Shout-outs to Alexandria and FLuFFy_slayer.
Josh is led into a room by two women, one blonde, one brunette. I'm calling the blonde one Priscilla and the brunette Zenobia. Just because. He comments that it's the first time he's ever been in the "Republican cloakroom." Priscilla asks what he thinks; Josh replies, "Well, you guys use the same decorator we do." Well, the decorator needs a poke, then, because every single piece of seating in the room is identical: there must be about eight club chairs and several sofas, all in the same button-tufted rich brown leather. Bor-ing. I could have done that in my sleep. Priscilla says, with an odd mixture of annoyance, pride, and flirtatiousness, "Damn it, Josh, I decorated the room." Josh asks if Benjamin Harrison was banned from there. Priscilla says he was, by Senate resolution, for excessive lobbying. She announces in a pleased way, "And Warren Harding's mistress was impregnated here." Josh: "Prompting another resolution?" Apparently not. Down to business: Josh wants to know if there's any chance Nearing is soft. Priscilla says no. Josh asks, "What about Herman Morton?" Zenobia says they'd have to rewrite the education bill. Josh: "It's fifty-fifty, Jane. Hoynes has a sleeping bag in there." Jane? Nope, sorry. I'm going with Zenobia. Even though that's a totally annoying choice for me because my Z key is acting up. Come on, Zenobia's funnier than Jane. Anyway, Zenobia asserts the Senator's voting no. Josh asks, "Which Senator?" Zenobia and Priscilla exchange glances, and Zenobia says, "The one we work for." Josh: "What the hell…?" Priscilla explains that a Liberty Foundation poll is about to come out showing that 68 percent of those polled think the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid, and 59 percent want foreign aid cut. Josh: "What the hell do I care? These people are responding to…" Zenobia interjects, "Come on, they're responding to being overtaxed and then having that money sent to Burundi instead of the school their kid goes to." Yeah, Burundi, where they just blow it on junk like low-rise jeans and tooth-whitening strips. Josh: "Now you're for more education funding?" Burn. Zenobia: "That's not the point." Josh: "Of course foreign aid polls badly! The people it's helping aren't the ones who are answering the phones." Zenobia: "Or paying taxes. Or voting." Josh wants to know if the Senator just reached this conclusion as a result of the Liberty Foundation poll. Zenobia says he never liked and Josh knows it, and furthermore: "The poll gives him cover with The New York Times people." Josh clarifies that by "The New York Times people" she means "people who can read." Priscilla stands up and says it's a quorum call. Josh makes for the door, saying he understands. Priscilla: "Come on, Josh." He turns and says, "I think this is crap. I think your boss has known about this poll for a while, and he's embarrassing the President at the eleventh hour because he spent too much time with his arm around the other guy." Zenobia points at Josh and takes a tougher tone: "We begged you to keep the President out of Colorado." Josh: "On the first vote out of the box!" Zenobia says Bartlet had Colorado from the convention and went there five times anyway. Josh reprimands her: "President Bartlet." Zenobia states the obvious for him: "You're one vote down on foreign aid." Josh goes out the door, and the music swells. I feel like we're having too many door openings/closings as the segue to the credits lately. It's probably just me. It nearly always is.
POTUS and his entourage are walking down a set of stairs in some huge building as he complains to Charlie that boyfriends are the curse of every daughter's father: "I don't like 'em. I don't like 'em at all." Charlie knows. Jed wants to know what the hell happened with Charlie and Zoey. Hey, take a number. Some of us have been wondering for about two years. Jed continues: "It was perfect! I just kept you in the office all the time." Charlie explains, "Well, she was unhappy that I was at the office all the time." Hey, if Warren Harding can manage to get his mistress pregnant in the Republican cloakroom, then I think you're just not trying hard enough there. Jed: "That was the point. If I was trying to make her happy, I'd buy her a Cabriolet." Hey, make me happy. Buy me a Cabriolet. We're already a VW household, it'd fit right in. I promise to feed it and walk it and everything. C.J. interrupts: "Sir?" Jed calls her "C-Jean" and says "Stable economies with free-flowing uranium don't make for a stable world community. Did I make that point?" She says he did. He then asks if there's a cow in his schedule today. C.J. says, "It's called Heifer International. Don't worry about it." Jed gripes to Charlie about meeting with a cow. C.J. says it's a photo op, not a sit-down. Jed: "I like your sass." C.J.: "You've got a very nice sass yourself…sir." Jed glances at her and asks, "What are you, touring?" C.J.: "I could." Somebody's very secure in her job. Jed emerges from the building to cheers and applause and begins working a rope line. He shakes hands, greets people, and accepts gifts, smoothly handing them off to Charlie. One woman has a large blue envelope that she tries to hand to Charlie. He tells her she can hand that directly to the President if she likes. She says she's not looking for an autograph. She seems slightly desperate, so Charlie accepts the envelope. C.J.'s cell phone rings; it's Josh, calling to say they're a vote down. She asks what happened; he mentions Colorado. She says they're coming back.
