Debate Camp - TWW S4E5

 

Original airdate: October 16, 2002

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (69)
Story by: William Sind (1)  & Michael Oates Palmer (1)

Directed by: Paris Barclay (3)

Synopsis

• Debate preparations force the staffers and the President to re-live a botched Attorney General nomination, bringing us flashbacks to the early days of the administration trying to find their way around the West Wing. President Bartlet considers how to react to a Qumari ship on its way to arm terrorists. Amy and Josh continue their flirtation over policy wording, and Toby drops a bombshell.

"Well, we may as well get used to having meetings in the corridors from now on. It may be our only hope."

How we react to mistakes in our past can tell us a lot about ourselves. Do we obsess over them, constantly berating ourselves in our minds about what we did or should have done? Or do we take time to consider the factors around the misstep, and try to learn from them and improve ourselves going forward?

We viewers have already seen Aaron Sorkin and the Bartlet administration deal with the, frankly, massive "mistake" of Jed's failure to reveal his health status during his run for President, and we've seen both approaches being taken at various times. I would argue the trend for President Bartlet - eventually, anyway - bends more towards learning from the situation than obsessing over it. Well, here we go again, with a much less pivotal issue than Jed's MS, but one that the staff argues must be addressed as the campaign's lone debate looms.

As "debate camp" proceeds at an actual camping resort in North Carolina, Sam (playing the part of Governor Ritchie) brings up the fiasco of Bartlet nominating an Attorney General who wasn't quite what Jed thought he was. President Bartlet snaps at Sam for bringing it up - "Because bite me, that's why" - as he's still sore at Sam for being right about it in the first place. The topic brings us ... flashbacks! Going back in time, just like In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen or Bartlet For America, and we can tell these are flashbacks because once again CJ has her frizzy hairstyle that she wore when she joined the campaign:

As we go back in the mists of time, back to the transition period of January 1999, we see most of the staff are excited that Cornell Rooker, an up-and-coming African-American US attorney, agreed to accept Bartlet's nomination for Attorney General. Sam might be the one exception, concerned a bit about Rooker's attitude towards privacy issues, but then ... CJ's chance encounter with a Christian conservative who enthusiastically backs Rooker over his opinion on racial profiling opens a can of worms. Turns out Rooker has said that he thinks racial profiling - using race as grounds to suspect someone of committing a crime - is an important tool for law enforcement. This is not a part of the Democratic Party platform, nor is it an opinion shared by President Bartlet.

Toby, Josh, and CJ work furiously through the early days after inauguration to address the backlash to Rooker. Josh comes up with the buzzword:

Josh: "Here it is. 'Take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record, you'll see -"

Toby: "Yes."

Josh: " - he's fought for justice his entire career. If you take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record, you'll see he's fought for justice his entire career.'"

Toby: "I don't want to be able to turn my head tomorrow without reading that quote."

In very Sorkin-esque hubristic fashion, naturally this blows up in their faces:

CJ: "Well, I did a one-on-one with Danny Concannon a few days ago on Rooker."

Toby: "Did you say, 'If you take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record ... ?"

CJ: "Yes, as a matter of fact."

Toby: "And?"

CJ: "He did."

Toby: "Oh, man."

It turns out Rooker had a DUI ticket fixed in law school, so the background check obviously hadn't been done very well for this choice. Rooker's name is withdrawn, the fledging Bartlet administration gets spanked for getting ahead of itself, and Leo reads the depressing results of the public opinion polls:

Leo: "Our report card for our first two weeks in office. The President's approval has gone from 61% during the transition - when, I suppose, there's nothing to approve - to 49% once there was. Forty-seven percent see him as a strong leader - a result of bungling the Rooker nomination - and African-American support, which basically elected him, has gone from 92 to 78."

Back in the present, as President Bartlet has had a chance to reflect on the issue while the staff tries to come up with a good answer for the debate, he and Sam have a little heart-to-heart.

President: "You pay for these things for such a long time. Too long, don't you think?"

Sam: "I absolutely do - and I don't know why we struggle with it."

President: "We made a mistake, I corrected it. I'll make more."

Sam: : "Yes. Humans can't rebut that. It's prevent defense and it has the added merit of being true."

President Bartlet is also dealing with military issues at this debate sleepaway camp. A Qumari ship bearing some fairly high-tech munitions has been spotted in the Mediterranean, undoubtedly bound for Ba'hi terrorist camps. Bartlet is willing to negotiate, to give Qumar something in order to turn the ship around, but Leo expresses a surprisingly hard line:

President: "Well, for the moment, they haven't stood up, but in the meantime let's think of something we can give them when they do."

Leo: "That's what we should do in the meantime?"

President: "Leo ..."

Leo: "We should think of something we can give them?"

President: "Honey, if we're going to have this fight, can we not do it in front of the Joint Chiefs? It just scares the hell out of them."

Eventually, though, Leo's point carries the day (with help from Admiral Fitzwallis and Nancy, of course). Instead of making a deal with Qumar, President Bartlet makes plans for the Navy to stop and board the ship. This is less a matter of learning from a past mistake as it is President Bartlet listening to his advisers instead of taking the easy way out (and it's also a diametrically opposite reaction of the characters of Jed and Leo compared to the end of  "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc" when Jed was ready to blow Syria off the face of the earth before Leo pulled him back). 

You know who else is dealing with a mistake in the past? Well, just about everybody in this episode, but let's mention Josh first. You recall from Posse Comitatus that right when Josh and Amy's budding relationship was going great guns, their opposing stances on a welfare reform bill eventually caused Josh to undercut Amy's position at the Womens' Leadership Council, costing her her job. While they've bumped into each other in recent episodes (with Amy advising Senator Stackhouse on his quixotic campaign), they still haven't really addressed what happened at the end of last season. We know Amy's still yearning (her whispered "I miss you"s from College Kids made that obvious), and here we see Josh, in his own weird, arrogant, braggadocio-filled way, show he's still thinking about her, too. 

