18th And Potomac - TWW S2E21

Original airdate: May 9, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (42)
Story by: Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr. (9)

Directed by: Robert Berlinger (2)

Synopsis

• As the public announcement of President Bartlet's MS looms, the staff urgently presses for a decision on reelection. Meanwhile, the administration faces dire poll results from Joey Lucas, a military coup in Haiti, and congressional pushback about paying for the government's lawsuit against Big Tobacco. And then fate intervenes with an unexpected jolt.

"Thank you, but I'm buying this car myself. This car is going to feel good."

We all know what happens at the end of this episode - the tragic thunderbolt out of the blue that's going to echo throughout the upcoming season finale. If you don't know what happens, why are you reading this blog anyway? And go, right now, and watch it. Trust me, it's worth it.

Rather than dealing with that event upfront, I'm going to work through this like Aaron Sorkin and Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr. did, talking about what we know as we know it. And we'll deal with the hammer coming down when we get there.

Everybody is upset. Everybody is tense, everybody is on edge, everybody is snapping at each other (well, not Mrs. Landingham, she's in her usual happy mood because she's buying herself a brand new car for the first time). Leo is annoyed with Josh over the tobacco lawsuit funding:

Leo and Jed are annoyed with each other thanks to dangerous developments in Haiti:

Abbey is annoyed with both Sam and Babish over not feeling respected, as well as a little defensive for how she's dealt with Jed's MS over the years:

And Sam is none too happy to be dealing with Abbey, either:

Why is everybody grouchy? Well, first off, Joey Luca's poll results are a real downer, as her questions about a hypothetical governor hiding his health problems in order to win an election don't bode well for President Bartlet. 71% of voters say they won't vote for a candidate with a degenerative disease, including 78% of women over 55. Over 60% of Democrats and liberals say they wouldn't vote for a candidate who lied about his health. When the President asks Joey if there's any good news in the poll results, she has a two-word answer.

"No, sir."

The decision has been made to go public with President Bartlet's condition, as well as the fact he concealed his MS from the public during the campaign. In secret meetings in a basement room, the staffers decide to get 30 minutes of airtime on the networks this upcoming Wednesday, to have the President and the First Lady answer questions one-on-one (well, two-on-one, to be honest, but you get what I mean) on live television. That will be followed by a press conference to deal with the press corps as a whole, but there's a problem:

Sam: "Hang on. If we take him from the Mural Room to the press conference, isn't a smart reporter going to ask, 'Mr. President, are you planning on seeking reelection?'"

CJ (CJ and Toby exchange exasperated looks): "A smart reporter ...  (scoffs) Sam, Ted Baxter is going to ask, 'Mr. President, are you planning on seeking reelection?'"

Sam: "So, we're going to need an answer to that, too." 

Nobody knows what the President's thoughts are on seeking reelection, and they're going to have to know by Wednesday evening. In a neat scene towards the end of the episode, each staffer comes into Leo's office - first Toby, then Josh, then CJ, finally Sam - each of them demanding that a decision on reelection be made, and each of them getting reassured by Leo that a meeting is on tap for that very night.

Otherwise, in the course of this stressful day, the administration is dealing with a developing coup in Haiti. The military, led by a Colonel Bazan, put down a rally in support of newly elected President Dessaline, killing two people in the process. Members of Dessaline's cabinet have been arrested and military units are stationed outside every police precinct. Dessaline, who hasn't even been inaugurated yet, is missing. Bartlet is beside himself, both at military interference in the outcome of a free election and at the fact that his administration encouraged Dessaline to run in the first place.

It eventually turns out that Dessaline is hiding in the trunk of a car driven by an American official in Haiti to attend the inauguration. On President Bartlet's order, the car is allowed to enter the American embassy. Meanwhile, the aircraft taking the non-essential Americans out of the country is boarded by Haitian soldiers. Three of them are killed before the plane makes an emergency takeoff and departs Port-au-Prince. The pressure is rising on the administration, with the Haitian president-elect hiding in the American embassy and three Haitian soldiers killed by American forces.

Pressure is rising on the domestic front, too, as the rising cost of the government's case against the tobacco industry is causing concern in Congress. The House subcommittee in charge of funding the lawsuit is balking at providing more money, with two Democrats on the "no" side - not because of loyalty to the tobacco industry, but because of serious concerns with the merits of the government's case. Josh meets with the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, and then with the two recalcitrant Democrats themselves, but can't make any progress. He later tells Leo he's a bit hesitant to push too much, because one of those Democrats is also a key member of the Judiciary Committee and he's afraid of making too many enemies, considering what may be yet to come from Congress after the President's health announcement. Leo isn't having any of that:

Leo: "Both of you listen. We're not gonna stop, soften, detour, postpone, circumvent, obfuscate, or trade a single one of our goals to allow for whatever extracurricular nonsense is coming our way in the next few days, weeks and months."

