The Hubbert Peak - TWW S6E5

 

Original airdate: November 17, 2004

Written by: Peter Noah (4) 

Directed by: Julie Hébert (3)

Synopsis

• The failure of a bill increasing fuel efficiency standards, coupled with Josh's SUV colliding with a Prius, brings about increased talk of alternative energy sources at the White House. Charlie half-heartedly looks for a job to fulfill his promise to move on from tending to the President, Annabeth helps Toby get better at briefing the press, and playing chess becomes a medical necessity.
  

"Then maybe we can stop thinking of it as something to fool people and think of it as a way to maybe get something done." 

This episode boils down pretty simply - just make the least possible effort you can and hope your favorable intentions will carry you along when the results can't.

 

From the administration making a half-hearted effort to look like they're supporting higher fuel efficiency requirements even though they know Congress will never impose them, to Charlie "looking for a job" by handing out his resumes only to his friends in the West Wing, to Annabeth convincing Toby to stand up straight behind the briefing room podium, that's the lesson we're apparently given. Just half-ass it, it's okay, people will give you credit for trying, even a little bit.

 

It also doesn't help that the main storyline of the episode is pretty wonky, even though developing renewable energy resources is more important now in 2023 than it was even in 2004. Kate's talk of the Hubbert Peak and a nightmarish world where the increased demand for fossil fuels coupled with a disappearing supply of that finite resource leads to war and misery ... not a feel-good storyline of sunshine and rainbows! Josh's online-publicized mishap of driving a giant fuel-hog SUV into a hybrid Prius right on the dealer's lot puts the White House into a tough spot, particularly as a bill that would force automakers to make their vehicles more fuel-efficient goes down in Congress with the administration only putting up token support.

So CJ orders Josh to put together an alternative energy task force, with a statement to be ready by the end of the day, to show the country that the administration is really, truly, honestly cross-our-hearts-and-hope-to-die behind renewable energy and conservation. Huh. All that leads to, though, is representatives from the solar, wind, ethanol, and hydrogen energy fields talking up the benefits of their own particular industries while poking holes in all of the others.

One funny little bit, though, comes as the meeting begins and Josh says he's going to have trouble remembering who is arguing for what:

Josh: "I'll try to keep everybody straight. Should've made little symbols - a picture of the sun, ear of corn, cloud blowing out its cheeks, and for hydrogen ..."

Anders: "The Hindenburg?"

And what's funny is when we check in on the meeting later in the day, there are indeed little signs exactly like what Josh had described:

(No Hindenburg, though, I don't think the hydrogen guy gets a sign.)

Nothing comes of this meeting. Josh is resigned to the fact that every alternative energy source has big problems of its own, there's no magic bullet. The President, though, decides he's going to veto the transportation bill - even though it will easily be overridden - just to make a point about higher fuel efficiency standards. Which means ... nothing really comes of this storyline. They make a point, they lose the battle, and there's no real progress in the war. Least possible effort.

Charlie has finished his studies at Georgetown and will get his degree, which means according to his agreement with President Bartlet he's now going to have to go out and get a job on his own. Charlie has been serving as the President's "body man" since he was asked to come aboard in A Proportional Response - basically the go-to assistant and handler for Bartlet in matters big and small. The President knows Charlie is cut out for bigger things than just being a glorified servant, so he's pushing him and his new degree out the door to make a career for himself.

Charlie's resumes, from the President himself

Charlie is reluctant. He likes his job, the President is a father figure to him, and with Leo out of the picture he doesn't think it's the right time for him to move on. So his big effort to get a new job is to ... hand out his resumes to Josh, Toby, and CJ, while asking them to not really consider hiring him at all. Toby has no problem with that request:

Which leads to quite the side-eye from Charlie:

I really do not think President Bartlet's idea of Charlie going out into the world and doing great things meant he should look for a new job right there in the same White House he's been working in for five years (or is it six now? It's not seven as we're told multiple times in this calendar-shifting episode, not for Charlie, because he didn't come on to the staff until almost a year into the administration). But there's no sign Charlie has any interest in actually looking for work outside.

That ends up paying off for him when CJ offers him a position as Deputy Chief Assistant to the Chief of Staff. It's actually a good idea for CJ - she's overwhelmed with the amount of work on her plate every day after taking over for Leo, she could use a capable, sharp assistant like Charlie - but it's still not really fulfilling the President's wishes. Once again - least effort possible, hoping "good intentions" carry you the rest of the way. Charlie seems inordinately proud of this new job, steps away from the desk he was working at, and the move spurs him to ask Zoey out to dinner, hoping to rekindle the spark they had back in Seasons 1 and 2.

Toby is still carrying on with the press briefings after CJ left the press secretary post. Much like in Liftoff, things aren't going very well, as the press has pretty much abandoned even listening to Toby's bland, information-free briefings:

CJ - who was totally onboard with the Annabeth/Toby plan from Liftoff to slow down the press secretary search - now wants to kick that into high gear.

CJ: "Where are we on finding a new press secretary?"

Toby: "Getting up to speed."

CJ: "Time for a turbo boost. No one, and I don't mean this unkindly, no one is anxious to have you keep briefing."

Toby: "Just curious, but how would you have put it if you meant it unkindly?"

Annabeth, though, insists Toby can be serviceable if he just ... I don't know, stands up straighter and delivers some funnier lines. Weirdly, that seems to work. Least possible effort, you know.

The element that doesn't really fall into the least-possible-effort theme comes from Leo. 

 

 

He's home in his apartment recovering from heart surgery, a nurse by his side, but sending word that the President needs to be reminded to play a weekly game of chess. CJ gets the brush-off when she mentions it, and doesn't think it's all that important, but at a lunch with Leo he illustrates why it's vital for Jed to keep those weekly matches:

Leo: "MS is a disease of the central nervous system. It can affect cognition, perception, reasoning, judgment - what the doctors actually term 'executive function.' As President of the United States this needs to be monitored on a weekly basis. You need to get the President to play chess."

