he's getting married, Josh replies, "I've heard it before." Sam was engaged when Josh came to his New York workplace to convince him to leave and work for the Bartlet campaign in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen - which also leads to Sam's comment about it having "a nice nostalgic symmetry." We actually saw Sam's former fiancée writing an article about him and the State of the Union speech in 100,000 Airplanes.

CJ tells President Bartlet he isn't going to be happy with the numbers for the San Andreo cleanup. The nuclear power plant in San Andreo, California, almost had a catastrophic release of radiation in Duck And Cover.

Donna working with Helen on finding temporary residences - as well as Helen's offer to Donna to be her chief of staff - reminds us of the connection they seemed to have over the tattoo/thong incident in Running Mates.

Helen, in flirting with Matt, says she was thinking of "shock and awe." That's a military tactic first outlined in 1996 and made famous by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

We have references to both Russian President Chigorin and Chinese President Lian. Chigorin first came to power around the time of Enemies Foreign And Domestic, and has come up multiple times since then. Lian's name first came up in A Change Is Gonna Come, and we actually saw him meet with President Bartlet in Impact Winter.

Oliver Babish's name is mentioned as a possible Attorney General candidate. Babish first arrived as White House Counsel in Bad Moon Rising, when he had to deal with the legal side of the reveal of Bartlet's MS, and was last seen pestering CJ over the leak of the military space shuttle in Here Today. Matt brings up both the MS (a storyline begun in He Shall, From Time To Time ...) and the Toby Ziegler leak.

Speaking of Attorneys General, Josh says (of Babish) that "it'd be nice to have an Attorney General who didn't hate us." The conflicts between the Attorney General and President Bartlet have been an ongoing thing, brought to a head in Abu el Banat when Bartlet stood up to AG Alan Fisk over contradicting the administration's position on assisted suicide. The Attorney General has been an oddly inconsistent Cabinet position throughout the series: in Debate Camp we saw flashbacks to the problems Bartlet's staff had in their 1998-99 transition, having to withdraw their original AG choice, Cornell Rooker; the AG was referred to as "Black" in A Proportional Response, then we saw a man named Dan Larson, who was definitely not Black (and also definitely not Alan Fisk), introduced as Attorney General in Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics.

CJ makes an offer to Josh for incoming Santos staffers to stop by and spend some time with the Bartlet staffers who are leaving, to help pick up some tips about their jobs. We saw something similar happening in the flashback scenes of Debate Camp, including Donna getting pranked by her predecessor over a secret nuclear missile silo under the White House.

CJ's flustered kinda-sorta dismissal of Josh's offer of a job in the Santos White House reminds us of Charlie convincing her to look over some job offers from outside government in Election Day Part 1. It seems she really hasn't come to terms with what to do next yet.

Josh makes a callback to President Bartlet's Nobel Prize in Economics. The award for economics isn't technically one included in the original prizes started in 1901, but an Nobel-adjacent award created in 1969 and administered by the Nobel Foundation does exist.

DC location shots

We see a scene with Josh on the phone as he walks along Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House. The scene actually does reflect how Josh might have walked from the White House back to the transition offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (although in reality that walk probably wouldn't be along Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street NW - the EEOB is literally across a parking area from the West Wing).

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

Josh compares his receding hairline to Napoleon being routed out of Moscow.

The comments about outgoing administrations sabotaging offices for the incoming staffers are based on reports that members of the outgoing Bill Clinton administration engaged in some vandalism aimed at the incoming George W. Bush administration on their way out in January 2001, including removing "W" keys from computer keyboards, cutting phone lines, and gluing filing cabinets shut. Some anonymous Clinton staffers claim they faced similar light vandalism upon taking over from the George H.W. Bush administration in 1993.

Helen refers to herself as "The Lady Of Shalott," the subject of a tragic poem by Tennyson in 1832 about a noblewoman stranded in a tower.

After considering staying at homes offered by donors, the Santos family plans to move into Blair House, which is located on Pennsylvania Avenue across from the White House. Called "the President's Guest House," the residence has served as a place for visiting foreign dignitaries to stay in Washington since the 1940s, and has also been a residence for many incoming presidents before their inaugurations.

The situation in Kazakhstan first sprang from an offhand comment by an odd national security adviser to Vinick in Message Of The Week; of course that has grown into a full-blown crisis as armies of both China and Russia have moved into the country, and President Bartlet has sent in US troops to serve as a buffer between them. Matt has made his concerns with the operation known ever since he and Vinick were first told about it in The Cold.