Toby: "When did we decide this?"

Leo: "Just now."

Toby brings Donna in on the MS secret, because he knows Josh is going to need all the support he can get and it can only help if Donna has the information she needs. This leads to a couple of touching moments: First, Donna provides quite a contrast with her personal, caring reaction of hearing the news as compared to Toby's initial reaction of anger and political outcomes when he found out in 17 People:

Toby: "You're the first person on the assistant level to find out. Margaret doesn't know, Bonnie and Ginger don't know. Donna, Mrs. Landingham doesn't know."

Donna: "Is the President in a lot of pain or discomfort right now?" 

And second, when Josh is still trying to make up reasons why he's needed for a late-night meeting with the President and Donna lets him know she knows:

Donna: "Josh ..."

Josh: "Yeah?"

(a long, awkward pause) 

Donna (stammering): "Um ... I'm trying to ...  see, this is why I'll never have a career as a -"

Josh: "Donna, what?"

Donna (quickly): "Sagittarius."

(Josh stares, thunderstruck)

Josh: "Are you all right?"

Josh later takes Toby to task, a little bit, for telling Donna before he did, but Toby makes the point that Josh hadn't done it yet, and also admits her reaction to the news was better than his own:

Josh: "You told Donna."

Toby: "Yeah."

Josh: "Why didn't you let me?"

Toby: "You hadn't yet."

Josh: "How'd she take it?"

Toby: "If everybody out there takes it the way she did, we may be okay. If a few more people in here took it the way she did, that'd be all right, too."

Josh: "Was that for me?"

Toby: "That was for me." 

That's good writing.

And now, the thunderclap. Mrs. Landingham is buying a car, the first new car she's ever had, the first car she's bought on her own, since her late husband always got something dependable from Calvin Hilly in Concord. She's paying full sticker price, she tells Charlie, because government ethics regulations make it a crime to accept any gifts greater than $20. She holds firm even when Jed quotes her the section from the regulations saying any discount or bargain available to the public at large wouldn't be an ethical violation. This is all playing out like one of Sorkin's humorous C or D subplots, to leaven the drama and heft of the MS story and the Haiti coup.

Jed tells Mrs. Landingham to bring her car by the White House after she picks it up, because he has something he wants to tell her. Obviously, he's going to bring his trusted assistant in on his health condition and the upcoming public announcement.

And off she goes.

And then ...

Charlie: "Leo, there was an accident at 18th and Potomac. Mrs. Landingham was driving her car back here."

Leo: "What happened?"

Charlie: "There was a drunk driver and they ran the light at 18th and Potomac. They ran it at a high speed."

Leo: "Charlie, is she all right?"

Charlie: "No. She's dead."

Charlie, holding the phone in shock, as if he can't believe what he's just been told. Leo, his face frozen, knowing he has to bring this news to Jed. Which he does, walking to the Oval Office by way of the outside Portico, seeing the President working through the wavy, distorted glass:

A shot of Leo, uncertainly looking through that glass as he gathers himself:

And then we see, but do not hear, Leo telling Jed the news he doesn't want to say and Jed doesn't want to hear, with the distortions of the antique glass in the doors heightening the impact of the moment:

(In the DVD commentary Sorkin and Berlinger discuss how some people on the production wanted to replace the glass for this scene, to show it clearly and undistorted. I think the decision to keep it this way was perfect.)

So as plans are made, plans to announce earthshaking news to the public, plans to make a decision on reelection, plans to deal with Haiti and the tobacco industry ... fate brings a devastating tragedy to bear right in the middle. What's next?

One of the best episodes in the history of television. That's what's next.



Tales Of Interest!

- The events of this episode take place over the course of a Monday (it's noted a couple of times that the Wednesday interview/press conference will be the day after tomorrow) in May (CJ remarks how the networks won't want to give up a Thursday night during May sweeps, one of the nationwide Nielsen TV rating periods). Stay with me here - the timing expressly laid out in the previous episodes, starting with The Stackhouse Filibuster on a Friday in late March, has the events of The Fall's Gonna Kill You occurring early in the third week of April. That's when Josh tells Joey she has to put together her poll and get it in the field in 96 hours. She urgently brings the poll results to the White House in this episode. Trouble is, the first Monday in May, 2001, was May 7, which is a full three weeks after Josh met with Joey about getting that poll out in four days. Oh, those wacky timelines!

