Holy Night - TWW S4E11

 

Original airdate: December 11, 2002

Written by: Aaron Sorkin (74)

Directed by: Thomas Schlamme (11)

Synopsis

• As a huge Christmas snowstorm shuts down most of DC, the arrival of Toby's estranged father spurs tension between Toby and Josh. Will is tested on his ability to stand up to power, and doesn't do very well. Josh tries to figure out his feelings for Donna. Danny Concannon surprisingly returns, tracking a story about suspicious dealings in Bermuda in May. Both President Bartlet and Leo, feeling guilt over that May assassination, try to solve unsolvable problems to make amends.

"It's four years later and there are things that are worse and things that are exactly the same. Where do you start?"

"By fixing a roof."

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." William Faulkner's line from Requiem For A Nun pretty much sums up our episode here. The past that our characters thought was dead and gone, whether it be a father's involvement with mobsters in the 1950s or a reporter who might have been a love interest once upon a time or a political assassination thought to be securely kept under wraps ... they're not even past.

Pretty much every character here is dealing with echoes from the past, whether they be obvious in-your-face memories (like Toby's dad just showing up in his office) or a bit more subtle ones (like the return of Zoey with her new boyfriend bringing Charlie up short). From Josh thinking about how his past sabotage of Donna's private life may have had motives he wasn't even aware of (something he talked about openly in The War At Home, telling Sam about Donna's dating "I don't like it and usually do everything within my considerable capabilities to sabotage it"), to the specter of a dismantled airplane popping up in President Bartlet's head during a session with Stanley Keyworth - the memories are like little Christmas presents showering over the West Wing. Just a lot less welcome and joyous.

As heavy snow shuts down most of Washington, Donna is hurrying to get away to spend the Christmas holiday with Jack Reese at the Washington Inn (remember, they only met on Election Day in early November, their first date came three weeks ago on the day before Thanksgiving, so things are zipping right along in DonnaJack land). Josh is supportive, even after Jack's comments in the previous episode opened the window into the fact that maybe, just maybe, Josh has some deep romantic feelings for Donna himself. But then a directive from the President lands on Josh's desk - he wants to rewrite the budget for the Department of Health and Human Services to provide more funding for early childhood programs, and it has to be done right away. Josh apparently can't hardly do anything without Donna's help, but she knows that and willingly delays her departure. "It's not what it looks like," Josh tells her, and she answers, "It's really okay. Where do we start?"

But what Josh said does stick with Donna, leading to this later conversation.

Donna: "What did you mean when you said it's not what it looks like?"

Josh: "Jack's already down there?"

Donna: "Yeah."

Josh: "I'll call him and apologize."

Donna: "What did you mean?"

Josh: "I meant that I wasn't keeping you here on purpose."

Donna: "Why would I think you were doing that?"

Well, if she remembers The Portland Trip, for one, when Josh sabotaged her date with unnecessary make-work, and there's been other examples, too (even if Josh's aversion to Donna seeing Cliff Calley in Ways And Means and War Crimes actually had solid practical foundations). Jack's remarks in the previous episode about how much Josh talks about Donna hit Josh pretty hard - and now he's dealing with the way he's tried to stop Donna from having romantic attachments in the past.

Donna does get away at last, thanks to a TV news helicopter that Leo arranges (how many ethics rules got violated for that?), but we're left knowing that Josh's denials of treating Donna differently than the past may not be completely honest.

Also in West Wing romantic soap opera plots, Presidential daughter Zoey pops up. We haven't seen her since The Midterms early in Season 2, and at that time she and Charlie were still quite an item. Charlie was just working out his unease about being a target for white supremacists gunmen because of their relationship, but near the end of that episode they happily walked off together as Charlie went to vote.

Things have changed since then. Zoey has brought her new boyfriend, Jean-Paul, to the White House to meet her father. Jean-Paul, it turns out, is French royalty (and also ends up being one of the more loathed characters appearing on The West Wing, but you'll need to stick around to find out why).

Zoey: "Jean-Paul Pierre Claude Charpentier Vicomte de Conde de Bourbon. He's the 22nd Vicomte de Bourbon, though obviously that got interrupted by the French Revolution."

President: "Yeah, that was a setback for the Bourbons." 

She's also hoping to convince the President to allow Jean-Paul to tag along to Manchester for the holiday, so things must be getting pretty serious between them. Charlie is, to put it mildly, not enthused to meet Zoey's new beau. We also get a little bit of a clue that things may not have ended very smoothly between Charlie and Zoey, whenever and however they did end, with a bit of a passive-aggression exchange between the two, with Charlie's snide "you've got a lot in common" definitely meant as a slam on Zoey:

Charlie: "But I wish you all the luck in the world. I like Jean-Paul. You've got a lot in common."

Zoey: "You are the worst kind of snob."

Charlie: "Well, I think there's snobs who are way worse. But thank you."

How about Will? As we discovered in the previous episode, Toby agreed to bring him in to help work on the President's inaugural address. However, Toby is frustrated with the logistics of Will working in his hotel and refusing to cross the "holy line of demarcation" in the White House lobby. Toby installs Will in Sam's office, which is currently unused as Sam is in California running for Congress in the special election. Will deduces that move will not go over well with the other speechwriters on the staff, as they will resent the move as a poor reflection on Sam's past legacy in the West Wing. His prediction appears to come to fruition when he find bicycles piled into the office and Sam Seaborn posters all over the windows.

 Will: "Who rides a bicycle to work when there's going to be a foot and a half of snow?"

It's all part of an elaborate test, though. Toby brings Will the President's notes on a section of the speech, saying he agrees with all three. Will doesn't agree with one of them, he wants to push more action, and Toby sets up an Oval Office meeting for them. Which turns out to be just two when Toby doesn't show up, and things don't go well when Will declines to take the meeting without Toby:

President: "Well, thanks for stopping by."

Will: "Thank you, Mr. Justice - Mr. Bartlet - Mr. President, actually."

(The President returns to the Oval Office)

Will: "Oh, my God."

Charlie: "You know what? I've seen worse."

Will: "Really?"

Charlie: "Well, no." 