CJ asks Josh to call Amy to get some material for the debate about support for families, without making it seem anti-feminist. Josh calls her, multiple times, tossing in just enough little comments to show there's still something going on - from mentioning her "date" for the evening is still married, to telling her (during her dinner with the married guy!) he's going to call her again "at a really bad time," to saying "you'll never lose me" when she's getting ready to go back into her apartment. Amy has just the right thing to say for the President, of course, and the future of these two kooky lovebirds may still be up in the air - but Amy's face after Josh says he'll call her back after 1:00 am tells us a lot:

"Good."

Donna also makes a mistake, in the flashback, falling for an outlandish story about nuclear missiles under the White House, a story told her by her predecessor in order to make her look foolish in a magazine story. It works, causing Josh to react with his typical overblown arrogant confidence since he would never fall for such a ploy:

Josh: "This is just like when I played the lead in Li'l Abner in eighth grade and rehearsals are going fine. All of a sudden there's sets and lights and costumes, and everyone's tripping all over themselves except me. You guys all walked into the building and got freaked by the lights. I walked in and, you know, something else happened."

Donna gets the last laugh, convincing another staffer to pretend to be an NSA official coming to Josh to tell him that Donna's interview may have revealed more secrets than she realized. Josh freaks out, which gives Donna a much-needed win as the administration just gets started. 

Then we have Toby. We found out in Mandatory Minimums that he was divorced, and his ex-wife, Andy Wyatt, was a Congresswoman with whom he still had at least a professional relationship with. But we didn't get any background into that family life, not then, anyway. But what about now?

First, in the present, Rep. Wyatt is part of the team helping the President with debate prep. We see her and Toby playfully spar a bit, as Toby is pressing her on something important:

Toby: "I need you to look at a couple of answers on defense readiness. I need concrete examples of waste in Pentagon procurement. We need two more members of the IRC for post spin. I need you to fill out this marriage license and paperwork for a joint checking account and review this 60-second answer on Rwanda."

Andy: "Okay, okay, okay, and, um, under no circumstances, and sure." 

We flash back to the transition in 1999. The couple are having issues with conceiving, we discover - we find out they're apparently trying in-vitro fertilization, and a later flashback scene informs us that Andy's immune system is making it difficult for her to get pregnant (and she needs Toby's white-blood cells to help). In both cases, Toby missteps with his responses - first, when Andy is saying the fertility clinic needs more contributions from him, he asks if it can "wait five days" until the inauguration, which brings this reaction from Andy:

And in the midst of the discussion about white-blood cells and immune systems, Toby steps right in it.

Toby: "You don't have to sell me. It sounds like something we should try ... but let me ask you something, and bear in mind that I'm happy, I'm ... eager to go to as many doctors as there are - but should we talk about a stop date?"

Andy: "You mean talk about adoption?"

Toby: "Yeah, we can talk about adopting."

Andy: "You meant a stop date stop date."

Toby: "I meant adopting. I meant surrogacy. And yes, I love kids and I want them and I don't have to have them -"

Andy: "I want them."

Which gives us this look from Andy:

And now, maybe, we start to realize the issues that caused these two to break up. In some ways it's a reminder of how Leo's marriage went belly-up in Five Votes Down - the job of working in the White House becomes all-consuming, leaving no time for a wife or children or any kind of family life. But why is Toby anxious to get back together now? Why is he after Andy to remarry him?

Charlie, Josh, and Sam recognize there's heat between the two during the debate sessions, so they put together a "Team Toby" to support him in his efforts to win Andy back - efforts which are only redoubled when Toby drops a huge bombshell on everyone, viewers included:

Josh: "Why don't you do your job as a man and get that nice girl pregnant?"

Toby: "I did."

 Josh (pause): "Wait, what?"

CJ: "What?"

Toby: "Andy's pregnant."

Josh: "Toby ... Andy's pregnant?"

Toby: "With twins."

 Sam: "This is incredible."

Josh: "And they're yours?"

Toby: "Yeah."

Josh: "Both of them?" 

Toby recognizes his mistakes from 3 1/2 years ago, and now he's trying to make up for them - Andy is pregnant, and he's wanting to re-assemble that family unit that he let go awry in 1999.

Mistakes of the past - they can keep eating away at us eternally, or we can use them as examples to make us better, more productive, more essential members of humanity. I guess I leave it to you to see which way Sorkin wants us to see our characters here. 

 

Tales Of Interest!

- Paris Barclay goes a little nuts with the shaky, hand-held camera style in this episode. I believe that's become a much more common television technique in recent years (along with the faux-documentary style of The Office, Modern Family, and the like), but it was probably slightly unusual for 2002, and, in my opinion, doesn't really fit the "vibe" of The West Wing. Certain, hectic, active scenes with a time-crunch element, that might work, but just normal conversations in Leo's office? I did not care for it. Barclay used camera motion a bit in his first time directing for the show, The Portland Trip, but it was more subtle and worked well there, I thought. The scenes shot through glass showing a reflection in that glass? Also used in that episode as well as this one.

The Portland Trip:

This episode:

- There is no Saybrook Institute for Public Policy. There is, however, a Faith, North Carolina, a small town of fewer than 1000 people between Charlotte and Winston-Salem.

- Another look at where Qumar is located, hidden away on a monitor in the background. As we've seen before, in The West Wing world Qumar is along the Straits of Hormuz in what is in reality southern Iran, with Dubai and the United Arab Emirates on that peninsula jutting northward.

- That's an interesting look at Joey's electoral map. From what I can see, it shows Bartlet with California, Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Vermont, and Hawaii, and a total of 178 electoral votes. After taking Ohio out of Ritchie's column and moving New Hampshire into it, Ritchie has 189 EVs, with 170 still up for grabs. A quick bit of math shows that's only 537 total electoral votes when there are actually 538, and have been since DC was awarded 3 EVs in 1964. Perhaps the show runners looked at the results of the 2000 presidential election, when only 537 EVs were cast (because one DC elector abstained as a protest against DC's lack of any other federal representation). 

