Access - TWW S5E18

 

Original airdate: March 31, 2004

Written by: Lauren Schmidt (4) 

Directed by: Alex Graves (20)

Synopsis

• A documentary film crew covers a day in the life of White House press secretary CJ Cregg, which happens to be a day with a domestic crisis involving the FBI and a standoff in Washington state.

"This is a terrible idea. (laughs) I don't know what I was thinking, this is, let's ... let's call this off." 

This is a strange one. While I'm willing to give Lauren Schmidt and the West Wing crew some props for trying something entirely different, there are also a lot of things wrong with this attempt. A lot.

It's a documentary (on PBS, it's implied, although not expressly stated) about CJ and the role of a White House press secretary, filmed over two days in 2004 but then not shown until after the end of the Bartlet administration three years later. Which brings us to one of the problems with this episode; if you're pretending to show us something that actually doesn't happen until the future (like this documentary, apparently not airing until 2007), you run a risk. There are events that are going to happen between now and that time in the future that you didn't foresee and couldn't know about, so even though we are going to see those things happen over the next 2 1/2 seasons, they don't end up getting mentioned by the makers of this TV production who, if this program was actually being prepared and aired in that future, would obviously know about and mention those events. (Yes, there are some specific things I'm talking about that I won't bring up here as spoilers.)

This is an unsolvable problem, of course; you can't possibly know everything that's going to happen between your filming of this episode in 2004 and its supposed debut in the future, but it's Schmidt and the creators of this episode who put themselves in that position. The show nearly gets itself into the same trouble at the beginning of Season 7, when the opening pre-title scene of the first episode sets up the entire season as a flashback, but their choices don't turn out to be disastrous in that event.

The other big problem, and one that should have been avoided, is an apparently administration-defining moment that we are told happened during the first year of Bartlet's first term in 1999. This is how the documentary narrator describes it:

Voiceover: "Five years earlier the FBI's mishandling of a standoff in Casey Creek, Kentucky, which resulted in the shooting death of a suspect's wife, was a tragedy that haunted the new President's first term."

It was such an important and memorable event that the press can't stop immediately comparing the current Shaw Island standoff to that 1999 debacle ... yet we, the viewers, have never heard of this event before, even as our journey following the Bartlet White House started that very fall. An FBI siege of domestic anti-government radicals, during which safety protocols were not followed, ended in the deaths of two people. That created a scandal leading to congressional investigations in the fall of 2001, and somehow that's never come up - at all - in the past 4 1/2 seasons of The West Wing? Even though in that fall of 2001 we were seeing congressional investigations of President Bartlet's coverup of his health and the effects of those investigations on his re-election campaign ... one would think parallel investigations of an FBI operation resulting in the death of an American citizen might be tied into our storyline then?

The documentary goes on to tell us that CJ's handling of the Casey Creek event in the briefing room was also a defining moment for her, and one that affected her standing with the press corps:

Voiceover: "Casey Creek also haunted President Bartlet's young press secretary. CJ Cregg's naivete about the power of her podium led many to question her ability to deliver the news of the nation. It would be months before she regained the confidence of the White House press corps and the Bartlet administration."

Again, something this serious about CJ and her relationship with the press - something that regardless of when it happened in 1999 would still be reverberating when the series began in September of that year - would absolutely have been referenced for us at that time, if it had actually happened prior to Lauren Schmidt's making up of the Casey Creek event out of thin air. We actually do get a Season 1 storyline about the administration being wary of CJ's connection to the press, in Lord John Marbury, when the top staff keeps CJ in the dark about a border clash between India and Pakistan ... but it's explained to us that they're worried about her close relationship to Danny Concannon, not that a domestic FBI crisis had shaken their faith in her.

This totally out-of-the-blue Casey Creek event used as kindling in the firestorm of the Shaw Island standoff in this episode wasn't even necessary ... the series gave us a similar standoff with anti-government types in Season 1's The State Dinner. Why not use that event, which we were aware of and almost fits the timeline we were given here, instead of making up something entirely new that - if it indeed were as important and memorable as we're led to believe - we should have had some mention of in past seasons? And if Casey Creek had actually happened, it certainly would have come up during the discussions and negotiations of the standoff with Idaho militia in The State Dinner. (Maybe it was Mandy who kept Casey Creek out of it, I don't know, she's easy to blame). 

To me, it's an unforgivable direction to go, and just mars the entire timeline of the series for the writers of this episode to give us an entirely new "scandal" from five years ago that we've somehow never heard of before. It's really lazy, making up an entirely new justification that supposedly happened in the past to fit your story instead of using elements that have actually been dramatized previously in the series to build your episode around. And which would have worked! The Idaho standoff, CJ's troubles with the press over India and Pakistan, you'd have gotten the same effect in this episode without having to violate the continuity of the series.

There's really not a bunch to say about this episode. CJ is granting this documentary crew access to the West Wing for a couple of days as they produce a program about the role of the White House press secretary in today's media world. They interview other members of the staff, some reporters, some (fictional) previous press secretaries; we get some behind-the-scenes look at the day-to-day operations of the press office and the staff working under CJ's supervision; and some glimpses of CJ's personal family life (including home movies of a young Allison Janney!) and her relationship with her father, who is struggling with Alzheimer's disease. Then the crew is also involved in documenting the administration's response to what could be a terrorist standoff in Washington state.