- For the first time, we see an elevator in the White House, bringing Sam and Toby down to the basement level.

In previous episodes we've only seen people taking a winding staircase past the Mess to the lower levels containing the Situation Room and Ainsley's office. Speaking of Ainsley's office, the conference room we see used for the secret "Sagittarius" meetings here is the same set as Ainsley's office area, with walls moved around. (Also, I thought it was a little weird that everybody enters the room from the floor above, coming down that little staircase - while at the same time there is a door at the other end of the room that opens up onto that floor. You can even see a guard's shadow through the frosted glass of that door. Why wouldn't people just come in through that door? I mean, other than this guy who brings a message to CJ:)

- A couple of nice directorial touches by Robert Berlinger: First, we see CJ during a press briefing, while at the same time we see CJ on the TV giving the press briefing.

We've seen this before (I mentioned it when Charlie meets the President back in A Proportional Response), and in the DVD commentary it's mentioned this character-plus-same-character-on-a-TV-screen was a hallmark of Sorkin's previous series Sports Night.

Second, this dramatic uplighting in Josh's office as he and Donna talk. It's, well, dramatic, making it appear the only lighting in the room is being reflected off the papers on Josh's desk.

- Speaking of the DVD commentary, this episode is the first time we learn Mrs. Landingham's first name (the President calls her "Delores"). In the commentary, Kathryn Joosten says her character didn't have a first name at the beginning of the series, and she thought she'd be able to choose her own first name. She was disappointed, though, because after choosing "Margaret" the show runners told her there was already another character with that name.

- Also on the DVD commentary, Sorkin makes quite a howler of a statement. In the scene where Sam tells Abbey they had used the basement conference room for planning some of the millennium things, Sorkin remarks:

Sorkin: "But I just noticed a mistake I made. We never say what year it is, on this show, you just never do. Um, cause if you say, I mean this show, uh, has a parallel universe and if you say if it's 2003, well, George W. Bush is President, it's 2003. Anyway, Sam just said they used this room to plan some millennium activities. Um, which means they were in office, uh, in the year 2000. That was a mistake, we don't do that on the show."

Well, Mr. Writer-Man Sorkin, you yourself wrote a conversation between Sam and Toby in In Excelsis Deo where they argued about whether or not the upcoming millennium would begin in 2000 or in 2001:

Toby: "It is not the new millennium, the year 2000 is the last year of the millennium, it's not the first year of the next one."

So you've already established, in the tenth episode of the entire series, that President Bartlet was in office in 2000. Also, just three episodes ago, in 17 People, you had Toby say outright that the upcoming election is in 2002:

Toby: "Leo, has there been a discussion in some room, someplace - anywhere, on any level, about Hoynes being dropped from the ticket in 2002?"

If you thought this offhand remark by Sam was a writing mistake you made, Aaron, well, you've been making those mistakes consistently for a year and a half.

- Let's take a look at the titular intersection in Washington, DC. We know Mrs. Landingham was bringing her new car back to the White House from the dealership. Charlie tells Leo a drunk driver ran the light at 18th and Potomac, running into Mrs. Landingham's car. That intersection is in far southeast DC, quite a distance from the White House.

It's also a quiet residential area, directly across from the Congressional Cemetery, and it doesn't appear there'd be any car dealerships around. The DC Jail and Correctional Treatment Facility is right nearby, but probably not any places to buy a new car.

Furthermore, 18th Street dead ends at Potomac Avenue, and there's just a stop sign there, not a light (this is looking south on 18th, with Potomac crossing directly ahead and the Congressional Cemetery across the street).

I guess Sorkin just liked the sound of "18th and Potomac," because that intersection doesn't make any logical sense in context.

Quotes    

President: "Where are we going?"

Leo: "The basement."

President: "Why?"

Leo: "'Cause I don't like the way it looks, seven of us meeting in the middle of the night."

President: "You like the way it looks if we're meeting in the basement?" 

-----

CJ: "Sam, he's going to go on TV and say he lied, I don't want him doing it behind the seal of the President."

Sam: "You think without the seal, people are going to forget he's the President?" 

-----

McNally: "Jeff, what's the latest estimate?"

Jeff: "It's about 500 soldiers, maybe 300 of them with AR-15s."

Leo: "We sold those to them, right?"

McNally: "Well, until a few hours ago they were on our side."

-----

Steve: "CJ, is the US prepared to invade Haiti?"

