Bartlet's Third State Of The Union - TWW S2E13

Original airdate: February 7, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (34)
Written by: Allison Abner (2) & Dee Dee Myers (3)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (4)

Synopsis

• The State of the Union address appears to be a smash, but while Josh and Joey Lucas wait for polling numbers, something about the speech makes Abbey feel betrayed. A police officer recognized for heroism has an unfortunate secret in his past. Colombian rebels capture some DEA agents. And Ainsley finally meets the President.

"We had a deal."

We don't always get a lot of family-related storylines on The West Wing. I mean, sure, the staff is a family of sorts, a family we almost feel a part of by watching them week after week ... but the real dynamics of people actually related by birth or marriage usually takes a back seat to the political strategies and foreign policy plotlines we get with the Leader of the Free World™. Plus, that kind of thing can tend to get a little soap-opera-y.

This episode (actually the first of a two-parter) sinks us right into the middle of a run of shows that dig fairly deep into family, from the trust issues that husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters have to deal with, to the nagging worry that maybe your children don't quite have the relationship with you that you think they should, to ... well, just stick around through The War At Home and Ellie and Somebody's Going To Emergency, Somebody's Going To Jail (heck, maybe even The Stackhouse Filibuster) and see what I mean. This isn't just a momentary footnote by Aaron Sorkin, though - this family-level background building is going to prove immensely important as we hit the stretch run of the season. Because we're going to learn (if we haven't already) that family isn't just the people we live with that are related to us, they're the people we work together with each and every day, and the sinews of those relationships are the strengths that keep us together when things get tough. And they're going to get tough, believe me.

The big issue here is Abbey. Stockard Channing is back, and boy, is she ever (she earned a nomination for a Supporting Actress Emmy for this episode and the second half of this two-parter, The War At Home, and she earned it). Something about the President's State of the Union speech is bothering her, but we're not sure what it is. Is it that a section about the Violence Against Women act got pulled out? Is it because he suddenly seems to support school uniforms? Is it the last-minute addition about a blue-ribbon commission to study entitlement programs? It seems to be all of those things, and yet none of them. Abbey is ready to tear into Toby for the writing of the speech, but even she isn't exactly sure where to direct her ire:

Abbey: "It was the language."

(...)

Toby: "Believe me, we gave Republicans plenty to be pissed about - the surplus, missile defense, capital gains. And I was just on TV for the 900th time and alienated gun owners, to say nothing of people who own Dodge Durangos. So what exactly was your problem with the language?"

Abbey: "It seemed ..."

Toby: "Abbey -"

Abbey: "I was just thrown by the last minute changes." 

But in a tense conversation with Jed in the White House kitchen we find out what the problem was.

Abbey: "You made a promise. We made a deal."

Jed: "Abbey."

Abbey: "When did you decide you were going to run for a second term?"

Jed: "That's not what tonight's -"

Abbey: "That's all that tonight's speech was about!"

So for the first time we discover Jed and Abbey had agreed on a one-term presidency. While it's not expressly stated here, we can infer that President Bartlet's multiple sclerosis (something we found out about exactly one year ago, on the eve of that season's State of the Union) is the main factor here. With Abbey surreptitiously treating her husband and keeping his illness hidden from all but a dozen or so people during the election campaign, the idea of hiding such a huge secret for yet another campaign and another term just seems too much to handle.

As we've been talking about since The Leadership Breakfast, Leo and Toby (in particular) are moving full-speed ahead on developing a plan for a re-election campaign, and the writing of the State of the Union address as a political selling point was fully a part of that. Nobody else was aware of this "deal" between Jed and Abbey (in fact, there have been comments by the President over the past 35 episodes that appeared to put the lie to that agreement already), and of course the administration staff would be working toward building a case for another term. The President has been sort of edging his way in that direction, almost without admitting it to himself - but the bold bipartisan nature of his speech and the forward-looking calls for agreement and moving past "partisan entrenchment" were giant flashing lights to Abbey signaling the direction Jed wants to go now.

And as a doctor, I think she sees better than anyone what another campaign, another term, another six years in the Oval Office could do to her husband - not to mention the fact that this disease can't be kept a secret forever. The seeds are planted for the Bartlet administration to lay its soul bare, not only in front of the nation, but also in front of the staffers and "family" members who have put their trust in Jed, only to have this huge secret kept from them. Hang on, folks. It's going to be a bumpy ride through the rest of Season 2.

Channing, of course, is outstanding in this confusion, this sudden unmooring that Abbey is going through. The speech was a gut-punch to her, as she instantly realized that it was intended to kick off the re-election campaign without so much as a word of discussion with her ahead of time. And yet, she has to keep that public face of normalcy and happiness after the speech's success. Here she is, smiling and glad-handing well-wishers, just moments after the tense confrontation with her husband behind the scenes (the shot of her through the kitchen door gathering her courage is tremendous):

Abbey also shows that, despite her disappointment with the political events spinning out of her control, she still deeply loves and supports her husband who has perhaps the most difficult and challenging job in the entire world. I love the moment when the President tells her about the DEA agents being held hostage in Colombia, with three hours left to negotiate before a military rescue team will go after them, and even in her anger and disappointment she says, "I'll stay up with you."