That story, as it is, kicks off with CJ noticing the director of the FBI coming by the White House unexpectedly. She asks a couple of questions about why he's there, but Leo assures her it's nothing. Later Leo and Josh bring her in with FBI director Arnold to let her know that the FBI is trying to apprehend someone on Shaw Island, but only in case she gets press questions about it - it's no big deal.

Of course, it is a big deal - there's been an exchange of gunfire, a dog apparently shot, children are injured, news helicopters are overhead, and the press immediately connects this situation to the administration's handling of the five-year-old Casey Creek event (again, a serious federal law enforcement breach of protocol that resulted in deaths and Senate investigations but one we've never heard of before). When an ambulance is sent in to take an injured child to the hospital, the FBI uses that as cover to set up an assault on the cabin ... and most of that preparation for the assault is covered by TV news cameras on the scene! It turns out the suspect, Jamal Othman, was involved in domestic terrorist activities and had contact with several other possible Ba'ji terrorists, and his arrest leads to the arrest of about a dozen others wanted in suspicion of conspiracy to commit terrorism.

Yes, it's weird. It's weird to see an episode of The West Wing be presented to us as if it's actually a PBS documentary that's being aired a few years in the future. Again, I kind of applaud the audacity of it - it's different, it's outside the box, it's a bold attempt at something unusual - but the execution isn't all that great. For one thing, there's a line CJ says in the documentary that seems to sum up her view of the responsibility and perception of her role:

CJ: "There's a misconception that I'm here to stymie reporters or to mislead the public, to spin or even hide the truth, when in fact any good press secretary aims to do just the opposite."

Schmidt and the show's producers apparently think that quote is so important that they repeat it, at least three and I believe four more times during the episode. Does CJ spin the truth sometimes, to put the administration's actions in a better light? Absolutely, and despite what CJ says here, I think that is a job requirement for any press secretary. Does CJ hide the truth from the press? Well ... I think there's no doubt the series shows her with the very best of intentions, and she does continually strive to keep the public informed as best she can, but we've seen quite a few instances where she not only sidestepped questions from the press (I love the scene in 18th And Potomac where Steve asks about military operations in Haiti, CJ gives a response, causing Steve to say, "You didn't answer my question" and CJ replies, "How about that?"), but also where she tells flat-out lies in a necessary process to protect the secrecy of ongoing military operations (What Kind Of Day Has It Been and her brazen lying about preparations for the rescue operation to retrieve the downed pilot in Iraq is an obvious example). Is it CJ's goal to "stymie reporters" or "mislead the public"? No, absolutely not ... but she still does it sometimes, and sometimes she has to.

There are some things I like a little bit about this episode - as I said, at least it's a different choice in presentation; the stark bluish video-tape-like color balance and shaky hand-held camera sets the documentary part separate from our typical filming style; I also like the inside-baseball parts with CJ's assistant press secretaries, particularly the moment when Carol is chewing out Jack Sosa over something or other; it's cool to see these young staffers doing their job that we just have no awareness of in general, and how they really do like working for CJ - but there's just so much wrong with it, from the ignoring of the past history of the show's seasons to the made-up controversies and loss of trust with the press that was never seen at the supposed time it happened, to the mawkish and overly emotional juxtaposition of CJ's phone call with her dad as home movies of her as a kid play on the screen. That was truly a terrible choice, and one I'm pretty sure no public television documentary crew would have made.

Plenty of people call this the worst West Wing episode of all. I don't think I'd go that far (partial credit given for the imaginative format), but it ain't good. Plus, I give you Ninety Miles Away, if you want a ponderous, confusing, history-disregarding contribution to The West Wing oeuvre.

 

Tales Of Interest!

- With the HLN network running holiday marathons of The West Wing over this past Thanksgiving weekend and the week between Christmas and New Years, my wife and I have jumped back into a rewatch of the Santos-Vinick campaign episodes from Seasons 6 and 7. What is really illuminating is how good those episodes are, a real rebound from the struggle to find footing post-Aaron-Sorkin in Season 5 and the first part of Season 6. Some of those episodes in Season 7 match up well with the best of the series in Seasons 2 and 3.

Another interesting note: the background actress highlighted here, as part of the press group standing outside of the White House, actually reappears as a reporter for a very short yet integral scene in Season 7. 

I never would have made the connection that it was the same actress if I hadn't seen both episodes just a few days apart. (I have noticed, however, the older white-haired gentleman with a buzz cut that appears all the time in the background of scenes - usually in the communications bullpen - keeps up working in the West Wing all the way through the entire series. Props to the show for keeping an actor employed for seven years in a non-speaking role!)

And another thing about the HLN marathons: what the heck happened to HLN, anyway? Originally called Headline News when it began 40-some years ago, it had one purpose - to package world and national headlines, weather, and sports into a neat half-hour presentation and just keep doing that, every half-hour. It was a great way to check in on what was happening in the news. Now it's true crime TV shows and nonstop Forensic Files all the time on HLN (well, except for the West Wing marathons, now that Warner Bros/Discovery/HBO has consolidated the TV rights). Yes, I know about network decay (or channel drift) and how MTV (Music Television) hasn't had anything to do with music for decades and the History Channel runs speculative fiction and the SciFi channel started carrying professional wrestling and so on ... it's just weird.