Anyway, it's a really close race with a lot of states up-for-grabs considering it's less than a month to the election.

Also, check out the toss-ups and how different things are almost 20 years later. The evergreens we're familiar with - Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania - but also some states that haven't been close to toss-ups in years: Tennessee? West Virginia? Arkansas? Washington? West Virginia is a special case; once a dedicated Democratic stronghold (only going Republican in three elections between 1932 and 1996), that state has gone hard right with over 60% of the vote going to Republicans in 2012 and 2016.

Also - New England? Maine, New Hampshire - New Hampshire, Bartlet's home state? I know they make a big deal about how embarrassing it would be for him to lose New Hampshire, but how would that even be possible? Not enough support for the salmon industry, maybe, Josh?

- It's kind of interesting (and probably fun for the set decorating staff) to see the emptiness of the Oval Office and President Bartlet's desk immediately after taking office. No paperweights, no family photographs, fewer decorations on the side tables.

Quotes    

(Sam and the President are practicing the debate) 

Sam (as Ritchie): "I don't know how you can talk about providing opportunity, while at the same time supporting racial profiling."

President: "What the hell is -- I don't support racial profiling." 

Sam: "Your nominee for Attorney General did. Can you tell us why you nominated him?"

President: "Why?"

Sam: "Yes."

President: "Cause bite me, that's why."  

-----

President: "I agreed to be locked up with you people for 48 hours. How much time do I have left?"

Leo: "47 hours, 41 minutes." 

----- 

Toby: "Let's line up people for IP, the mornings ... 'Cornell Rooker has an exceptional record as a US Attorney ... a leader in fighting unemployment discrimination ... was college chair of ... he's tough on crime, he's fair on justice.' That's the line. Say that. (beat) Do not say that.  What the hell was that? 'He's tough on crime, he's fair on justice'? Sings a song, has a mustache? What is that supposed to -?"

CJ: "Toby's gone to the zoo."

Leo: "Yeah, I think we may have killed these two guys with inauguration."

-----

President: "What are we doing right now?"

Mrs. Landingham: "We're choosing pictures from the collection at the National Gallery."

President: "They'll loan stuff?"

Mrs. Landingham: "Anything you want in the National Gallery or the whole Smithsonian."

President: "Really?"

Mrs. Landingham: "Yeah."

President: "I want Apollo 11."

Mrs. Landingham: "Well, you can't have that."

President: "Then don't bother me." 

----- 

CJ: "Six hundred thousand evangelicals are praying for me, so ... we have that going for us."

Leo: "What the hell are you talking about?"

CJ: "It's true - a guy gave me this card. '365 In Media.'"

Sam: "Who are the others?"

CJ: I don't know, let's see ... Hugh Hefner, Don Imus, Howard Stern, all the late-night guys. This is ... one, two, three ... the editorial board of the New York Times. (realizing) This isn't a good list, this is a list of people who are going to hell!"

Toby: "Yes."

CJ: "They aren't praying for me because they like me. It's cause I'm doomed to eternal damnation!"

Sam: "Well, if you weren't, it'd be a waste of praying."

CJ: "You're on the list, too, pal."

-----

Josh: "We're gonna do better for you, boss."

Leo: "Do better for him."

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

• Congresswoman Andy Wyatt (Kathleen York), ex-wife of Toby, reappears both in the present and in the flashback scenes. We first saw her in Mandatory Minimums and her most recent appearance came in Night Five. We also learn they were still married and trying to figure out how to conceive in January 1999, although when the series began in the fall of that year the couple was already divorced. Andy is going to stick around for a few episodes here.

• Martin Sheen is well-known for not being able to remember people's names, and Sorkin and the writing staff made that a trait of President Bartlet's as well. Here he can't remember the name of Joey's sign-language interpreter:

President: "How you doing there, Joey? Kippy?"

Josh: "Kenny."

President: "Okay."  

• The names Hutchinson and Berryhill are mentioned as "Secretaries" - they were first referred to in A Proportional Response, and they constantly come up in foreign policy/military frameworks. I think Hutchinson may be the Secretary of Defense; I'm not sure which Cabinet position Berryhill holds.

• Leo also mentions "Peter from State;" we've seen someone named Peter offer foreign policy advice in the Situation Room and the Oval Office in the past (he first appeared in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part I, then was seen regarding the Haiti embassy situation between 18th And Potomac and Manchester, as well as giving info on the Middle East situation in 20 Hours In America Part One). He doesn't actually appear in this episode, but here is Victor McCay as Peter in his most recent appearance. 

• Cornell Rooker, Bartlet's original nominee for Attorney General, is referred to as an African-American US Attorney from Florida. In A Proportional Response we learned the Attorney General at that time was African-American, although it couldn't have been Rooker because his nomination was withdrawn. In Lies, Damn Lies And Statistics we saw the Attorney General, Dan Larson, and he most certainly was not an African-American.

• Sam's concern with Rooker and privacy issues that we see in the flashback ties in nicely with his similar concerns with Bartlet's Supreme Court pick in Season 1:

Sam (talking about the Supreme Court in The Short List): "It's not about abortion. It's about the next twenty years. Twenties and thirties, it was the role of government. Fifties and sixties, it was civil rights. The next two decades, it's gonna be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records, and who's gay and who's not."

---- 

Sam (here in a flashback which actually would have been prior to his quote above, referring to Rooker): "I thought there might be more conversations about the more conservative tendencies."

Leo: "Like privacy?"

Sam: "Yes." 

• There's Mrs. Landingham in flashback, helping President Bartlet pick out artwork.

• Sorkin makes a sly reference to the "walk and talk" scenes that this show made famous, giving us a kind of "creation story" in a flashback as to why these staffers spent so much time talking while they were on the move in the corridors:

Josh: "WW-160, you been able to find it?"

Sam: "I don't even know where I am right now."

