In The Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part I - TWW S2E1

Original airdate: October 4, 2000

Written by: Aaron Sorkin (22)

Directed by: Thomas Schlamme (6)

Synopsis

• Season 2 starts where Season 1's cliffhanger ended, with the presidential motorcade speeding away from the chaos of the Rosslyn shooting. We discover both President Bartlet and Josh have been shot, one much more seriously than the other. While emergency room medical personnel work to save their lives, staff members think back three years to the beginnings of Jed's presidential campaign and how they came together.

"Look what happened."

I've said it before and I'll stand by my opinion - Season 2 of The West Wing ranks as one of the best, most well-crafted, and consistently excellent seasons of any television series anywhere. And it starts with another terrific Aaron Sorkin script, a two-part episode showing us the outcome of the Season 1 cliffhanger shooting while also flashing back to the beginnings of how Bartlet's staff came together. (Much like season-ending cliffhangers, two-part season premieres sort of became a thing for Sorkin and The West Wing.)

We're thrown right into the situation from the season finale, with the Presidential motorcade speeding across the Arlington Memorial Bridge away from Rosslyn. President Bartlet and Ron Butterfield (the incredibly awesome Michael O'Neill) have a back-and-forth about the whereabouts of Zoey and the condition of Ron's hand that feels real and true, the exact kind of frantic conversation that could take place in the aftermath of an assassination attempt - until Butterfield notices blood coming from the President's mouth and finds more blood underneath his jacket. Instantly the audience starts with the knowledge that this is the big reveal from last season's cliffhanger, that the President has been shot and is in danger.

Then we're taken back to Rosslyn (remember, the production had to set up again at the same location as the previous year to shoot these scenes, since when What Kind Of Day Has It Been was filmed Sorkin didn't know who was going to end up shot at the end of the night). We see CJ being treated for a bump on the head, Sam, Charlie, and Toby, who is searching for Josh. He finds him, all right - shot in the chest and bleeding out on the walkway. Sorkin has faked us out, and we have two gunshot victims to worry about.

The story of the night, the rushing of the President and Josh to the emergency room, the Bartlet family and staff making their way to the hospital, the two undergoing surgery - that's the current running plotline that takes us through the episode. Adding to the chaos of that storyline is unusual troop movement in Iraq that might require an American response, but there's uncertainty about exactly who is in charge and the failure to draw on the 25th Amendment provisions for handing over presidential power. Adding to the story of the night's events, and more importantly to the series, we see through flashbacks the beginnings of how we got here, how Jed Bartlet and Leo McGarry put together a staff that built a successful campaign ending with Bartlet in the White House.

That's the real meat of the episode, of both episodes, really. We get to see the characters we got to know over the first season in a new light, at the outset of the Bartlet story: Josh, working with Hoynes on his presidential campaign, but not fully convinced this is the "real thing"; Sam, about to make partner at a top law firm, where his biggest (and unfulfilling) priority is creating oil tanker liability barriers to protect oil companies; and Toby, certain he's about to be canned for his failure to get the Bartlet campaign to catch fire. Not to mention a Bartlet making uninspired speeches to a VFW hall full of half-interested New Hampshire residents.

Josh tries to get Hoynes to get out in front of big issues (saving Social Security, to be exact) but ends up getting shot down for base, electoral-politics reasons. Leo shows up asking Josh to go to New Hampshire later that week to hear Jed Bartlet speak. He asks as an old friend of Josh's father, but Leo always knows - he knows Josh isn't satisfied with the Hoynes campaign, and he knows Josh is a top-notch asset for any candidate. Their discussion winds up with what is actually a pretty good slam on the 1988 Michael Dukakis campaign (which didn't actually happen in The West Wing universe, but we get who Josh is referring to):

Josh: "The Democrats aren't gonna nominate another liberal academic former governor from New England. I mean, we're dumb, but we're not that dumb."

Leo."Nah. I think we're exactly that dumb."

On the way north Josh stops in Manhattan to track down Sam, who's working at the second-biggest law firm in New York protecting oil companies from liability on their semi-seaworthy tankers. It turns out these two guys are old friends as well, and Josh has been trying to get Sam to join him on Hoynes' campaign as a speechwriter. Sam, though, is a week away from making partner and has wedding plans for the following year, but it turns out his biggest obstacle is the fact Josh isn't really all-in for Hoynes. Could this Bartlet fellow be the one?:

Josh: "If I see the real thing in Nashua - should I tell you about it?"

Sam: "You won't have to."

Josh: "Why?"

Sam: "You got a pretty bad poker face."

SPOILER ALERT: Sam gets to see Josh's bad poker face in the next episode, but you already figured that out.

Meanwhile, in Nashua Toby is day-drinking at a bar because he knows he's about to be fired. The Bartlet campaign isn't doing much, some 48 points behind Hoynes in polling for the Democratic nomination, and the campaign staff that's been working for Bartlet over the years isn't too happy with his work (as he tells a woman at the bar, even though he's very good at being a professional political operative that's run campaigns for city council, two congressional runs, a Senate campaign, a gubernatorial run and a national campaign, he's never had one of his candidates actually win). The biggest sticking point is Bartlet's vote against a bill while he was in Congress that would have increased prices paid to New England dairy farmers. The old staff want Jed to obfuscate and backtrack to placate the New Hampshire voters, while Toby (and Leo) just want him to tell the truth:

Cal: "Do you enjoy losing?"

Toby: "Not that much, no, but then again I don't actually have a lot to compare it to, so ..."