- There is no "previously on The West Wing" to start the episode; we jump right in with the sponsors of Access, as if we are watching that public television show. It's definitely a stand-alone episode - there's nothing that ties this in with previous or future episodes (except for the passing nods to CJ's father and the upcoming congressional delegation to the Middle East).

- CJ's deputy Eric Schaeffer is heard saying the date is Wednesday, March 31, as he gives the daily presidential schedule over the phone. This matches up exactly with the broadcast date of the episode, Wednesday, March 31, 2004.

- For the first time we have confirmation that Richard Nixon was President in the West Wing universe. While Eisenhower has been talked about before, and some references to Kennedy and LBJ have been made that strongly implied their administrations, the series' only two prior mentions of Nixon didn't necessarily prove he had been President. Here we see video evidence of President Nixon and his press secretary, Ron Ziegler.

However, this doesn't really help us with the timeline of Presidents in this universe, or explain how Presidential elections got offset two years from how things go in the real world. From what we see in this episode, the most recent Presidents that are confirmed as existing in the series are Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and now Nixon - but we don't know exactly how things progressed between Nixon and Bartlet.

2002: Bartlet elected to second term

1998: Bartlet elected

1994: Republican elected (served one term, which we know from Supreme Court Justice Crouch saying he waited to retire until a Democrat was in in office in The Short List, and knowing Leo served as Secretary of Labor in a Democratic administration in 1993 in In Excelsis Deo)

1990: Democrat elected, or re-elected (was this Newman?)

1986: Unknown (could this have been Newman's first term?)

1982: Unknown

1978: Unknown

1974: Nixon had been re-elected in 1972, and resigned in 1974 - is this where a new Presidential election timeline began?

In The Stormy Present we learned of two prior Presidents between Nixon and Bartlet, the Republican Owen Lassiter and the Democrat D. W. Newman. Toby says he voted for Newman twice, so perhaps he served two terms between 1986 and 1994? Lassiter could have been the one-term Republican defeated by Bartlet in 1998, but I think if that were the case it might have been expressly stated in that episode, but I don't know ... it's possible. Anyway, this is what we know for sure at this point, with the added knowledge from this episode that Nixon did indeed serve as President.

I won't even get into Separation Of Powers when we are told Supreme Court Chief Justice Ashland had served under 22 Congresses (which puts his confirmation to the post around 1961) and "the last five guys" hadn't been able to name a Chief Justice (there's no way to make it any fewer than six guys between then and Bartlet) - and which also ignores the fact Nixon named Warren Burger Chief Justice in 1969.

- The FBI director, George Arnold, is seen in file footage testifying before Congress about the Casey Creek event, which took place sometime during President Bartlet's first year in 1999 (and apparently before the series timeline began in the fall of that year). That would mean he has been Director of the FBI for Bartlet's entire administration ... yet in A Proportional Response the President says this to Charlie:

President: "Listen, Leo McGarry filled me in on the situation with your mother, I'm so very sorry. I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of calling Tom Connolly, the FBI Director."

Come on, showrunner people, don't you guys have a "bible" or something for the series to keep everything straight?

- Gail's fishbowl features a television camera.

- Somewhat surprisingly given the mixed reviews for the episode, Allison Janney won an Emmy for her performance. It was her fourth award in five seasons, receiving her second Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Emmy Award after earlier taking two Supporting Actress Emmys and losing in the Lead Actress race the previous season. I don't mean to belittle Janney at all and I would never do that, because she's always awesome and she does an excellent job in an episode designed to showcase her, but this isn't your typical award-bait kind of episode here. SPOILER ALERT: this will turn out to be the only Emmy Award the show gets for the season, and the first time in five years the series would fail to win the Outstanding Drama Series award.

- Why'd They Come Up With Access?

The program airing this documentary is called Access. The initial screen listing the major contributors to the program make it appear as if it's a PBS production - although the in-program breaks ("When we come back") aren't something typically seen in a public television production that doesn't actually have commercial breaks.

The title is also, of course, a reference to the access CJ and the White House is giving to this documentary film crew. 

Quotes    

CJ: "I can't let this project in any way compromise my obligations to the President of the United States. That was bragging."

-----

CJ: "What have you got?"

Chris: "Well, you're not gonna like it."

CJ: "I never expect to."

Chris: "At last year's inaugural the First Lady wore a burgundy Richard Taylor gown, satin, off the shoulder. I have a source that says she accepted that gown as a gift from the, uh, the designer, the ethics rules are pretty clear."

CJ: "Looks like I'll be rifling through the First Lady's closet this afternoon."

Chris: "Yeah, you could get fired for that?"

CJ: "If I'm lucky." 

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

• The FBI Director, George Arnold, is played by familiar character actor Michael Kagan (Providence, How I Met Your Mother, Desperate Housewives). The implication is that he's been in the post as long as President Bartlet has been in office (given his involvement with Casey Creek in 1999), but we've never seen him before (and in fact in Season 1 the FBI Director had a different name). Arnold will pop up again.

• Whenever the FBI is involved, it's always good to see Special Agent Mike Casper (Clark Gregg).

• Ivan Allen appears as a TV news anchor again, which is his go-to role in most of his appearances on TV or film. His first time popping up on the series happened in A Proportional Response, and he'll end up credited in 27 West Wing episodes.