The Colombia storyline is another high-stakes foreign policy development, right in the middle of what should have been an overwhelmingly successful night for the administration. Five agents with the DEA were taken hostage by anti-government rebels, and the options are limited. The President is left with trying to negotiate their release, while preparing a military strike to rescue them (one that could ignite an actual war with Colombia). It brings a real awareness of the responsibilities and duties the President has, and the decisions he has to make under intense time pressure without, perhaps, all the information he'd like to have available.

Speaking of not having all the information - the President acknowledged a Detroit police officer for heroism during his address, but soon afterward news comes to the White House that the officer had been accused of using excessive force earlier in his career. It's up to CJ to try to handle the issue, although ... what is she supposed to do about it, exactly? She does discuss the story with the officer, to try to get his side (which doesn't sound all that nefarious, especially considering charges were dropped and the civil suit against him was dismissed). Anyway, we know the media is going to spill the story soon, so CJ is trying to figure out a way to get ahead of it.

Meanwhile, Joey Lucas is back! Fully transformed from the campaign manager of Take This Sabbath Day and now a full-time polling expert, Joey and her sign-language interpreter Kenny are back to pester Josh as they prepare to get some instant nationwide polling numbers following the State of the Union. Naturally Donna is after Josh to ask her out (the sexual tension remains high with those two), and complications ensue when the power goes out at the polling firm's office just before the first numbers are ready.

And then there's Ainsley. As the Capital Beat TV show broadcasts live from the White House with its State of the Union coverage (prompting a legitimate question from the press to CJ, "So why do they get special treatment?" to which CJ's response is a not-very-satisfactory, "Because they're special"), the administration brings out all their spokespeople to appear, from CJ to Toby to Ainsley (being an attractive Republican working in the Democratic White House, it's a pretty good spot for her, even if she hasn't met the President yet):

Ainsley: "I've never met him. I'm an associate counsel. The Chinese food guy's got more access than I do."

Mark: "And yet they have you out here speaking for the White House."

Ainsley: "Yeah! It's a really big night for me!"  

Ainsley indeed enjoys her big night; even sitting in wet paint in the sculpture garden (something CJ did earlier as well) can't ruin her mood, as she enjoys a Pink Squirrel while dancing to "Blame It On The Bossa Nova":

But then Sam's plan to have Ainsley meet the President backfires. She's a bit tipsy, she's in a bathrobe, and she's already told Sam she's terrified to meet President Bartlet - so naturally, Sam has him drop by her office as a total, horrific surprise. This moment is intended for laughs (Ainsley's scream as she throws her drink glass against the wall is pretty funny), but the humiliated, stricken look on her face as the President departs isn't funny at all. It's terrible.

Great job, Emily Procter. Bad form, though, Sam Seaborn.

What we do have to look forward to, though, is the second part of this arc in the next episode. Will the DEA agents be rescued, without kicking off a war in South America? Will Ainsley get a second chance to make a first impression? Will Josh ever get his polling numbers, and will he get up the courage to ask Joey for a date? And how will Abbey and Jed settle things?

We will get a more in-depth feeling about family, though, in both the family-as-relatives sense and the family-we-work-together-with sense. There's so much more power and unity and strength and purpose, in both senses of family, and we'll take a few episodes to explore that. Before all hell breaks loose.



Tales Of Interest!

- Somebody involved in this episode really wanted to give a plug to University of Florida. Note the Florida Gators mug held by the background actress here behind Sam. That mug is being held in a very unusual and unnatural manner, that just happens to clearly show off the logo to the camera. Hmmm.

- As mentioned, Stockard Channing was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy for her performance here and in the next episode.



Quotes    

Josh: "Where the hell you been?"

Joey (through Kenny): "My plane had mechanical difficulties."

Josh: "This is the State of the Union. There was nothing you could do about it?"

Joey (through Kenny): "No. Because as a child I never paid attention during airplane mechanics class."

Josh: "Is this the kind of Noel Coward-esque wit I can expect all night long?"

Joey (through Kenny): "Yes." 

-----

CJ: "You know why I'm not wearing any pants?"

Sam: "I just assumed it was the usual reason."

(...)

Sam: "Where'd you get the bathrobe?"

Carol: "The gym."

Sam: "They have bathrobes at the gym?"

CJ: "In the women's locker room."

Sam: "But not the men's."

CJ: "Yeah."

Sam: "Now that's outrageous. There's a thousand men working here and 50 women - "

CJ: "Yeah, and it's the bathrobes that are outrageous."

-----

Sam: "I think if you said something along the lines of, 'You know, a lot of people assumed you were hired because you're a blonde, Republican sex kitten and they were obviously wrong.' And to keep up the good work."

President: "That's really good."

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

• We saw Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law, Major League) as Rep. Henry Shallick in The Leadership Breakfast. He's back as a Republican guest on Capital Beat; it seems like he's being set up as a recurring character, but as it turns out we won't see Rep. Shallick again.

• The adviser in the Situation Room, Mike Chysler, is played by Glenn Morshower. He is often seen playing military advisers or law enforcement officers, is a familiar voiceover artist (video games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 or Battlefield 3), and had long-running roles in 24 and Friday Night Lights. 

• The Detroit police officer, Jack Sloan, is played by familiar character actor Richard Riehle (Office Space, among many other TV and movie appearances).  