Josh: "I'm looking on this side again."

Sam: "Do you mind if I talk to you while we walk?"

Josh: "Well, we may as well get used to having meetings in the corridors from now on. It may be our only hope."

(later)

Josh: "I should be sitting at my desk right now. Do I have a desk yet?"

Donna: "No."

Josh: "Then I'll just ... walk around some more. See if I can get into a pickup meeting." 

• Also, when Josh is introducing himself to his staff and asking where WW-160 is, we see Ginger! "I haven't seen it," she mutters as she passes by. So we know she's been here since the beginning (we actually first saw her in A Proportional Response as an aide to Toby, and she first had spoken lines in In Excelsis Deo).

• The producers of the show rebuilt the sets between Seasons 1 and 2. Toby's office in Season 1 had a solid wall next to the doorway, between his office and Sam's. Since Season 2, there's been glass in that wall. 

Here's what Toby's office wall looked like at the end of Season 1 - this would have been after the timeframe of the flashback scenes we see in this episode. Note that it's a solid wall behind where his door opens.

And here we see Toby's office in a flashback scene in this episode, a time prior to the image above ... and there's a window in that same area, just as there is in the "present" time. 

• It's somewhat jarring to see Leo take such a hard line on American military response to Qumar (particularly compared to his standing up to President Bartlet's impulse to blow up Syria in A Proportional Response). His relentless grilling of an innocent suspect after an unspecified terror incident in Isaac And Ishmael, though, seems to be a foreshadowing of his hawkishness towards Qumar and their sponsorship of terrorism here. In truth, he's kind of a stand-in for the attitude of many American people towards terrorism after 9/11.

• The Horton Wilde storyline in the California 47th and Sam's urging for White House support in more congressional districts from The Red Mass continues.

• Danny Concannon gets a mention in the flashback scenes to the administration's early days. We never see him here (he hasn't appeared since The Portland Trip), but it's a nice callback for CJ to specifically mention him as the administration gets started, both in the scene where she's trying to memorize where the reporters sit in the briefing room and also as the guy who actually did "take a thorough look at Cornell Rooker's record" to dig up some dirt in his past.

• Speaking of the briefing room, much like Toby's office that I mentioned above, the briefing room got a big upgrade early in Season 1. This was our first look at the press briefing room in Pilot (and again, this scene would have occurred in the fall of 1999, after the flashback scene of CJ practicing in this episode):

But this is how we see the briefing room in this episode from early 1999. It looks just like it's looked since "Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc":

• Also in that briefing room flashback we see Carol as CJ's aide right after the inauguration. We originally saw Carol working with Toby in Five Votes Down, and didn't see her working with CJ until The Crackpots And These Women. There were a couple of other unnamed staffers seen helping with CJ's briefings before that.

• After the Rooker nomination is withdrawn and Leo goes over the poor poll results after the administration's first two weeks in office, we can see the origin of those approval ratings that were such a sore subject throughout much of Season 1. Leo says President Bartlet's approval ratings went from 61% to 49% after the problem with Rooker's nomination. Throughout Season 1 we hear several times that the administration is stuck with a 48% approval rating.

• Josh and Amy continue their flirtatious re-connection, after they got together late last season and then broke up because Josh's political maneuvers to pass a welfare reform bill got her fired from her job. Even when Amy's on a "date" they're flirting over the phone, over policy wording. What a couple of nerds.

Josh (on the phone): "How you doing?"

Amy: "I'm freezing."

Josh: "Where are you?"

Amy: "I'm at my front door."

Josh: "Well, go inside."

Amy: "I can't, I'll lose you."

Josh: "You'll never lose me, Amy."

Amy (beat): "Please don't say that."

And then the small smile on Amy's face after Josh tells her he'll call her back at 1:00 am and she says, "Good."

 

• After Toby reveals his pregnancy bombshell, Charlie says "Well, we're going to have to step this up now" about Team Toby, to which CJ replies, "Yeah! We're gonna get hats!" That's kind of a reference to something that happens after the twins are born.

• WHAT'S NEXT MOMENT - Josh says "Break's over" as he sends everyone off to work on debate topics, just as President Bartlet told his staff at the end of Pilot.

DC location shots    

• The Bartlet transition office is located at 1900 K Street, as we can see that address both in the building's windows facing the street and on the lobby wall during the tense "sperm donation" scene between Toby and Andy. As you can see from the Street View of that building, this scene was definitely filmed in that lobby at 1900 K Street.

• There are shots of Amy biking near the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin.

• Amy's date with Peter Harlow was outside the now-closed Signatures restaurant in Market Square near the Navy Memorial, a favorite location for West Wing shots. The fountains behind Harlow are undoubtedly the Navy Memorial fountains we've seen in The Women Of Qumar and other episodes. Interestingly, Signatures was owned by Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist made famous as Casino Jack who used the restaurant to launder funds given by Native American tribes into free meals and drinks for members of Congress.

• When Josh calls Amy after her date, catching her on her apartment stairs, that scene was filmed in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.

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

• Donna is tricked into believing there's a missile silo under the Eisenhower putting green. This does raise the question - is the silo under the green established by Eisenhower in 1954, or the green re-installed in a different location by President Clinton in the 1990s? Or, in The West Wing universe, did the putting green stay in its original position without a Clinton presidency?

• Mrs. Landingham points out paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci ("Madonna and Child with Pomegranate") and Botticelli ("Adoration of the Magi") as suggestions for loan to the White House; both paintings are indeed among the National Gallery of Art archives (although the gallery attributes the first painting to da Vinci's student Lorenzo di Credi). The Smithsonian is also mentioned, to which President Bartlet responds by asking if he can have Apollo 11 at the White House.

• Donna's magazine profile describes her wearing Selia Yang slacks and a DKNY button-down.