• Wilson Cruz (My So-Called Life, Star Trek: Discovery, 13 Reasons Why) appears as Jack Sosa, part of CJ's staff.

• There's an early shot of CJ through the viewfinder of a TV camera, a little gimmick this series loves to do.

• Some of our usual White House reporters Greg Brock, Steve, Chris, Katie, and Mark all are seen.

• CJ tells the documentary crew, "My commute's the one time I can be by myself, gather my thoughts." In Pilot she was telling the cute guy on the treadmill next to her (before she fell off) that 5 to 6 am was the one hour that belonged to her, which she used to exercise. I guess her self-care schedule has changed. Or perhaps not; she says she's awake before 5 am, and arrives at the White House between 7 and 7:30, so maybe she still has that hour to work out.

• The process of keeping CJ out of the loop with what's happening on Shaw Island can't help but remind us of Lord John Marbury, when CJ was kept in the dark about the Pakistan-India border conflict, which hurt her relationship with the press. At that time, she was assured something like that would never happen again ... yet here we are. We even get confirmation from Josh and Toby that sometimes they have to keep information away from the press secretary, which is a direct reversal of how things ended in that Season 1 episode.

• In The Portland Trip Leo's office number was shown as WW-111. Here we get a good look at the sign for his office with his name on it, and it's now WW-115.

• There's an offhand mention of Abbey's inaugural gown, a burgundy Richard Tyler off-the-shoulder design in satin. I have no idea if it's a Richard Tyler, but in Inauguration: Over There Abbey was indeed wearing a burgundy off-the-shoulder satin gown. (Sure, the showrunners made sure they got that little fact right from a previous episode, they couldn't do that for the main plot?)

Abbey and Jed at the inaugural

• There's also an offhand mention of the press claiming Congresswoman Wyatt (Andy Wyatt, Toby's ex-wife and mother of their twins) is getting "chummy with the Palestinians." This goes along with the upcoming congressional fact-finding trip to the Middle East that was first heard about in the previous episode, The Supremes, and will continue as an important story thread into Season 6.

• CJ's father's struggle with Alzheimers is recalled. She first mentioned his difficulties with his memory in The Two Bartlets, and we saw CJ visit her father in The Long Goodbye.

• CJ's frizzier hair in the 1999 press conference scenes is a shoutout to her hairstyle from flashback episodes like In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II and Bartlet For America - that was how CJ looked pre-West Wing September 1999 debut! However, while this clip did show Carol acting as CJ's assistant back in 1999, we first saw Carol working for Toby in early Season 1, with other staff appearing to serve as CJ's assistants. Carol is seen helping CJ with a press briefing in The Crackpots And These Women and is definitely CJ's dedicated assistant by The Short List - all of which happened after this clip from earlier in 1999.

• We saw Toby go to California in In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen Part II to recruit CJ for the Bartlet campaign, in what would have been late 1997 or early 1998, and it's shown that the two knew each other a little. At that time CJ had just been fired from her PR post at an entertainment promotion firm. In this episode Toby tells us they first met at an unspecified earlier time, when Toby was running an unsuccessful Senate campaign in New York and CJ came over from a New York PR firm.

• We see a box of Goldfish crackers in CJ's office. We learned from Josh in The Short List that CJ loved "goldfish" - Danny Concannon took that to mean the actual fish, which is why he gave her Gail as a gift, but Josh meant the snack crackers.

• Leo's quiet reference to some of those arrested after the Shaw Island standoff as having connections to the Ba'ji terrorists tie us right back to the five sleeper agents who disappeared and were thought to be in the Pacific Northwest back in Season 4 (Commencement).

• The final voiceover for the documentary says CJ Cregg was the only woman to have served two terms as White House Press Secretary. Not to spoil too much for the future, but CJ doesn't actually serve two entire terms in that post. Again - the risk you run writing a TV episode that purportedly exists in the future, without you knowing everything that's actually going to happen in that future.

DC location shots    

• None.

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

• A lot of real-life file footage in this episode, at one point coming from Pathé News.

• We also see logos from C-SPAN, MSNBC, CNN, Bloomberg TV, and even C-SPAN 2 (which covers the Senate, C-SPAN covers the House). The two television stations we see, WRQE (the logo we see as the station airing this documentary) and WKPJ (seen on TV screens in the West Wing covering the Shaw Island story), apparently are fictional (both are currently radio station call letters, but not TV).

(The Working Towards Independence Act seen on this screen was before the House in the spring of 2002, or two years prior to this episode)

• Speaking of CNN, here's former CNN and current Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer in the background.

• Newspapers seen or mentioned include the Chicago Tribune, the Orange County Register, USA Today, and the (former) Washington Evening Star.

• Here's a look at an AOL (American OnLine) screen. Eric is doing background work using AOL Research & Learn!

• Former Presidents and press secretaries seen or mentioned include Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower (and his press secretary Jim Hagerty), John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson (and the press secretary for both JFK and LBJ, Pierre Salinger), and Richard Nixon (and his press secretary Ron Ziegler).

Eisenhower and Hagerty

Kennedy

Johnson

Salinger

Nixon

Ziegler

• CJ brings up the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, although the "observer effect" she's referring to isn't quite the same as the Heisenberg Principle (from Wikipedia: "Historically, the uncertainty principle has been confused with a related effect in physics, called the observer effect, which notes that measurements of certain systems cannot be made without affecting the system, that is, without changing something within a system").