When Jed is asked the question, he pauses, then lets it all hang out:

Jed: "Yeeahup. I screwed you on that one."

Farmer: "I'm sorry?"

Jed: "I screwed you, you got hosed. [...he goes on to make some points about growing childhood poverty...] Let me put it this way - I voted against the bill cause I didn't want to make it hard for people to buy milk. I stopped some money from flowing into your pocket. If that angers you, if you resent me, I completely respect that. But if you expect different from the President of the United States, you should vote for someone else."

Which finally causes Josh to turn his attention away from the crossword puzzle (right at the moment "I screwed you on that one").

And causes the Bartlet campaign staff to direct even more ire at Toby, until Leo unexpectedly turns the tables and gives it all to Toby:

Leo: "Jerry, Cal, Mac, Steve - you're fired."

Cal: "What?"

Toby: "What?"

Leo: "Don't screw up."

(This picture doesn't fully depict Toby's surprised reaction. Boy, Richard Schiff is outstanding in this episode.)

And the flashback part of the episode draws to a close on the streets of Nashua, with Jed railing against Leo for firing all "his people" and Leo maintaining it's time to build their own team:

Jed: "You know, I got elected to Congress by this state, this state sent me to Congress three times and then elected me Governor, all without your help. Don't start!"

Leo: "No, seriously, that's, that's a real political accomplishment considering your family founded this state."

Jed: "Hey -"

Leo: "Were you even opposed in any of those elections?"

Leo then finishes the conversation off by challenging Jed to be the best candidate, the best man for the job that he can be:

Leo: "They say a good man can't get elected President. I don't believe that. Do you? [...] This is the time of Jed Bartlet, my old friend. You're going to open your mouth and lift houses off the ground. Whole houses, clear off the ground."

Back in the current course of events, the President's wound turns out to be minor and quickly dealt with, but not without Abbey informing the anesthesiologist that he's now the 15th person to know about Jed's MS - and that's a topic that's going to hang over this entire season. However, during the procedure, steps were never taken to actually transfer presidential power to the Vice President; and when a Situation Room meeting is required to address Iraqi troop movement, the question of who can order a change in defense levels is an open one. And that's a topic that ties into the previous one.

Josh, meanwhile, is in much worse condition, with a collapsed lung and a damaged pulmonary artery, requiring a 12- to 14-hour surgery. The entire situation has the staff out of sorts and staggering through the night - poor Donna, racing to the hospital to happily learn the President is going to be fine, only to then get the news of Josh's condition:

(The confusion and emotion of the exchange between Toby and Donna - "Donna, Josh was hit." "Hit with what?" - is so well written and well acted. Great scene.)

Let me quickly mention Gina Toscano and her frustration at being unable to remember all the details about the accomplice on the ground. Jorja Fox did a wonderful job of bringing Gina's professionalism and her subdued anger at herself into play - even the fact that her spotting the shooters initially probably saved lives, when she couldn't remember exactly what the accomplice's ball cap looked like, she felt like she had failed in her duty. Speaking of Gina, take a look at the incredible take from 2:03 to 3:25 in the teaser - it's just a minute and twenty seconds, you might say, but it's a single take with a Steadicam moving from CJ and a medic, to CJ looking at a shot-out car window, then talking to Sam, to Gina bursting past them to talk to another Secret Service agent, all with extras moving through the background and foreground and lights shining ... it's an incredible logistical feat, while not quite the long unbroken shot through the hotel from Five Votes Down, still damn impressive.

Before we wrap up the episode, a shout-out to the debut of National Security Advisor Nancy McNally, played by the wonderful Anna Deavere Smith. Nancy is going to be around throughout the rest of the series, and you won't find a more badass take-no-prisoners adviser than she.

Interestingly enough, Smith had roles in the White House-set movies Dave and Sorkin's own The American President prior to being cast in The West Wing. She also got to deliver this line in this episode (real-life foreshadowing):

Nancy: "It's worth mentioning that at this moment we do not know the whereabouts of about a half dozen cell leaders, including Bin Laden."

That's the only mention of Osama bin Laden in The West Wing, in a world in which 9/11 never happened, but this mention comes almost a full year before the actual attack.

Part I of this two-parter draws to a close with the President and Leo looking through a window as the doctors operate on Josh, his life in the balance, while in the flashback sequences an unsettled Jed has put his trust in Leo to put together a staff to help him win the White House. Will Part II bring us closure on any of this? As Toby might say: "I'm just guessing - I'm pretty drunk."


Tales Of Interest!

- Continuity between scenes - things like costumes, hair, props - are tough enough while shooting one episode. When the production staff had to go back to Rosslyn to recreate the scene from What Kind Of Day Has It Been several months later, that must have been a continuity nightmare.

First of all, here's the landscaping from the end of Season 1, with yellow flowers along the walkway (Ron Butterfield, on the right, is right next to the spot where Josh is discovered after being shot):

And here's the exact same area when they filmed this episode. You'll notice the flowers are now red:

Sam and CJ appear to have gotten their hair cut and styled sometime during the assassination attempt.
Here they are from the end of Season 1:

And now in this episode (Sam seems to have changed the side he parts his hair on):

- The credits for Season 2 have changed somewhat. Janel Moloney is now added to the starring cast (yay, Donna!), while Moira Kelly has disappeared (the last we saw of Mandy was her walking down the hallway after talking the President into taking his jacket off during the town hall prep meeting). There's also some different shots mixed in, including a new headshot of Allison Janney, and the removal of the photo with the entire staff (including Mandy) talking with the President in the Oval Office. Rob Lowe remains first credited, with Hill, Janney, Moloney, Schiff, Spencer, and Whitford following in alphabetical order, ending with "and Martin Sheen."