• Ted McGinley is back as Capital Beat host Mark Gottfried.

• It was exactly a year ago (He Shall, From Time To Time ...) that Leo (and we, the viewers) discovered President Bartlet suffers from MS. We've heard very, very little about it since, only Zoey's remark about the President looking flushed in What Kind Of Day Has It Been and Abbey telling the anesthesiologist in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I that he's the fifteenth person in the world to know ("When all this is over, tell the press, don't tell the press. It's entirely up to you."). I can't help but think Leo's quick remark to Jed in the Oval Office ("How you feeling?") is a subtle callback to his illness and his collapse on the brink of the State of the Union the year before.

• I also couldn't help but think the moment where President Bartlet stops to tie his shoe on his way to the House chamber was a callback to the moment when he collapsed in the Oval Office before the State of the Union a year ago. I mean, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but when he stops and stoops down to the floor, the looks on the faces of Leo and Toby and Sam all seem to reflect a concern and worry that the pressure is getting to the President again. Or maybe they're just concerned he's going to be late, I don't know.

DC location shots    

• There don't appear to be any DC location shots in this episode.

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

• The President says Bob Novak (then with CNN) claimed this State of the Union is "the speech of (his) political life."

• Several shots of C-SPAN network coverage of President Bartlet's speech to Congress.

• Josh compares Joey's airplane mechanic joke to the wit of playwright and actor Noel Coward.

• There's a fleeting shot of CNN's John King on TV in the background of the White House reception as Sam enters ("Sam Seaborn, everybody!").

• We see Josh holding a copy of Vogue with actress Charlize Theron on the cover.

End credits freeze frame: The President and his team waiting to enter the House chamber.

The Drop In - TWW S2E12

Original airdate: January 24, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (33)
Story by: Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr. (8)

Directed by: Lou Antonio (1)

Synopsis

• Tempers flare in the Communications office when Toby adds a passage to Sam's speech that has the President scolding environmental groups. Leo tries to convince the President to continue funding a space-based missile defense system. CJ is sent on a mission to stop potential controversy involving a stand-up comedian. And Lord John Marbury returns, this time as Great Britain's ambassador to the United States.

"We can't govern if we don't win."

The "cynicism of attacking your friends for political protection" (in Sam's words) takes center stage in this episode. Toby and Leo continue their work as the self-anointed Committee to Re-elect the President by using a speech to an environmental group as an excuse to rebuke friends on the left, as a substitute for going full-out after their adversaries on the right. Meanwhile, CJ is dispatched on a mission to prevent a comedian's appearance at a charity event from re-igniting controversy over a joke told during the campaign two years ago. In both cases, the administration is scolding its friends in hopes to gain some political cover, which is indeed, as Sam sadly puts it, cynical.

The speech issue nearly tears Sam and Toby apart. Sam is proudly working on what he thinks will be a masterpiece of a speech, a call to arms about protecting the environment and the earth we live on. Toby, who wasn't involved in the decision to have the President speak before the Global Defense Council, realizes a public commitment to left-leaning environmental causes isn't going to help Bartlet's re-election prospects all that much - these groups are going to vote for him anyway, he reasons, but what might be seen as big concessions to the left will just harden opposition on the right and strengthen the cause of a Republican challenger.

Building on we saw in the previous episode, Toby and Leo are starting to develop a re-election strategy pretty much on their own. Together they agree that Bartlet can't be seen beholden to environmental groups, so they come up with adding (or "dropping in") a section to the speech that calls these groups out for not being loud enough in condemning violent extremists. Toby has a cause ready made - radical environmentalists who burned a Colorado ski resort that was encroaching on the habitat of an endangered lynx.

What makes this even more cynical and divisive, of course, is Toby's insistence to keep the drop-in a secret from Sam. Toby doesn't want to deal with Sam's arguments on the subject as he's crafting what he looks upon as one of his crowning speech achievements; also, Toby might be harboring some anger at Sam, perhaps blaming him a little for the humiliation Toby suffered in The Leadership Breakfast (although, what did Sam have to do with that? Nothing!).

(The discussion of the drop-in between Leo and the President gives us a couple of great lines. First, by the President:

 "And we can't take it for granted that everyone pretty much fundamentally opposes arson?" 

Followed by Leo's scientifically inaccurate statement:

Leo: "We'll get you some information on the lynx, which is a kind of opossum, I think."

President: "Okay, well, it's not a kind of opossum, so why don't you get me that information.") 

The President agrees (after Leo reminds him they did something very similar with a Christian group back in Pilot), the speech is delivered, and Sam is crestfallen. He had exhorted his staff to come up with something stirring and inspiring:

"The difference between a good speech and a great speech is the energy with which the audience comes to their feet at the end. Is it polite? Is it a chore? Are they standing up because their boss is standing up? No, we want it to come from their socks."

And instead the audience, after being chastised, applauds politely from their seats:

"They're not standing."

Sam, still in the dark about who was behind the drop in, puts two and two together when both Toby and CJ use the same phrase in addressing the response ("Friends are honest with each other."). And Sam goes off, shoving past Toby and storming to the Oval Office (where he's prevented from seeing the President) before heading off to drown his sorrows. Once Toby tracks him down, Sam really lets him have it:

"You and the President may think they deserved it, but this cynicism of attacking your friends for political protection offends them and it offends me. It offends you, and there's really nothing I can do to make you feel better about that."