• The press secretary flak jacket story with the notes left for future press secretaries is true, although it never was an actual "flak jacket" but began as a men's vest with a bulletproof lining. Ron Nessen, President Ford's press secretary, first handed down the jacket to his successor in 1977.

End credits freeze frame: Carol and CJ at a press briefing.

Previous episode: The Supremes

Next episode: Talking Points

The Supremes - TWW S5E17

 

Original airdate: March 24, 2004

Written by: Debora Cahn (6)  

Directed by: Jessica Yu (3)

Synopsis

• The quest to name a new Supreme Court justice takes an unexpected turn when Josh comes up with a bold, completely implausible plan to get both a progressive liberal and a staunch conservative on the bench.

"I love her. I love her mind. I love her shoes." 

A standout episode featuring a standout cast (Glenn Close! William Fichtner!), with top-notch writing and plotting from Debora Cahn and active, interesting directing from Jessica Yu make this a treasured favorite among West Wing fans, and a true hallmark of the series overall during what's been kind of a beleaguered Season 5. The fact that this episode is followed up by what many regard as one of the worst episodes of the series only serves to emphasize the unevenness of this first post-Aaron-Sorkin season ... but wow, this one is a keeper!

And, somewhat surprisingly given the serious subject matter and the high stakes involved, it's actually written as a comedy, devolving almost into a French farce by the final act. It's really funny! You've got funeral bouquets being sent to living Chief Justices, a Senator getting both Josh and CJ "a little bit drunk," Toby and Josh becoming a pretty good comedy team as they deal with potential SCOTUS nominees, a randy CJ keeping Toby's prying eyes away from her AOL IMs,

dry cookies, and Donna's parents' cats inspiring a crazy Hail Mary effort to transform how judicial nominations are made.

Plus, the sight of Josh and Toby arguing in Debbie's office outside the Oval, as she urges them to use their "inside voices" while the President peers out to see what all the racket is about:

Followed by Debbie spraying Josh with water, like a disobedient pet:

And then a half-drunk Josh, trying to get Toby's attention while two highly regarded federal judges are having an in-depth conversation in the Roosevelt Room:

"Josh Lyman is gesticulating wildly."

Back to the top: as we learned at the end of the previous episode, Supreme Court Justice Owen Brady has died, and the President now has the opportunity to name a replacement to the court. Brady was a hard-core conservative judicial voice, and given the opposition of the Republican Congress, the White House knows there's no way they could get a liberal replacement confirmed. They start coming up with names of moderate judges they think they might have success with.

As part of the overall effort, Leo and the staff think bringing in a left-wing judge or two, just so they're seen talking in the White House, might cause the conservative Republicans in the Senate to agree to a more moderate choice when the time comes - kind of a bait-and-switch. They're happy to go with the judge they think would cause the most consternation among the conservatives, a female judge who's overturned a law regarding parental consent for abortions, a judge that would have no prayer of getting confirmed in the current Senate - Evelyn Baker Lang.

Trouble is, once Josh and Toby talk to her, they're intrigued, even smitten. While she's totally aware of what's happening herself ("I'm window dressing. That's fine. I'm happy to help. But let's just chat about the weather"), Josh in particular can't get her out of his mind as a candidate. So as President Bartlet is talking with the moderate centrist everyone can get behind, Lang gets called back in for another visit - and the difference couldn't be more stark.

Judge Brad Shelton, being asked by the President about his stance on certain issues, refuses to say anything at all. "I don't position myself on issues and I don't know what I think about a case until I hear it," he says - which, to be fair, is solidly on the ground pretty much all SCOTUS nominees follow these days. The term "litmus test" comes to mind, which refers to an administration (or Senate) having certain requirements of where a judge might stand on certain high-profile issues before sending them through confirmation. The current thought, exemplified well by Shelton here, is that judges pretend they don't have firm opinions on points of law and that they'll look at each case before them in a totally fresh, unbiased light.

Lang, on the other hand, continues to dazzle Josh and Toby. They ask her about what she might say in a confirmation hearing if the committee brings up judicial activism regarding reproductive rights, and she counters with an answer that shows she has a far better understanding of individual Senators than they expect:

Lang: "Who are you, we're playing committee?"

Josh: "This'd be coming from, one of the eleven Republicans on there, Mitchell, Davies --"

Lang: "You can only be one."

Toby: "We don't really need to --"

Lang: "If you're Webster, the question is where do you stand on Roe v. Wade, and the answer is judicial rulings shouldn't be based on personal ideology, mine or anyone else's. If you're Davies, the question is how would you approach a D & X case because he's the drum-banger on partial birth, and the answer is, I don't comment on hypotheticals. If you're Malkin, you're from Virginia so you ask in Drori, I take you point-by-point from the doctor to the father to Casey to undue burden to equal protection back to Roe at which point you don't remember the question and I drink my water for a minute while you regroup."

It's a display of intellect and self-assurance that leads Josh and Toby to excuse themselves and Josh to whisper:

"I love her. I love her mind, I love her shoes."

But after some further discussion, Lang reveals a bombshell - she had an abortion herself while a student at law school. Now it's Toby and Josh's turn to regroup.