- The basic elements of President Bartlet's shooting storyline were drawn directly from the assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981. In both cases the wounds to the President were not discovered until he was in the limousine being driven away from the shooting; both men joked with medical personnel in the emergency room; both were treated at George Washington University Hospital; and in both cases, a staffer was wounded more seriously than the President (press secretary James Brady in Reagan's shooting). Also the question of who actually held presidential powers while Reagan was in surgery (remember Secretary of State Alexander Haig saying "I am in control here"?) is reflected a bit with the 25th Amendment discussion.

- Let's talk about the 25th Amendment storyline and what they got right and what they weren't clear on. While McNally's statement about the Constitution saying the presidency only automatically devolves to the Vice President if the President dies is accurate, it's not the full story. The amendment also offers a provision for the Cabinet to make the determination of transferring presidential powers, and when Jed tells Leo to assemble the Cabinet before he goes into surgery, that provision could certainly have come into play. (Modern-day angle: the current Cabinet, if it saw fit, could absolutely make the decision to remove presidential powers from Donald Trump and transfer them to Vice President Pence. One wonders exactly what it would take for that to happen.)

So the administration's hands aren't tied, as it seems in this episode, to having presidential powers held solely by a man who is under anesthesia and can't actually exercise them (you know, God forbid someone launches an attack on the United States at the exact same time. Who is the Commander-in-Chief? Who can order a missile launch?). In fact, there's a deleted scene where Leo talks to Danny and expressly tells him they did not want to actually invoke the 25th Amendment provisions. You wonder why that is.

(Also McNally's mention of the 1947 Defense Act and the powers granted to the Secretary of Defense isn't accurate, as that act was superseded by a law passed in 1962. The mention serves only to set up Toby's quite sarcastic line "Of course it wouldn't, cause that's an area of federal law where you'd want to have as much ambiguity as possible.")

- When Josh is pulled out of the ambulance at the hospital, it's a neat overhead shot - but it also shows him being taken out head-first. Which would mean he was loaded in the ambulance feet-first. That's never how it is actually done.

- Let's talk timelines. As this episode picks up right where Season 1 ended, it's still the Monday night in May (and eventually Tuesday morning) of the MSNBC town hall meeting. The flashbacks are described as "three years" ago - Hoynes mentions that it's 13 weeks until the New Hampshire primary, and Leo gripes to Jed about how cold it is in October. So we're looking at October 1997, about a year before the presidential election.

- Some Internet sites say there's a goof or error in the scene with Hoynes talking to Josh, as you can see a Tennessee flag behind Hoynes even though he's clearly a Senator from Texas. To me it's obvious that conversation isn't being held in Hoynes' office, but in a hallway of the Senate office building. A different state flag (I think it's Iowa's) can be seen behind Josh. It's not an error of having a Tennessee flag in Hoynes' office, it's a conversation held in the hallway outside the office of a Tennessee Senator.

- In Pilot Sam mentioned he worked at Dewey Ballantine out of law school, which was a real-life law firm. Now that his job involved creating liability shields for oil tankers, Sorkin decided he needed to work for a fictional firm, and created Gage Whitney Pace. Ever the kind of writer to not let a good idea be wasted, Gage Whitney Pace also popped up on Sorkin's 2006 series Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and appeared on a computer screen in the background of his 2017 movie Molly's Game. The firm also was mentioned in the series 24 and Rob Lowe's series Lyon's Den.

- I really think the transitions between current time and flashback time were well done by Sorkin and Tommy Schlamme: When Josh is wheeled into the ER, he's deliriously babbling about a meeting and going to New Hampshire, which transitions (via the bright overhead light morphing into a chandelier) into Josh meeting with Hoynes' campaign staff; Sam bumps into a woman on the sidewalk after talking to Josh in New York, which immediately transitions into Sam bumping into a nurse in the ER waiting room, throwing us right back into the present; Toby thinks he hears Ginger say something after consoling her, but he's remembering the bartender at Hank's Tavern ask him if he wants another drink.

- A neat little moment illustrating the confusion about who's in charge: when Hoynes comes into the Situation Room, several of the military officers have to be reminded to stand. Then Hoynes pointedly avoids sitting in the President's chair at the head of the table, taking the one next to it.

- Allison Janney's performance at the press conference was perfectly off-kilter, confused, and adrift, exactly what you might expect from someone who had just been through such a traumatic experience. This episode was one submitted by Janney that earned her a second best supporting actress Emmy. Tommy Schlamme also won an Emmy for directing this episode, while John Spencer (supporting actor) and Sorkin (writing) were nominated for Emmys based on this episode.



Quotes    

Nurse: "I need to ask you some questions, sir. Do you have any medical conditions?"

President: "Well ... I've been shot." 

-----

Leo: "Jack? What's the best way to get a message to Iraq?"

General: "King of Jordan."

Leo: "Okay."

Advisor: "What do you want the message to be?"

Leo: "Don't mess with us tonight." 

-----

Reporter: "CJ, can you tell us why the AP knows more than you do?"

CJ: "I don't believe they do know more than I do, I just believe they're willing to tell you more than I am." 

-----

Woman at bar: "I'm gonna tell ya, I didn't even know Bartlet was running."