• While ragging on Donna for being gullible, Josh quotes the profile calling her "Bambi-esque" and also mentions how he played the lead in Li'l Abner in eighth grade (fun fact: I have also played the lead in Li'l Abner, as a high school junior, singing songs like If I Had My Druthers and Jubilation T. Cornpone).

• CJ refers to the new administration being called the "Capitol Clampetts" by the Washington press, a reference to the TV show The Beverly Hillbillies.

• Joey asks why Sam wants the President to go to districts where the last Democrat won by "railing against Abraham Lincoln."

• Josh brings up Cher and Sonny while talking to Amy on the phone. 

• President Bartlet refers to Star Wars in a discussion about military defense, which brings to mind the 1977 film that was the inspiration for the nickname of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative.

• As Leo lists the poor poll numbers after the botching of the Rooker nomination, he says if the election were held right now Bartlet would be chair of the economics department at the Phillips Andover Academy instead of President.

• Among the media notables being prayed for by Kingspeak magazine readers (in addition to CJ and Sam) are Hugh Hefner, Don Imus, and Howard Stern.

• There's a can of Sprite on the dinner table at debate camp between Toby and Sam (along with a nice-looking plate of pasta that Toby hasn't even touched yet).

• That's an HP laptop in front of CJ as she begins the practice debate. It's notable that we saw a lot of Apple/Mac products in the first couple of seasons; not so much any more.

End credits freeze frame: Mrs. Landingham going over artwork with President Bartlet.

Previous episode: The Red Mass

Next episode: Game On

The Red Mass - TWW S4E4

 

Original airdate: October 9, 2002

Teleplay by: Aaron Sorkin (68)
Story by: Eli Attie (4)

Directed by: Vincent Misiano (3)

Synopsis

• With the administration unhappy about how the upcoming Presidential debates are formatted, CJ comes up with a daring idea. Leo's attempt to get a message to Israel about their response to Qumar's threats goes undelivered. The standoff in Iowa with the suspected KSU bombers comes to a head. Stackhouse's renegade candidacy continues to cause headaches, especially for Josh. And Sam starts contemplating his future.

"Wow ... isn't this exactly why casinos don't play with a one-deck shoe?"

Where do we focus? When we get an episode with plot lines flying this way and that - from Charlie's Little Brother Anthony learning something about the Constitution and separation of church and state, to Donna having to sit through a soul-draining self-help seminar, to the FBI moving in on the suspected Kennison State bombers in order to rescue a sick child, to issues about the campaign and debates and Qumar tensions and masses with the Supreme Court and coaches calling screen passes over and over - where does our attention settle?

I'm not trying to complain about this episode, it's a pretty good one, but I'm just trying to figure out where to start. And I think I'm going to start with Sam ... because his little plot point here is actually huge when it comes to the future of Sam's character and Rob Lowe's participation with the show.

If you've been with me for a while, you know I've brought this up before. Aaron Sorkin's original idea of The West Wing series was supposed to focus on the senior staffers and their roles in the administration, with only occasional appearances by the President. Rob Lowe signed on thinking he'd be the "lead," of sorts - I mean, there's a contractual reason he's appeared first in the credits ever since the show began. But as the series got its feet under it, characters developed in interesting, unexpected ways - Josh and Donna, for example, both became richer, more important characters than one might have thought in the fall of 1999; Mandy (and the second-billed Moira Kelly) proved to be a waste of time and storylines; and maybe most importantly, Martin Sheen's portrayal of President Bartlet was so vibrant, so energetic, so vital, that it took up a lot of space that was originally intended for the other characters.

Plus, Sorkin started to have trouble writing storylines for Sam. I've talked about several episodes where Sam's stories drifted off completely separate from the rest of the cast (talking about getting rid of the penny in War Crimes, for instance, or defining the poverty level in The Indians In The Lobby or seatbelt law in The Women Of Qumar). He still gets the occasional top-level storyline, but Sam isn't the main character any more, if he ever was (remember when his controversial friendship with an escort was a key plot point of the entire first season?). And Rob Lowe started to get frustrated with the lack of direction and satisfaction with the writing for his character by late in Season 3 ... and that's when he decided he was going to leave the series.

As far back as Hartsfield's Landing (when President Bartlet told Sam, "You're going to run for President one day"), we've known Sam Seaborn has aspirations higher than writing speeches for other people. We've started to see the foundation of his departure laid right from the get-go this season in 20 Hours In America, when Sam gets tasked to staff the President after Josh gets trapped in Indiana for a day. Sam starts to get a taste for real political power, for being in the room when decisions are made, for being a part of the discussions that shape those decisions. The door of opportunity opens wider now, when a congresswoman mentions an unknown Democratic House candidate in California, Horton Wilde. She just wants to be sure the White House knows Wilde suffered a heart attack and might use some attention from the administration, but Sam realizes Wilde is just one of many sacrificial lambs the Democrats put up in races across the country:

Sam: "Do you know who Horton Wilde is?"

Leo: "That name sounds familiar. He's running in Orange County."

Sam: "Yeah. He's in the hospital. He's had a heart attack."

Leo: "I'm sorry to hear that. We'll send something."

Sam: "It's his fourth. In the Idaho 2nd we're running a guy who lost the race for city council. In the Texas 22nd our candidate's an electrical engineer who paid his filing fee by dumping the cash out of a cigar box. The Arizona 6th features a Democrat who, nine weeks ago, registered as ... a Democrat." 

Leo: "You just named three districts that are impossible for Democrats. Finding qualified sacrificial lambs ain't easy."

Sam: "When the D-triple-C tries to raise money by saying 'we're taking back the House' it doesn't appear as if we're giving it all we got."

Sam got a taste of being in the room where it happens (and remember, that was just 10 days ago in West Wing time), and now he's wanting to re-energize the entire Democratic electoral strategy nationwide. Sam's in-depth conversation with Leo about, well, bridges and tunnels, terrorism, and American foreign policy showcase Sam's newfound interest in making policy, instead of just writing about it.