It's clear such a candidate could never survive Senate confirmation, not to mention the public outcry once that fact was revealed. But let's give President Bartlet some credit here. He's not willing to write her off so quickly:

President: "When did she have an abortion?"

Josh: "Law school."

President: "Before or after?"

CJ: "After '73. It was legal."

President: "Are we discarding anyone else for legal activities?"

Toby: "Not yet."

President: "Tonsillectomy? We down on surfing this year?"

CJ: "She'd be publicly eviscerated."

President: "Twenty-seven million women voted for me. I think they might have had in mind that I was going to protect this particular right. 'I like the guy from Florida with the good hairdo, but I want to retain my right to choose. I'm voting for what's-his-name married to Abbey Bartlet.'"

Even so, her elevation to SCOTUS seems nearly impossible ... until an offhand remark from Donna sparks something with Josh. Donna is sharing some cookies sent by her mother, cookies in a tin decorated with pictures of her parents' cats.

Josh: "Two cats. Cat people."

Donna: "For years, they only had one, but he died over Christmas."

Josh (chewing): "This is a dry cookie."

Donna: "After what was deemed an appropriate mourning period, they went to get a new one and my mother liked the Abyssinian and my father liked the gray, and they claimed that after 39 years of marriage they've outgrown compromise so they got both."

You see the lightbulb go on in Josh's head.

Donna's story has given him an idea - don't compromise, get both. Get Lang on the court (by replacing a current liberal titan, the ailing Chief Justice) and give the Republicans their hand-picked choice to replace the conservative Brady. Josh excitedly goes to Toby, who tries to shoot it down, then reluctantly thinks it over more - they go to the President, who is leery but willing to think about it. They visit Chief Justice Ashland, who scoffs at the impossible audacity of their idea but would agree to step aside if it were for Lang.

Josh goes to the Republicans to see who they'd choose. And, just as you might expect, it's a radical conservative voice that's fought against everything this Democratic administration has tried to accomplish. Christopher Mulready is the name, and Toby is livid.

Toby: "The man wrote a book that flushes the entirety of the doctrine of unenumerated rights down the, the ..."

CJ: "Toilet."

Toby: "Garbage disposal! No right to use a condom. No right to get an abortion, certainly. No protection from electronic searches, no substantive due process!"

But Josh knows it's this or nothing.

Josh: "This is the deal. He's what Evelyn Lang is to them. We nominate the patron saint of a woman's right to choose for chief justice, we ask them to ignore an incredibly rich piece of her personal history, we take the name they give us."

There's no way this can work, right? But then Toby, after a few minutes to reflect, comes to Josh to ask how they can get this deal past the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, especially Senator Pierce ... who, they realize, happens to share a last name with Josh's intern, Ryan ... the Senator's nephew.

Ryan pulls some family strings, gets Pierce to the White House, brings along a bottle of Scotch to Josh's meeting, while at the same time both Lang and Mulready are called in to meet the President separately. Trouble is, though, the scheduling breaks down because President Bartlet is having such a great time talking with Lang.

CJ: "Lang's still in there?"

Debbie: "Oh, she's a big hit."

CJ: "She has to leave, her evil twin Skippy's on his way."

Debbie: "I did our secret wrap-it-up sign which is I knock and say, 'The deputy NSA needs to talk about Japan' and he said, 'You talk to him, you've been there,' which is true, but it makes me think he's forgotten it's a secret sign."

CJ: "How about, 'Excuse me, Mr. President, we need to move on'?"

Debbie: "If you want the job, you're going to have to work on your typing."

And as Lang is taken to the Roosevelt Room from the Oval, she and Mulready cross paths, in a move that was never supposed to happen. But incredibly, their happenstance meeting results in a crackling discussion of legal doctrines and big issues sure to come before the Supreme Court sooner or later, and Toby in particular is mesmerized by the notion of these two accomplished legal minds working together.

Josh: "How's it going?"

Toby: "He's striking down gay-marriage bans and she's defending him. And they're as thick as thieves. And he's a fan of chain-yanking."

Josh: "She's defending him?"

Toby: "Up is down, down is up."

He rushes to the Oval Office to state his case to the President.

President: "You like him."

Toby: "I hate him. I hate him, but he's brilliant and the two of them together are fighting like cats and dogs ... but it works."

Mulready meets the President, and he impresses there, as well. 

Mulready: "Who writes the extraordinary dissent? The one-man minority opinion whose time hasn't come, but 20 years later some circuit court clerk digs it up at 3 in the morning. Brennan railing against censorship. Harlan's jeremiad on Jim Crow."

President: "Maybe you, someday."

Mulready: "They can't put me on the court. Just like you can't put Evelyn Lang on the court. It's Sheltons from here on in."

President: "There are 4000 protesters outside this building worried about who's going to land in that seat. We can't afford to alienate all of them."

Mulready: "We all have our roles to play, sir. Yours is to nominate someone who doesn't alienate people."

That last sentence strikes home to President Bartlet, and he makes the call. He's doing the historic two-justices deal. 

