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