CJ: "It should be clear that we're talking about two separate issues - one is a democratically elected president whose people are being denied their leader by an armed militia, the other is the lives of the Americans in the embassy and the American Marines who are guarding them." 

Steve: "You didn't answer my question."

CJ: "How about that."

-----

Hackett: "Between friends ..."

CJ: "Yeah?"

Hackett: "Is the water over your head?"

CJ: "No. The water is exactly at my head."

-----

President: "I don't want to make the same mistakes over again."

Leo: "Not when there are so many new mistakes we can make."

-----

Abbey: "Sure you don't want some acetylsalicylic acid?"

(Sam looks at her blankly)

Abbey: "Aspirin, my brother."

Sam (smiling): "What a dumb major you had."

-----

Abbey: "When did I stop being Dr. Bartlet? When in the campaign did I decide that women were going to like me more if I called myself  'Mrs.'? When did I decide that women were that stupid?"

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

• Congressman Andy Ritter, ranking minority member of the House Subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, State and the Judiciary, is played by John Rubenstein (Family, Crazy Like A Fox, The Boys From Brazil).

(By the way, wouldn't the subcommittee in charge of appropriations for the Justice department already include the judiciary? Why would these be listed separately? At least as of 2019 it's officially named the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies, which makes more sense.)

• Congressmen Warren and Rossiter are played by Richard McGonagle (left, lots of voice work in video games and animated series, as well as appearances in shows like Third Rock From The Sun and The Practice) and Robert Walden (right, All The President's Men, Lou Grant, Brothers)

• The network executive Paul Hackett is played by familiar face Peter Michael Goetz (the Father Of The Bride movies, Jumpin' Jack Flash, Glory). We'll assume Hackett is with NBC, as that's the network that broadcasts Dateline (as well as The West Wing).

• The badass National Security Adviser Nancy McNally is back, played by Anna Deavere Smith:

(We don't get to see Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Fitzwallace (John Amos) in this episode, but we hear President Bartlet order that he be briefed and that's who's on the other end of the phone call above.) 

• In the course of ordering the removal of non-essential personnel from Haiti, the President mentions "pulling nine dead bodies out of Colombia" - a reference to the failed hostage rescue mission in The War At Home.

• We see those old-school pagers again, this time on Josh's belt:

• Sam's been wearing monogrammed shirts pretty much all season. They're still wrong, by the way, reading sNs instead of the sSn they should (the initial of the last name is supposed to be the large initial in the center, not the one for his middle name, Norman):

• I'm not sure if the name has been mentioned before, but Abbey and Babish confirm Dr. Herman Vikram was the original diagnosing doctor for Jed's MS.

DC location shots    

• The scene where Josh meets with Congressman Ritter was filmed outside the Department of Commerce building, on 15th Street NW (just southeast of the White House, facing the Ellipse): 

Here's a street view of the building today. The canopy over the sidewalk isn't there now, but you can see that exit, the guard shack they walk past, and the archways behind them:

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

• Sam says President Bartlet's favorability ratings are right up with those of famed, trusted newsman Walter Cronkite.

• Sam also says the public announcement of Bartlet's MS should be done from behind the Kennedy desk, so John Kennedy must have been President in this universe. The desk Kennedy used in the Oval Office is usually referred to as the Resolute desk, originally a gift to President Rutherford Hayes in 1880, and which has been used in the Oval Office by almost every President since Jimmy Carter brought it back to the White House in 1977.

• The deal is made to have the interview with the Bartlets on the NBC news show Dateline; possible interviewers mentioned are Russert (Tim Russert), Diane (Diane Sawyer), and Stone Phillips (who was in real life a co-anchor of Dateline from 1992 to 2007). 

• CJ brings up fictional television newscaster Ted Baxter (from The Mary Tyler Moore Show) as well as the 1960s TV series Petticoat Junction.

• Jed's good-natured ribbing of Mrs. Landingham over her car purchase includes his calling her Bob Cratchit (from Dickens' A Christmas Carol), Mammy Yokum (from the comic strip Li'l Abner), and Fannie May (a chocolate brand with 197 shops in North America before 2002). If he meant "Fannie Mae" instead, that refers to the Federal National Mortgage Association.

• We get lots of CNN on TVs in the background here. It appears Geraldo Rivera is doing a live shot behind Charlie here:

Then we later get what is meant to be footage from demonstrations in Haiti:

And it appears Bernard Shaw is anchoring while Leo has CNN on in his office:

• Mrs. Landingham says her new car is highly rated by Consumer Reports.