CJ, who isn't much of a chess player, brings in a government employee who was on the Stanford chess team and clears an hour of the President's schedule to get him a match. Bartlet, naturally, turns the tables on CJ and makes her sit down to play, with some help from the Stanford guy. This chess-playing, and its connection to President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis, is the opening salvo of that MS playing a more important role as the final seasons of the series play out. (We haven't heard much, if at all, about the effects of the disease on Bartlet since Election Day of 2002, and here we are in 2005, apparently.)

There's also Kate's efforts to reach out to Donna and give her some support (a minor yet nicely played PTSD storyline by Mary McCormack and Janel Moloney) and Gail Addison's attempts to redecorate CJ's office and Vice President Russell needing briefings from Kate to keep his countries straight and his acting kinda creepy toward CJ ... but no matter to all that.

Lip service to alternative energy and higher fuel standards; a token effort to comply with a promise to the President to find a new job; standing up a little straighter to talk to the press. That's the kind of bold, energetic, outside-the-box action we're used to seeing out of the Bartlet administration ... wait, no, it's exactly the opposite. This is a weak, overly talky episode showing a lot of weak motivations and weak decisions by our heroes, with weak outcomes they just seem to be resigned to. I like the show better when these folks are trying to make big things happen with big, unexpected tactics. Is that too much to ask?

 

Tales Of Interest!

- I hadn't mentioned this yet, but Stockard Channing has joined the regular opening credit cast list, instead of just showing up for episodes she appears in. That brings the number of actors pictured in the sequence to 11 (12 when "with Jimmy Smits" appears, which for now is only the episodes he's actually in). That compares to just eight in the first season opening credits sequence. Remember, the opening credits music doesn't change, so they're adding more people in the same amount of time - and they're not done adding yet.

- The West Wing timeline has now officially become unhinged from the actual calendar. For the past five-plus seasons, events depicted in the series have tracked with when the episodes actually aired: Christmas shows were seen in December, a couple of good Thanksgiving episodes ran in November, we had unusual tropical storms and graduations and baseball games and Memorial Day in springtime episodes. We also know the years tracked along with the actual year of airing, from talk of the upcoming millennium in 1999's In Excelsis Deo to Toby's question about a possible change to the  2002 presidential ticket in 2001's 17 People.

Well, that's now changed. I mentioned in my recap of the last episode that even though there were references to "five years" (CJ saying Toby should have told the press about her involvement in foreign policy decisions for that long) and "six years" (Toby said he'd been doing his job that long when he handed in his prank resignation, and CJ told the press she'd been talking to them for that long), we also had the weird revelation that somehow we'd skipped the midterm elections that would have been held in November of 2004, and now we're just a year away from the 2006 presidential election. That five and six year stuff is no longer the case ... we are seven years into the Bartlet administration, and we know that because it gets pounded over our heads time and time again:

Will: "This administration's had seven years to make better fuel efficiency a priority --"

Toby: "Seven years --"

Will: "Don't take your guilt out on me."

Toby: "Seven years of a hostile Congress."

And:

Annabeth: "What CJ did for seven years wasn't combat, it was charm and disarm."

And:

Josh: "Thank you all for coming. Particularly on such short notice."

Anders: "I've been wanting to have this meeting for seven years."

And:

Leo: "So, how's it going?"

CJ: "It's overwhelming. The amount there is to tend to. I ... I thought I was busy before. How in the world did you manage it for seven years?"

So yeah ... we have now officially skipped an entire year. Even though Donna is still on crutches for her injuries that happened in May 2004, and Leo is still recovering from his surgery that happened in June 2004, we're now past the midterm elections and somewhere in 2005. Just go with it, I guess.

- Car dealerships don't have actual, regular license plates on the vehicles on their lot. They use temporary dealer plates for test drives, and the usual state-issued plates aren't put on until after a vehicle is purchased and registration is complete. So the DC plates on the SUV Josh is taking for a drive shouldn't be there.

 

 

- Speaking of that SUV, it's said a couple of times that Josh "totaled" the Prius when he ran into it. When you see the actual collision, the damage doesn't appear that severe - in fact, the only body part we see break loose and go flying is the SUV's license plate frame.

 

- Josh’s talk about gas prices was in the ballpark of being correct. In 2004, when this episode was shot, average gasoline prices in the U.S. were $1.92 per gallon, on their way to an average $2.34 in 2005. The price of gas in 1981 ($1.35) adjusted for inflation to 2004 was still only about $2 per gallon. As he says, though, 1981 does appear to be the adjusted peak of gasoline prices prior to 2010 or so (1981 gas prices in 2022 dollars would be $4.46 a gallon). The new peak, according to what I found online, appears to be 2012’s $4.69 (in 2022 dollars). That year, remember, was when gas prices skyrocketed mainly due to speculation and market manipulation leading up to the 2012 election. 

- There's a pretty good look at Gail's fishbowl on CJ's desk, but I can't tell what kind of decoration is in there.

- Why'd They Come Up With The Hubbert Peak?

Kate explains the Hubbert Peak theory to Josh, which basically says the supply of a finite resource like crude oil will eventually run out, and that available supply will look like a bell curve - there will be some point at which the remaining amount of oil available to extract will begin to fall, and it will continue falling as the resource is exhausted. The theory was named after geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who developed a method for modeling such a curve and predicted the beginning of the drop in global oil production would come around the year 2010 or so. As it turns out, development of new technologies to extract oil in unconventional ways (such as fracking and use of tar sands) has made Hubbert's predictions inaccurate.

Quotes    

Josh (on the phone): "You should see this thing I'm driving. It's a monster."

Donna: "What?"

Josh: "My testosterone is flying."