There's also a little bit of discussion about a congressional fact-finding trip to the Middle East, involving some non-governmental officials that's going to upset both the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority, a trip that's going to involve Toby's ex-wife Rep. Andy Wyatt. That leads to a touchy little talk about Andy and Toby's twins, twins we've heard almost nothing about since they were born 10 months ago, so that's an interesting little revelation of Toby's character (in Twenty Five he pledged his undying devotion, less than a year later he doesn't even ask about who's going to be taking care of his kids when their mother is leaving the country for two weeks) - but this is just laying the groundwork for a storyline that will take us through the end of Season 5 and into Season 6. There's also a touch of CJ flirting with Ben some more, online and on the phone (as she's trying to "fix" what she ruined with her busy schedule in Eppur si Muove), but it's barely there, and considering how lightweight and inconsequential the whole Ben/CJ story is anyway, that's just fine.

Other than that, though, it's a one-plotline episode, and it's a great one. And an amazing comedy, to boot. I don't think I nearly did it justice with my recap here, but hopefully I covered the high points for you, gentle reader. Better hang on to your hats, though, because the next episode is, well ... hoo-boy, it's something.

Tales Of Interest!

- Let's talk a little about the makeup of the Supreme Court in this universe. Josh says, "We've got centrists. We've got six of them. Plus two staunch conservatives, plus Justice Ashland." That's nine, meaning he's including the deceased Justice Brady among the two conservatives, and implying Ashland is the only progressive. Um, what about Justice Mendoza, nominated by President Bartlet and confirmed to the court in Six Meetings Before Lunch? Is Josh claiming Mendoza, hailed as a bold pro-privacy liberal judge that'd be hard to get confirmed in The Short List, is actually just one of those "centrists"?

And who exactly is on the Supreme Court at this time? Following the events of this episode, with the confirmation of Lang and Mulready assured due to the deal agreed upon by the White House and Republican leadership, we'd have:

Chief Justice Lang

Justice Mulready

Justice Mendoza

Justice Driefort (Ainsley Hayes clerked for him, from In This White House; confirmed he was a member of SCOTUS in It's Surely To Their Credit)

Justice Henry Clark (mentioned by both Ryan and Mulready)

Justice Brannigan (mentioned by Mulready)

Justice Hoyt (mentioned by Mulready)

Justice Lafayette (mentioned by Mulready)

Justice Carmine (mentioned by Mulready)

That gives us nine, which would be the correct number ... but if you remember Madame Justice Sharon Day, who was brought to the Oval Office to swear in President Walken in Twenty Five, suddenly we now have ten justices. Hmmm.

- I'm very familiar with the peanut butter cookies with a chocolate kiss, but I don't think I've ever heard them called "black-eyed susans" except for this episode. Actually, for me, growing up on a farm in southeastern Iowa, my mom would make those cookies using chocolate stars instead of kisses.

- It's a little bit interesting, I guess, that Joshua Malina appears in the opening credits but is does not appear in the episode. I mean, he's a full cast member, so he's going to be in the credits every week, but somebody like Stockard Channing only gets to be in the credits of the episodes she's actually in.

- When President Bartlet asks for Judge Lang's autograph on a copy of the 14th Amendment, he says Toby has a daughter that's 10 months old. We know the twins were born on the day of Zoey's graduation/kidnapping the previous year, which would have been in May of 2003, so this episode is firmly placed in March of 2004 (exactly when it aired). That's notable because the timeline of the show is going to be shifting soon.

- Another fleeting look at Gail's fishbowl, and I can't really see what's there. Not even the website that tracks West Wing fishbowl appearances has an answer for this one.

- Why'd They Come Up With The Supremes?

A shorthand reference to the justices on the Supreme Court, which is used by Ryan only for him to be criticized by Josh. The cross-reference to the Motown singing group The Supremes is not unintended.

Quotes    

Lang: "A conservative anchor of the court has just died - a young brilliant thinker who brought the right out of the closet and championed a whole conservative revival. You cannot replace Owen Brady with a woman who overturned a parental consent law. You'd be shish-ka-bobed and set aflame on the South Lawn. Two reporters have ... three reporters have walked by since we started. I'm window dressing. That's fine. I'm happy to help. But let's just chat about the weather." 

-----

Josh: "You sent a funeral bouquet to the family of the living, breathing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?"

Ryan: "No, I sent them to the guy who died, Brady."

Josh: "No, actually, you didn't." 

----- 

Debbie: "I hate to do this, but it's Rena, sir."

President: "Huh?"

Debbie: "The girl in the dress with the flowers."

President: "Just now?"

Debbie: "Yes."

President: "What'd I call her?"

Debbie: "Lana."

President: "Who's Lana?"

Debbie: "I'm guessing an exotic dancer from your spotty youth."

-----

Josh (approaching CJ's door): "Is she in there?"

Carol: "Hang on. She's getting off ..."

(We hear CJ laughing behind the door)

Carol: "The phone."

-----

Josh: "We've got Lang coming in to meet the President at 7. Christopher Mulready is at 8. The press can't see 'em. We need a clear shot from the Roosevelt Room to the Oval."

Donna: "He's on the short list?"

Josh: "He is if she is. We make it both."

Donna: "Oh my god, you're putting my mother's cats on the Supreme Court."

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

• Judge Evelyn Baker Lang is played by the amazing eight-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close (The World According To Garp, The Natural, Fatal Attraction, Damages, on and on and on). She's dazzling in this role.

• Centrist nominee candidate Judge E. Bradford Shelton is played by Robert Picardo (Star Trek: Voyager, Stargate: Atlantis, Dickinson).