Leo: "It's that I don't know what winning looks like. What does it look like? Is it ... I mean, is it honestly the US flag flying over Mecca? Is that what's going to straighten this out? And if that's the case, why are we postponing that? What are we hoping is going to happen in the meantime?"

Sam: "That somebody will think of something before we have to do the unthinkable."

Leo: "You're one of the big minds of your generation. Have you thought of anything yet?"

Sam: "No."

Leo: "Neither have I. Neither has the President of the United States - also a pretty good mind."

And that sets up Sam's line at the Red Mass, the line that starts to set up Sam's new path in politics:

Sam: "I was thinking about what you asked me before, about have I been able to think of anything and I said, 'No.' And you said, 'Neither have I or neither has the President.'"

Leo: "What about it?"

Sam: "I wouldn't speak for anybody else but you know I'm not done yet, right?"

The Horton Wilde heart attack is going to prove to be Sam's way into the legislative branch, and Rob Lowe's way out of the series. Stick around to see exactly what I mean.  

In the latest Qumar developments, Leo is trying to get a message to the Israeli government. Qumar knows it was the United States who had their defense minister killed on the way back from a visit to Washington, but they're publicly blaming Israel in order to stoke tensions with Islamic fundamentalists. The Israelis - not ones for patience or subtlety - have plans in place to strike back at Qumari training bases, but Leo asks Israel's Foreign Minister Ben-Yosef to delay those attacks. 

Leo (and the Bartlet administration as a whole) are doing their best to lower the temperature, not raise it, and they know an Israeli attack will inflame the Middle East. Ben-Yosef agrees to take the request back to his government ...

But this is The West Wing, where drama happens daily - so his plane disappears over Lebanon before arriving home. Leo's face is ashen.

"How did I not see that coming?" Leo asks. No matter who is behind it, the disappearance of Ben-Yosef's plane - and the failure of Leo's message to get to the Israeli government - will do nothing but increase the tensions between Qumar, Israel, and the United States, and result in more violence, terrorism, and death.

While Sam works on the President's speech for the Red Mass - an annual Catholic service held the day before the Supreme Court session begins in October - Josh, CJ, and Toby are concerned with the campaign. In different ways and different angles, but it's all about "I know how Ritchie is going to win this election," as both Josh and CJ say.

Josh is concerned about the renegade campaign of Senator Howard Stackhouse, a Minnesota Democrat we saw previously in The Stackhouse Filibuster. He's a firebrand, an independent-minded sort who's not interested in the standard party procedure or being polite - he has issues he wants to bring out for discussion and he's going to do it, whether or not it helps his fellow Democrat Bartlet. The Republican candidate, Robert Ritchie, calls out the idea of the government providing needle exchanges for drug users in order to slow the spread of AIDS. Stackhouse, a deep-blue liberal, wants to grab the opportunity and come out strongly in support of such programs.

Amy, who's been working for Stackhouse since Josh got her fired from her job in Posse Comitatus, wants to put the brakes on that. She sees Ritchie's speech as the trap it is - if he gets Stackhouse to come out for needle exchanges, President Bartlet will have to take a stand as well, and Ritchie can hit him hard from the right. Meanwhile, Josh is desperate to get Stackhouse to stop his campaign and endorse the President, as he promised to do weeks ago - and he takes out a lot of his desperation on Amy, picking fights with her for no obvious reason:

 

Amy: "Those polls sample likely voters."

Josh: "Yeah."

Amy: "When a third candidate gets elected it's gonna be by unlikely voters."

Josh: "And why is that good? Why are we eager - what, why are we encouraging a group of people who are so howl-at-the-moon, the lazy-ass stupid, that they can't bring themselves to raise their hands? Why is it important that they be brought into the process?"

Amy (beat): "You should stop being mad at me." 

Josh: "I'm not."

Amy: "You are. You know, I lost my job because of a strategy you organized."

Josh: "You lost your job in a fashion that ensured you 93 better offers."

Amy: "That's sweet of you to look out for me but I liked the job I had. And when I lost it, I didn't pitch anything. I didn't stage a nutty. I fought you, I lost, I had a drink, I took a shower. Cause that's how it is in the NBA. You know what I do when I win? Two drinks."

But the smart political minds win out in the end. Amy convinces Stackhouse to stay away from the topic of the needle exchange program, then drops by the White House to entice Josh with her balloon animals. Her tactic actually brings a smile to Josh's face:

Maybe those two crazy kids are going to be able to make things work out after all.

Stackhouse, after hearing Bartlet's eloquent speech at the Red Mass, meets with the President to tell him he's dropping out and giving Bartlet his endorsement. In a very nice closing shot, we see Stackhouse walk away, past the shouting press, and disappear in the crowd:

As the President watches him go, flashbulbs popping in his face. 

We are struck with the contrast of Stackhouse, who wanted to bring attention to issues he thought were being ignored as he ran for the office of the most recognized person in the country, drifting his way past reporters and others who don't even realize he's there, and President Bartlet, the focus of the press and their shouted questions and pointed cameras, pondering Stackhouse's sacrifice of his ambitions and his issues.

Whereupon he calls CJ over to ask her to gather the press away from the church, as he wants to make a statement on needle exchanges. He does the right thing, and brings Stackhouse's issue to the public eye.

CJ's concern (and Toby's) centers on the upcoming debates. CJ's belief on "how Ritchie is going to win" comes from their continued focus on the contrast between Bartlet's intelligence and Ritchie's ... well, not. By lowering expectations so much, CJ is afraid the bar is so low Ritchie can win the debates by just showing up and "not setting his podium on fire." Toby doesn't agree - he wants debates, and plenty of them, to keep on showing the voting public how Ritchie isn't suited for the office:

Toby: "When we mention that we want five debates, say what they are. One on the economy, one on foreign policy, with another on global threats and national security, one on the environment, and one on strengthening family life, which would include health care, education, and retirement. I also think there should be one on parts of speech and sentence structure, and one on fractions." 