Donna: "Try not to get any on anyone."

-----

Kate: "What kind of SUV?"

Josh: "A humongous one."

Kate: "Excursion, Expedition, Escalade, what?"

Josh: "One of those ... I just wanted to drive it. Like a Hummer. Wouldn't you want to experience that once?"

Kate: "Yeah, I've had the pleasure. It's less of a giggle when you're taking automatic weapons fire."

----- 

Toby: "Not counting today, today was, uh -- I don't know what today was, but the briefings?"

Josh: "Yeah, they're getting better."

Toby: "Good. On a scale from one to ten, ten being CJ and one being a chimp throwing feces, where do I rank?"

Josh: "You're getting better."

-----

Annabeth: "Smart and funny, seduce them. It worked on your wife."

Toby: "We're divorced."

Annabeth: "Living with you is a whole 'nother ball game. I get that already."

-----

Toby: "How do you get women?"

Josh: "Huh?"

Toby: "Smart and funny? Right?"

Josh: "Plus I got that, you know, boyish thing."

Toby: "I don't have that."

 

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

• The Bartlet daughter Zoey (Elisabeth Moss) is back, and we discover she's the one who told President Bartlet about Charlie finishing up his studies at Georgetown. Zoey, of course, was first seen in The Crackpots And These Women and began dating Charlie soon after, which led to Charlie being the target of white supremacist assassins in What Kind Of Day Has It Been. They broke up sometime after the 2000 midterms, Charlie was trying to win her back around the 2003 inauguration, she was dating French layabout Jean-Paul and graduated from Georgetown in the spring of 2003 (either one or two years prior to this episode, it's getting hard to tell), after which she was kidnapped, rescued, recovered, and was last seen at the Bartlet family Christmas gathering in Abu el Banat. That Christmas it did appear she and Charlie were still on somewhat warm terms, and Charlie is trying to rekindle their relationship now.

• Wallace Langham (The Larry Sanders Show, Veronica's Closet, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) pops up as solar energy proponent Terry Anders.

• Rachael Harris is another one of those character actresses who works steadily and has been seen in shows like Modern Family, Suits, and Lucifer and movies such as The Hangover and Best In Show. Here she's Corinne McKenna, the wind energy expert in Josh's meeting.

• This unnamed reporter was seen in the background as part of a group of reporters in Access. I know from an earlier rewatch that she plays a small but integral role in a Season 7 episode. So I guess she's kinda part of the White House press corps now.

• Gail Addison from the Office of Administration appears, trying to convince CJ to redecorate. Played by Bonita Friedericy (Chuck, Preacher, Christmas With The Kranks), we'll see Gail again in about a year.

• Josh tells CJ "I don't wear jammies" - yet we saw him wearing the too-big pajamas CJ gave to him in The Midterms and again when Amy shows up at his apartment early one morning in The Two Bartlets. So he used to wear jammies, even if he doesn't any more.
  

• The longtime press corps reporters seen in this episode include Steve, Mark, and Katie.

• Will and Josh, and later Josh and Toby, talk about a "Governor Baker" who they think is the frontrunner for the Democratic Presidential nomination, even though he hasn't announced his candidacy yet. Governor Baker will be a presence through the upcoming campaign.

• Josh's heedless urge to respond to anonymous online blog comments about him remind us of The U.S. Poet Laureate and his reaction to the LemonLyman website, which led him into a rabbit hole of escalating attacks and responses. He was severely chewed out by CJ for that - surprising she doesn't go after him again here.

• Donna is still in a wheelchair, or in crutches when she ditches the electric wheelchair for energy conservation reasons. She tells Kate she'll be out of her cast "soon." Given that broken bones generally heal in around six weeks, and Donna was injured in the blast in Gaza just before Memorial Day, this still would be summer - even if we give her extra time to heal due to the severity of her injuries and her consequent surgery, we couldn't really be much into August at the latest. But again, as we've discussed earlier ... time is getting pretty flexible here, what with skipping the midterms and the constant references to seven years passing and everything being done to rush us into the upcoming presidential campaign. So maybe Donna's bones take a year to heal, who knows.

• Annabeth is seen settling into what was originally Sam's office, then Will's before he left to go work for the Vice President (but is he really gone if he's still hanging around the West Wing all the time?). The office has been empty since Toby moved Will's stuff out in Abu el Banat, which means - since we are apparently in 2005 sometime now - it's been vacant for over a year.

• Toby's ex-wife Andy Wyatt gets a quick mention, as Toby is gobsmacked that Annabeth had asked her what had originally drawn her to him ("smart and funny").

• When CJ visits Leo, he mentions he's on the painkiller Vicodin after his recovery from heart surgery. It was a different V-drug, Valium, that he had abused (along with alcohol) back in the mid-1990s, a huge storyline in Season 1.
  

• President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis pops up as Leo tells CJ she has to insist the President play chess every week, as a way to monitor the disease's effect on his executive function. We first learned of the President's diagnosis in He Shall, From Time To Time ...; the public revelation of that disease and the coverup during the 1998 campaign played out over the last episodes of Season 2; and we noticed Bartlet suffering some symptoms in Election Night. There's been little talk of the disease since then, but this chess-playing story is laying the groundwork for more progression of that MS on the way.
  

• President Bartlet has been seen as an active, enthusiastic chess player before, in episodes like Hartfield's Landing. So it seems a bit odd that he'd try to pass on the opportunity to play when CJ first brings it up.
  

DC location shots    

• None. I figure the car dealership scene at the opening was filmed in southern California somewhere, although when I search automobile dealers with "Kira" in the name (as that's what I can see on the signage) I only find what looks like a somewhat disreputable used car dealer in Los Angeles.
  

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

• The Toyota Prius gets talked up a lot, with a starring role in that opening sequence. The Prius (a gasoline/electric hybrid vehicle) has been available in the United States since 2001, and the 2004 model (shown here) was the new second-generation redesign.