• Products: Once again Keeper Springs water makes an appearance, in the basement conference room. Keeper Springs has practically been a season sponsor this season:

Also in the basement room we get a look at a bag of Millstone coffee:

End credits freeze frame: Mrs. Landingham and Charlie in the Oval Office, bantering about car buying.

The Fall's Gonna Kill You - TWW S2E20

Original airdate: May 2, 2001

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (41)
Story by: Patrick H. Caddell (7)

Directed by: Christopher Misiano (4)

Synopsis

• The senior staffers are told about President Bartlet's condition, and tensions run high as CJ and Abbey meet with Oliver Babish. Josh asks Joey Lucas for a poll to help the administration figure out how to deal with reaction from the eventual public revelation. Sam tries to walk a fine line while writing a speech on tax cuts, and Donna freaks out over news of a falling Chinese satellite.

"The President has this disease and has been lying about it, and you guys are worried that polling might make us look bad? It's the fall that's gonna kill you!"

If you thought the President and Oliver Babish were getting pissy in the previous episode, that hardly compares to the thinly veiled hostility we see between Babish and CJ (and Babish and Abbey) this time around. The stakes are getting bigger, there's a clear notion that revelation of the coverup of Bartlet's MS could crash the entire administration, and people aren't happy.

CJ, for one, has some pretty solid grounds to be upset. She still remembers how it felt to get left out of the India-Pakistan crisis in Lord John Marbury and how her credibility with the press was damaged from "the guys" misleading her. Now having to face the press corps with the knowledge that there was another huge thing that the President and Leo kept from her? No wonder she's snapping at Babish:

All Babish is trying to do, of course, is find out what the staff knew and if they knowingly participated in covering up the President's condition. With CJ, he wants to know if she ever lied to the press about Bartlet's health, specifically the difference between her asking the President if there was anything else she "should know" or if she asked if there was anything else she "needed to know" about his health. To Babish she says she doesn't remember ... but later, talking to Abbey, she recalls a moment on the campaign trail in Manhattan, Kansas, when she came into the Bartlets' hotel room and saw Abbey injecting Jed with something. After that, she'd only ask if there was anything she "needed to know" ... because she had an awareness of something in the shadows that wasn't supposed to be out in the light.

Abbey, too, is peeved at Babish and his questions:

She feels like she's getting the third-degree from the White House Counsel and she doesn't appreciate it. However, in her case, she's carrying a lot of guilt. She's been treating Jed on her own, in secret, in violation of several medical ethical tenets. She's been keeping the secret of his MS for years, a heavy burden, to be sure. But Babish makes it clear why he needs to grill her in this way:

Babish: "Well, I've got a pretty good-looking resume already, Mrs. Bartlet. And it's not a big thing because I say so, ma'am; it's a big thing. You're going to get all the questions I just asked you, and quite a few more. And then they're going to ask the President if he was in the room when you signed it. And that's when he's going to give everyone's favorite answer from a President who has just announced that he has MS: 'I. Don't. Remember.'"

Abbey is peeved at Jed, too, just like we've seen ever since Bartlet's Third State Of The Union, when she realized he was thinking about going back on his promise to her to only serve one term. She returns from a trip and immediately goes after Jed about not being in the loop while word of his condition spread amongst the staff and the Counsel. Jed doggedly tries to keep some of the regular familial niceties intact:

Jed: "Welcome back."

Abbey: "How come I just found out about this?" 

Jed: "How was the flight?"

Abbey: "Jed ... how come I just found out about this?"

Jed: "When Leo talked to you on the plane, he thought you already knew."

Abbey: "You think I'm saying this is Leo's fault? I'm asking how come you didn't tell me last week?"

Jed: "And I'm saying, we still do this. We're husband and wife and parents, and before we launch into palace intrigue, we do, 'Welcome back, how was the flight?'"

The tension between the Bartlets has been a key element of this whole story, and adds a lot of depth to the purely political angles we see everyone else playing. I think it helps ground the issue for viewers, who may not be able to relate to how a President stays in office in this situation, but can relate to the ups and downs and secrets and lies of a marriage under stress.

As far as those political angles ... Josh wants to get an idea of what voter reaction will be when the President goes public. He thinks the administration needs to get a poll out, but how to frame the poll question so as not to give away too much? And what polling group can they trust? Josh turns to Joey Lucas, first seen as a congressional campaign manager in Take This Sabbath Day and then becoming a poll expert from 20 Hours In L.A. onward. Josh calls Joey, telling her they want to develop a poll on why Americans are eating more beets, and then meets her at the airport.