Josh hangs up and wanders over to where Donna's reading something. She says, "This is a push poll." Josh recites the Liberty Foundation poll statistics. Donna repeats herself; Josh keeps rabbiting on about the poll, saying that respondents think that foreign is 15 percent of the federal budget, whereas it's actually only 1 percent, or was, a half hour ago. Josh and Donna walk as she reads a question aloud: "'The money that goes into foreign could be used to reduce the tax burden here at home. Do you support such a shift of funds?' That's not a push poll?" Josh gestures for Donna to come a little closer and says quietly: "I lose this vote…I'm resigning." Donna looks as if she thinks he might be serious.
Roosevelt Room, lots of staffers milling about and buzzing. When Josh enters, Larry asks if they'll postpone again. Josh says they won't, not after two continuing resolutions. He says this expires at midnight. Ed asks if that's their problem. Josh says it "massively is." Leo comes in and asks, "What about Grace Hardin?" Josh says he thought of her, and wonders if she can say no to POTUS. Larry says she will; she's publicly against it. Ed mutters about "foreign aid in Georgia." Josh: "I say she's a Democrat, she owes the President, and there's nothing wrong with Georgia that New England can't fix." I bet Georgians might have something to say about that. Leo says, "If it's 'no' it's gotta be a fast 'no.'" Josh says it won't be no. Leo leaves. Josh tells them to put the senior Senator from Colorado in the nay column and move Hardin to undecided. "And start the clock." Larry starts the clock. Josh stares at it and says to himself, "I hate that clock."
Out in the hall, Will catches up to Josh. Josh: "Yeah, you're Bill Bailey, right?" Will corrects him and comments, "You get a pretty good aerobic workout talking to someone in this building." Josh says he's heard the jokes, and asks what he needs. Will starts to explain he's working on the Inauguration speech; Josh cuts him off saying, "Bill, I know who you are. What do you need?" Will states his name again, and indicates that he's working on a legislative section of the speech to do with bipartisan cooperation, and Toby wanted Josh involved. Josh: "Boy, did you pick the wrong day to write about bipartisan cooperation." He launches into the Liberty poll statistics again; Will wonders if Josh was talking to him or not. Josh asks Will to read him what he's got. Will obliges: "'The people, in their enduring wisdom, have put in office a Chief Executive of one party and a Congress of another. It's our duty to respect and enact…'" Josh tells him, "Strike 'in their enduring wisdom.' You think electing a reactionary Congress and a progressive President was wise? The people, in a fog of uncertainty, unsure of the difference, split tickets across the country." Will agrees, but thinks Toby would say that lacks poetry. Josh recites the poll results again, in case you missed them the first twenty-six times, and Will decides he's not going to get any help from Josh in this state and decides to do some other work in the meantime.
As Will passes Donna outside Josh's office, she greets him: "Hey, Ted." He corrects her. Donna: "Okay." She goes into Josh's office, where he tells her they need Senator Hardin. She says they're already on it -- Leo's office called. I bet that was Margaret. Remember Margaret? Hey, you know what I want to see? I want to see a whole episode just about the assistants and minor characters. Maybe all the senior staff could take a three-hour boat tour and get marooned or something, or maybe they could just be forced to go to one of those touchy-feely personal development seminars Human Resources departments are always making people go to, or maybe they can go to a lecture to find out who moved their big block of cheese and then some mini-crisis could come up requiring the assistants to run the White House just for a couple of hours. Nothing major, just a couple of hours. Carol could do the press briefings; Donna can run interference with politicians; Bonnie and Ginger can decide to punch up one of Toby's speeches; Ed and Larry can be the non-political subplot, exploring the whatever it is between them that dare not speak its name. And Margaret can kibitz with Fitz in the Sit Room. Yeah, now you're scared. (New spinoff: Kibitzin' with Fitz.) Maybe Kenny could drop in, sans Joey, to finally ask Katie out. Maybe Alexander Haig could do a cameo, playing the politician Donna's got to deal with. Wouldn't that be funny? Wait, is he still alive? I have no idea. ["I believe he is -- and if he died, we'd know about it, given the continuing kerfuffle over whether he's Deep Throat. No, the other Deep Throat." -- Sars] Maybe Gail could fit in here somehow, too. Anyway, I think this would be amusing. Oh, where the hell was I? Donna asks Josh if he's going to try Cantina. Josh says he's going to try everybody, but Cantina's never voted in favour of sending any money anywhere: "I think he's against air mail stamps." Heh. Donna asks about McKenna. Josh says McKenna needs Republican votes on broadband access. Donna's skeptical about Hardin. Josh says she's a freshman Democrat and she can't say no to POTUS. Donna wonders if Josh has seen how foreign aid polls in Georgia. Josh has, and says that Hardin might be difficult to get on the phone today. Donna: "We've been here before." Josh: "Tell me about it." She says he had two different strategies that were shouted down, and he can't take the fall for this. Josh: "My job is to execute the plays Leo calls. The rest…" Donna wonders if he was serious about resigning. He doesn't answer, but instead hollers to the staff outside his office, "We looking for Hardin?" Donna assures him they're on it.