• SUV models that get mentioned include the (Ford) Excursion, (Ford) Expedition, (Cadillac) Escalade, (Toyota) Land Cruiser, and Hummer, which was still manufactured by the builders of the military HUMVEE, AM General, in 2004 while the brand name was owned by GM. The show removed the badging from the grill of the vehicle Josh drove, so you can't obviously see the car brand ... but in the shot of Josh colliding with the Prius, you can freeze the screen and see the "Excursion" badging on the fender.

Just ignore the arrow pointing to the license plate, note that there's no grill badging

• Toby satirically wonders if it's the birthday of Baltimore journalist and scholar H. L. Mencken  when he wonders why most of the reporters have abandoned the briefing room.
  

• CJ is seen carrying a Starbucks cup when she's ambushed by those reporters in her office.

• Birkenstock shoes gets mentioned (as shorthand for liberal eco-loving hippies, I guess) in connection with Josh's meeting with alternative energy proponents.

• Josh makes a comment about "rats of an unusual size," which is almost identical to "rodents of unusual size" seen in the 1987 movie The Princess Bride.
  

• A mention is made of not having time to learn to program a TiVo at Charlie's graduation celebration.
  

• We see a CNN logo and former CNN reporter Aaron Brown on the TV in Josh's office.

• Later in CJ's office, in the background we see Bill Hemmer, who at the time was a CNN anchor. Hemmer now works for Fox News.

• Annabeth brings up the looks of the actors Jude Law and Denzel Washington in comparison to Toby's methods of getting women ("smart and funny").
  

• The German zeppelin Hindenburg and its unfortunate explosive demise in 1937 are criticisms of the hydrogen alternative energy possibility at Josh's policy meeting. 
  

• A can of Diet Pepsi is seen on the table of the alternative energy meeting.

• The Italian restaurant Terrazzo in Chevy Chase, Maryland, was listed in Washingtonian magazine's 2004 list of the 100 best restaurants in the DC area. So at the time of this episode, it was a real restaurant that no doubt featured gnocchi that was "very gnice."

• Dolley Madison and her desk get mentioned by the designer hoping to de-militarize CJ's office.
  

• The ringer CJ brings in to play chess with the President was a member of the Stanford chess team in college.
  

End credits freeze frame: President Bartlet, CJ, and the guy from the Stanford chess team settling down to their match.

Previous episode: Liftoff

Next episode: The Dover Test

Liftoff - TWW S6E4

 

Original airdate: November 10, 2004

Written by: Debora Cahn (8)

Directed by: Alex Graves (23)

Synopsis

• CJ is overwhelmed by her first day as Chief of Staff, facing prank resignations, offers of uranium from a former Soviet republic, and conflicts with a smug Secretary of Defense. The search for a new press secretary gets complicated. And we meet a youthful, interesting congressman from Texas with big ideas who just wants to quit politics and go home.
  

 

"She still nervous?"

"I don't think so, no."

So we can just call this "CJ and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day."

 

Her first day as Chief of Staff is off to a rough start. From the 5:30 am (well, 5:26) invasion of her apartment by Army sergeants, Secret Service agents, and a mass of people hauling off her computers and setting up sleeping quarters; to the skeptical reaction of Margaret as CJ tries to ease her way into Leo's office; to a dangerous viral outbreak in South America; to a disastrous press briefing by Toby that gives credence to the disrespect shown for CJ's seeming lack of foreign policy experience; to the prank resignations of Toby, Josh, and even the President; to the overwhelming, nonstop flood of documents and briefing materials she finds she has to get up to speed on instantly:

"We'll set aside some extra time."

CJ finds herself underwater by 8:45 in the morning.

And things get worse from there. A representative of the Republic of Georgia shows up to give the United States an offer to take over some enriched uranium they have lying around ("It's just sitting there behind what he describes as a padlock"). Given that the emissary has also been meeting with the Iranians, the administration jolts into high gear trying to put together a plan to accept the gift and get the uranium stored safely.

This causes pushback from the smug, gruff Secretary of Defense, Miles Hutchinson. Hutchinson tries to do an end-run around CJ's office, finding ways to sneak into private meetings with President Bartlet and steer the uranium conversation away from bringing it back to the United States and cleaning up the site to instead securing it in Georgia, which is a far less safe (although cheaper) plan. When CJ has to deal with both a potential leak about preparations to store the material in Tennessee from the Secretary of Energy, which could ruin the entire operation, and a meeting of the top administration security advisers in the Situation Room, she's running behind and being led from crisis to crisis by Margaret - who has to take control to get her into the Sit Room in the first place.

And then CJ finds herself embarrassingly steamrolled by Hutchinson in that meeting. She's unprepared, she's reacting instead of leading, and she's being taken advantage of. And she doesn't much like it.

This horror show of a first day leads her to a late-night visit to Leo's hospital room, where she tearfully admits she doesn't think she's right for the role and it just isn't going to work out.

Day two goes a little better, and that's mostly thanks to Margaret. CJ asks her how Leo deals with "a son of a bitch" like Hutchinson or the Secretary of Energy, and Margaret gives her the advice to start dealing with the subcabinet policy wonks first. CJ gets her own policy wonks on the job - Toby, Josh, Will (she could really use Ed and Larry here, couldn't she?) - and slowly starts taking control of the situation. When Toby offhandedly mentions the Department of Defense is worried about their finances, having not budgeted correctly for the peacekeeping force in the Middle East, the light bulb goes on for CJ ... Hutchinson isn't being a jerk only for jerk's sake, he's afraid the DOD doesn't have the funds to handle the uranium extraction and the peacekeepers. Once CJ works out that they'll get the money from elsewhere and the Defense Department won't get stuck with the bill, the rest of the project comes together smoothly.