When they finally do have the meeting, and the opportunity is given for anyone to speak up about potential changes to the speech, Will is reluctant to say anything - and it turns out he's fallen into the trap set by Toby and the President. The bikes were a planned distraction, the note Will didn't agree with was planted to see if he would catch it, and Toby bailing on their original meeting was a setup to see if Will would take some iniative, and, well:

Will: "You said that I caught the bad note?"

Toby: "Yeah, that was planted there to see how well you'd do telling truth to power."

President: "Not very well so far."

 Will: "I have no difficulty, sir, telling truth to power."

President: "Okay, except when I asked you to come into the Oval Office you said, 'No, no, no. No, no, no, no.'"

Will: "I was firm in my convictions."

President: "And you called me Mr. Justice."

(This does seem a bit of an odd performance considering what we've seen of Will before, standing up to Sam about how he ran the Wilde campaign with a dead candidate, then standing up to him again about staying on for Sam's run, then standing up to Toby and criticizing his writing style. I suppose the office of the Presidency and the importance of the Oval Office itself was just a bit too much.)

So Will has to deal with not only Sam's past shadow looming over the office space and his speechwriting role, but also his own past reputation for being a straight shooter and brutally honest fizzling under his awestruck respect for the White House itself.

Toby and his father ... that's quite a story. We've heard a bit about Toby's family past previously, from his brother being a NASA shuttle payload specialist in What Kind Of Day Has It Been to his sisters taking him to protests in 1968 in Somebody's Going To Emergency, Somebody's Going To Jail, but we know nothing about his parents. This episode changes that in a very unusual way, with a flashback to 1954 Brooklyn Heights and characters speaking in Yiddish, where we discover Toby's father, happy about his son being born the day before, is involved in some kind of criminal gangland activity.

Back to the present, Toby's dad is waiting for him in his office. Josh has set up the meeting, which pisses off Toby royally - because as we discover, it turns out his father served prison time for being a part of the mob group Murder Incorporated back in the '50s and Toby does not want to have any kind of relationship with him. His father, Jules, though, has heard that Toby and Andy are expecting, and he would love to have some contact with his grandchildren.

It's an icy back-and-forth between the two, but given that it's Christmas and that all the city's hotels are booked up, Toby eventually melts just enough to offer his apartment as a place for his father to stay for the night. It doesn't hurt that Josh brings up his own familial tragedies as a contrast for Toby to think about:

Josh: "All right, it was desperation. It wasn't out of a desire to do evil. He had a young family and he barely spoke the language. He went to jail. He went to jail and you went to school, and it was all a half-century ago. Look what he did in two generations. What room did you just walk out of?"

Toby: "I appreciate that that's what you think. Do I get to think what I think?"

Josh: "No, you don't, cause you don't know what I know."

Toby: "What?"

Josh: "That I would give anything to have a father who was a felon, or a sister with a past. That's it."

Finally, the big shadow hovering over the episode, a shadow of a momentous secret decision made last spring at the end of Season 3, President Bartlet's call to take out a Qumari government official who was sponsoring terrorism against the United States. While the beginning episodes of Season 4 had some references to the Shareef assassination, with Qumar reopening the investigation and blaming Israel for it, it's been a while since the topic has come up in our episodes. So it caught me unawares, really, when the President unknowingly and unexpectedly says the word "airplane" in his therapy session with Stanley, when he's supposedly talking about how he can help children's health and well-being:

President: "The President can't do anything about nature or bad luck. I ought to be able to do something about the airplane."

Stanley: "Uh-oh."

President: "Wait, what'd I just say?"

Stanley: "It's hard to figure, sir, but you've introduced a new word into the conversation."

President: "What do airplanes signify?"

Stanley: "Death."

Just seems like a weird misstatement in context, especially when Bartlet goes on to explain that he's been spacing out in meetings lately ... but Sorkin is too good of a writer to plant that nugget there in the script without it meaning a lot more.

Apparently the Christmas season has caused the guilt felt by the President and Leo over the assassination to fester. Bartlet focuses on children's health and infant mortality, directing Josh to rewrite the HHS budget before the new year, as a way to atone for the killing, apparently. Leo explodes over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem being closed on Christmas Eve for what he sees as petty reasons, with his fervor to fix the problem and reopen the church his way of reacting to his guilt.

This guilt about the secret is an interesting psychological plotline in itself, but things get really dicey when Danny Concannon returns (after a nearly two-year absence) to his position as a White House correspondent. He first pops up in the guise of Santa Claus, giving CJ a gift of a goldfish pin from the press corps, along with a little something else:

(A smooch. It was a big smooch, which hearkens back to Danny talking about CJ's "randomly grabbing me and kissing me" in Season 1.)

Danny (who hasn't been seen since The Portland Trip in Season 2) has spent some time working overseas, but now he's back - and he has a little tidbit of information for CJ. He tells her in the course of enjoying cricket matches in Bermuda, one of the players who is also a ramp worker at a small airstrip had an unusual situation come up in May. The airport staff was told to take a day off, with a training crew coming in to replace them for that day, but when this fellow realized he'd left something in his locker and went to retrieve it that "training staff" refused him entry.

Danny puts things together and tells CJ he believes these were U.S. Army Rangers, clearing a Bermuda airstrip of local workers for a day, the same day Abdul Shareef's aircraft supposedly disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle - and he knows there's some kind of connection there. And he's working on the story.

CJ believes him.

Josh: "Danny thinks we somehow got a Gulfstream in land in Bermuda, assassinated Shareef, then disassembled the plane and distributed the pieces throughout the Bermuda Triangle?"

CJ: "Yeah."

Josh: "I think he spent too much time in the Africa hot."

CJ: "Thing is -"

Josh: "Yeah?"

CJ: "I'm absolutely certain that's what happened."

And then we get a clear callback to the private and eventual public disclosure of President Bartlet's health issues and the staff's involvement in that during Season 2:

Josh: "We're not supposed to talk about this."

CJ: "If it is true, we need to say so before Danny does. We've been here before."

And that's the biggest example of past not being dead, not even being past, as the Shareef assassination isn't buried under the waves of the Atlantic but struggles to be revealed, as such things almost always eventually are.