But when the debate commission comes back saying there's only going to be two debates, Toby is livid. Bartlet, too, is unhappy - the format of one candidate speaking, then the other, then a rebuttal, is not his idea of a debate: "It's a joint press conference," he complains.

CJ keeps on thinking. What if, she muses, they request a new format for the debates, something more suited to what the President wants to do? After all, Ritchie got what he wanted with fewer debates, why shouldn't the administration get something they want, too?

President: "We'd never get it."

CJ: "We might."

President: "The Ritchie people would put up too much of a fight."

CJ: "They might consider it. They might consider it if we give them something else they wanted."

President: "Other than this house, we don't have anything else they want."

Sam (realization dawning): "Sure we do. Sure we do. We wanted five debates, they wanted none. We have exactly one thing left that they want."

Trade one of the two debates for changing the format. It's a Hail Mary, a wild idea that's so crazy it just might work ... but only if CJ can get Toby to agree:

CJ: "What's really the difference between one debate and two debates?"

Toby: "What's the difference between - ? It's a whole other debate! It's a second debate! It's 100% more debates!" 

CJ wears him down - "When you can't lower expectations, you only have one thing you can do. Meet them." Meaning, if the campaign is making the point that Bartlet's intelligence and leadership make him the best choice, let's use this debate to keep hammering that point home, by using a format that helps the President do just that. Toby agrees, which leads us on to the next couple of episodes as the debate prep gears up.

I haven't even gone into the stories of Anthony (whom Charlie badgers into reading the First Amendment when Anthony complains about the Red Mass being a government-linked event) or Donna (whose weekend is ruined when Josh makes her attend a Teddy Tomba self-help seminar in order to get some more info to use against Ritchie) or the resolution of the Iowa standoff with the bombers of the KSU swim meet (leading President Bartlet to offer one of his daughters to Special Agent Mike Casper), and I'm not going to. There's a lot happening here (and again, all the events from 20 Hours In America until now has occurred over less than two weeks' time), but there's often a lot happening in the White House and in the world of politics and government and we can't even realize how little time people in positions of power might have to deal with the onrush of events. So this episode actually does a nice job of showing us, the viewer sitting down to watch a neatly organized 44 minutes of television drama, that the world we're dropping in on is a chaotically overwhelming torrent of stuff happening all the time.

And the election is less than a month away, and Sam is considering a future of a much different sort.

Tales Of Interest!

- The timeline here is easily determined, as the weekend before the Supreme Court convenes on the first Monday in October would have been October 4 through 6 in 2002. Leo says to Ben Yosef on that Friday night that the farmhouse in Iowa has been surrounded for 11 days, which would refer to Monday, September 23. That's close, I suppose - the events of 20 Hours In America happened on a Monday, with the KSU bombing that night (Josh, Toby, and Donna saw the news at the hotel in Indiana before they flew back to DC, arriving in the wee hours of Tuesday morning). That does mean all the events in the first four episodes of the season have been crammed into two weeks (from Monday, September 23 to Sunday, October 6).

- A freeze-frame of the TV screen near the start of the episode reveals some polling results. It shows Bartlet leading Ritchie in handling nearly all of the listed categories: Military Security (50-48), Education Reform (49-47), International Crisis (48-48 tie), Domestic Crime Rate (58-41), and Health Care Reform (51-46). So things should be going pretty well for the Bartlet campaign, right? The headline on the bottom panel of the screen says "Ritchie-Hestin Strong In Polls." Say what, now? We did learn Jeff Hestin was Ritchie's running mate in The Black Vera Wang.

- A baseball discussion: Josh's rant about the Mets makes no sense. If you have a runner on first who's a threat to score (or steal), why would you intentionally walk the batter, automatically moving that runner into scoring position? Even with four pitch-outs, that just makes zero baseball sense. And if you were going to do that, why worry about him stealing? Your plan is to put him on second base regardless. Dumb strategy, Josh.

- Sam's added a cool CD/radio/speaker unit to his wall. I imagine an audio system like this was a big deal in 2002, maybe? Also a boldly confident move to add to your office a month before the election.

- The coordinates listed for where Ben Yosef's plane disappeared - 35°51' North, 44°47' East - are not in southern Lebanon, as the advisors say. That location is actually in southern Iraq, southeast of Erbil and south of Dukan Lake. That's about a thousand miles difference. I don't know why Sorkin doesn't ever use accurate lat/longs in his scripts, it's not that hard to do; he's done this before.

- The football game Bartlet is watching is a Canadian Football League game between the Edmonton Eskimoes and the Calgary Stampeders (most likely because Warner Bros. wasn't interested in paying for the rights to footage from the NFL. I can remember years ago when TV manufacturers' print ads would feature shots from USFL games, because NFL logos/brands would have been too expensive to use). In 2002 Calgary and Edmonton actually played on June 28th, September 2 and September 6. Edmonton played at Ottawa on October 6 (the Sunday of this episode) while Calgary had played on the Friday before.

- John Spencer was nominated for an Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series Emmy for this and Twenty Five. It was his fourth nomination for the award, which he won last season. The Emmy went to Joe Pantoliano for The Sopranos.




Quotes    

CJ: "Red Mass is at ... you're right, 10:00 at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is also what they called my dorm room in college."

-----

Ben Yosef: "What's happening at that house in Idaho?"

Leo: "Iowa."

Ben Yosef: "Which one's the potatoes?"  

-----

Janet: "Oh, by the way, I was just called. Horton Wilde is in the hospital. He's had a heart attack."

Sam: "Horton Wilde isn't the same as Thornton Wilder, is it?"

Janet: "I'm talking about California."

Sam: "Cause if Thornton Wilder had a heart attack, that would be remarkable news."

Janet: "You don't know who Horton Wilde is."

Sam: "He wrote Skin Of Our Teeth."  

-----

Josh: "He's taking the President's votes. It's as simple ... he is taking the President's votes."

Amy: "Listen, I'm not indifferent to the situation, but that right there, that's the crazy part of your argument."