There are a couple of signs that show us CJ is settling into the Chief of Staff position. She finally realizes she has her own door to the Oval Office, and she doesn't have to ask Debbie or Charlie for time to see the President. The look on Charlie's face when he finally tires of telling CJ about the door and decides to escort her to it himself is priceless.

Another sign is CJ's speech to Margaret asking her to stay on. Margaret told her earlier she'd be leaving to stay with Leo, and CJ would need to find another assistant - but Margaret's invaluable help over the first two days have shown CJ her critical importance.

CJ (to Margaret): "You're an odd woman, and I've never quite understood you, but you're extremely capable and you run this office like a Swiss watch and you're tall, which is reassuring ... Leo may need you, and if he does, that's okay, but if he's willing to part with you I hope you'll stay."

And, perhaps most importantly, when CJ moves Gail's fishbowl from the coffee table to the desk, the desk that was Leo's and is now hers - that really shows she's making this office her own.

Meanwhile, Toby has been tasked with finding a new press secretary to replace CJ. That topic showed its urgency right from the start, with Toby's unhinged press briefing leading to shocked reactions around the West Wing, particularly this gem:

Toby (at the press briefing, as Margaret and CJ watch from Margaret's office): "CJ Cregg's not the only one working without a net."

Margaret: "Oh ..."

CJ: "Oh, no, no, no ..."

Reporter Mark: "You just said nobody has experience with this kind of military incursion."

Toby: "The Pentagon has experience, as do the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the NSC, but in the event they all lose their way the President can always send CJ Cregg to Ramallah to swat at suicide bombers with her purse."

That remark causes Josh to spring into action as he races for the briefing room. It's pretty funny to see him dash by in the background as Debbie, Charlie, and the President stare at the TV screen:

And then he slides right past the hallway outside the briefing room exit.

(Josh, or rather Bradley Whitford, has made it kind of his thing to slide along slick floors and then sometimes fall, as we saw in The Stackhouse Filibuster.)

CJ is firm - the White House needs a new press secretary, and they need it now. She orders Toby to bring her a list of three to five potential candidates.

Toby and Donna find themselves auditioning spokespeople from the State Department, Interior, all kinds of government departments - and they're nearly all horrible (Toby's reviews are hilarious - "He's smart, he's articulate, and you can hear him, which is more of an issue than one might have thought" and "He mispronounced 'New York'"). When he does find a likely candidate, he thinks the job is done - but CJ insists on a list of applicants, so back to the auditions they go.

Enter Annabeth Schott. She's actually not interested in the press secretary job - she had applied for a media relations post to be a liaison between the White House and TV morning shows - but she's intrigued by what's going on and how she can be part of the process of moving on from CJ.

Annabeth: "You don't want a new press secretary. Not yet. Anyone who tries to stand in CJ Cregg's shoes will be eaten alive."

Toby: "And who exactly, do you think, is going to brief the press?"

Annabeth: "You. You need someone from inside the administration to get you through this transition period."

(Toby scoffs)

Annabeth: "Don't make a face. You were good."

Donna: "I saw it. He really wasn't."

Annabeth: "You just need a little grooming. I can take care of that. And I'll help you find a new press secretary. A real search, not some 24-hour emergency rescue mission."

When Toby brings this idea to CJ, she's actually surprised to find herself in agreement ("This is remarkably well thought-out") and so they'll go ahead with Toby briefing the big stuff, deputies handling the press most of the time, and Annabeth helping with the search for the next CJ.

And finally, the little bit of the episode that's going to resonate throughout the remainder of the series - we meet Congressman Matt Santos. Our lead-in to that involves a bit of a time skip: Josh and Toby are talking about all kinds of job offers as the administration winds its way down, which should be almost two years away but instead we're told the midterms have already happened and the Presidential election is "next year." As the Democrats start to discuss plans for the upcoming elections, congressional retirements, tough races, perhaps having Josh run for Congress from Connecticut, Josh finds one upcoming retirement particularly puzzling - why would Matt Santos decide not to run, after being a young, energetic, promising Representative who's moved up onto Ways and Means and has big ideas about health care?

A conversation in Toby's office gives us a lot of bread crumbs for upcoming storylines:

Will: "They love him in Houston, maybe he wants to run for governor."

Josh: "You think?"

Will: "Term or two as governor, he can come back here and run for the big chair."

Toby: "Are you high?"

Will: "People like him. Ex-Marine --"

Toby (scoffing): "He's not running for -- no."

Josh goes to visit Santos to try to get a fuller picture of his decision. While the congressman and his staff continue their work on a patients' bill of rights (which, I mean, even if we've jumped a year and it's the summer or even fall of 2005, he does still have over a year left in Congress), he tells Josh his decision is final - he misses his family, the job takes too much time away from his kids, and he can do great things and bring health care to Texans by working at home. Yet there's something about Santos that sticks in Josh's head ...

Our episode draws to a close with a golden setting sun shining through the windows, and CJ settling in to review her briefing materials, satisfied that she's been able to solve the Georgian uranium issue; the other staffers having a little celebration of CJ's new job, with her providing the refreshments; Toby getting ready to move the public face of the White House in a new direction with Annabeth's help; and Josh troubled by the nagging thought of how he might deal with a promising Democratic congressman giving up his seat to do something real and helpful.

It's no longer a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day ... but we're set on a promising path to something in the future.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- From here on out, my quote-gathering is going to take a lot more work. The site I get quotes from was filled with volunteer-supplied screenplay-style transcripts of the episodes (shoutout to westwingtranscripts.com), well-designed and searchable. There were a few episodes missing from Season 5, but almost everything else up to this episode is there. Unfortunately, though, it looks like nothing's been added to the site since 2008, this episode and the rest of Season 6 aren't there, and it has only the first 14 episodes of Season 7. So I'm going to have to resort to other sites that just have all the dialogue listed (a lot of it inaccurately, I'm finding), but not who says it or descriptions of what else is happening in the episode. Sad! If anyone reading has a tip for a better West Wing transcript site, please leave a comment for me on this post.