But she's not staying. Josh has her booked on a flight back to California in an hour, and he has a private meeting with her (without her interpreter) where he tells her what this poll is really about and explains the President's health issue. Can they come up with a question that can get them what they need without letting on it's about President Bartlet?

Joey: "We make it a governor."

Josh: "A governor?"

Joey: "Of an industrial state."

Josh: "I don't ..."

(Joey writes on a napkin)

Josh: "The governor of an industrial state."

Joey: "Michigan."

Josh: "And you give him a degenerative illness."

(Joey nods)

Josh: "Joey, you understand that before this is over we're probably all going to be spending some time in front of a grand jury."

(Joey nods)

And in a signal to us about how important secrecy is and the stakes involved in this entire affair, Josh takes the napkin they've been using to pass notes back and forth and dunks it in his water glass.

A bit of humor comes up in the episode when Donna learns of a fax from NASA saying a Chinese satellite is about to fall out of orbit and come crashing into our atmosphere, somewhere. She freaks out about the possibility of a school-bus-size satellite landing on her head. The rest of the staffers disregard the entire subject (we find out at the end that this sort of thing happens all the time, every ten days, in fact, as Josh tells CJ), but Donna's naivete about it has her unable to relax.

Donna: "... and now it's dropped off their radar, suggesting it's begun a rapid fall towards the Earth's atmosphere."

Charlie: "Cool."

Donna: "No, it's not! What's the matter with you people?"

Charlie: "What'd I do?"

Donna: "A thing the size of a garbage truck is going to be in a 2,000-mile-an-hour free fall and no one knows where it's going to hit."

Charlie: "I'm rooting for Zurich."

Donna: "Charlie -"

Charlie: "I've had it up to here with the Swiss."

Turns out, though, it's not just a humorous subplot. The idea of something crashing down on you, out of the blue, out of your control, directly reflects on what the entire administration is facing with the President's health coverup, as is made clear by Abbey's response (and her expression) as she greets Donna in the hallway.

 Abbey: "How are you?"

Donna: "I'm fine, but there's a giant object hurtling its way towards us at devastating velocity."

Abbey: "Tell me about it."

And the Josh/CJ discussion at the end, where Josh says man-made things fall out of the sky every ten days and nobody's ever been hit ... yet. Well, he's not really talking about being hit by satellites here:

Josh: "Since the first year we started putting man-made objects in space, 17,000 have come back and remarkably, not one person has been hit. (beat) So I suppose there's an argument to be made that we're due."

CJ: "Yeah. You picked me right up there, Josh."

Meanwhile Sam is working on an economic speech the President is going to give, which is why Toby is holding off on revealing the big secret to him. The administration wants tax cuts, but they want them targeted to the middle class, while the Republicans want tax cuts for the wealthy, too. When word comes in that the federal budget surplus is going to be lower than expected, Sam sees that as good news (now they can't afford big tax cuts across the board). Sam still runs into trouble with congressional Democrats who want to add language to the speech spanking those who want to give more tax breaks to the well-off:

Sam (reading): "'We want a real tax cut for working families to help them pay for higher education and housing, while our opponents want to help the rich pay for bigger swimming pools and faster private jets.' No, I don't think so."

Jane: "They want it in."

Sam: "No, no, no."

Jane: "Why not?"

Sam: "Well, for one thing, it's very bad writing."

We find out later, in his meeting with congressional Democrats, that the writing isn't his only problem (even though he thinks "it sounds like it was written by a high school girl."). Sam spells out the tax burden he carried as a well-paid attorney at Gage Whitney before he joined the campaign, and while as a Democrat he's in favor of helping balance the economic scales, he also doesn't think demonizing the rich is a worthwhile path to go down. It's an interesting take from what's generally seen as a left-leaning TV series, and it's the kind of thoughtful discussion we'd be better off seeing more of today. (Not that I'm against taxing the uber-rich, I am for that ... they got that way thanks to the benefits of American society, and they need to return some of their financial takings to help that society continue to thrive. Our current gap between the rich and the disappearing middle class is unsustainable - go Elizabeth Warren! And that's my current affairs take of the week.)

The best thing about Sam's contribution this episode, though, is his utter cluelessness at what he's about to discover when Leo summons him to the Oval Office. Toby tells him he'll be there in the office when he's done; Sam has a confused look, then happily grins and says, "Yeah. Okay."

He just has no idea how things are about to change for him. As we, the viewers, have no idea what's about to come ... two of the finest episodes in American television history, next on The West Wing.


Tales Of Interest!