The episode ends with a skillfully presented montage, scenes of the characters striving towards truth and closure as the Whiffenpoofs sing "O Holy Night." We first see Danny, hard at work on his story digging at the events in Bermuda and Shareef's disappearance:

Then CJ in her office, turning over Danny's story in her mind and thinking about the consequences:

Charlie leaving for the night, followed by Zoey and Jean-Paul heading out for Manchester:

(There in front of Zoey and Jean-Paul I'm pretty sure we see a gingerbread White House, something that has been shown in all the Christmas episodes, but never quite in this blink-and-you'll-miss-it way before.)

Those shots lead us to Sam's office, where Will continues to work on the inaugural address among the bicycles (this after Leo sent him away from the Oval Office, saying surely Will had somewhere to be for Christmas - he doesn't):

Meanwhile, in the Oval Office, President Bartlet gazes out at the snow, deep in thought over his past decisions and making moral amends:

Speaking of amends, here's Leo, working the phones to try to get a roof fixed so a church can be open on Christmas Eve:

Josh, helping his friend and mentor with his moral struggles, working those phones alongside him:

And as Josh looks through his office window, he sees Toby and his father, listening to the Whiffenpoofs sing, perhaps signs of a bit of thawing in that icy relationship:

A terrifically put-together montage to close the episode - the pictures tell us so much without words, laying out the emotions and truth behind the stories we've been told over the past 40 minutes. It's Christmas, it's a season of hope and forgiveness ... and yet, the past won't stay dead.

Tales Of Interest!

- This episode marks the exact midpoint of the series, 3 1/2 seasons into the 7-season run. Holy Night is the 78th episode (including Documentary Special), and there are 78 episodes still to come. Meanwhile, it's taken me close to four years to blog my way through those 78 episodes (my first entry was posted in April 2017). Here's hoping I'll be able to pick up the pace somewhat for the second half.

- For the third time in four seasons, the title of the Christmas episode refers to a Christmas hymn (In Excelsis Deo in Season 1, Noël in Season 2 - only Bartlet For America in Season 3 broke the pattern). I do think this is the first time, though, that the song referenced in the title is actually heard in the episode. At the end of In Excelsis Deo the children's choir sang The Little Drummer Boy, and at the end of Noël we heard Carol Of The Bells sung by the choir outside the White House gates. This time we actually do hear the Whiffenpoofs singing O Holy Night.

- This episode marks Toby's 48th birthday (born December 23, 1954, this episode is set on December 23, 2002). Richard Schiff was born in May, 1955, so he's just five months younger than his character.

- Joshua Malina appears in the opening credits for the first time. Rob Lowe also remains in the credits, but for the first time he does not appear in the episode ... unless you count the Sam Seaborn for Congress posters that the irritated West Wing workers use to cover the windows of the office while Will is trying to work there.

- It's always great to see the lights and set decorations used to set the holiday scene in the Christmas episodes:

- Check out the long, one-take shot with the camera slowly pushing in on Danny as he tells CJ the story he heard from the Bermuda ramp agent. It's one minute and 15 seconds, uncut, with the camera starting in the hallway and ending up in a tight shot of Danny's face. Awesome work by Tommy Schlamme. Here's where that unbroken shot begins and ends:

- There's some kind of round glass object in Gail's bowl. Is is a Christmas ornament? Is it a bowling ball? Are the holes a reference to, perhaps, bullet holes? Who can say?

- You of course recall the heavy use of pagers in the early episodes of The West Wing - mixing up pagers, in fact, was a key plot point in the Sam/Laurie story in Pilot. Pagers seem to have drifted out of favor (as they did in real life) as cell phones become more common and useful. Here we can see Josh's flip phone attached to his belt, which is fairly typical for high-powered people in the early 21st century:

- This is the first time the Christmas episode did not earn any Emmy nominations; the previous three seasons all had performances that ended up as Supporting Actor Emmy wins (Richard Schiff for In Excelsis Deo, Bradley Whitford for Noël, John Spencer for Bartlet For America), while In Excelsis Deo also won the Writing Emmy for Aaron Sorkin and Rick Cleveland.



Quotes    

(Carol and CJ are listening to the Whiffenpoofs sing 'Bye, Bye Blackbird') 

Carol: "You think they should wrap it up?"

CJ: "Well, one more after this."

Carol: "I know. Aren't they great?"

CJ: "You just want them to take you to their place and ..."

(A rather sultry look comes over CJ) 

 

Carol: "They're 20 years old, ma'am."

CJ: "Yes. Sing ... is what I was going to say. Take you to their place and sing." 

-----

Will: "Seriously, Toby, you put me in that office and everyone who works on the speechwriting staff is going to resent me."

Toby: "Don't be ridiculous. It's a West Wing office. Everyone who works in the White House is going to resent you."

Will: "That's right."

Toby: "Yet curiously, I don't care." 

-----

Zoey: "This is Jean-Paul. Jean-Paul, this is Charlie Young."

Charlie: "How do you do."

Jean-Paul: "Ah, Zoey talks about you all the time. She talks about you so much I think sometimes I want to kill you."

Charlie: "Hey, that's nice of you. Thanks." 

-----

Zoey: "My dad's going to love him."

Charlie: "Oh, yeah."

Zoey: "Well, I love him, so my father will love him."

Charlie: "That's absolutely the way it works." 

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

• John Diehl (Miami Vice, Jurassic Park III) returns as Larry Claypool, the guy from Freedom Watch who grilled Josh in a deposition over the investigation of drug users in the White House in Lord John Marbury. Now he's grilling Toby over Andy Wyatt hiding her pregnancy from the voters before the election.

• Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield) returns! Last seen on Air Force One in The Portland Trip, he apparently spent some time in Africa (at least according to Josh's comment "I think he spent too much time in the Africa hot") and is now back as a White House correspondent. At the time, Busfield actually had a role on the TV series Ed, which is one reason why he hadn't shown up here for a while. 

• Speaking of returning, here's Dr. Stanley Keyworth (Adam Arkin). He first appeared in Noël as a psychological trauma specialist helping Josh. This marks the third time we've seen him working with President Bartlet on some of his issues (Night Five and Posse Comitatus being the others) - and it's unfortunately the last appearance for Dr. Keyworth.