Toby: "Yeah, we keep that secret pretty good." 

-----

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

• The big cheese at Gage Whitney Pace, Jack Gage, is played by Peter White (longtime TV character actor, recurring on The Colbys, Dallas, and Sisters, among many others).

• The Air Force general in the Situation Room is played by Daniel von Bargen (Malcolm In The Middle, Seinfeld).

• And look, there's Jane Lynch (Glee, Best In Show, Two And A Half Men, many others) as a reporter yelling questions at CJ! We'll see her again at the end of the season.

• Check this out - I didn't know this until watching the DVD commentary with Sorkin, Schlamme, Whitford and Moloney - one of the Secret Service agents assigned to Abbey is Olympic sprinter and former NFL wide receiver Willie Gault. Seriously! It's true! He actually started his acting career in the early 1990s, and had a recurring role on The Pretender from 1997 through 2000.

• Some threads that are just for Part II: CJ's constant referral to "somebody pulled me down" will come to a nattily-coiffed head; Josh's mention of his dad being sick plays a big part in the next episode; and the press question about why a tent or canopy wasn't used at Rosslyn will get answered.

• Abbey tells the anesthesiologist that 14 people know about the President's MS. We can assume family members (although that exact number is unknown), and she mentions the Vice President, Leo, and Fitzwallis. We might also assume his personal physician is included, named as Admiral Jarvis in CJ's press conference. So Hoynes, Leo, Fitz, the doctor, Abbey, Zoey, that's six. We'll find out there are two other Bartlet daughters, so that makes eight. So there are six others in on the secret that we don't know about yet (perhaps a son-in-law or other relatives?). And we're not counting Jed - that's made clear later in 17 People.

• Okay, the well-traveled newsman played by Ivan Allen is back. We first saw him as an unnamed anchor for cable news station CND in A Proportional Response :

He then apparently moved to local TV, working under the name Roger Salier at the fictional "Channel 5" in The White House Pro-Am :

Here he is again as Roger Salier, and he's apparently moved across town to the very real Channel 4 (WRC-TV in Washington, DC, owned and operated by NBC):

• When Hoynes leaves the campaign staff meeting, pulling Josh out, he tells the rest to work on the ethanol tax credit. We learned in 20 Hours In L.A. that Hoynes had worked to defeat that credit.

• We learn background information that Leo is an old friend of Josh's dad, and Josh and Sam have known each other for a while.

• In the flashback Sam is engaged to Lisa, with the marriage set for next September. We might see Lisa in the future.

• WHAT'S NEXT MOMENT - We hear Jed using the term three times in his testy meeting with staff after his VFW hall speech (finishing with "What's next? Nothing? Excellent." before stalking off). Leo then jumps right in to say, "Okay, what's next?"

DC location shots    

• Back in Rosslyn at the Newseum site, including a shot outside the segment of the Berlin Wall the Newseum has (still on display at its Pennsylvania Avenue location)

• The Arlington Memorial Bridge shows up twice, in the opening shot of the Presidential motorcade and again in the ending montage with police searching vehicles:

• Leo and Josh talk outside the Capitol building.

• I believe the show actually shot outside the George Washington University Hospital emergency room. I know scenes in Part II were filmed outside the hospital, so it's likely this was actually at GW:

References to real people    

• George Washington University Hospital is, of course, named after our first President.

• Josh mentions the Walt Disney Corporation (actually The Walt Disney Company) and remodeling the rides at Epcot.

• For a pop-culture reference, a nurse mentions how a worried pregnant woman will soon feel her baby doing the Macarena. That dance became a sensation after the song was the number one Billboard hit of 1996.

End credits freeze frame: Aerial shot of the President's motorcade crossing the Arlington Memorial Bridge,with the Lincoln Memorial in the background (in the DVD commentary Schlamme tells Bradley Whitford that this took three takes).

Wrapping Up Season One - The West Wing

With Season 1 of The West Wing in the books (well, it's been in the books for 18 years now, but we're talking about this blog, okay?) I thought I'd take a quick look at how the show was recognized in its first year.

Ratings-wise it wasn't a smash hit but performed very well, finishing as the 24th highest-rated program of the 1999-2000 season according to Nielsen. The show earned a rating of 9.1, which equates to about 9.17 million viewers, and had a share of 14.2 (meaning 14.2 percent of televisions that were turned on Wednesday nights were tuned in to The West Wing on NBC). It's darn near impossible to make a direct comparison between TV viewing habits in 2000 and those today, given the explosion of streaming, non-broadcast cable programming, time-shifting with DVRs, focus on certain demographics rather than overall ratings, and the like, but if you look at the top-rated Nielsen show from 2016-17 (The Big Bang Theory), that show earned a 11.5 rating (in 1999-2000 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? earned the top spot with a rating of 18.6). The most-watched programs from 2016-17 had about 14 million or so viewers ... so the performance of The West Wing in light of today's television landscape is very respectable indeed.

2000 EMMY AWARDS

As for critical/industry recognition, the show did extremely well right out of the box, earning the top Emmy award for a TV drama among several other accolades. The show won these Emmys at the award show held in September, 2000:

• Outstanding Drama Series
• Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Richard Schiff, for Five Votes Down and In Excelsis Deo)

• Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (Allison Janney, for Celestial Navigation and Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics)

• Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series (Thomas Schlamme, Pilot)

• Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (Aaron Sorkin and Rick Cleveland for In Excelsis Deo)

The series also earned a couple of nominations where it was beat out:

• Martin Sheen was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, but the award was won by James Gandolfini (The Sopranos).
• Aaron Sorkin was also nominated in the Outstanding Writing category for Pilot, but lost to himself and Rick Cleveland.