Charlie is at his desk, sorting the mail and handing things to another assistant. We see Zoey's drippy French boyfriend, Pierre EscargoAway (tm FLuFFy_slayer), standing in the doorway. A long lock of his hair is hanging annoyingly in his face, making me want to grab some scissors and snip it right off. He says, "So, Charlie. What it is you do is, you sort the mail for Zoey's father." Charlie guesses so. Le Vicomte Eurotrash (tm Alexandria) adds, "And you don't like me very much because I'm with Zoey now." Actually, you're the sort Charlie wouldn't like no matter whom you were dating. Charlie: "Jean Paul, I'm kind of working here." His Royal AssClownness says he understands. Yeah, I bet you understand "work." Perhaps Charlie could explain it to you using small words and visual aids. Frenchie (tm Omar) adds that Charlie has a lot of mail to sort. Charlie: "Also classified intelligence cables to prioritize and a meeting to break up between a President and a king." He asks the other assistant, Stacy, who's about to leave, where the big blue envelope (the one he was handed in the rope line) is going. She says it's going to General Correspondence. Didn't he retire? (Oh, I kill me.) Stacy says it's a servicewoman writing about food stamps. Charlie asks her to leave that letter here. She does, and leaves. Le Boyfriend makes a dismissive little "huh" sound and when Charlie glances at him, turns the other way, rolling his eyes. What, exactly, is he even doing here? Other serving as an excuse to irritate Charlie and annoy the hell out of me? I mean, Zoey's nowhere around, and she's probably not in the Oval Office meeting with her father and the King of Siam, or whoever. I'm not sure I've ever disliked any character on this show, much less one so trivial, as much I loathe this French-fried drip. I really hope Charlie gets an excuse to deliver him a pound of knuckle pudding.
Briefing Room. A reporter asks C.J. if the White House will try to delay the vote. C.J. says it expires at midnight; if Congress doesn't act, there's no foreign aid budget. Katie wants to know the President's reaction to Mosely saying "we're throwing money at problems halfway around the world." C.J. replies, "The President wishes the Republican Leader would throw some money at problems right here, but doesn't wish to help the United States retreat from its role as a world leader. Foreign aid's been cut 50 percent in the last decade. As a percentage of GNP spent, we rank not toward the bottom; we are the bottom. Dead last." Mark asks whether it was a good idea to make the first bill out of the second term such a controversial one. C.J. replies that the President doesn't believe that for something so important, something like that should be taken into consideration. She calls on Steve, who starts asking about something a "Democratic Senator" said; C.J. indicates they're not responding to blind quotations: "We just assume you made it up." There's some tittering. C.J.: "I'm not kidding." She leaves the podium, calling Danny back to her office as she goes. Hey, did you know Danny and Will are brothers-in-law? Well, not Danny and Will. Because, you know, neither of them is married. I mean Timothy Busfield and Josh Malina.
In the hallway, Danny asks her, off the record, about POTUS's response to Mosely's comment. C.J. says he said, "Lord God, what a tool." Word. She tells him that he can say that several senior White House officials said that the administration will have a good memory when the transportation bill comes up year. Danny: "You don't mind blind quotes so much when they're from you." C.J., sharply: "No." He follows her into her office, saying he'll walk her threat around for her, but…"the pilot." My God, but the lighting is dark and orangey here. It must be the middle of the morning, for heaven's sake (based on the clock in the Roosevelt Room). C.J. wonders what he thinks she's going to say. Danny says the pilot of Shareef's plane was named Jamil Bari, and he looked into whether this guy had any history of pilot error. He says his new assistant, Maisy, found out that Bari got a certificate of qualification on the Gulfstream (Shareef's plane) in 1994. That's all he's been able to discover so far. He says they've been checking aviation schools, and they've been unable to find him: "There are a lot of aviation schools, but we're going to check 'em all." C.J.: "And sooner or later, you'll find him." Danny: "Sure." C.J.: "You know, I gotta tell you, your tie goes with your shirt, and your jacket…you' re dating a college graduate, aren't you?" Danny's unamused. And also, undistracted: "Maisy ain't never gonna find him, C.J. Jamil Bari is an invented identity for someone. It has to be. For this thing to have worked, the pilot had to be one of our guys." C.J. "Yeah, I just meant it was a nice tie." He says he'll be around all day for the vote, and leaves. C.J. sits down and looks at her fish bowl, asking, "What's up there, Gail?"