Toby's response is that re-election polling numbers are scary at the moment, and he felt the best thing to do - for political purposes - was to use a slapdown of a friendly group as a method to put some space between the administration and the left, perhaps gaining some votes from right of center. Leaving Sam out of the discussion, though, with Toby and Leo essentially running the re-election strategy on their own, turned out to be an unnecessary and hurtful part of the plan.

CJ has a similar situation with Cornelius Sykes, a popular comedian who helped campaign for Bartlet's election in 1998. He's about to be asked to host a charity event the President will attend, but Josh and CJ have concerns Sykes' appearance will stir up press interest in an incident from the campaign. Sykes had made a joke about New York City police shooting a black man, and candidate Bartlet had faced intense pressure to disavow Sykes' comment, which he did not do. Instead the party line given by the campaign was that Jed didn't laugh at the joke. We discover, as CJ and Sykes spar over club sodas, Jed did laugh at the joke, because it was a good joke in context, and the campaign was simply trying to gain political cover - just as the administration was doing now with the speech to the Global Defense Council. Sykes agrees not to take the charity gig, but we are left with the sense that the grimier side of politics is starting to take hold among these staffers, people that we've previously seen upholding some pretty strong moral positions even in the face of doing the easier, more popular thing. Elections have a lot of tactical moves, and they're not all completely on the angels' side of things - and some relationships may end up not being strong enough to withstand the aftereffects.

Something else this episode has? A lot of schadenfreude, or taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Leo is desperate to show the President that an experimental missile defense system will work and be worth the cost, but when a test goes awry and the target is missed by 137 miles, Jed has a wry look of self-satisfaction at the expense of his old friend:

And when Donna brings Josh the news that Lord John Marbury has been named Britain's new ambassador to the United States and will now take up residence right here in Washington, she can't help herself with her look of glee at Josh's discomfort either:

Marbury's arrival and the missile shield come together at the close of the episode, when Marbury (instead of trying to talk the President into supporting the shield, as Leo wanted) asserts the defense program is an expensive boondoggle that will never work; and even if it did, adversaries would eventually come up with other methods to get around it. The discussion leads President Bartlet to hope that strong wills and strong minds might work together for the betterment of humanity:

"They say a statesman is a politician who's been dead for fifteen years. I'd like us to be statesmen while we're still alive."

As we saw with Leo and Toby's handshake at the end of The Leadership Breakfast, the Bartlet re-election campaign has been set in motion. The conflict over the speech between Toby and Sam is a direct outcome of that motion, and we're going to see more and more of that storyline develop, with more and more of the characters becoming involved. It's a real slow-burn part of Season 2, but it's a good one.


Tales Of Interest!

- The producers continue to show off their newly built West Wing set for Season 2. Here we see Leo and Jed make their way down several flights of stairs to the Situation Room, located straight down a couple of flights from the mess. They enter the (wide open) Sit Room through an outer office. This entry to the room will change as the series goes on:

- Sam's speech to Ginger, Bonnie, and the rest of the writing crew in the Roosevelt Room is a reminder of a much different time and a much different direction in American government. It's sad to see this scene from almost 20 years ago and realize not only how little has changed, but how much the current administration is actively working against the goals Sam outlines here:

Sam: "As of today, it shall be the unequivocal position of the United States government that global warming constitutes a clear and present danger to the health and future well-being of this planet and all its inhabitants."

- You may remember in my Noël recap I pointed out how the glass globes and the lamp on President Bartlet's desk had switched sides. Here they are back to the positions we saw prior to Noël, with the lamp on his right and the globes on his left:

- Gail's fish bowl features a missile stuck nose-down in the rocks, an illustration of the failure of the missile defense system.

Quotes    

Mrs. Landingham: "In our day, we knew how to take care of ourselves."

Leo: "Well, in your day, you could pretty much turn back the Indians with a Daniel Boone musket, couldn't you?"

Mrs. Landingham: "Ah, sarcasm. The grumpy man's wit." 

-----

President: "Peanuts. Charlie Brown."

Leo: "I've heard of them. I'm just not conversant in them."

President: "Why?"

Leo: "I've never read the comics."

President: "Leo, were you born at the age of 55?"

Leo: "I know there's a dog." 

-----

Colonel: "Mr. President, approximately three minutes ago a missile was launched with a simulated nuclear warhead from the Kwajalein atoll in the South Pacific."

President: "And it's going to hit my garage in New Hampshire exactly when?"

-----

Sam: "Clean Air Rehabilitation Effort."

CJ: "Yeah."

Sam: "You don't know what it is."

CJ: "It's an effort by which we clean the air and rehabilitate it."

Sam: "Okay, how could you -"

CJ: "I'm not involved in the nuances of environmental policy."

Sam: "Which will come as a relief to environmentalists." 

-----

Josh: "Leo McGarry has nothing but respect and affection for John Marbury."

Donna: "That's what I said."

Josh: "Good, because Leo thinks he's a lunatic."

...

Donna: "You seem threatened by his brilliance."

Josh: "How do you know he's brilliant?"

Donna: "I saw his picture."