2000 GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS

The 2000 Golden Globes were held in early 2000, with nominations announced in December of 1999, so only the first part of the television season was even considered. The West Wing did earn a few nominations, but didn't win any awards for their first year.

• Nominated for Best Television Series, Drama, but the award was won by The Sopranos.
• Martin Sheen and Rob Lowe were nominated for Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series, Drama, but again, that award went to James Gandolfini.

2000 SCREEN ACTORS GUILD AWARDS

Again, these awards were held in March 2000, with nominations out in January, so the entire season was not considered. The West Wing had only one mention at the SAG Awards:

• Martin Sheen was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series, but lost to - you guessed it - Gandolfini.

So that about closes the book on Season 1. I hope you'll continue on my look at Season 2, because I think what's coming up is among the best seasons of any television drama, ever. Season 1 got us introduced to these characters, and the administration's efforts to get out of the mud and drive forward with initiatives that are the right thing to do, despite the political ramifications; Season 2 deals with the aftermath of the Rosslyn shooting, and more importantly, the relevations of President Bartlet's medical condition and the fallout from that becoming public as the administration starts to look toward the 2002 election.

And it's gooood, folks. So good. Season 2 starts with a two-part episode, where we get to see how these people were pulled together into the original Bartlet campaign and how that all got off the ground. My post on that will be coming shortly. Stay tuned!

What Kind Of Day Has It Been - TWW S1E22

Original airdate: May 17, 2000

Written by: Aaron Sorkin (21)

Directed by: Thomas Schlamme (5)

Synopsis

• In flashback, we see West Wing staffers preparing the President for a televised town hall meeting, while he also waits for word on the fate of a downed Air Force pilot in Iraq. The space shuttle crew (which includes Toby's brother) is dealing with critical problems before they can leave orbit and return to earth. Josh gets the Vice President onboard with the campaign finance reform issue. Then, at the end of the town hall, Season 1 ends in gunshots and chaos with a voice calling out on the radio, "Who's been hit? Who's been hit?"

"Decisions are made by those who show up."

Yep, Season 1 ends with a cliffhanger. Aaron Sorkin kind of made that his style, though, with each finale episode of his four seasons of The West Wing leaving the audience waiting for answers (Two Cathedrals, yeah, you can argue that's not really a cliffhanger, but it has the style). Sorkin caught some flak from critics for that back in 2000, being accused of using a hackneyed plot device to hold the audience over the summer, but I mean, damn - he does it really, really well.

We saw in Celestial Navigation a bit of playing around with time - in that episode we started with Josh giving a talk, then we saw some flashbacks of the week leading up to that talk before time catches up with him and Toby and Sam's trip to Connecticut. Here we get a full flashback treatment, something that will be used again and again in the series. The cold-open teaser shows us the present, with something bad about to happen, then we go back to 12 hours earlier to fill in the gaps and build us back up to that night.

That teaser, by the way, is so damn good. It still makes me catch my breath and feel the tension rising in my throat. Right from the end of the nearly seven-minute cold open, when Gina Toscano sees the kid looking up to a window behind her and turns, and begins to shout as the opening titles roll ...

Holy frickin' moly, that's good TV. I still get the hairs on my neck standing up seeing that shot.

And think about seeing this for the first time. There's the President, holding court onstage for this town hall ... but why is Charlie grinning about something he said? Why is he so excited when he's talking to Josh? What's with the swooshing arm signals passed between Sam and Toby and Josh and Leo, and the President? What's that news tip CJ is giving Danny? Sorkin and director Tommy Schlamme do what I think is a great job of giving us interesting hints and leaving us wanting answers, which they give us over the course of the episode (sometimes in unexpected ways). And then, of course, the episode and the season ends in a hail of gunfire, with the crowd scattering and the radio call of "Who's been hit?" And back in 2000 ... we had to wait four whole months to find out.

So,what's going on here. President Bartlet is preparing to hold a televised town hall meeting, mostly with college students, it appears (Sam tells Toby students aren't going to ask questions about Cuba, and Toby responds there'll be faculty there). Please note, this town hall is televised by MSNBC, which is something that hasn't been mentioned before in The West Wing universe:

(MSNBC being a cable news channel and joint venture of Microsoft and the NBC television network. The channel launched in 1996, so had been on the air over three years at this time. While it's an intrusion of the real world into the universe of the show, it's kind of a corporate synergy strategy to use your own real-life news network in this entertainment programming rather than made-up channels like the previously seen "CND" network.)

Over the course of the day leading up to the town hall, an Air Force pilot patrolling the no-fly zone over Iraq is shot down. President Bartlet orders the military to go in and rescue him, threatening to march on Baghdad if the Iraqis capture him (the no-fly zone and opposition with Iraq imply something like the Gulf War happened in this universe). Meanwhile, we also discover equipment problems are causing a delay in the return of the space shuttle Columbia from orbit - and furthermore, Toby's brother is a payload specialist on the flight (Sam: "I didn't know you had a brother on the space shuttle. I didn't know you had a brother."). And Josh meets with Vice President Hoynes to get him to work with the administration's recent push to reform campaign finance rules on soft money.

