West Wing TV Show - Take Out The Trash Day - West Wing Photos & Videos, West Wing Reviews & West Wing Recaps | TWoP

Recapped by Strega · Aired 01-25-2000

The show starts as C.J. tells the press corps, "There will be fifteen PEN recipients; the President will sign the bill with fifteen pens." Ace reporter Fishboy asks, "'Josiah Bartlet' has thirteen letters in it; how's the President going to use fifteen pens?" I just want to know how he's going to sign anything if he's switching pens for every letter. Sounds more like printing to me. C.J. makes fun of Fishboy, who claims, "My readers expect a little bit more." Which is why they subscribe to your competitors' paper, dude. C.J. looks through her notes and is eventually able to report that the Prez will use the extra pens to dot the "I" and cross the "T"s. Then she calls him "Freakboy," which is pretty close to "Fishboy." Moving on, C.J. announces that the parents of Lowell Lydell, who was killed by gay-bashers, will be present to watch the Prez sign his new Hate Crimes bill. Mandy steps up to the window to watch this part more closely. A reporter asks if the Lydells are still expected to attend, since "there's a rumor that the Lydells aren't big supporters of the President." C.J. says she's heard the same rumor, and it's ridiculous because "the President is signing Hate Crimes legislation. Jonathan and Jennifer Lydell's son was killed for being gay." Other reporters chime in to say they've heard the rumor too. So? That's kind of why they're called rumors; lots of people hear them.

After the press conference, Mandy goes to harass C.J. "I wish you hadn't done that," Mandy says. When C.J. asks what she's talking about, Mandy clarifies, "Guaranteed the Lydells." C.J. snaps, "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that you all intentionally kept me ignorant of new developments so that I could mislead the press more effectively. Do you mean I should be completely honest with the press? Maybe I'll start by telling them that the only difference between the White House staff and a pack of baboons is that the baboons have better wardrobes!" No, she doesn't say that, but I bet she thought it. Instead, C.J. asks if the Lydells are coming, and Mandy says, "They are coming, I'm just not sure we're going to want them there." Mandy explains that she flew to St. Paul to visit the Lydells and that the mother is fine, but that the father "doesn't say much." C.J. snaps, "Their son was just murdered, Mandy. Did you want him to wear a campaign button?" Mandy answers, "I do at the bill signing." C.J. asks, "Are you listening to yourself?" If she did, she'd probably realize how annoying she is. Mandy says that the Lydells will be arriving in the morning, and that C.J. should meet with them. C.J. asks if she's supposed to audition the Lydells. Mandy answers, "Yes. And I'd also like you to cut me some slack." Since C.J. has her back to the camera, we can't see her roll her eyes.

C.J. enters her office just as Josh comes down the hall to announce, "We've got a bit of a sticky wicket." I can see that Lord Marbury's been influencing him. C.J. begs, "Please don't tell me I'm staying here and working late tonight." Josh says she needs to read a report. "I'm a woman in her prime, Josh; I'm a prime woman," C.J. declares. And she is. Josh agrees, but insists that she has to read something anyway. He explains, "We want Congress to sign off on funds for a hundred thousand new teachers. They say, fine, but you gotta stipulate that in Sex Ed classes --" "Abstinence only?" asks C.J. "Yes," says Josh. "I would have no trouble passing such a class," C.J. offers, and Josh gets a bit of TMI whiplash. He hands C.J. a copy of a report that was commissioned on sex education in public schools. Josh summarizes: "It says basically that teaching abstinence only doesn't work -- that people are going to be prone to have sex whether they're cautioned against it or not." I wish he'd used a word other than "prone," there, because given the context, well, anyway...C.J. asks what the report recommends, and Josh says that it favors "abstinence plus." When C.J. asks what that is, Josh says that Sam renamed it "everything but." C.J. says, "So the sticky wicket joke was...?" "A regrettable pun," Josh confesses. Josh offers to order food for C.J., and then adds, "By the way, pages twenty-seven to thirty-three? A couple of things every girl should know." C.J. asks for a salad. Instead, she gets the credits.