 

- And just now I'm also discovering that a valuable site for information on West Wing episodes, the West Wing Episode Guide, is no longer accessible online. I just used it two weeks ago! Good grief, things are getting a lot more complicated and tougher for me now.

 

- The opening title screen returns to white type on a black screen ... but it's also not centered, leaving room above the title for a fade-in to looking through the peephole on CJ's door.

 

- I don't know if we've ever fully established where CJ lives. We saw her street in We Killed Yamamoto, when Simon Donovan was walking her home. That scene was actually filmed in Greenwich Village in New York City, but I think the idea was CJ was living in Georgetown (we know Leo lives there, from Somebody's Going To Emergency, Somebody's Going To Jail, and I think Josh is supposed to live around there, as well). Staff Sergeant Kelty says if she has to evacuate due to an emergency, she's to meet the helicopter in a farm field on Danville Road, about a mile south of her apartment. There is a Danville Road in rural Maryland, south of the National Harbor and Joint Base Andrews - but that's well outside DC and quite a distance from the White House. If CJ does indeed live in Georgetown, I don't think there are any fields with cows or horses a mile south of there (south of Georgetown is Rosslyn and Arlington and other urban parts of northern Virginia).

- This is our first meeting with Matt Santos, played by Jimmy Smits (LA Law, NYPD Blue, the Star Wars prequels, of course the classic Running Scared). Santos will play a huge role in the remaining 41 episodes of the series, which isn't really a spoiler since the opening credits kind of give the game away well before we even meet the guy:

- It's a bit jarring to see the Georgian emissary Roman Mindeli intend to offer a gift of wine to Leo, who is a well-known recovering alcoholic who no longer drinks, but ... European customs and approaches can be different, I suppose.

 

- Here's where the timeline shifting shenanigans really begin.

West Wing writers have always had a tenuous grasp on consistent timelines: in Season 2's The Midterms they told us the Rosslyn shootings happened in August and not May, in order to force a tie-in to the midterm election cycle (in later episodes they went back to saying the shootings were in May); later on in that season we have inconsistencies about when the White House Counsel changes from Tribbey to Babish; The Long Goodbye is explicitly set in February, yet it aired before the inauguration episodes that constitutionally must be in January; Season 5 includes some weird passage-of-time issues with Zoey's bruises and recovery from her kidnapping lasting months through Independence Day; the Bartlets' grandson inexplicably got considerably younger between his first appearance in 7A WF 83429 and his subsequent appearance in Abu el Banat. Consistency of time has always taken a back seat to making whatever story is told feel immediate, as if it's happening right when it's being broadcast ... but we're really getting weird now in Season 6.

 

I've been harping on this through the beginning of this season. The Middle Eastern crisis sparked by the bombing that killed American congressmen and Admiral Fitzwallace while injuring Donna happened near the end of May, as was proven in Memorial Day. The Camp David summit with the Israelis and Palestinians couldn't have happened later than mid-June, as was proven by the connection with Donna's surgery crisis in Germany. Third-Day Story begins as the summit ends, so it's still June, and that plays out over only a couple of days, as proven by the discovery of a stricken Leo at Camp David and his emergency surgery following. Despite a few comments being thrown in trying to move the action to the fall (President Bartlet telling Farad his granddaughter just started high school, Josh talking about the fall legislative agenda), there's absolutely no way we are past the month of June.

This episode starts to really confuse the issue, and it's intentional because we're about to lose an entire year here pretty soon. Despite the casually dropped comments trying to move the action to the fall, we are still set firmly in June, with CJ starting her position as Chief of Staff right on the heels of Leo's surgery (the President locks it down with the surgery happening "36 hours ago" as he announces CJ's promotion in the briefing room). But what year is it? Is it still 2004 in West Wing time?

We know Season 4 happened in 2002-03, because we had the Presidential election (an election confirmed to be in 2002 by Toby in 17 People) and the inauguration. We also got through the California special election (which had to be early 2003) and Zoey's graduation from Georgetown, so the season ended in the spring of 2003. Season 5 picks up there, goes through the summer (Jefferson Lives) and Christmas (Abu el Banat) and ends in the spring (Memorial Day). There's no indication of a jump of a year anywhere during Season 5 ... we as an audience have no reason to think this administration is anywhere but early in its sixth year, from Inauguration Day 1999 to spring of 2004.

 

We start to get a little bit of confusion by characters talking about how long they've held their jobs. CJ stresses to Toby that he should have told the press that she's "been involved in foreign policy decisions for five years," which would match this being 2004 with an administration kicking off in 1999 - but at another point both Toby (when he offers his prank resignation) and CJ (speaking at the press room podium) say they've been in their positions "six years." Now, if you start counting from January 1999, you're into the sixth year, with five full years being up in January 2004, so five years or six years, I could see both making sense, kind of.

 

What's really baffling, though, is when the DCCC guys are talking to Josh.

DCCC guy: "Thanks and adulations for all the help at the midterms last year, you guys were fantastic."

Josh: "Our pleasure."

DCCC guy: "We're looking at next year, our latest count was seven members of Congress retiring, and we've got twelve --"

Other DCCC guy: "Maybe thirteen."

DCCC guy: "-- vulnerable incumbents. We've got the Presidential race pulling the spotlight."