So there's tension galore, and not just from that look of Gina's before the opening titles. The President and Leo go back and forth to the Situation Room as plans are made for the military rescue operation. Toby stews in frustration, smart enough to know that the situation in orbit could be dire, but powerless to do anything about it. And let's not forget CJ - after Leo (somewhat reluctantly) lets her know about the rescue mission in Iraq, he has to bring up the events of Lord John Marbury where she was left out of the information loop entirely, and when he somewhat condescendingly says he hopes she won't have issues dealing with the press this time, she's not shy:

CJ: "I wasn't lying to the press on India-Pakistan, I was lied to by you, which made me look like an idiot."

Leo (pause): "Well, I'm not lying to you now." 

Leading to a nice Schlamme-designed shot of CJ flat-out answering Danny's question about any current military operation with "No" as Leo watches through the glass:

That little give-and-take at the briefing, by the way, continues to keep Danny riled up. He feels he's still being unfairly treated by CJ after his reveal of Mandy's opposition research memo some episodes ago, and is miffed at CJ calling on him to ask the question so she can mislead the public (and the Iraqis) about the rescue mission. We do get the impression, though, that CJ is softening about that whole thing:

Danny: "CJ, I'm not staying in the penalty box forever. I have covered the White House for eight years, and I've done it with the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time magazine, and the Dallas Morning News, and I'm telling you, you can't mess me around like this!"

CJ: "Danny, I gotta tell you, that was, seriously, that was a turn-on when you said that, though I don't know why you decided to be your most haughty on the Dallas Morning News in that sentence."

So that little exchange, as well as the troubles with the space shuttle, answer our questions about the CJ/Danny scene in the teaser.

The space shuttle story gives us another insight into Toby. He's obviously a deeply private man - we've seen over the season that in many ways he's the moral center of the West Wing and this administration, doing his best to hold the President to the path of doing what's right rather than what's politically expedient, but for his personal life, well - we didn't even know he had been married until Mandatory Minimums. Now we discover he has a brother, and he's a NASA astronaut. When Sam first talks to him about the issues the Columbia is having in orbit, Toby is quite rude and snippy. Then later, we find he acted that way because he felt guilty. He forgot that his brother was even on the flight, since his assignment had been changed around several times, and now that he was in danger, well, Toby does have feelings after all. There are very nice scenes between Sam and Toby, and Jed and Toby, that not only show the deep emotions going on behind Toby's wall (his eyes welling up while he talks to the President, that's great acting), but also the deep affection the others in the West Wing have for him.

The shuttle does finally return safely, with word passed around via swooping arm movements, giving the audience the answer to that little bit in the teaser. What we discover, though, is that the "signal" was actually thought up by Sam to pass along word on the rescue of the Air Force pilot. The thinking was that the rescue mission might take some time, and word might come down while the President was at the town hall. Sam thought a wordless signal might be a good way to pass along good news on the pilot's rescue:

(Naturally Leo thinks it looks like a "hip-hop movement.")

The rescue mission, though, goes quickly, and Admiral Fitzwallace gets to pass the word to President Bartlet in the Oval Office well before the town hall meeting. I like how Sorkin put that scene together - Fitz comes in telling Jed he should have news soon, then they sit together and talk about the carpet for a moment, then when the call comes it's not actually word on the outcome of the mission, but the pilot himself, Scott Hotchkiss, on the line to talk to the President. The sudden surprise and joy on Jed's face is priceless. Nicely done.

(What's not so nicely done is the "urban legend" Fitz tells about the eagle in the Presidential seal, and how it turns from facing the olive branch to facing the sheaf of arrows when war is declared. That's simply not true. While the eagle in the seal had been facing different directions at different times before 1945, in that year President Truman ordered the seal always have the eagle facing right, toward the olive branch.)

Josh's little jogging meeting with the Vice President is notable only for the location shot (on the Arlington Memorial Bridge) and the little nugget that Josh had been advising Hoynes on his presidential campaign a couple of years ago.

Hoynes: "You know something, Josh, sometimes I wonder if I'd listened to you two years ago, would I be President right now? You ever wonder that?"

Josh: "No, sir, I know it for sure."

So, in Jed's words when he discovered Charlie and Ambassador Cochran knew each other, "You have a past?" It creates a little oddity in the moment in Five Votes Down when Josh goes to Hoynes' office to congratulate him on the maneuvering, and Hoynes tells him, "Welcome to the NFL." Would Hoynes have acted quite like that if he had Josh as an adviser during his campaign? Or was that a dig at Josh for leaving him and going to Bartlet? And how long exactly did Josh work for Hoynes before changing teams?

There we are, though, with our questions about the teaser answered and our attention back to the town hall. We still need to find out about Charlie's grinning, though ... and that comes through when the President mentions him in bringing up a fact about youth disengagement in politics, from a report Charlie had found interesting but only mentioned to the President after Zoey's urging. That moment gives us a callback to Charlie's hiring in A Proportional Response, in which he tells Josh, "I've never felt like this before," and Josh replies, "It doesn't go away." Here Charlie tracks down Josh in the back of the auditorium:

Charlie: "He used the material I told him about. You were right."

Josh: "What do you mean?"

Charlie: "It doesn't go away."

I want to mention that town hall scene, shown to us twice, in the teaser and leading up to the climax at the end of the episode (and in both places, starting at the exact same time, where Jed tells the joke about the debating politicians and "Yes, I am lying, but hear me out!"). Sorkin and Schlamme do a masterful job of weaving different angles and focus on different speeches the two times we see it, while still leaving us sign posts along the way so we remember where we are. The bit about the President mentioning Charlie is buried and lost in the teaser - we only see Charlie's reaction - but it's right out front in the second telling. Jed's final words about his great-great-great-great grandfather Josiah Bartlett and the founding fathers writing down "all men are created equal" was never heard in the teaser, but is prominently featured in the final act (with great shots of Leo and CJ watching him). The town hall wraps up, all our early questions answered, with a overarching crane shot of the auditorium (a West Wing and Schlamme specialty).