- I know many of you probably think my continuous ponderings about timelines on The West Wing gets old, so if that's the case for you, jump ahead. I'm just thinking, in this instance, since Aaron Sorkin insists on using very specific phrasing about the passage of time, it'd be a simple thing for him to make it all actually make sense. Check this out:

- The Stackhouse Filibuster clearly takes place on a Friday night in late March. Perhaps Toby's late-night ball-bouncing carries over into early Saturday morning, maybe.

- 17 People is set 6 days after the previous episode (the pre-credits scene explicitly lays out the passage of time, plus Toby says it took him "six days and 23 minutes" to figure things out). It's also clearly stated it's now April, so this would be the first Thursday of April. Again, if we grant the end of Stackhouse was early Saturday morning, we could be talking about early Friday morning for when Toby finds out. Maybe.

- Bad Moon Rising is on the following Monday (Donna asks Josh how Mexico's economy could just collapse on a Monday morning), and that's when Babish is told. 

- In this episode Babish tells CJ he learned about the MS two days after Toby; even if we stretch Stackhouse into early Saturday and 17 People into early Friday, Monday is not two days after Friday. He also tells CJ he was told six days ago - since that was a Monday, this must be the following Sunday, but we've seen in past episodes everybody clears out of the West Wing on the weekends, so we're scratching our heads at why CJ would be sitting in Babish's office at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, or at why Leo told her about the President's MS late on a Saturday night. Josh was told two days after Babish, so that must have been the Wednesday prior to this episode.

Anyway ... you're writing the damn thing, Sorkin. The least you could do is have your math work out right.

- We are still seeing plenty of pagers in use by the West Wing staff, with Josh and Charlie specifically using them (and we've seen one on Sam's belt several times over the past few episodes). Motorola, the largest manufacturer of pagers at the time, actually began to pull out of the pager business in 2001, the year these episodes were made.

- Abbey says the Presidential physician is now Admiral Leonard Morrow. That's the fourth official physician we've heard of - in "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" it was Terry Wyatt (with poor, doomed Morris Tolliver taking over while he was away); in He Shall, From Time To Time... it was someone named Hackett, and in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I the doctor was Admiral Jarvis.

- Zoey's Georgetown forms (and the plot necessity of her being a minor when they were filled out) bring talk of them being signed "over a year ago" and the statement that she "wasn't 18 yet when she started." As discussed previously, she was already 19 by the time of Mr. Willis Of Ohio in 1999, and started at Georgetown the January following that. She hadn't been 17 since late 1998 at the latest, so that seems early to fill out forms for spring semester 2000.

- In a nice moment, Joey Lucas follows up her discussion with Josh about the President's condition by asking if he's okay. She then reaches out to pull Josh's face up so she can read his lips and his response, "He's fine." It serves as a contrast to Bartlet's anger at Toby showing no concern about his well-being when he finds out in 17 People.

(This whole airport scene is really good, with Josh dealing with Joey's speech and trying to clearly communicate with his lips ... then he actually signs the letters "M" and "S" to explain what's wrong with the President. The directorial choice of zooming in tight on the faces for this secretive little meeting is also perfect.)

- A good bit of writing and character development for Toby - CJ somewhat bitterly tells Babish about Toby's line to her that he'd be in his office when she got done with her meeting with Leo and the President, before she even knew what she was about to find out. Toby gives Sam the same line: "I'll be here in the office when you're done." That's Toby, ever the moral compass for the administration, feeling responsible to help out the rest of the staff after he had to carry that secret alone for several days. And then Sam, with his puzzled look passing quickly as he happily heads off to be told news he has no idea is coming, his last little moment of innocence:

- EDITED TO ADD: Oliver Platt was nominated for an Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series Emmy Award for his role as Oliver Babish in this episode. That award ended up going to Michael Emerson for his appearance on The Practice.


Quotes    

CJ: "I don't know you."

Babish: "I'm sorry?"

CJ: "I was told to report to you. I don't know you. You've been here, what ...?"

Babish: "Three months."

CJ: "Three months, so why should I trust you?"

Babish: "I don't care if you trust me or not."

CJ: "Imagine my shock."

Babish: "I've got better things to do with my imagination."

CJ: "I think this is going really well so far, Oliver. It's almost hard to believe that four different women have sued you for divorce."

-----

Toby: "You trust this person?"

Josh: "I gotta trust somebody, right?"

Toby: "Good, 'cause I don't trust anybody right now." 

-----

CJ: "Well, at first glance, I thought he might have a virus contracted from a rare African tsetse fly, possibly tropical sprue. I'm not an expert, but I did meet a man once in India."

Babish: "Yeah."

CJ: "It could be anything with these Presidents. James Polk had diverticulitis."