• And Zoey is back. We haven't seen Elisabeth Moss since The Midterms, when Zoey and Charlie were still dating and Charlie was struggling with the fact their relationship made him a target of white supremacist gunmen at the end of Season 1. Somehow, unseen by us in the 51 episodes and over 2 years since that appearance, Zoey and Charlie are no longer together and Zoey has found some French royalty to date.

• Toby's father Jules is played by Jerry Adler (The Sopranos, The Good Wife, Mad About You, Rescue Me).

• President Bartlet's comment to Dr. Keyworth drops a couple of callbacks.

President: "Stanley, the width and depth of what I haven't done about it yet ... you know you can't do anything about hurricanes? The President can't do anything about nature or bad luck. I ought to be able to do something about the airplane."

Keyworth: "Uh-oh."

President: "Wait, what did I just say?"

Keyworth: "It's hard to figure, sir, but you've introduced a new word into the conversation."

First, of course, the mention of hurricanes and being unable to do anything about it recalls Hurricane Sarah from The State Dinner, which unexpectedly changed course and hit a carrier battle group off the coast of Virginia resulting in the loss of the USS Hickory. The introduction of "airplane" into the conversation seems odd at the moment, but as the episode develops we realize both Bartlet and Leo are having internal moral struggles with last spring's assassination of Qumari Defense Minister Shareef. We saw that play out over the end of Season 3, with the actual killing of Shareef and destruction of the evidence - the airplane - happening in Posse Comitatus.   

• That story thread gets pulled some more by Danny Concannon and his source from the airstrip in Bermuda. We do find out that event happened on May 22 ... which happens to be the very day Posse Comitatus aired on NBC. Go figure.

• Toby says his full name is Tobias Zachary Ziegler. In Ways And Means when the special prosecutor read off the list of names subject to subpoenas in the investigation into Bartlet's MS coverup, his name was read as "Toby Zachary Ziegler."

• Toby's father is seen looking at the framed newspaper that was used to confirm Toby's identity to the Wesley, Connecticut, police in Celestial Navigation.

• The Bartlet jacket flip appears. Martin Sheen's left shoulder was injured at birth and he's unable to raise his arm above the shoulder, so this is how he puts on a jacket.

• Will's speech he wrote for the Governor of California at the Stanford Club is mentioned again (it first came up in Game On).

• Josh tells Toby "I would give anything to have a father who was a felon, or a sister with a past." Josh's father died the night Bartlet won the Illinois primary (seen in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II) and we learned his sister was killed in a house fire when Josh was a little boy in The Crackpots And These Women.

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• There's a quick glimpse of Bob Hope on a television and we can hear his voice in the opening 1954 scene. Hope began hosting TV specials in 1950, with the first Bob Hope Christmas Show airing in December, 1953. However, his 1954 Christmas special did not air on television until January 9, 1955 - so it would not have been on the air on December 24 as seen here.

• Cole Porter is mentioned in the opening 1954 flashback, as well as his membership in the Whiffenpoofs, a Yale a capella singing club. The actual Whiffenpoofs then appear, singing songs in the lobby of the White House (including the songs Bye, Bye Blackbird, Girl From Ipanema, and O Holy Night), with one of the members prominently wearing a Yale sweatshirt in their final scene. The singing group was also mentioned by CJ in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" when she said the President's knowledge of Latin would have had them rolling in the aisles at the Whiffenpoof dinners (of course, Bartlet never went to Yale, being a graduate of Notre Dame and the London School of Economics, but Sorkin may not have had that figured out yet in the second episode).

• The Washington Inn - or, more precisely, the Martha Washington Inn - is a historic hotel in Abingdon, Virginia. Abingdon, though, is in far southwestern Virginia, a good 5 1/2 hours away by car in good weather (and probably a lot further than a news helicopter would be flying from DC). So perhaps that's not actually the inn they are referring to - although Donna's reference to I-66 checks out, as she would take Interstate 66 west out of DC before heading southwest on I-81 to get there.

• Leo is all wound up about the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem being closed on Christmas Eve.

• Ebenezer Scrooge, a character in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, gets a mention, since it's Christmas.

• The snowstorm shutting down travel and keeping people somewhat trapped in the White House has President Bartlet thinking of Agatha Christie murder mysteries.

• Charlie tells Jean-Paul he read 150 words about him in US Weekly.

• There are Coca-Cola bottles visible as part of the refreshments provided for the Whiffenpoofs stranded by the snowstorm.

• A CNN logo is seen on a TV screen, as well as former CNN weatherperson Flip Spiceland (Spiceland left CNN in early 2001, so he actually was not at the network at the time of this episode):

• All the Murder Inc. references are from real life. Albert Anastasia (who did indeed die in October 1957), the Brownsville candy store, Louis Amberg, the sixth floor of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, Dutch Schultz - all of those relate to mob activity in New York.

• Josh has a Starbucks cup (with the red holiday design).

• Josh says he'll take Donna to the Hawk 'n' Dove. That was a famous hangout for Democratic politicians near Capitol Hill (although not very convenient to the White House). While the name of the bar wasn't said in Dead Irish Writers, you could see a neon sign reading "Hawk 'n' Dove" in the window of the bar where Toby and Lord Marbury were meeting.

• As Josh and CJ go over what Danny thinks might have happened in Bermuda, Josh says how ridiculous the idea is that Shareef's Gulfstream would have been forced to land there and then taken apart and dumped in the ocean. During the events leading up to the killing of Shareef at the end of Season 3, his private jet is referred to as both a Learjet and a Gulfstream - but the scenes of the shooting at the airstrip in Posse Comitatus clearly show it's a Learjet.

End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet contemplating at the Oval Office window.

Previous episode: Arctic Radar

Next episode: Guns Not Butter

Arctic Radar - TWW S4E10

 

Original airdate: November 27, 2002

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (73)
Story by: Gene Sperling (2)

Directed by: John David Coles (1)

Synopsis

• The administration tries to dodge the issue when a Navy pilot's career is threatened after she refuses an order to stop an affair with another officer. Toby loses his writing mojo, and Sam thinks Will Bailey might be the answer. Donna tries to get Josh to help set her up with Jack Reese. A Star Trek fan in the office causes problems for Josh.