And then two guys with handguns open fire on the Presidential party from a building across the street, with bullets flying and chaos everywhere. We know somebody's been hit, but who? In the DVD commentary, Sorkin mentions how viewers examined the scene like the Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination looking for clues ... so let's do that!

First, Gina knocks Charlie to the ground:

She then covers Zoey with her body next to a limousine:

The President is pulled away into the limousine by Secret Service:

Josh looks on in horror from behind a gate:

CJ gets pushed by a Secret Service agent:

And then is tackled by Sam just before the police car window shatters from gunfire:

Toby is on the ground, in the crowd near a fence:

And Leo is held down, presumably by Secret Service agents:

(This shot is eerily reminiscent of James Brady lying face down on the sidewalk after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981.)

And the final shot, from overhead, with at least one person (Secret Service, perhaps?) lying motionless on the ground, with a voice on the radio calling out "People down! People down! Who's been hit? Who's been hit?"

Now, the kicker ... at the time this scene was filmed, Sorkin didn't know who had been shot. He had built up the season to end with an assassination attempt, but he hadn't worked any further ahead than that. He literally did not have a plan for what followed or who ended up hit in the melee of bullets ... making any attempt by viewers to figure out the result of the assassination futile. That also means, for the Season 2 opener, the crew had to go back to the Virginia location to shoot more footage once Sorkin wrote that script and decided which characters actually had been shot.

Season 1 ends on an exciting note, and a cliffhanger (cliche, perhaps, but well-done in any event). Sorkin pulls together threads he'd planted throughout the course of the season - the Charlie-Zoey relationship, the soft-money campaign finance reform plan, the President's illness, Josh's brash arrogance, Gina Toscano's intuition - and has it all come together to wrap up the season and leave the audience on tenterhooks until the fall.


Tales Of Interest!

- An interesting shot from the previous episode, which I forgot to add in to that post. There's a picture on the wall of the Communications Office area that shows a young, well-coiffed Jed Bartlet (obviously a young Martin Sheen photoshopped in) talking with Teddy Kennedy and another old-school Democratic bigwig. It's right above Bonnie's head in this shot. I can't tell if it's maybe Chicago mayor Richard Daley, or perhaps not. It's still a pretty cool little detail in the set decoration that you're going to miss unless you're looking closely, and it really helps to add a dose of physical reality and history to this whole TV-series world we're watching.

- While we're talking pictures, there's some new portraits added to the Situation Room wall. I'm going to assume they're previous Presidents, as the one on the left is obviously Richard Nixon. However, this brings up some universe questions:

You can get some better looks at a couple of these in early shots, but the next picture over from Nixon looks an awful lot like Jimmy Carter, and the one on the other side of the seal looks a lot like George H. W. Bush. The one on the right we never get a real good look at, but it sure has the impression of Bill Clinton, who was actually President at the time this episode aired. As I've surmised earlier, a possible permutation of history in this universe was new elections called in 1974 to replace the resigned Nixon; Carter serving as President from 1975-1979 could be possible. Putting Bush in the line, perhaps elected in 1978 or 1982, okay, I could see that. Clinton, though ... that wouldn't make any sense. We know the previous President before Bartlet (elected in 1994) was Republican (the Supreme Court justice in The Short List tells Jed he'd been waiting for a Democrat to retire), and it would have had to be a one-termer (in The White House Pro-Am we're told the trade bill has been worked on for eight years and three presidents). The administration prior to that, elected in 1990 or perhaps 1986, was likely Democratic (as Leo served as Secretary of Labor when he went into rehab in 1993). There have been at most five, and at least three, Presidents between Nixon and Bartlet - and if these pictures indicate it was Carter, Bush, and Clinton in there, that doesn't leave room for the presidents we find out about in Season 5's The Stormy Present. Just a fun thought about alternate reality ...

- That title, What Kind Of Day Has It Been, is a hallmark of Sorkin's. He used it for the Season 1 finale of Sports Night prior to this; after this he has used it for the series finales of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and The Newsroom.

- The use of the space shuttle Columbia in the story putting the crew in peril turned out to be sadly prescient, as the real-life Columbia broke up during re-entry in February 2003, killing all seven crew members.

- Perhaps you noticed this episode seemed stuffed with extra bodies. In the DVD commentary, Sorkin and Schlamme say the season finale is a good opportunity to put the stand-ins and other background folks onscreen for a moment, and maybe even give them a line. It also gives Sorkin a chance to dig at a well-known quirk of Martin Sheen's:

President (walking through the corridors): "Morning, Patty [...] Hey, Steve, hey, Mikey. (to Charlie) Listen, have I gotten any of the names right so far?"

Charlie: "No, sir, but you came damn close on a couple of them."

Sheen is famous for not remembering names well, or at all.

- Speaking of stand-ins and other folks, remember back in Take This Sabbath Day, where we saw the Supreme Court justices, and one of those actors looked a lot like Ruth Bader Ginsburg?

Isn't this reporter sitting next to Danny in the press briefing room the same person?