----- 

Toby: "Here's what I think ..."

Leo: "Screw the environmental lobby?"

Toby: "Did I say that? Did I say, 'screw the environmental lobby'?"

Leo: "You didn't say anything."

Toby: "That's right, and before I even open my mouth, you decide I'm going to say, 'screw the environmental lobby'!"

Leo: "I apologize."

(pause)

Toby: "There's an extent to which we've got to screw the environmental lobby."

-----

President: "Sweden has a 100 percent literacy rate, Leo, a hundred percent. How do they do that?"

Leo: "Well, maybe they don't and they also can't count."

-----

Leo: "Sir, I really think you should know -"

President: "Yes?"

Leo: "- that nine out of the ten criteria that the DOD lays down for success in these tests were met."

President: "The tenth being?"

Leo: "We missed the target."

President: "Damn!"

Leo: "Sir -"

President: "So close!"

Leo: "Mr. President -"

President: "It's that tenth one. See, if there were just nine criteria ..."

----- 

President: "It would be hypocrisy not to hold our friends to the same standard."

Leo: "Yes."

President: "Yet it seems strange to score political points by doing the right thing."

Leo: "Yeah."

President: "I'm victim to my own purity of character."

Leo: "Whatever."

-----

Sam: "Final draft?"

Ginger: "Well, it's the 12th draft. Whether or not it's the final draft is up to you."

Sam: "Is that sass?"

(beat) 

Ginger: "Yeah."

-----

President: "Bryce Davis said if I keep this up, he's going to encourage Seth Gillette in a third-party bid."

Leo: "What'd you say?"

President: "I said for fifty bucks and a ride to the airport, Gillette could have the job right now."

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

• Air Force Colonel Chase is back in the Situation Room, played by David Graf (the Police Academy movies). We saw him previously in The Portland Trip.

• Cornelius Sykes is played by Rocky Carroll (Roc, Chicago Hope, NCIS).

• Roger Rees returns as Lord John Marbury, previously seen in Lord John Marbury and He Shall, From Time To Time ...

• As Leo is convincing the President to go along with a mild rebuke of environmentalists, he reminds Jed that they did a similar thing with Rev. Al Caldwell when his Christian group refused to condemn religious extremism a year and a half ago (seen in Pilot).

• Sam brings up Toby's embarrassment at the hands of Republicans in the previous episode (The Leadership Breakfast), asking if Toby blames him for the debacle.

• President Bartlet mentions Seth Gillette as a possible third-party challenger. We'll actually see Gillette in an upcoming episode.

• The Martin Sheen jacket flip, his unique way of putting on a jacket due to an arm injury he suffered at birth.

• Nancy returns! Played by Renee Estevez, Martin Sheen's daughter, she appeared several times in Season 1 but this is her first sighting in Season 2.

DC location shots    

• I do not believe there are any Washington DC locations appearing in this episode.

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

• The Oriental Hotel in Bangkok is indeed a historic location. While I haven't found evidence that the author James Michener's typewriter is on display there, the hotel does have a suite named after him. 

• With the receiving of several ambassadors in the episode, some real-life heads of state are mentioned (King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand, King Carl Gustaf of Sweden, and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain); also Prince Bandar bin Sultan was indeed Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States at the time.

• Leo prods Mrs. Landingham with a reference to Daniel Boone.

• We get a whole thing between Jed and Leo about Charlie Brown, Lucy, and the Peanuts comic strip ("I believe the word you're looking for is, 'good grief.'").

• In Season 1 there was a human-figure shooting range target on the wall of Josh's office. In Season 2, after he was shot, that disappeared - and now we see it (or one like it) in the Communications Office bullpen:

• The comedian Joey Bishop is mentioned, as well as early-20th-century entertainer and humorist Will Rogers.

• CJ expresses her adoration for former Monkee and TV star Davy Jones; she also mentions journalists Cokie Roberts, Diane Sawyer, and Lesley Stahl as previous recipients of the Matrix award from New York Women in Communication.

• Apollo 11 and astronaut Neil Armstrong are used by Leo in defense of the missile shield.

• Lord John refers to Josh being shot at Rosslyn and his recovery when he tells him, "The prayers of millions were answered."

• CJ and Cornelius Sykes bring up the comedy club chain Catch a Rising Star. 

• We see CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour on TV in Leo's office.

• Lord John's lineage includes British royalty Queen Victoria, King George III, King George I, King Charles I, King James I, and Mary, Queen of Scots.

• Product placement: Bonnie appears to be using an HP laptop (and I believe there's a Gateway in the Roosevelt Room as well; I still can't figure out the logo on CJ's laptop, though - is that Gateway?):

• We see Seattle's Best coffee cups twice, once in the Roosevelt Room and once next to CJ in the briefing room:

(That also looks like a Fritos bag in the upper left corner of the shot.)

• Sam has a couple of Heinekens, while Toby has a Canadian brand of beer (perhaps Molson):

End credits freeze frame: Lord John Marbury delivering his credentials in the Oval Office.

The Leadership Breakfast - TWW S2E11

Original airdate: January 10, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (32)
Story by: Paul Redford (5)

Directed by: Scott Winant (1)

Synopsis

• A bipartisan meeting to kick off the new year and a new Congress finds the Bartlet administration caught by surprise when a Republican Senate staffer outmaneuvers Toby. Sam looks into moving the press out of the West Wing. Efforts to atone for Leo's comments about a journalist's shoes snowball out of control.