Okay, hold up. According to our established West Wing calendar, the midterms would be in 2004, coming up in November of this year, five months after the events playing out in this episode (but also right at the time this episode aired). Bartlet was elected in the Presidential election of 1998, the first midterms occurred in - surprise! - The Midterms in 2000, we had another Presidential election in 2002 in Election Night, that means 2004 is the next midterm cycle and the Presidential race they're talking about as "next year" would actually be 2006. Somehow we're supposed to believe that we've transposed from the spring of 2004 to sometime in 2005 (since the midterms are referred to as "last year" and the upcoming Presidential election is "next year"). Given Leo is still in the hospital and Donna is still in a wheelchair, the events of this episode are inextricably tied to the end of Season 5, only weeks after the Gaza blast ... is it possible somehow that we jumped a year somewhere after Christmas 2003?

It's not likely. I don't think the writers put in a time leap in Season 5, they're awkwardly doing it now in order to build a Presidential campaign storyline a year early (particularly since the show runners weren't sure they were going to get a Season 7, let alone a Season 8, I can understand that). It's just inartfully done to try to force in "oh hey, remember those midterms that happened last year?" when you're still dealing with storylines from the end of Season 5 that clearly happened before the midterms.

- The second consecutive episode without Kate Harper (Mary McCormack was on maternity leave at the time of filming), and Leo gets only a short, wordless scene in his hospital bed. I'm sure Leo's scene was filmed at the same time as his hospital scenes in Third-Day Story ... John Spencer's character was written out of the series for a while as he had to undergo surgery that would take him away from the show for a few months.

- This is kind of fun: there's a quick glimpse of Annabeth's resume being handed to CJ by Toby, and a screenshot of it reveals some interesting stuff.

 

 

It can be fun to catch tidbits included on prop items like this that we're actually not supposed to be able to see ... but technology and screen shots and pausing DVDs exist, so here we are! We are able to see that:

 

+ This is a resume for the position of "Press Secretary to the President of the United States of America," which Annabeth specifically said she was not applying for.

 

+ She was valedictorian of her high school class at Barwood, Virginia, High School. Neither the town of Barwood nor a high school with that name actually exists.

 

+ She earned her BA in Business Administration from the University of Maryland and later an Associate's Degree in political science from Georgetown.

 

+ Graduating from college in 1974 would indicate Annabeth was born around 1952, making her 52 years old at this point. Kristin Chenoweth was actually born in 1968 and was 36 years old at this time. 

+ Her employment history is a list of secretarial positions, beginning in 1970 which would have overlapped with her time attending the University of Maryland. There's no indication of any public relations or media jobs, and nothing saying she worked for Taylor Reid in any capacity.

 

+ Her current job (since 2000) is listed as Executive Secretary to Senate Majority Leader Blanche Sindelar. We know the actual Senate Majority Leader at this time in the series is Robert Royce, and he was not even in the Senate in 2000 (he was a member of the House when we first met him in On The Day Before in 2001). 

 

+ Blanche Sindelar, by the way, was the property master for The West Wing, making it her responsibility to come up with this resume prop - so it makes sense she put her own name on it somewhere; and she actually was born in 1952, which helps explain that note on the resume as well. Another show-connected name shown here is Cathy Bond, who was second-unit or assistant director on many episodes.

- We see Gail's fishbowl a couple of times. I can't really tell if the decorative item in there is anything more than just some archway:

- Why'd They Come Up With Liftoff?

The word "liftoff" is specifically spoken by Staff Sergeant Kelty when he's giving CJ the rundown of her emergency evacuation - "There won't be more than three minutes from code call to liftoff."

The title, of course, actually pertains to CJ's "liftoff" in her position as Chief of Staff, as she's thrown into the tumult from the start of day one.

Quotes    

Ssgt. Kelty (showing CJ a diagram of the White House): "You're going to have to time that, but in the event of a situation, we'll need you to exit here."

(CJ looks around at the hubbub happening in her apartment)

Kelty: "Ms. Cregg?"

CJ: "I'm listening. What kind of situation?"

Kelty: "A nuclear attack."

CJ: "Are we expecting one?"

-----

CJ (walking into Margaret's outer office, seeing the array of flower arrangements): "Wow! People shouldn't be sending me flowers!"

(She leans down to smell one of the bouquets)

Margaret: "They're for Leo."

----- 

Margaret: "CIA briefer's on his way, security will be by for a palm print and an eye scan. President's got Treasury in ten minutes, you're on the call. EPA's waiting for feedback on the Clean Air markup, Armed Forces is coming to talk about a budget boost for the peacekeeping tour because they forgot to factor in food, for the troops."

CJ: "And this gets us to ...?"

Margaret: "8:45."

-----

Mindeli: "President Rustaveli wants to offer United States gift of uranium. Highly enriched. To your government."

CJ: "Uranium? Like, to make bombs?"

Mindeli: "We do not wish to make bombs. We give to you, you make what you want!"

-----

President: "You putting together a tiger team?"

CJ: "Uh, I'm not quite sure what that is."

President: "Four or five agencies on one project, particularly something this complicated, they pass it around like a hot potato, fourteen months from now we'll wake up having accomplished absolutely nothing. You're gonna have to spearhead the project yourself."

CJ: "Sure, I'll .. tiger team. Grrrr!"

(President looks at CJ questioningly)

President: "What was that?"

CJ: "Nothing."

-----

Margaret: "It's first priority."

CJ: "For the day?"

Margaret: "For 1:45."

CJ: "Three hundred pages on snowmobiles?"

Margaret: "The President's got lunch with Interior tomorrow, Yellowstone's going to come up."

CJ: "And there's no one else in the building that can position us?"

Margaret: "Toby and the policy shop are split."

CJ: "All right, get me the rest of --"

Margaret: "We've now talked through the snowmobile window. You have to leave."

CJ: "Where am I going?"

Margaret: "The Georgian thing."

CJ: "Where's the nonproliferation --"

Margaret: "I have one."

CJ: "-- and the uranium repatriation study?"

Margaret: "You really have to start walking now."

-----

Toby: "I misspoke, okay. No one thinks you can't handle foreign policy."