Josh: "Why?"

Amy: "They're not his votes."

-----

Josh (after Donna hands him Tomba's open book): "Okay, well. This is an order form to buy Owning Yourself, followup to the best-seller -"

Donna: "Leasing Yourself."

-----

Sam: "What do I know? Shareef was a bad guy. Feels like he had money in the Ba'ji cell."

Leo: "He did. He was also behind the plot to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge."

Sam: "Bridges and tunnels. That's my nightmare. What's yours?"

Leo: "Well, now it's bridges and tunnels, Sam."

Sam: "Then my work here is done."

-----

President: "Mike, pick yourself out a daughter. My oldest is married, but I can have it annulled. The Pope said he'd do it, I swear to God."

Casper: "That's very friendly of you, sir. Thank you."

 

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

• Senator Howard Stackhouse (previously seen in The Stackhouse Filibuster) returns, played by George Coe (who I will always bring up as a member of the original Saturday Night Live performing crew, as well as playing a memorable role in Max Headroom).

• Stackhouse's adviser Susan Thomas is played by Robin Bartlett (Mad About You, Lean On Me, City Of Angels).

• Janet, the House Ways and Means committee member who brings Horton Wilde to Sam's attention, is played by Deborah May (St. Elsewhere, The Larry Sanders Show, many TV guest appearances).

• Major past story lines referred to here include the assassination of Qumari Defense Minister Shareef and the fallout from that (the arc began in Enemies Foreign And Domestic), the plan to make college tuition tax-deductible (first inspired in 20 Hours In America Part Two), the quixotic Stackhouse presidential run and the issue with debates (from College Kids, although Stackhouse was first mentioned in Mandatory Minimums and first appeared onscreen in The Stackhouse Filibuster), the topic of Ritchie's intelligence and how to play up the contrast with President Bartlet's smarts (which goes all the way back to The Two Bartlets and Hartsfield's Landing), Anthony, who was being mentored by Big Brother Simon Donovan before Simon's death in Posse Comitatus and then was taken under Charlie's wing in 20 Hours In America Part Two, and Josh's legislative strategy to get a welfare reform bill through that ended up costing Amy her job at the Womens' Leadership Coalition (Posse Comitatus).

• Josh's examples of Presidential crises too difficult for a lightweight like Ritchie include the embassy surrounded in Haiti (which we saw in the arc from 18th and Potomac through Manchester Part II) and satellite photos of a heavy water reactor (from Enemies Foreign And Domestic).

• In Josh and Amy's fight, Amy says she handles defeats like losing her job practically the same as she handles wins, "cause that's how it is in the NBA." She compares working on the political front lines to the high-stakes world of professional sports - which is exactly what Vice President Hoynes did with Josh in Five Votes Down. After twisting arms to get a gun control bill passed, stealing away the credit that the White House dearly craved, Hoynes told Josh, "Welcome to the NFL."

• As Sam lists the oddball Democratic House candidates for Leo, he includes the Texas 22nd district, saying their candidate is an electrical engineer who paid his filing fee by emptying a cigar box of cash. Leo responds by saying Democrats never have a chance in any of these districts. Just three episodes earlier, in 20 Hours In America Part One, Congressman Peter Lieu stops by the Oval Office to meet the President, Leo, and Sam. Lieu is the Democratic congressman from the Texas 22nd (who apparently won a special election two months prior). If that's so ... why is Sam aghast about an unqualified, unsupported candidate from that district - whom he has personally met - and why is Leo saying the Democrats never win this seat when they currently hold it?

• The Martin Sheen jacket flip makes an appearance. Sheen suffered an injury to his left shoulder at birth, and he developed the overhead flip to put on his jacket to compensate for the loss of some arm mobility.

• Amy's balloon animal is a callback to The Women Of Qumar where she had her practice balloon figures in her office, and later dropped a water balloon on Josh in the plaza outside her office building.

• We see the full Supreme Court at the Red Mass ... but these justices are nothing like the ones we saw in Take This Sabbath Day. Where's the older woman with the collar to remind us of Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Where's the men who looked a bit like Antonin Scalia and William Rehnquist? Even bigger - where the heck is Roberto Mendoza (whose nomination and confirmation was such a big deal in The Short List and Six Meetings Before Lunch)? Edward James Olmos is definitely not in attendance. We do get a look at a justice that is meant to remind us of Clarence Thomas, which is interesting because we saw no African-American on the Court in Take This Sabbath Day.

This guy is supposed to remind us of Clarence Thomas.

DC location shots    

• None. The Red Mass scenes were not filmed in the actual National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

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

• The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception does exist in northeastern Washington, DC, on the campus of Catholic University. In reality the annual Supreme Court Red Mass is celebrated at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in northwestern DC.

• There's a portrait of John F. Kennedy on the wall at the White House lunch reception for Ben-Yosef.

• Sam confuses California Democratic candidate Horton Wilde with playwright and novelist Thornton Wilder. He also mentions Wilder's play The Skin Of Our Teeth.

• Josh and Donna discuss the philosophers Immanuel Kant (mentioning his Critique of Pure Reason although Josh calls it A Critique Of Practical Reason) and Plato (and his work The Republic), as well as the poet Robert Frost and his poem Mending Wall.

• I'm pretty sure that's former CNN anchor Jack Cafferty on the screen behind Donna in Josh's office.

• Josh mentions McNuggets, which would imply the existence of McDonald's restaurants.

• Donna calls Josh "Buckminster," which must refer to architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller.

• Sam tells Leo his international news sources include the (International) Herald Tribune and Agence France.

• President Bartlet's references to past Roman debates include Cicero, Lentulus, Caesar, and Cato.

• We see a Dunkin Donuts cup on Toby's desk, which is slightly unusual because he's been consistently seen drinking Starbucks.

End credits freeze frame: The senior staffers coming into the Oval Office for their morning meeting.

 

Previous episode: College Kids

Next episode: Debate Camp