"The legislative session hasn't begun and we can't put a forkful of waffles in our mouth without coughing up the ball. You got beat."

The West Wing is a television drama set in the world of politics, but it's not necessarily a purely political show. We get human stories, relationships, moral dilemmas, workplace issues, even some comedy for the well-rounded viewer - but then, every so often, we do indeed get a story based on the exercise of political power, how it's wielded, who wins and who loses. What can make these stories even more interesting is the fact that our heroes don't always come out on top, despite their seemingly unbeatable smarts and cleverness. Sometimes that's due to events spinning out of control (The State Dinner is a good example. or this season's The Lame Duck Congress), but it can be more interesting when it's due to overreach, hubris, or pure miscalculation (as in Five Votes Down, or here).

Toby (and the administration) get outfoxed by some even-more-clever adversaries in Congress, with the long game of the next Presidential campaign coming into play. While in some ways it's a sort of callback to the image of the Bartlet administration's listless struggles in Season 1 leading up to Let Bartlet Be Bartlet (whether or not that powerlessness was actually earned, as I have pointed out), it's really intriguing to see these smart, calculating political minds get outplayed by the opposition.

The White House is setting up a breakfast meeting for the top folks from the Democratic administration and the Republican-led Congress to kick off the new year. On its face it's an opportunity for the two sides to work together and find common ground, but in reality it's simply a public relations show from which no one expects any real progress:

CJ: "It's a breakfast to trumpet a new spirit of bipartisanship cooperation and understanding in a new year, no one's going to be listening to each other anyway."

The entire buildup to the breakfast is about seating arrangements, which topics are off the table for discussion, and the amount of time given to the topics that are agreed upon to be talked about. In fact, CJ meets with congressional staff members a couple of days before the event even takes place to hammer out the wording of the post-breakfast press briefings.

And this is where the outmaneuvering begins. Ann Stark, chief of staff for the Senate Majority Leader, asks for the congressional briefing to be held at the Capitol instead of outside the White House. CJ flatly refuses, sticking with the traditional plan of congresspeople talking to the press outside the building where the meeting took place while she does her briefing in her own press room. Stark goes over CJ's head, directly to Toby. Those two have some kind of past political relationship (Toby later says to Ann, "Ten years ago we used to be able to sit down, we'd order a couple of bourbons, we'd talk about health care, we'd talk about the minimum wage."), and Toby has reasons of his own for going off the reservation: he's frustrated over the fact that nothing of any real relevance or meaning is going to happen as a result of this breakfast. He sees the meeting as an opportunity to make progress in areas where the administration wants to move the needle.

Toby demands some time be used to discuss the patients' bill of rights, and also throws out the threat that if a minimum-wage-hike bill is bottled up by Republicans, the Democrats will simply offer it as an amendment on every bill up for a vote. Stark agrees to the health care discussion, in exchange for moving the entire press briefing (yes, CJ, too) away from the White House to the Capitol. Toby sees this as a good trade and orders CJ to make it happen. When the briefing comes around, though, Stark's boss is nowhere to be seen and the Republican congressmen open fire on the administration for strongarm tactics in threatening them over the minimum wage, claiming Bartlet sandbagged the entire bipartisan goals of the breakfast before it even was held.

Of course this was Stark's plan all along. She wanted to use Toby's words to her to paint the administration as a bully, then keep the Senate Majority Leader out of the fray so he could come in later to smooth the waters - in essence, staking his claim as a frontrunner for the Republican nomination in the presidential contest coming up in 2002:

Toby: "When are you going to announce?"

Stark: "Announce what?"

Toby: "That he's running for President."

Stark: "I'm pretty sure we just did."

It's a pure political storyline, one we get once in a while, and nicely crafted. I particularly enjoyed the scene of the press conference held outside the Capitol: CJ and Toby are watching TV intently in their offices, CJ thinking out loud to Carol why the Senate Majority Leader is begging out with a "sore throat;" she puts it all together and realizes it's a trap just before the trap is sprung with Toby's quote; then CJ and Toby on the phone with Toby struggling to figure out a response. Add in some great dramatic underscoring music by Snuffy Walden and it's a gripping little scene.

Meanwhile, a lightweight comedic running subplot involves growing complications as staffers try to apologize to New York Times columnist Karen Cahill, who is apparently powerful enough and intimidating enough that Leo feels it necessary to make up for saying something uncomplimentary about her shoes. Not so necessary that he does it himself, though; he wants to send Josh, but Josh delegates the task to Sam, which may or may not be a good plan:

Sam: "I don't do well with Karen."

Donna: "In what way?"

Sam: "I get nervous."

Donna: "What happens?"

Sam: "I become unimpressive."

Donna: "In what way?"

Sam: "In many ways."

Donna: "You don't fall down, do you?"

Sam: "Once."

Sam does not fall down in his dinner meeting with Cahill, but when he's later reflecting on his triumphant apology for Leo, he realizes he may have mixed up Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan when talking about nuclear weapons:

Sam: "Kazakhstan is a country four times the size of Texas and has a sizable number of nuclear missile silos ... Kyrgyzstan is on the side of a hill near China and has mostly nomads and sheep."