"You ready to saddle up?"

Hard choices - not just making them, but actually inviting the opportunity to make them. Whether it be a choice between angering the military for overriding their decision on discipline, or angering women voters by not stepping in; or a choice between going on a long-deserved vacation or helping write an important political speech for no pay; or a choice between doing your part for national security by staffing a lonely Arctic Circle radar base or, well, not ... stepping into the fray to actually have the opportunity to make these choices seems to be a theme of this episode.

(I may be reaching by including Jack Reese's quick mention of a memo to the radar base here, but Aaron Sorkin had to have some reason for naming the episode Arctic Radar. It had to mean something, right? Right?)

The theme of reinvigorating the administration, of stepping up to the hard challenges instead of avoiding them for expediency, is a good one to mark the beginning of Bartlet's second term ... although it's also a baldfaced ripoff of the theme from Season 2's Let Bartlet Be Bartlet. Can you rip off yourself? I guess, seeing as how Sorkin basically ripped off an important subplot from his screenplay of The American President for A Proportional Response, the answer is definitely yes.

Looming over the entire episode is the issue of Vicky Hilton, a high-ranking Navy pilot leading a trailblazing career for women in the military who finds herself in a heap of trouble after having an affair with a married, lower-ranking officer. The trouble isn't so much the affair, but the fact she ignored a direct order to stop. Leo and Toby are working hard to keep the issue away from the President, as they think involving the White House in the issue would only be a lose-lose proposition.

Of course, there are two sides here - which is what makes it a hard choice! - and Sorkin and Gene Sperling do a pretty good job of bringing them out. You've got mentions of all the wives/daughters/girlfriends weighing in. First, Amy:

Josh: "And the Commander-In-Chief chooses not to overrule his commanders."

Amy: "He chooses to do that without hearing informed argument?"

Josh: "Yes, cause then when he says no, I got a problem with women."

Amy: "Except that my friends and I can give you a problem with women right now." 

Then, Jordon and Andy:

Toby: "Is Jordon pestering you? Cause I'm getting it from Andy on this day and night."

Leo: "No, Toby, I meant a women's issue. The constituency of women."

Toby: "Yeah."

Leo: "Though Jordy hasn't shut up about Vicky Hilton."

Toby: "This is what I'm saying."

 And even the First Lady and Jed's daughters:

President: "You think we should get involved?"

Leo: "No, but you're gonna have problems with the women."

President: "Abbey and the girls?"

Leo: "No."

President: "Women?"

Leo: "Yes."

President: "Cause I got to tell you, I've been hearing it from Abbey and the girls."

Others weigh in on the side of Hilton - Charlie says "I don't think you can reasonably ask someone to control who they fall in love with," and even Toby believes "I think we invested time and money teaching her how to fly a warplane which it turns out she does very well and there aren't that many who do. So I'm going to go ahead and pick national security over caring who she sleeps with."

But Admiral Fitzwallis, in an uncomfortable conversation with Josh, drives the military's point of view home.

Josh: "Just out of curiosity, if you could step in, would you save her?"

Fitzwallis: "No. I'd discharge her, dishonorably, and I'm sure that's what's going to happen."

I have to think, in essence, Fitz has the point right. While other opinions may have some validity - who an officer chooses to sleep with should not have an effect on his or her job, or that a woman who has broken so many barriers and led the way for others to follow might deserve some special consideration, or even that we invested training funds in her, why fire her? - the bottom line is this: She failed to follow a direct order. Following legal orders is the bedrock essence of military discipline - once you give members of the armed forces a choice over which orders to follow and which to ignore, the military fails to function as designed. Plus, officers must be seen as impartial, so that when they make the decisions and give orders that necessarily result in the deaths of soldiers under their command, those soldiers know the orders are for a greater good, for national defense - and not to protect someone that officer has a special relationship with.

So in the overall scheme of things I believe Leo and Toby are absolutely right. There's simply no upside for the President to get involved, even though as Commander-In-Chief he has the power and the right to intervene. Civilians (the President) do indeed have final authority over the armed forces in this country, as Amy says ... but countermanding a decision made for unit cohesion and the importance of following orders, just to placate a bloc of Democratic voters, doesn't seem like a wise decision. And even having the President make it known that he's even considering such a decision can only upset both sides, the military and women voters. It really is a lose-lose proposition.

But it makes for good dramatic television, so there's that.

The story of Jack and Donna (two American kids growing up, in the heartland) continues, this time with Donna begging Josh to let Jack know she kinda likes him. Yes, it sounds pretty juvenile, but at least Josh calls that out with his reference to Potsie and Ralph from Happy Days. What ends up being more important, though, is that Jack Reese can read Josh way better than Josh knows himself.

From the beginning of the series, from the first scene of Donna bringing coffee to Josh in Pilot, there has been a great chemistry between Josh and Donna. Sorkin and the showrunners had little intention of making Donna much of a recurring character - Mandy (remember Mandy?) was supposed to be the romantic foil for Josh - but Janel Moloney's dazzle and commitment and obvious spark in her character forced their hand, which is why Moira Kelly disappeared from the show and Moloney moved into the opening credits in Season 2. The spark and romantic tension has popped up here and there - the special moment of Josh watching Donna read the note he wrote in her Christmas gift in In Excelsis Deo, his sabotaging of her date and the recognition of how good she looked in The Portland Trip, Josh going above and beyond to save her and her diary from House investigators in War Crimes - but it hasn't really been acknowledged by the characters themselves.

Reese sees right through it. Josh's first effort to encourage Jack to ask Donna out includes a list of wacky things she's done in the past, a list that horrifies Donna when she finds out.

Donna: "Cause he's gonna think I'm flaky."

Josh: "Maybe, but he's not going to care."

Donna: "Why?"

Josh: "Guys will go out with anybody."

Donna: "That hasn't been my experience. Go back!"

So Josh does go back, trying to explain to Jack why he told him those stories ... because they're stories that make Josh think fondly of her:

Josh: "Listen, it occurs to me that, uh ... you know, I mentioned Donna before and it occurs to me that I told you ... that I named some things that tickled me. I ... I don't know. I certainly wouldn't want to leave you with the impression that she was ..."