Fishboy wanders into C.J.'s office and asks if she wants dinner. She explains that she has to read a report about sex education, and adds, "I'm anticipating any joke you could possibly make right now, and I'm not finding any of them funny." Fishboy insists that eventually C.J. will have to go on a date with him, instead of just grabbing him and kissing him randomly. Oh God, it's happened more than once? He says, "I applaud the spirit, but there's [sic] better things ahead. As I'm sure you're about to read." Give me an "E"! Give me a "W"! What does it spell? EW! C.J. asks what Fishboy wants, and he answers, "I want to know about an advance man for the Vice-President who took a Navy helicopter to Pebble Beach to shoot eighteen holes." C.J., shocked, asks how he heard about it. Fishboy credits an anonymous source in the White House. C.J. says she'll look into it. Then she kisses him. Ugh.

Donna shouts for Josh, and then asks Cathy, "Did they burn the hamburger?" Cathy says, "I told them well-done," and Donna explains, "He likes it beyond well-done; he likes it burnt." Josh pops in and immediately asks, "Did they burn the hamburger?" Donna says that they did, whereupon Josh asks, "Did you check?" "I am not checking your food!" Donna says, and for once I sympathize with her. Josh goes on to say, "I like it where if you dropped it on the floor, it would break." Desperate to change the subject, Donna asks, "What's 'Take Out the Trash Day?'" Josh says, "Any stories we have to give to the press that we're not wild about, we give them all in a lump on Friday." Hey, Ken Olin directed this episode! ["And he directed Freaks and Geeks last week! The man gets around!" -- Wing Chun] Donna asks why they don't spread out all the bad stories. Josh spells out the obvious: If the stories are all released the same day, coverage will be divided among them. Donna asks why they do this on Fridays. "Because no one reads the paper on Saturday," Josh explains.

Sam steps into Toby's office with this conversational starter: "There's a town in Alabama that wants to abolish all laws except the Ten Commandments." Toby already knows, because Toby knows everything. Sam says, "Some of those Commandments are going to be pretty hard to enforce." Toby seems uninterested in this topic, and asks what Sam wants. Sam says that he's been asked to comment on a story that will be in tomorrow's Georgetown Hoya. That's Georgetown University's newspaper, which I guess might be common knowledge, but I wouldn't know that if I didn't leave near D.C., so consider this your educational tidbit for the day. And before you ask, no one knows what the hell a "Hoya" is. Sam explains that "A sociology professor has been teaching what the paper, at any rate, feels is racist stuff. Too much funding for Head Start, welfare mothers, and --" When Toby wonders why this is a White House issue, Sam explains that Zoey is in the class. Toby summarizes, "The President's daughter got an idiot sociology teacher, and we've gotta..." Sam says he'll talk to Zoey. Toby turns back to his laptop, but then realizes Sam is still lurking in the doorway.

Toby: What else?
Sam: Coveting thy neighbor's wife, for example. How are you gonna enforce that one?
Toby: Sam!
Sam: We never have our chats anymore, Toby.
Toby: What chats?
Sam: Our late night chats!
Toby: Did we ever do that?
Sam: ...No.

Hey Sam, what about coveting thy boss's daughter? Anyway, Leo rescues Toby by interrupting to ask him and Sam to come to his office. As they follow him through the hallway labyrinth, Sam asks if Leo knows about the potential Ten Commandments legislation in Alabama. Leo does. Sam asks for Leo's thoughts on the matter. Leo says, "Coveting thy neighbor's wife is going to cause some problems." "That's what I said," Sam says, puckering up. "Plus, if I were arrested for coveting my neighbor's wife, when asked about it, I'd probably bear false witness." I just know that Sam spent all afternoon thinking up that line, and ever since he's been roaming the halls trying to get someone to set up his quip.

In Leo's office, Josh is chiseling a new, eleventh commandment ("Thou shalt not make speculative movies about Lennon/McCartney reunions") into his hamburger. Leo enters, with Toby and Sam trailing behind him, and declares, "Josh, this Sex Ed report could not possibly come at a worse time!" Toby points out that Josh didn't write the report. Leo says that they'll have to deal with the report tomorrow, and asks, "What's this thing on the Hill?" Josh says, "Sam and me [sic], we're meeting with Bruno from an appropriations sub-committee that has jurisdiction over the White House budget." Leo asks, "Is this about me?" Josh says, "Technically, it's about me. They want to know why I withheld information gained during Inspector Javert's drug search." Toby declares that "it was absolutely the right thing to do under the circumstances." Wow, thank you for sharing, Toby. Leo awkwardly thanks Josh and Sam for their support, and Josh and Sam do the embarrassed squinting and looking at the floor which is the guy version of saying "you're welcome."