- I mentioned the Schlamme shots of Leo watching CJ and the briefing through the window, and the sweeping overhead shot of the auditorium. I also liked the shot of Leo giving the signal to the President while he's on stage, and you see Jed's face on the monitor as his head follows Leo's arm motion. Pretty cool.

- The town hall scenes were filmed at the Colburn School, a music school in downtown Los Angeles. I found this out because the sign outside the room being used by the press calls it the "Toby E. Mayman Recital Hall." That means the school's larger Zipper Hall was used for the auditorium shots.

- Less of an interesting item than a sad one: The political topics covered in this episode from early 2000 include: youth disengagement from politics; younger generations blaming older ones for their lack of opportunities; campaign finance reform to remove corporate "soft money" from elections; the difficulties in finding health care for all Americans; heck, President Bartlet even mentions how one of the town hall attendees called him a socialist. How much progress have we made, in any of these areas, in the past 18 years? Sad to say, not much.


Quotes    

CJ (whispering): "I have a tip."

Danny (whispering): "You do?"

CJ (whispering): "Yes."

Danny: "Okay."

CJ (whispering): "I have a tip and I'm going to give it to you before the others."

Danny: "Are we being watched right now?"

CJ (looks around, whispers): "No."

Danny: "Then why are we talking like this?" 

-----

Sam: "I'm also not wild about that hand-held mic, can we get him wired?"

President: "No, cause with the mic and the stool and the jacket over my shoulder I can do the town hall meeting and then do a couple of sets at the Copa." 

-----

Josh: "It looked, like, you wanted to hug me."

Leo: "Man, did you read that wrong." 

-----

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

• Say farewell to Cathy, the Communications Office assistant (the one whom Sam looks on like a sister). Suzy Nakamura got a part on another series and left the cast after this season. Here's her final appearance:

• Speaking of farewells - Mandy, Mandy, Mandy. You've had so little to do over the past six or eight episodes, and what you've done, you haven't done well. You never had any chemistry with Josh, you screwed stuff up all the time, and you were just generally annoying. Your final scene on The West Wing had you musing about whether or not the President should take off his jacket during the town hall:

And this is the final time we see Mandy, heading down a corridor, disappearing forever (never to be even mentioned again, which is pretty odd when you think about it):

• Back in 20 Hours In L.A., when the President meets Gina and asks her some questions, she tells him, "I know what I'm looking for in a crowd, if that's what you're asking me." Here, as she scans the crowd and notices something odd, she says to herself, "I saw something. I saw something."

• CJ continues to give Carol a hard time about her spelling. Back in Take Out The Trash Day, she got after her for misspelling "Senator." Here, after briefing the press about the military rescue operation:

CJ: "I want to congratulate you, Carol. I really thought I was going to see Saudi Arabia spelled with a Y."

Carol: "CJ, I am a much better speller than you give me credit for."

CJ: "Yes. One L in Tel Aviv." 

• Gail's fishbowl has a space shuttle in it:

• So what's the deal with Josh and Hoynes, exactly? If Josh was helping Hoynes "two years ago," that would have been late 1997-early 1998. What are some other things we know about Josh? We know Donna started working for him "during the campaign" in early 1998, so he was on the Bartlet campaign then. We know he and Mandy had a thing during the campaign, but they broke up in a July (probably 1998, as it was before the election). So could Josh have changed teams from Hoynes to Bartlet around the first of 1998? It's possible.

• A couple of Presidential callbacks: Zoey notices Jed is sweating when she talks to him in the hallway during the town hall prep. He brushes it off, but does it have something to do with his multiple sclerosis?

Also, in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" and A Proportional Response Leo was the one who had to hold the President back from a devastating military strike on Syria. Here, it's Jed who puts a hand on Leo's arm when Leo bristles at the idea of waiting before going after the downed pilot.

Leo does tell Josh he flew planes "in the war" - in Season 5's An Khe we'll learn during the Vietnam War Leo had firsthand experience of what it's like to be shot down in hostile territory (this also helps explain Josh's deference and deep respect in his apology to Leo for bringing up a political upside to rescuing Hotchkiss during his talk with Hoynes). 

• Remember those two skinhead-looking dudes who made Gina nervous outside the restaurant in Los Angeles in 20 Hours In L.A.?

Sorkin confirms in the DVD commentary that they used the same two actors, flying them to Virginia, as the shooters in the assassination-attempt scene.

You never get a really good look at them during this episode, but it is indeed those same two guys from Episode 16. 

DC location shots    

• The exterior shots of the Newseum, in Rosslyn, Virginia (the site of the town hall meeting) were indeed shot there, on North Kent Street.

The Newseum has since moved to downtown Washington, on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol (and I highly recommend it as a site to visit). This area in Rosslyn is now called Freedom Park.

• Here's the building where the shooters were set up:

And here's what that building actually looks like today:

• The jogging meeting between Josh and Hoynes took place on the Arlington Memorial Bridge over the Potomac. That's the back of the Lincoln Memorial in the background:

References to real people    

• Jed is looking forward to a televised softball game between Sacramento State and the University of the Pacific, both real universities.

• Wolf Blitzer and Christiane Amanpour are seen on TV screens in the background,and their CNN network is mentioned.

• President Bartlet is seen drinking out of a Dayton Flyers mug, from the University of Dayton. Martin Sheen is from Dayton.

• The President mentions the daytime drama General Hospital.

• Hoynes is wearing a U.S. Naval Academy T-shirt while jogging, implying he's a graduate of the USNA.

End credits freeze frame: The establishing shot outside the Newseum from the beginning of the episode.