To which Jack responds, "I don't want to get between anything." 

It takes Jack Reese, a character who has only been around a few weeks, to knock Josh over the head about what he really thinks about Donna. Josh actually has to process this for a moment before denying it.

But later, as Donna excitedly gets ready to leave to have a drink with Jack, Josh gets close to the (unspoken) point.

Josh: "Those are good stories about you, though. Those stories would make me like you." 

That flies right over Donna's head in her eagerness to have a date with Jack ("You like everybody," she answers, which we have seen over the past four seasons is obviously not true). But we are inching closer and closer to, maybe, Josh and Donna actually realizing there is something more than a work relationship brewing here.

I've said before this really isn't a healthy relationship, given the balance of power between the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and his assistant, nevermind the little indignities and cruelties Josh hands out to her. But Bradley Whitford and Janel Moloney do such a good job of playing the underlying truths of these characters, we almost can't help ourselves rooting for them.

A couple of minor plotlines in this episode: the President shouting at the UN Secretary General over parking tickets (as another thing Leo is trying to keep off Bartlet's radar, the story just exists as a reinforcement of the 'tough choices' Vicky Hilton theme), CJ putting a reporter in his place in the briefing room (tough-CJ stories are always welcome, and her tactic of letting Mitch back in the front row but pledging to show the seat empty on TV - with a sign pointing it out - is classic tough CJ). The Star Trek pin story, while also a minor one, is kind of a favorite with many West Wing fans.

What happens here is one of the temporary employees (Janice Trumbull) in Josh's office, there to help with all the appointments and new hires for the second term, wears a Star Trek pin on her outfit. Josh is miffed, asking Donna to tell Janice to take it off (unless it's a Star Trek holiday or something), which sends Janice off into a complaint to her supervisor.

The whole thing ends with Josh's incredibly condescending speech at Janice, apparently outlining the differences between being a "fan" of something and being "obsessed" - which would be hard to discover just because someone is wearing a freakin' pin on their jacket. To me, it just seems to be another example of Sorkin's disregard for people who spend time on the internet (as we previously saw in The U.S. Poet Laureate), whether it be in discussions of his show or gathering together in appreciation of, well, any kind of deep communal regard for a creative work. Josh's incredibly rude assumption of Janice being a weird Star Trek groupie - without any information to the contrary except for her admonishing him about "honor and loyalty and civic duty" - just feels wrong and out-of-left-field uncharacteristic. And then having Janice smile at the end when Josh says "Well, work hard around here. We'll make one [Star Trek holiday]" is just cringeworthy.

(Crazy sidebar: here's a side-by-side comparison of the Space Force seal, the new branch of the military created in 2019, and a Starfleet seal from Star Trek, which is possibly something close to the pin Janice wore. We went from a temporary employee being chastised for wearing a pin in the West Wing to nearly the same design being an actual branch of the military):

The storyline that I think is the meat of the episode involves Toby, Sam, and Will Bailey. Sam is packing up his office to head for California for 90 days and the special election campaign for the California 47th.

Toby urges him to leave his Lakers banner, but Sam recognizes that as Toby's desperate need for Sam to come back after the election. Toby is overwhelmed with picking up Sam's writing duties, as he doesn't trust anyone else on the writing staff to do, well, anything:

Sam: "Are you going to use Michael?"

Toby: "From the staff?"

Sam: "Yeah."

Toby: "Michael's who you use when you need brief remarks to whoever wrote the check we couldn't turn down."

Sam: "What about Jerry?"

Toby: "Jerry's who you use when you can't get Michael."

Naturally, there is a pretty big speech on the horizon, as in Bartlet's second inaugural address in January. Toby insists there's no one else but him who can do it any justice, and as he also stubbornly continues to write even routine remarks from lower-level White House offices, the strain is definitely showing.

Sam has an idea. He was blown away by a speech from the governor of California that he knew was written by Will back in Game On; he tells Will that Toby liked that speech, too, and might be interested in getting some help on the inaugural address. He convinces Will to stop by DC on his way to a vacation in France, writing a quick note he tells Will to deliver to Toby.

Except that's not the story Sam tells Toby. Will arrives as Toby continues to fight his writer's block with a bit of fire:

Will thinks Toby asked him to come to help with writing the speech; Toby thinks Will is coming on his own accord to ask for a job. The realization that Sam set them both up starts to come as Toby nonchalantly puts out the fire in his wastebasket:

(Handy that he has that seltzer bottle handy, as is often seen in offices everywhere, right?)

As two high-powered writers with a command of the English language, this first little butting of heads results in this delightful skewering of each by the other:

Toby: "Call and response isn't going to work in front of a joint session. You're alliteration happy: 'guardians of gridlock,' 'protectors of privilege.' I needed an avalanche of Advil. And when you use pop culture references, your speech has a shelf-life of twelve minutes. You don't mind constructive criticism, do you?"

Will: "No, sir."

Toby: "Anyway, thanks for coming in. I told Sam I can do this by myself."

Will: "Well, maybe he thought that your speeches were obscurantist policy tracts lost in a cul-de-sac of their own internal self-righteousness and groaning from the weight of statistics. I'm just speculating. I can't say for sure."

Toby is not used to getting pushback like this on his writing. He grudgingly recognizes Will may have a point, and gives him an assignment: write a 500 word section for the speech, as an "audition" of sorts. Toby will try his hand and they'll compare later.

That comes late at night, in the Mess, as Toby continues to struggle with his writing spark. Will comes in and drops the legal pad on the table - "Four hundred ninety eight," he says, "but with my name, it's 500." In a terrifically taut scene that makes outstanding use of silence, of light and shadow, they start reading.

I just love Richard Schiff here. Well, I love most of what he does with Toby (in my initial original broadcast viewing of the show, I thought Toby was unnecessarily gruff and mean and unfeeling - but watching the series over, Toby has become one of my favorite characters). As they start reading each other's work, Toby quickly realizes what has dropped into his lap with Will.

Toby: "Stop reading mine."

Will (impressed with what he's seeing): "Actually, it's --"

Toby (quickly): "Stop reading, please." 