CJ: "We all think it. Had you thought any differently, it would have been, 'she's been involved in foreign policy decisions for five years,' not 'she'll bounce every question to somebody at NSC,' it never crossed your mind to reject the premise of the statement."

-----

CJ: "Not a bad idea."

Toby: "It is, actually, but can we focus on --"

CJ: "On you as spokesman for the ship of fools? It's a dream come true."

Toby: "The deputies can handle most of it, I'll just do the high-profile stuff."

CJ: "Like this morning?"

Toby: "Yeah ... No. Slightly better."

  

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

• I've already mentioned Jimmy Smits as Matt Santos, but we also meet a couple of his staff members who will be seen plenty as the remaining 40 or so episodes play out. Karis Campbell (Boston Public, Rizzoli & Isles, one episode of ER in the ER-West Wing pipeline) plays Ronna:
  

• While Evan Arnold (Spider-Man, Suburgatory, 9-1-1: Lone Star, also an episode of ER) is seen as Ned.

• The wonderful Kristin Chenoweth joins the show as Annabeth Schott. Chenoweth earned fame on Broadway on shows like You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown and Wicked, and gained TV and film stardom in Pushing Daisies, Bewitched, Glee, and Schmigadoon!

• The familiar face of Bill Birch is seen as DCCC guy Len Segal. You might recognize Birch from tons of commercials as well as appearances on NCIS, Grey's Anatomy, and Just Shoot Me!

• We haven't seen Nancy McNally (Anna Deavere Smith) for a while, but she's got CJ's back here.

• We also haven't seen Defense Secretary Miles Hutchinson (Steve Ryan) lately, but he's just as much of a jerk as ever.

• The Bartlet/Sheen jacket flip is here again, with CJ's head getting caught in his jacket this time. Martin Sheen's left shoulder was injured at birth, making it difficult for him to raise that arm above the shoulder, so he came up with this over-the-head technique to put on coats and jackets. 

• Chris and Mark are the long-time press room reporters seen in this episode, while Greg Brock gets talked about.
  

• CJ's objection to a Secret Service detail takes us right back to Enemies Foreign And Domestic, when it took the emphatic demand of the President to get her to agree to Secret Service protection after she received death threats. Given that experience, though, and knowing that CJ is aware of the importance of the Chief of Staff position, I don't think she would actually try to stop the Secret Service from just doing their jobs.
  

• Toby's disastrous press briefing reminds us of The Long Goodbye, when Toby handled the briefings when CJ was out of town at her high school reunion. CJ's father famously said of Toby's performance then, "That man lacks grace and charm."
  

• Toby mentions "spending time with my kids" after the mass resignation prank. His twins, Huck and Molly, were born in Twenty Five, and while Toby pledged his everlasting devotion to them in that episode, according to his ex-wife Andy Wyatt in The Supremes he really hasn't spent all that much time with them.
  

• The talk about funding for the peacekeeping troops, and the reluctance of some NATO nations to go along, is a reference to Kate's gambit in The Birnam Wood, when she salvaged the Israeli-Palestinian talks at Camp David by coming up with a plan for giving Palestine limited control over holy sites in Jerusalem in exchange for an outside peacekeeping force. 
  

• Remember the whole Josh-Donna thing? How she's totally devoted to him, perhaps secretly in love, and how he definitely needs her by his side yet is sometimes cruel and thoughtless about her feelings? How he takes her competence and her loyalty for granted, relying on her to do his grunt work? How he's promised (more than once!) that "this time he's changed" and he does realize what he's got with her, and her career and future is important and he's going to help? Even just a couple of episodes ago, when he was by her side at the hospital in Germany, wondering if she was going to survive emergency surgery or if she might suffer brain damage, the Irish photographer Colin took him to task for not paying enough attention and possibly losing the most important person in his life. Remember how Josh took that to heart? Remember how he took Donna aside and gave her a gift of the pen from the peace deal signing? Remember how it seemed maybe Josh really got it this time, and he was going to start treating Donna like a promising professional worthy of advancement and respect? Well ... as soon as Toby asks him for help in the press secretary auditions, Josh dumps that job right off on (a still wheelchair-bound) Donna.

It doesn't appear he's learned or changed much at all.

•  There's also a mention of conservative TV show host Taylor Reid ("this administration's most vocal and effective critic"), who was seen (played by Jay Mohr) verbally jousting with CJ on his show in An Khe and Full Disclosure.

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• During the hubbub in CJ's apartment with the Army sergeants and the Secret Service, someone is removing CJ's iMac G3 computer. We saw a similar Apple iMac at Amy's Women's Leadership Coalition offices in The Women Of Qumar. This model of iMac was actually discontinued a year and a half before this episode aired.

• CJ steals Toby's bottle of Aquafina water to get a drink before going into the briefing room.

• The logos for MSNBC and C-SPAN are featured.
  

• After Toby's comment about "swatting suicide bombers with her purse" Will says CJ is "like a ninja with a Prada clutch."
  

• The older background actor with the flattop buzzcut (the one that pops up in almost every episode) is seen walking in the hallway.

• There's talk of an outbreak of Marburg virus in Ecuador, although Marburg is generally thought of as an African virus.
  

• CJ calls the emissary from Georgia "Inspector Clouseau" when she suspects Josh sent him as a prank.
  

• Toby makes a reference to "the lone man facing down the tanks in Tiananmen Square," which means the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the "tank man" exist in the West Wing universe.

• CJ's critique of one of the press secretary candidates includes, "He has no soul ... he'd front for the Gotti family if you asked."
  

• Once CJ gains her confidence she tells President Bartlet he should read the new Benjamin Franklin biography instead of DOE reports she should have been screening all along.
  

End credits freeze frame: CJ and the President in the Oval Office after CJ settled things with Hutchinson and the military.

Previous episode: Third-Day Story

Next episode: The Hubbert Peak