By Strega

All the secretaries are gathered about in a gossip-fest. It appears that they are arguing over how sure someone is about something. Margaret tries to hush them all as Donna declares, "She just said, she knew it in her heart, which is very different from somebody saying --" "I know it for sure!" insists the secretary tentatively identified as Sheen-spawn. Mrs. Landingham interrupts, "Excuse me." Quickly taking stock of the situation, she says, "You all work for very important people. This is not a place for gossip. You understand me?" Abashed looks from the secretaries. Mrs. L exits, to go schedule her poker night with Grams Lindley. ["Ha!" -- Wing Chun] Donna refuses to be cowed, and immediately says, "She said she knew it in her heart. You know how many things I've been wrong about in my heart?" Josh suddenly steps out of his office, notes, "Here's a group of federal employees," and goes on his way. Donna rushes after him and asks if she can talk to him in Sam's office. "We'll need to ask Sam, don't you think?" asks Josh. Donna nods, "I need Sam, too." Luckily, Sam is passing by just then and is drafted into their chat. As they head for Sam's office, Donna starts jabbering about the advance man who took a Navy helicopter to go play golf. Sam says that the guy's name is Chad Magrudian. "Didn't he use to work for us?" Josh wonders. Sam says that Chad kept screwing up: "He advanced the Puerto Rico trip and spent a half a day scuba diving. Which was nowhere on the President's itinerary. He advanced the New York trip and got impossible tickets to something the President had no intention of seeing." Josh asks what Donna would like to tell them. "We know who leaked the story," Donna says. Josh closes the door.

Josh and Sam tell Toby who the snitch is: "Her name is Karen Larsen. She'd worked on the Vice-President's campaign and in his public affairs office. Aides thought she was getting a bit of a crush on Hoynes, so they moved her further away." Gosh, why does that sound familiar? There's something that reminds me of, but what? It's on the tip of my tongue....Toby guesses that Karen was moved to personnel. "How high is her FBI clearance?" he asks. "High enough," Sam declares. "I think we've found our man," Josh says, who might need to look over that Sex Ed report again. Toby tells Sam to talk to Karen after he gets back from Capitol Hill.

As they hurry to the Oval Office, Leo tells the Prez, "The way the European Union is set up, the rules favor the import of bananas from Latin American countries that used to be European colonies. "I don't want to spend the whole day talking about bananas," the Prez declares, and quickly greets Mrs. L. and Nancy. So, it turns out that there is an area of trivia that the Prez doesn't care about. Mrs. L. asks, "Did you say you wanted a banana? Nancy, you want to get the President a banana?" The Prez says, "I really don't want a banana." Mrs. L. points out that bananas are a good source of potassium. "I'm done talking to you now," the Prez says, and goes into his office, where the whole team is gathered. Leo, not giving up, says that "the rules discriminate against bananas from poorer Latin American countries." The Prez asks if the U.S. is a poorer Latin American country, and having confirmed that it isn't, wonders, "Then why am I having this conversation?" Leo explains that the bananas from poorer Latin American countries are sold through companies based in the United States. Every time I try to write something here about U.S. corporations and the economic and political situation in Latin America, I end up ranting incoherently, so I guess I'll give up and move on. Let's just say, it might not be a coincidence that those countries are the poorest. The Prez asks if he's in trouble with Chiquita and Dole. Leo hesitates: "Well, it's not you so much as...Yeah, it's mostly you." The Prez tells Toby, "We have appointed five people to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Republicans in the House, as well as an alarming number of Democrats, have been holding up those appointments." Toby says he's aware of the situation, and that he's going to a meeting about it later. The Prez adds, "As far as I can tell, their reluctance has little, if anything, to do with bananas." Toby makes a little speech: "I was raised on Sesame Street; I was raised on Julia Child; I was raised on Brideshead Revisited. Their legacies are safe in my hands." He turns in time to see C.J. giggling, and asks if she has a problem. "You watched cooking shows?" she snickers. "I watched Miss Julia Child," Toby sniffs. The Prez confirms that C.J. will meet with the Lydells that afternoon. C.J. asks why everyone's concerned, and Leo repeats Mandy's claim that Mr. Lydell doesn't say much. C.J. is still bewildered by their concern. The Prez explains, "This is no time to put a guy front and center who's embarrassed that his son was gay." Leo adds, "This guy sells dental supplies in the Twin Cities, so how enlightened do you think he's going to be?" Dental supply retailers are well known for their homophobia. C.J. asks if the Prez has looked at the Sex Ed report, and describes it as "very dramatic." The Prez says he'll talk to her about it at the end of the day.