Will's effort is such a great piece of writing that Toby, while he's still reading it, offers Will the (unpaid) opportunity to work on the inaugural address.

Toby goes on with one of the great monologues of the show, a howl of frustration at his slump, a devastating note of regret at feeling he can't measure up to the history of Presidential speechwriters, a recognition of a common member of the brotherhood of writers. I hate to put the whole thing down here, but it's just masterfully delivered by Schiff:

Toby: "This is incredibly good, Will. 'Never shrinking from the world's ...' 'a fierce belief in what we can achieve together.'

"I used to write like this. It was ten months ago. I don't understand what's going on. I really don't. I've had slumps before, everybody does, but this is different. I'm sorry, we don't know each other, but there aren't that many people I can talk to about it.

"I don't understand what's happening. There's no blood going to it. I've never had to locate it before. I don't even know where to look. I'm the President's voice and I don't want it to sound like this. And there's an incredible history to second inaugurals. 'Fear itself,' Lincoln ... I really thought I was on my way to being one of those guys. I thought I was close. Now I'm just writing for my life and you can't serve the President that way. But if I didn't write - I can't serve him at all."

Will tries to console and encourage Toby, telling him what he really needs is a few days in Atlantic City, but also - "You are one of those guys." He's touched by Toby's praise, by his acknowledgment of Will as a member of a very small group of talented specialists, but he's still committed to taking some time off after the grueling Horton Wilde campaign:

Will: "Okay. I'm glad you liked what I wrote. I'm pretty tired. I've been tired for a pretty long time and you've been tired even longer. I'm getting on a plane tonight and going to a place in Nice and I'm going to stay there for a few weeks. When I get back, it'd be a privilege to give you all the help you ask for."

Toby is outwardly appreciative, but he knows he needs the help now, not in a few weeks. Will's insistence on taking a break seems to show Toby he's not really all-in on this opportunity. Until Will remembers Sam's note:

Will: "Oh, man, I forgot. Sam wanted me to give you this."

(Hands Toby an envelope)

Toby: "You didn't give it to me yesterday?"

Will: "Yeah, you know what? Not your FedEx guy. Happy Thanksgiving." 

Will walks away. Toby opens the envelope.

 

Then, in the absolutely pitch-perfect ending to this episode, Will returns in the background shadows.

Will: "Unless you want to start now." 

 

Tales Of Interest! 

- We got a couple of special themed Thanksgiving episodes the past two seasons, with Shibboleth and The Indians In The Lobby. This turns out to be the Season 4 Thanksgiving episode, but we only know that because characters wish each other a happy Thanksgiving as the episode draws to a close.

- Sorkin and Sperling cram in a hefty amount of references to previous episodes in this script. You can see the ones I found in the Story Threads section below ... there were a bunch.

- Toby has been wearing a wedding ring from the beginning of the series, even after we discovered (in Mandatory Minimums) that he was divorced. Here is the first time I've noticed he's no longer wearing the ring, which is interesting when we think about the fact that he's trying to get Andy to re-marry him as they await the birth of their twins.

- I'll talk about this more in the They Do Exist! section, but Toby is wrong about "fear itself" coming from a second inaugural address. That's actually from FDR's first inaugural speech.

- It seems like kind of a crappy deal for Will; Toby says they'll set him up in a hotel room, but there will be no pay for working on the inaugural speech, and if he wants Elsie onboard Will has to pay her out of his own pocket. It's not like Will is really concerned with money, though, considering his plan to stay at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in Nice for a couple of weeks.

Quotes    

President: "What can she get?"

Leo: "She could go to jail for two years."

President: "For failure to follow an order?"

Leo: "Sure."

President: "We should have that here." 

-----

Mitch: "You can't just do this. It's a slap in the face."

CJ: "Well, I certainly didn't mean it as one."

Mitch: "It is."

CJ: "Mitch, I put you in the very first row I don't care about. Of the things I don't care about, I put you right up front. I'll see you later." 

-----

Donna: "We're running about 15 minutes behind."

Amy: "At 10:00? That's, like, half an hour ahead."

Donna: "I know, we're very proud." 

-----

Janice (to Josh): "Okay, well, you got the cards but Star Trek and the entire Starfleet series is about honor and loyalty and civic duty and the fact that you don't think that those are characteristics that should be displayed inside the White House is sad. But I wouldn't expect you to understand those types of things."

-----

Josh: "Admiral, you know I have all the respect in the world for you, right?"

Fitzwallis: "Yes."

Josh: "And if I didn't, I'd respect the uniform and the rank and the position anyway."

Fitzwallis: "What is it, son?"

Josh: "I feel like I have to go to Leo."

Fitzwallis: "Good. That's the way it's supposed to work."

-----

Reese: "I have an aide who, in my life, I haven't talked as much about as you've talked about Donna in our entire relationship, yours and mine, which is a cumulative total of seven minutes old."

Josh: "Nah, nah, no."

Reese: "You sure?"

Josh: "Sure. Tell me your aide's name. I'll ask her out. We'll double."

Reese: "Chief Petty Officer Harold Wendell."

Josh: "I got the fuzzy end of that lollipop."

Reese: "I don't know, Wendell's not 'cute' cute, but he's so funny." 

-----

(The President is told the UN Secretary General is on the line about diplomats' parking tickets) 

President (jabs telephone button and starts yelling): "There are big signs! You can't park there! I hope they get towed to Queens and the Triborough is closed and there's a big craft show at Shea, a flea market or a tractor show!" 

(He jabs the telephone button again)

Charlie: "Well, that was probably his secretary." 

-----

President (to Leo): "Are we together on this? Do we have resolve? We've got four years, no election, and a Republican Congress that hates me and actually hates you more. You ready to saddle up?"

 

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

• Mitch, the reporter who clashes with CJ over seating assignments, is played by Vyto Ruginis. He's been seen in many, many TV shows including NCIS: Los Angeles and ER (also, ironically considering this episode's subplot, Star Trek: The Next Generation) as well as the movies Moneyball and Broken Arrow (which also stars this episode's Christian Slater).