So now Donna is told to go to an art exhibit where Cahill will be in attendance, so she can correct Sam's misstatement on former Soviet republics. Donna pulls it off with aplomb and great success ... until a package arrives addressed to Josh that contains her underwear, which apparently fell out of her pants and onto the floor in front of Cahill. The look on Donna's face as Josh holds her underwear aloft is, well ... just look:

Karen Cahill 3, White House staff 0.

There's also a small plotline about Sam wanting to move the press out of the White House and across the street to the Old Executive Office Building. Unbeknownst to CJ, who thinks it's a terrible idea, he and Josh add a question about the topic to the monthly DNC telephone poll - and when a member of the White House press pool actually is one of the people called as part of the poll, CJ brings her wrath down upon those two guys:

CJ: "Fred and Ethel, would you follow me please?"

Josh (to Sam): "She's talking about us."  

I think Aaron Sorkin was pretty smart to have these two small, unimportant, comedic storylines included with the main story of Toby and the White House getting punked by a Senate staffer, showing she's every bit as smart and clever and capable as our West Wing regulars. What we're left with is the sinking realization that despite the lofty goals and proposals that might be driving the administration, the political game never ends. There's always someone jockeying for power and position, sometimes they're better than you, and you have to bring your A game and stay on your toes every day. Otherwise you'll be left playing catch up and burning more political capital and energy just to stay even.

What we're also left with, though, is the committed staff dedicated to getting things done and improving the country in the ways they think best, and if that means convincing President Bartlet to get his reelection bid underway two years ahead of the election, that's what they need to do. The final discussion between Leo and Toby actually kicks off a story arc that will lead us into Season 3:

Leo (to Toby): "Shake my hand. (They do.) We just formed it."

Toby: "Formed what?"

Leo: "The Committee to Re-elect the President." 

Tales Of Interest!

- The cold open is like a mini-play all by itself. We have Josh and Sam, bundled against the cold (with the White House heat malfunctioning), trying to start a fire in the Mural Room fireplace; CJ, Ed, and Larry (also wrapped in coats) trying to work out the complicated seating arrangements for the breakfast, and a stocking-capped Donna shuttling back and forth between the two groups. It's tightly written, with some good comic dialogue between Sam and Josh (the discussion of spruce versus hardwood and drying out the wet wood in the fire is a hoot), and it all leads up perfectly to Charlie's final line:

Charlie: "Mr. President, you know how you told me not to wake you up unless the building was on fire?"

Speaking of that fire-building scene, take a look at this image from Six Meetings Before Lunch, which aired nine months before this episode:

That shows a fire merrily burning in the Mural Room fireplace, which appears to be the exact same fireplace Sam and Josh are working on here:

So it doesn't seem possible, as the plaque says, that this fireplace has been welded shut since 1896. In addition, the entire interior of the White House was completely rebuilt during the Truman administration between 1949 and 1952. Here's what it looked like in 1950:

No fireplace welding from 1896 is going to survive that kind of reconstruction. (The Truman Balcony, which President Bartlet mentions in the episode, was added to the White House in 1948, just prior to this complete interior renovation.)

- It's both interesting and sad that the topics the Democrats and Republicans were fighting over in 2001 continue to be the same issues we can't find agreement on almost 20 years later: health care, the minimum wage, tax cuts. Also, the fact that the major sticking points are what words are used to describe proposals (patients' bill of rights vs. Comprehensive Access and Responsibility Act; tax cuts vs. tax relief or 'income enhancement') or the difference between a two-year or three-year phase-in of a minimum wage hike ... so much energy is expended for so little actual progress. I guess that's government in a nutshell.

- Tying in reality and The West Wing timeline: Congressman Shallick says the 107th Congress hasn't yet begun its session; the real 107th Congress actually convened January 3, 2001, or just a week before this episode aired.

- It's pretty hard to make out what's in Gail's fishbowl this time. Other websites say it's a fire engine, a nod towards the antics of Josh and Sam in the Mural Room. I guess I'll buy that; I can't really tell for certain.

- There are a couple of neat script callbacks that you may not catch unless you're like me and dig waaay too deep into things. For one, (and this may be a bit of a stretch, but it fits) I mentioned the energy expended on the semantics of what each party wanted to call certain proposals, with the differences not so much in the actual plans but just in the terms used to describe them. There's kind of a preview of this in the fire-building scene:

Josh (setting logs in the fireplace): "You want to stand them in a tripod, right?"

Sam: "Yeah, standing three sticks on an end and slanting them to a common center."

Josh: "Isn't that a tripod?"

Sam: "Yeah, but ..."

Josh: "You just thought you'd say more words." 

Sam: "Yeah."

The other script callback is clear as a bell. When Toby makes his threat to Stark about adding the minimum wage hike to "everything that moves," she replies with "Say that again?" At the press conference, when the reporter quotes Toby's words in the question to Congressman Thomas, the congressman responds with "Could you say that again, please?" While in neither case does Toby or the reporter actually "say it again," the repeated rhetorical device used by Sorkin is kind of neat.