As Josh and Sam try to escape through a side door, the Prez spots them and follows them out for a quick chat. "What time are you going up to the Hill?" he asks. Josh tells him they're leaving at noon. The Prez says, "I want to preempt a hearing. I don't want it. I don't want it for Leo. I don't want it for his family. I don't want it for us. They know that, and they're gonna play Let's Make a Deal. Don't take anything off the table until you've talked to me, you understand?" They do. The Prez adds, "Unless a war breaks out, I'll be spending much of my day talking about bananas." He goes back inside and asks Leo if he's going to meet with someone named Simon Blye later. "How did you know that?" Leo wonders. The Prez says, "I broke into your secret schedule compartment and took infrared photos with my compact camera." Then he admits that Margaret told him. Incidentally, the President appears to have a collection of snow globes or glass paperweights on his desk. ["Hey, so does my dad! He could be President!" -- Wing Chun] Or maybe they're Orbs of Thessaly, or Soul Hunter globes. Your guess is as good as mine. Leo says that Simon is a good friend. "No, he's not," the Prez insists. "He's been a good friend to me," Leo says. The Prez gets Confucian and tells Leo, "It isn't hard to like a guy when he's doing well. The measure of a man is, how does he behave when things are otherwise?" Leo says he needed some advice. "That you couldn't get from me? Or Toby, or Josh, or Sam, or C.J.?" the Prez asks. Notice a name that isn't on that list? Starts with "M," ends with "-andy"? Leo strokes the Prez's ego, saying that his counsel "is valued above all else. I just meant [that] I can use all the help I can get." The Prez tells Leo that he puts too much faith in people. Not that this will become a plot point later, or anything. It'll become TWO plot points.

C.J. stops by Fishboy's office to ask him something, and then confirms that they're off the record. Then she changes her mind about asking him. Fishboy starts talking about kissing again, and insists that he doesn't mind it. C.J. says there won't be any more kissing. I shout hallelujah. C.J. finally asks, "Is it possible that a father could be embarrassed about his son being gay, even after his son was murdered?" Fishboy tells her that it is. "Possible to the extent that he'd be disinclined to support a law that would impose stiffer penalties upon the perpetrators of hate crimes, including the ones who tied his seventeen-year-old son to a tree and threw rocks at his head?" Again, Fishboy says yes. Sad and baffled, C.J. says, "It eludes me." Fishboy asks if she's going to tell the press about Chad's golf game. She says she'll have the information on Friday. "You're gonna dump it in the Friday trash," Fishboy notes. C.J. says, "He's a C-level aide to the Vice-President, Danny. He's resigning. You want to run a special section?" Fishboy and C.J. say goodbye to each other a few times. C.J. tells Fishboy he should go. And he should. Fishboy points out that they're in his office. C.J. leaves. Without kissing Fishboy. Go C.J.! Be strong!

Josh and Sam sit across a conference table from Bruno and several other gray-haired white men in dark suits. Bruno seems eager to put them at ease. He says, "This isn't a trial. This isn't a deposition. You won't be sworn in. You're not on the record. There will be no record." He explains that some Congressmen want to hold hearings "to determine if there was any wrong-doing on the part of senior White House staffers in covering up Leo McGarry's past problems with alcohol and drugs." Bruno says he wants to keep that from happening, and then asks, in his casual, non-confrontational way, "What happened?"