 

• Janice Trumbull, the Star Trek fan temporarily assigned to Josh's office, is played by Audrey Wasilewski, who has a long list of credits in TV shows and movies, as well as many many voice work credits in animated productions. She may be best known for her appearances in Big Love, Mad Men, and as the rocket-propelled-grenade-toting "businesswoman" in Red.

 

 

• There are a TON of references to past episodes here. Behold:

• At the opening Cabinet meeting, President Bartlet boasts that he's had the most stable cabinet since Hoover's. If you think back to Enemies, though, and the first Cabinet meeting we saw, none of the people in the room are the same as we saw that episode. I made this same point about the Secretary of Agriculture shown in Enemies (the one Bartlet joshes about never having eaten a vegetable) not being the same person as Secretary of Agriculture Roger Tribby, whom we saw as the "designated survivor" in He Shall, From Time To Time ... We've also seen CCH Pounder as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Deborah O'Leary in Celestial Navigation, but she's not in this scene, either.

• A press question to CJ references an increase in Shehab missile tests, a plot point from Swiss Diplomacy.

• Sam and Toby both mention Will's speech he wrote for Governor Tillman to deliver at the Stanford Club, which was first referenced in Game On. 

• Toby's frustration with losing his writing touch was previously seen in Enemies, where he ended up helping Sam with the "birthday message" for the Assistant Secretary of Transportation in order to get his groove back.

• Nancy, played by Renee Estevez, Martin Sheen's daughter, pops up again in the door of the Oval Office.

• Donna gets a bunch of callbacks: there's a mention of Donna trading votes with Jack Reese, from Election Night; a story about her accidentally leaving her underpants at an art gallery as part of the Karen Cahill caper (The Leadership Breakfast); and Josh reminds her that she got her job by pretending she already had the job, as we saw in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II.

• The name "Berryhill" is mentioned as someone Bartlet really wants in the Cabinet. That name was first heard in A Proportional Response as somebody working something out with Syria. The name came up several more times throughout Seasons 2 and 3, often in connection with Secretary Hutchinson (who must be Secretary of Defense, as there's a particular Bartlet statement in Swiss Diplomacy that says Hutchinson and Fitzwallis are building an urban warfare military). Finally, though, in Debate Camp Berryhill was referred to as a "Secretary" in the discussion of the Qumari ship carrying weapons for the Ba'hi terrorists. If he's already a Secretary involved in that level of action, wouldn't Berryhill already be in the Cabinet?

• Danny Concannon gets a shoutout, although we haven't seen him onscreen since The Portland Trip.

• As the President and Leo talk about the Hilton affair they get sidetracked into a story about Bartlet getting rid of an ambassador to somewhere in South America because he had an affair with the daughter of the President of Brazil, with the President saying he set the guy up with a job. This is very close to, but not exactly the same as, what we saw in Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics. Bartlet asked for the resignation of the ambassador to Bulgaria because he was having an affair with the daughter of the Prime Minister, with the President finding him a private-sector job for a landing spot.

• President Bartlet says he likes basketball but he can't play. We actually have seen him playing basketball, in The Crackpots And These Women, as he and his staff played a game on Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House. It's possible he's telling the truth about not being very good, as he did bring in a ringer who used to play for Duke to be on his team.

• Bartlet's appeal to Leo, to not let things be kept away from the Presidency because they're "too sticky" and to "saddle up" against the Republican Congress, sounds a lot like the reinvigoration of the administration we saw happening in Let Bartlet Be Bartlet (even down to Leo's "I serve at the President's pleasure" quote, which reminds us of the staff repeating "I serve at the pleasure of the President" in that episode). A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then (the MS coverup, congressional hearings, censure, an election), so perhaps it makes some sense to do it all over again.

• Will and Elsie Snuffin went from being co-workers and co-speechwriters in Game On to siblings in Election Night (when Elsie called him "big brother") to now step-siblings (Will tells Toby he has a stepsister who works with him on speechwriting).

 DC location shots    

• None.

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

• President Bartlet recalls Hoover's Cabinet.

• Toby asks Sam to leave his Los Angeles Lakers banner in his office (Sam used to have a Lakers jersey hanging in his office back in Season 1, just to prove he's always been a Southern California guy).

• The kerfluffle with Janice Trumbull and her Star Trek pin brings the TV show Star Trek and all its various series into the universe, including Romulans and Cardassians.

• Josh gives Donna a hard time about her asking him to help set her up with Jack Reese, and includes a reference to Potsie and Ralph, characters from the TV show Happy Days.

• Sam recommends the Hotel Beau Rivage in Nice to Will; Will responds that he's staying at the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild (which is actually more of an art museum than a place to stay).

• Josh uses Jackie Robinson as an example of a groundbreaker in his discussion with Fitzwallis.

• Toby has a City College of New York mug on his desk. As my wife and I are watching some Season 1 episodes right now, I noticed that mug pop up in Take Out The Trash Day when Toby is defending public broadcasting in the Roosevelt Room. We also saw him wearing a CCNY sweatshirt during the Pennsylvania Avenue basketball game in The Crackpots And These Women.

• Will tells Toby he was president of the Cambridge Union on a Marshall scholarship. His speech to the Stanford Club is also referenced.

• Josh tells Reese a story about Donna writing a letter to tennis star Ilie Nastase.

• Bartlet refers to Eisenhower and Kay Summersby as an example of affairs in the military not ending careers.

• CJ tells Mitch that Danny Concannon won a Pulitzer Prize.

• Bartlet's rant at the UN Secretary General includes mentions of "the Triborough" (meaning the Triborough Bridge) and "a big craft show at Shea" (meaning Shea Stadium).

• Toby (or, actually, Sorkin) is incorrect with the reference to important second inaugural addresses. He quotes "fear itself" as a famous second inaugural example: Franklin Roosevelt actually delivered the line "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" in his first inaugural address; his second was famous for the line "I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished." Toby's reference to Lincoln's second inaugural is fine, though, as it's famous for "divine providence" and "bind[ing] up the nation's wounds."

• We get mentions of the cable movie network Showtime, the pain reliever Advil, and the shipping company FedEx.

 End credits freeze frame: Toby alone in the Mess, considering the loss of his writing ability.

Previous episode: Swiss Diplomacy

Next episode: Holy Night