• The recognizable face of Mitchell Ryan (Dharma & Greg, Grosse Pointe Blank, Lethal Weapon) is seen as Senator Pierce, Ryan's uncle. Ryan actually passed away just a few months before this post, in March 2022.

• I love the work of William Fichtner (Contact, Armageddon, Black Hawk Down, Mom [also starring Allison Janney!]), so it's great to see him as Judge Christopher Mulready.

• Ryan is back (after having kind of gone missing in the previous episode), and the fact he has an uncle in the Senate plays a big role in the plot.

• Andy returns, along with a mention of Toby's twins, newborn twins which he pledged his life to in Twenty Five but has hardly said a word about since. It's hard to reconcile Toby's emotional, devoted speech to the newborn twins in that episode with the guy here who doesn't even ask about who will be taking care of his children when their mother is heading to the Middle East for two weeks.

• Speaking of Andy, the congressional delegation to the Middle East that Toby is so upset about will be an ongoing thread throughout the rest of the season, with repercussions even into Season 6.

• Lisa Wolfe from the Senate Judiciary Committee pops up again, after being seen in Eppur si Muove being persuaded by Josh to help get some judges confirmed (including his friend Eric Hayden). Now she's knee-deep in Josh's maneuverings in the double-SCOTUS-justice swap.

• Milo O'Shea (The Verdict, Barbarella, 1968's Romeo and Juliet) has one more appearance as Chief Justice Ashland (previously seen in Separation Of Powers).

• Chief Justice Ashland's health issues were first brought up in Inauguration: Part I when the Chief Justice was writing opinions in verse; in Constituency Of One he mistook a college moot court proceeding for the actual Supreme Court; and in Separation Of Powers he collapsed and nearly died, but insisted he couldn't step down because the Bartlet administration wasn't strong enough to get a suitable liberal judge confirmed to replace him.

• Judge Lang brings up Josh's attempts to get his friend Eric Hayden confirmed to a federal court, which we saw in the previous episode, Eppur si Muove.

• The President's mangling of Rena's name (calling her "Lana") is a callback to Martin Sheen's difficulty with keeping names straight himself. Aaron Sorkin gave that trait to the character of Jed, and it's continuing even in the post-Sorkin era.

• CJ is canoodling on the phone with her college beau Ben, referred to as "Ranger Rick" by Josh (he was a park ranger in Alaska, recently relocated to the Washington area). The Ben storyline has been trickling along since Constituency Of One, with CJ deciding to try to make a go of becoming a couple in Eppur si Muove.

• President Bartlet's off-hand remark about "the guy from Florida with the good hairdo" refers to Governor Rob Ritchie, Bartlet's Republican opponent in the 2002 election whom we saw portrayed by James Brolin in Posse Comitatus and Game On.

DC location shots    

• At the opening we see Josh coming in through what appears to be the actual White House security gate. I had my suspicions about it actually being on location at the White House; while in some previous episodes we've seen shots of the entry gates from the outside, we've never actually had cameras set up inside the fence. It turns out I was correct, listening to the DVD commentary; this was actually filmed on the Warner Brothers lot.

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

• The landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which enshrined a constitutional right to abortion, is mentioned several times. Lang also mentions Casey offhand, which would be 1992's Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which also upheld abortion rights. Of course both Roe and Casey were basically reversed in 2022 by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision from the hard-right Roberts court.

• Judge Lang recalls sneaking a copy of Lady Chatterley's Lover out of the public library and never returning it.

• Donna's parents' cats are named Shadrach and Meshach, from the Bible story in the book of Daniel of the three boys who survived being cast into the furnace after refusing to bow down to an image of the king. No word on why Abednego didn't get a shout out.

• Josh says if the Supreme Court had a bench full of moderates in 1954 "separate but equal" would still be the law. That's a reference to Brown v. Board of Education, a 1954 decision that established "separate but equal" facilities were unconstitutional.

• Toby is seen with a Panda Express menu, perhaps a catering menu.

• Chief Justice Ashland quotes Shakespeare (Richard II, to be precise) with his "Let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings."

• Josh calls CJ's friend Ben "Ranger Rick," although I don't think he means he's a raccoon.

• A couple of songs appear: Ryan is heard singing "Stay" in the hallway (making Josh refer to him as Elvis), and CJ and Senator Pierce wind up singing "American Pie" after getting a little too deep into the Scotch (a 21-year-old Glenlivet, as Josh describes it, which currently goes for over $250 a bottle).

• Debbie's office is seen with a Bose Wave Radio (we've seen a similar unit in the Presidential residence before).

• When Lang and Mulready are going at each other back-and-forth in the Roosevelt Room "Lopez" is mentioned along with the Commerce Clause; that's a real case, 1995's United States v. Alfonso D. Lopez Jr., which restricted the power of Congress to enact legislation under the Commerce Clause.

• Mulready brings up dissents from past Supreme Court justices Brennan (censorship, referring to 1988's Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier) and Harlan (dissenting against the principle of segregation and "separate but equal" in 1896's Plessy v. Ferguson).

• We see the logos of both MSNBC and C-SPAN on TV screens in the final scenes.

End credits freeze frame: Judges Lang and Mulready shaking hands in the Roosevelt Room.

Previous episode: Eppur si Muove

Next episode: Access