Meanwhile, Simon Blye is shown into Leo's office. He and Leo exchange pleasantries and sit down on the couch. Josh, Sam, and Bruno summarize the Lillienfield/drug scare/subpoena saga. Simon tells Leo that Josh and Sam won't be able to make a deal with Bruno: "There's going to be a hearing, Leo, and it'll take months and it'll be awful. We're going to hear stories about booze, and pills, and God knows what you did. The President's got a budget to pass, he's got to get Mendoza confirmed, and in nine months he's got to get a Democratic Congress elected." Leo hesitates, and asks, "Did you come here to tell me you think I should resign?" Simon nods. Leo says that he's offered his resignation, but the Prez won't accept it. Simon sneers, "He's blinded by friendship, and he's being foolish, and you should point that out to him." Leo stares at Simon for a minute before finally saying, "I'm just taking a guess....Is there an op-ed piece coming out that I should know about?" Simon says yes, it'll be in tomorrow's issue of The Washington Post. Leo starts shaking his head slowly while Simon goes on to say, "I wanted to let you know as a courtesy since we've been friends for so long. I have a copy with me..." Leo says that he doesn't need to see it: "I know what it says. For the good of the party, for the good of the President, a leading Democrat comes out in the Post and calls for my resignation." While Simon desperately tries to interrupt, Leo sarcastically adds, "That probably won't get much attention, and it will definitely not distract from the President's agenda. I haven't seen you making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows in a while, Simon. I'm glad I could help out!" Suddenly Leo's voice sounds funny, as if this line was dubbed in later: "Where's your grave concern for country, party, and President, when you're out whoring for Atlantic Oil?" The closed captioning refers to Standard Oil. Is Standard Oil affiliated with GE or something? Anyway, when he finally gets a word in, Simon just says that he's insulted by the accusation. Leo, getting angrier by the second, snaps, "Well, God, I sure didn't mean to hurt your feelings!" Simon tries to say something else, but Leo suggests, "I think you should walk out of here, now. As a matter of fact, I think you should run!" Simon doesn't run, but he doesn't hesitate either. As he closes the door, Leo sighs, "Oh God."

"For how long?" Josh asks. "After the midterms," Bruno answers. Sam helpfully points out that they're almost a year away. "You want the White House to put it in a drawer for a year? Why?" Josh asks. Bruno says, "I don't want the debate. Nobody does. Nobody wants to support it, nobody wants to oppose it. Nobody wants the debate, not 'til after the midterms." Josh, still puzzling this out, confirms that if they do this, there won't be any hearings. Sam says the Prez won't go for the deal. Josh blusters: "The hearings aren't going to turn up anything. We're not frightened enough to suppress --" Bruno points out, "It doesn't matter what the hell the hearing turns up. It's a hearing. This one is drugs, so it's sexy. This is Geraldo's dream come true. So don't get up with me, okay?" "Get up with me"? Bruno adds, "I am throwing you a rope -- something I'd like the two of you to remember the time you're mouthing off on Face the Nation [that] you can't get anything done, 'cause House Republicans are vindictive." Bruno, who has gone from being Mr. Rogers to Mr. Wilson in the blink of an eye, growls, "This is what happens [when] you put teenagers in the White House. You guys screwed this up from the beginning!" He declares that they should have let the White House Counsel's Office do the investigation, and that Josh came close to perjury in his deposition. He winds up by saying, "I'd like to hold hearings into the two of you being stupid! But I don't have that kind of time." Heh. Bruno and his aides leave so that Josh and Sam can call the Prez.

A young woman with an extremely grating voice tells Toby and C.J., "Your argument isn't with us. We watch PBS. We like PBS. But we also work for Congressmen who have constituencies that want to know why the federal government is subsidizing television for rich people." Toby calmly points out that PBS is not television for rich people: "One quarter of the PBS audience is in households with incomes lower than twenty thousand a year. Blacks comprise eleven percent of the public television audience, and blacks comprise eleven percent of the commercial TV audience." He gives some more demographic information as C.J. leaves the room. A secretary tells her that "they" are here, and C.J. asks the secretary to get Mandy. When asked where Mandy is, C.J. says, "She's in the Oval Office, having what must be a very comfortable audience with the President."