Babish: "Yeah."

CJ: "Couldn't digest nuts. I'll tell you what else. One in forty American men wear women's clothing, and we've had well over forty Presidents."

Babish: "Yeah."

CJ: "I'm just saying, one of these guys was dancing around the Oval Office in a prom dress. Now let's get to the bottom of that."

Babish: "CJ?"

CJ: "Yeah?"

Babish: "In my entire life I've never found anything charming."

-----

Toby: "He calls you and me the Batman and Robin of speechwriting."

Sam: "Well, I don't think he does -"

Toby: "He doesn't, but he should, 'cause that's what we are."

Sam: "Okay."

Toby: "We're Batman and Robin."

Sam: "Which one's which?"

Toby: "Look at me, Sam. Am I Robin?"

Sam: "I'm not Robin."

Toby: "Yes, you are."

Sam: "Okay, well, let's move off this ..."

Toby: "You bet, little friend."

Sam: "Listen, we're really not Batman and Robin."

Toby: "No, we'll keep those identities secret. I'm Bruce Wayne and you're my ward -"

Sam: "Toby -"

Toby: "Dick something."

-----

CJ: "You guys are like Butch and Sundance peering over the edge of a cliff to the boulder-filled rapids 300 feet below, thinking you better not jump 'cause there's a chance you might drown. The President has this disease and has been lying about it, and you guys are worried that polling might make us look bad? It's the fall that's gonna kill you!" 

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

• Marlee Matlin returns as super pollster Joey Lucas! It's nice to see the close relationship between her and Josh, and knowing that Josh feels comfortable trusting her.

• Josh's early meeting with Martin Connelly spells out the administration's lawsuit against five tobacco companies. The fight against Big Tobacco - and Josh's role in it - is going to come up again and again.

• As Babish grills CJ over whether or not she's lied about the President's health, there's a callback to Pilot and Jed riding his bicycle into a tree (and here we find out he sprained his ankle in that incident).

• Gail's fishbowl features a metal chair, the kind one might have to sit in for an interrogation similar to what CJ and Abbey faced with Babish, or what many administration figures might face in the future.

• I'd say it's no longer product placement but more an ongoing thread, as the President's Notre Dame coffee mug shows up on his desk again.

DC location shots    

• Josh's meeting with Joey Lucas was filmed in the terminal at Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC. Here they are meeting (along with Joey's temporary interpreter) in the main hallway:

(The actual story of why Joey had a "temp" rather than Kenny is that the show didn't have money budgeted to fly Bill O'Brien - the actor who played Kenny Thurman - from Los Angeles to Washington. They brought in another actor/interpreter from New York, Jon Wolfe Nelson, to play Dale, at a lower travel cost.)

And here's a couple of actual views of that terminal at National Airport:

Their cafe meeting was on a floor medallion designed by Joyce Scott, one of several floor medallion artworks in the terminal:

(It appears the show created the cafe at that site for purposes of filming, as it just appears to be a regular hallway seating area in actuality):

• The closing scene with Josh and CJ walking outside the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on 17th Street NW was filmed at pretty much exactly the same spot as Josh and Danny's scene in The Short List (when Danny found out CJ liked goldfish):

And then there's a good shot of CJ crossing Pennsylvania Avenue at 17th Street, with the bonus of the Pennsylvania Avenue street sign marking the 1600 block:

Here's the Google Street view of that intersection, with the direction Josh and CJ were walking marked with an arrow (note that vehicle traffic can't get on the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue now):

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

• CJ refers to President James Polk in one of her sarcastic tirades at Babish; there's no evidence that he actually suffered from diverticulitis, though.

• Toby has a whole Batman and Robin discussion with Sam; obviously Batman and Robin aren't real people, but the Batman DC comics must exist in this universe.

• I can't verify this for sure, but that certainly looks like a signed photograph of former Vice President Dan Quayle on the wall (as Charlie is taking Abbey into the Oval Office). That begs the question of why ... it's doubtful that George H.W. Bush was ever President in this universe, meaning Quayle would not have been VP, but even if he had been, why is a former VP's photo on a West Wing wall?

• Abbey mentions the movie (or play) Arsenic and Old Lace while talking to Babish. 

• Abbey also brings up famous law figures of the past Daniel Webster and Benjamin Disraeli.

• In talking about going public with the President's health, Babish refers to newscasters Jim Lehrer, Tim Russert, and Barbara Walters.

• CJ's line about Butch and Sundance on the cliff and "the fall's gonna kill you" is a direct reference to the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

End credits freeze frame: Abbey and Jed facing off in the Oval Office.