- This is Scott Winant's first shot at directing the series, but he shows he's paid attention. He makes great use of all the windows on the set, with this clever shot in CJ's office (we see Carol out at her desk through the window, with CJ reflected in the other set of windows with the blinds closed):

- John Spencer was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor Emmy for this episode (along with In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part I). Richard Schiff was also nominated for the same award for this episode and the upcoming 17 People. Bradley Whitford ended up winning that Emmy for this season; Schiff had won the Supporting Actor Emmy the previous year. (Spencer will get his, not to worry.)


Quotes    

Donna: "To move Jankowicz, we've got to move either the House or Senate whip."

Josh and Sam (together): "House."

Donna: "Why?"

Sam: "Cause life is tough in the big cruel world, and if he doesn't like it, he can kiss me."

Donna: "So, the spirit of bipartisanship begins." 

-----

Josh: "And what stupid-ass Irish thing did you say to Karen Cahill that you now need me to apologize for at Ben and Sally's like a little girl?"

(Leo stares at Josh)

Josh (sheepishly): "Let me tell you what was surprising about that moment just then." 

-----

Ann: "I think you're going to have to start getting next to the idea that your party isn't in the majority." 

Toby: "My party's in the White House."

Ann: "A building to which the Constitution does not endow sovereign power."

-----

President: "Donna wants me to call Karen Cahill and make it clear she wasn't hitting on her when she gave her her underwear."

Leo: "Yeah, that's cause I made fun of her shoes and then Sam said there were nuclear weapons in Kyrgyzstan and Donna went to clear up the mix up and accidentally left her underwear."

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

• We get to see Ed and Larry, together again!

• Ann Stark is played by Felicity Huffman, who had previously worked with Sorkin on Sports Night. Her big fame with a role on Desperate Housewives was yet to come.

• Congressman Henry Shallick of Missouri is played by Corbin Bernsen (L.A. Law, Major League, Psych). A recognizable star at this point, his appearance only via the in-world TV screen would seem to imply Shallick as an important recurring character; however, he will appear on only one more episode. (Also, note the CND logo on the screen to the left; that's the cable news network invented for The West Wing back in Season 1.)

• A quick callback to the events of Noël and Josh's talk with therapist Dr. Keyworth, as Leo asks if he is feeling all right ("I'm going to ask you once a day, okay?").

• We get a mention of both Toby's and Leo's ex-wives, and the rules about what they could and couldn't talk about.

• Ivan Allen is back as newscaster Roger Salier. We saw him first in A Proportional Response, as an anchor for CND; then he was a reporter for the fictional local Channel 5 in The White House Pro-Am; and back as an anchor for the real NBC Channel 4 in Washington in In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part I. Is he now with MSNBC? Or is this still WRC-TV? There's definitely the NBC peacock logo on the screen; I just can't tell if that's supposed to read MSNBC under it.

• As I mentioned, with the Leo/Toby talk at the end of the episode, we kick off a long story arc with the re-election campaign of President Bartlet. I keep saying how Season 2 is one of the best seasons of television anywhere; long overarching storylines are one of the reasons, and here's the beginning of one.

• So what happened to Steve Onorato, the aide to the Senate Majority Leader that we saw dealing with White House staffers back in Let Bartlet Be Bartlet? Now Ann Stark is doing all the work for the Majority Leader ... she does tell Toby she "just got here," but when he says her predecessor wasn't good at playing the game, she says, "Maybe that's why they gave me her job." So she doesn't mean Steve ...

DC location shots    

• The press conference after the breakfast is held with the Capitol in the background (not even close to the Capitol steps, the location Stark was insisting upon, but definitely on location). This appears to be next to the Ulysses Grant monument, pretty close to the same area where Leo and Josh met in In The Shadow of Two Gunmen Part I, when Leo asked Josh to go to New Hampshire and check out Jed's early campaign.

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

• Josh compares the chilly White House to the movie Ice Station Zebra.

• We have mentions of former Presidents Benjamin Harrison (and his log cabin made of spruce); Andrew Johnson (who sat by that fireplace in the Mural Room); Harry Truman's balcony; James Monroe and his doctrine; and John Adams (as well as non-president Alexander Hamilton and their mutual dislike for political parties).

• President Bartlet says he won't have to be Officer Krupke if the breakfast finishes up and everybody leaves. Krupke is a character in the musical and movie West Side Story.

• Leo asks Josh to go to dinner at "Ben and Sally's" in order to clear up his comment about Karen Cahill's shoes. While not expressly named as such, this is an obvious reference to former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn. At the time of this episode, Bradlee was retired as the Post's editor but served as the newspaper's vice president at large.

• There was a London-based military and logistics consulting firm called Global Strategies Group at the time of this episode. I'm pretty sure that's not the polling group employed by the DNC.

• We see the congressional press conference carried on C-SPAN. There's also a clear NBC peacock logo on the screen where Ann Stark is watching the news when Toby comes to see her - it might even be an MSNBC logo, it's hard to tell.

• CJ calls Sam and Josh "Fred and Ethel," a reference to the Fred and Ethel Mertz, neighbors of the Ricardos on the I Love Lucy television show.

• Product placement: Ann Stark has a Dean & DeLuca bag when she brings out the Vermont maple syrup can for Toby.

End credits freeze frame: Leo and Toby in the final scene in the Oval Office, establishing the Committee to Re-elect the President.