Cut to the Prez, who reads, "The majority of young people move from kissing to more intimate sexual behaviors during their teenage years. More than fifty percent engage in petting behavior." He interrupts himself to ask Mandy if that means what he thinks it means. He reads on, "By the age of fourteen, more than twenty-five percent have touched a girl's...I won't say that word." He reads ahead silently and says, "Not gonna say that." Looking at the , he finds another word he won't be uttering. Mrs. L. enters and tells Mandy that the Lydells are waiting in the mural room. Mandy excuses herself. Mrs. L. looks at the Prez and asks if he'd like to share what the report says. He responds, "With you? No." Mrs. L. folds her arms and asks why not. "Because I'd rather not be in therapy for the rest of my life," he answers. As she leaves, the Prez crosses out another word in the report.

By Strega

Cathy pokes her head into Sam's office. Sam says, "There's a small town in Alabama that wants to pass a law saying if I don't honor my father, I go to jail. What do you think about that?" Cathy asks how they'd know if Sam was honoring his father. Sam says, "Yeah, I think they've overlooked that problem." That must have been the cover story in USA Today, for Sam to be so obsessed with it. Cathy sends in Karen Larsen, and Sam closes his door. He tells her, "The advance man you ratted out doesn't work for us anymore, Karen. He works for the Vice-President. Kind of screwed yourself there, didn't you." I think Sam's been taking lessons in glaring from Leo, because, eek. Karen tries to deny it, but Sam tells her he's got witnesses, and that people think she's been acting strange. Sam asks if she was trying to protect her boss, and without letting her answer, says, "They think you're the one who leaked the story about the advance man. I'm thinking something different." Sam says he doesn't give a damn about the advance man, and then asks, "Were you the one who gave Leo McGarry's personnel file to Lillienfield and Claypool?" Karen looks down, and says that Claypool is a family friend. Sam shouts for Cathy, who opens the door. Sam says, "Take her back to her office and stand there while she cleans out her desk." Sam leans over Karen and tells her that security will throw her out of the building in fifteen minutes.

The Prez tells Mrs. L., "You're not going to believe this, but I think I'd actually like a banana." Mrs. L. says, "I'm afraid not sir, no." The Prez asks why he can't have one, and is told, "You were offered one earlier, sir, and you were snippy." The Prez denies any snippiness, but Mrs. L. ignores his denial and tells him that C.J. is waiting for him. He goes into his office and tells C.J., "She withholds food from me." C.J. asks the Prez about the Sex Ed report. He tells her, "We're going to leave it alone for a while." He clarifies that they're going to stick it in a drawer till after the midterm elections. C.J. asks, "You don't think we have an obligation to present the information?" The Prez says, "It's not going to play well at PTA meetings, C.J. It says we should be teaching kids to have sex." C.J. says it doesn't, and the Prez agrees: "But that's how it's gonna play." C.J. argues that offering information about safe sex doesn't increase the rate of teenage sexual activity, and that teaching abstinence doesn't lower it. The Prez says that Congress won't give federal funding to classes that teach anything other than abstinence. C.J. says, "We have an enormous pulpit from which to --" The Prez gets that wrath-of-God tone and declares, "And we will avail ourselves of that pulpit, but we will do it after the midterm elections!" Then, looking a bit abashed about raising his voice, he explains, "I needed to get Leo off the hook." C.J. confirms that this is the deal Josh and Sam made. She tells the Prez that some of the press know that the report has come in. The Prez says, "There's nothing wrong with telling them we got it. I wouldn't make a big deal out of it. We got it, we're looking at it, we're studying it. Throw it out with the trash." C.J. starts to leave, than turns at the door and inexplicably declares "We can all be better teachers" before leaving.

There's a peculiar shot of the overhead lighting fixtures, courtesy of Ken Olin. Fishboy finds C.J. sitting on a staircase, and asks what she's doing. "Nothing," she says. After a pause, she says, "If you call Mr. and Mrs. Lydell in St. Paul and ask them why --" "Don't!" Fishboy interrupts. "Don't leak me a story. I've seen this look on the face of four other press secretaries before you. You've got a story in the trash this week that's a story, you want it out there, and someone said no." C.J. asks, "Four other press secretaries and you never took a free lead?" Fishboy says, "I always took a free lead. Not from you." When C.J. asks why not, he explains, "Twenty minutes from now you're gonna remember [that] you're a professional, and you won't like me anymore." If that's true, I wish she'd give him the story. Fishboy says that if there's a story he'll find it. C.J. says that he won't: "We've gotten very good at this."

Leo is watching a press conference in his office when Karen Larsen enters, carrying her box of White House souvenirs. Leo says, "I wanted to meet you, and I wanted you to meet me." He asks what went through her mind when she read his personnel file. "My father drank a lot," Karen says. "So did mine," Leo nods, "In fact, he died from it. He came home late one night, very drunk. My mother was yelling at him. I'm not sure about what; I heard the yelling downstairs from my bedroom. She came upstairs, and he went out to the garage and shot himself in the head." Karen asks if that's why Leo drank and took drugs, and Leo says, no, he did that because he's an alcoholic and a drug addict. Leo says, "I haven't had a drink or a pill in six and a half years, which isn't to say I won't have one tomorrow." Karen asks what would happen if he did. Leo says, "I don't know, but probably a nightmare the likes of which both our fathers experienced. And me, too." Leo explains a bit more about alcoholism to Karen, who seems to know very little about it for someone whose father was an alcoholic. Karen finally says, "You're not like what I thought you would be like." Leo asks again what Karen thought when she read his personnel file. Close to tears, she says, "My father used to...You have all these important decisions to make in your job. Every day. All the time. Decisions I can't even...People's lives." Leo leans back and says, "Karen, what you did caused a lot of problems. For me, for the President, for a lot of people we don't even know. But I'm not sure it wasn't a little bit brave." He asks if she liked working at the White House, and when she says she did, he says, "Okay, then why don't you go unpack your carton, and you and I will give each other a second chance." Karen happily heads back to her desk, apparently unaware that none of her co-workers will ever speak to her or trust her again. Leo turns back to the TV, where C.J. is dutifully dumping the trash: "Chad Magrudian has submitted his resignation to the Vice-President's office, putting an end, I hope, to that affair. We expect the President's appointees to the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to be confirmed early week. And I have a note here that Jonathan and Jennifer Lydell won't be able to be at the bill signing ceremony this evening. There was some family business that required them to go back to St. Paul."

By Strega

Little Miss Nails-On-A-Blackboard tells Toby that Nielsen figures are based on diaries viewers fill in. Her sidekick says that automated boxes report much lower numbers of PBS viewers. Toby, not thrown by this at all, agrees that people want to report that they're more sophisticated than they are. Sidekick-Boy adds, "There's one other thing: product licensing for Big Bird dolls and Fuzzy Bear toys?" "That's Fozzie Bear," Toby notes. Sidekick-Boy says, "Whatever." Toby stands up for Henson, repeating, "It's Fozzie Bear, not Fuzzy Bear." Sidekick-Boy says that twenty million dollars a year in licensing fees are paid to the Children's Television Workshop, and none goes to PBS. He adds, "This is a company whose chief executive earns high six figures in salary and benefits per year, yet Sesame Street is subsidized by taxpayer dollars." Toby says that this is perfectly reasonable complaint. Well, part of it is. He continues, "And I don't care. We're going to see to all those things. In the meantime, at a time when the public is rightly concerned about the impact of sex and violence on TV, this administration is going to protect the Muppets, we're gonna protect Wall Street Week, we're gonna protect Live from Lincoln Center, and by God, we are gonna protect Julia Child." If my hands didn't still hurt from clapping for Mr. Lydell, I'd applaud Toby's declaration, too. Just then C.J. knocks at the door, and Toby goes to talk to her. He tells her that Josh and Sam made a deal, so there won't be any hearings about Leo. After C.J. expresses her relief, Toby heads back inside, saying, "I've gotta get back in there, this is too much fun."

By Strega

West Wing TV Show - Take Out The Trash Day - West Wing Photos &amp; Videos, West Wing Reviews &amp; West Wing Recaps | TWoP

West Wing TV Show - Take Out The Trash Day - West Wing Photos & Videos, West Wing Reviews & West Wing Recaps | TWoP