After the commercial, Donna's talking to other staff members who've been chasing Hardin all over God's green earth. Or at least the part between D.C. and Atlanta. They keep getting sent all over the place trying to find her. Allegedly she's on her way back to D.C. from Atlanta for the vote. Donna asks them to find out if it's a commercial flight. Josh appears to complain that it's been an hour and a half and they can't find her. Donna says she doesn't want the call. Josh: "No kidding." Josh hands her a cell phone and says, "Donna, your job is to take this, find her, and stick it in her hand. Make big plays today." He walks off as a staffer tells Donna her flight lands in thirty-five minutes. Donna grabs her coat and runs.
POTUS is giving a speech somewhere. "We live in an interdependent world and we should act like it. We live in a global community and we should sustain it. We should cross borders. We should cross borders to build sustainable democracies that can banish privation and fear. And we should cross borders to bring food and medicine and roads and schools and teachers to parts of the world forgotten by all but the warlords. We're gonna pass this Foreign Ops bill." All of this has been said to constant and increasing applause and whistling. Now, the audience is actually getting to its feet, and they're so loud you can hardly hear Jed. "This should be a century of hope and prosperity everywhere. And America is going to lead the world and not just bully it." "Not just bully it," eh? Well, that's welcome news. Jed thanks them and leaves. I love how pretty well every speech this season has been resoundingly well-received. This one gets a deafening ovation.
Jed comes backstage to where Leo, Toby, Zoey, and Punky Le Pew are waiting, and gripes to Leo, "What the hell is going on?" Zoey interjects: "That was great, Dad!" Jed: "Hey, thanks, Peach Patch." Peach Patch? He asks Leo again what the hell is going on. Leo whispers as they walk away together, followed by everyone else, "Hardin's a yes if we can get her on the phone." Jed: "Which is why we can't get her on the phone?" Leo says she's been a little slippery: "But this is where Josh eats." Jed, angrily: "We have many, many backup plans in the works? Josh has broken people into teams and they're developing and executing rapid-response backup plans?" Leo: "Yeah, okay." He turns and tells Toby they should probably have a backup plan. Jed: "Oh, my God!" Leo: "A split second of humour injected in the middle of a stressful day, sir. Sounds to me like we're talking about the act of a friend." Jed: "Please, my daughter's dating a kid who's better-looking than my wife." The kid's right behind Jed as he says this, by the way. He certainly is taken with Frenchie's looks. That makes…him and Zoey. He carries on: "I have only so much RAM to give over to…C.J.!" She comes up on his left, and he says, "I'm sorry, but once again…there's a cow?" She explains that it's connected to an organization called Heifer International, which provides milking cows (and many other types of livestock, from llamas to bees) to poor families in developing nations in order to help them develop self-sufficiency. Jed wonders if she's okay with a picture of him with a cow. What, it's somehow more foolish than pardoning a turkey? C.J. says she has her concerns. Jed's ire seems way out of proportion to the situation as he rags on her about why she agreed to it in the first place. Wasn't he just out there stumping for foreign aid? What the hell does he think Heifer International is trying to do? I would think he'd be excited to support them. Anyway, he figures out it was Abby's idea. C.J. says she'll think of a way to make the picture work. He wishes her luck with that, and says, "Now turn around casually and tell me if Le Vicomte de Valvert has got his hands anywhere near anyone who's related to me." C.J. turns and glances, and then says, "That is a good-looking young man." Jed bellows, "Zoey!" She says, "I don't respond when you shout." Jed: "Yeah, I think you'd respond if I stopped feeding you!" Seriously: What crawled up his ass and exploded? Zoey says to Frenchie, "Ignore him." Frenchie, blithely: "Oh, yes, I do." He turns his attention to Charlie and asks, "This envelope that interests you, it was what?" Shut. Up. Pierre. Zoey: "What envelope?" Charlie explains that the woman on the rope line is a private in the Army and her family is on food stamps. Pierre: "An American soldier on food stamps?" Charlie: "It's a big family." Le Vicomte Eurotrash: "And you read this letter as if it was special?" Charlie says she handed it right to him. Le Vicomte asks whether after he reads it, he just throws it on the pile with the others. Honestly. Shut. Up! As if you care. As if you even know what food stamps are. Charlie says yes. Eurotrash Boy says this woman sees Charlie standing to POTUS, but doesn't realize he's powerless to help. Charlie, very conscious of Zoey watching all this: "I'm not powerless. I called the DoD and asked them to give special notice to the letter." He walks off as Bartlet calls him. As he walks toward Jed, he instructs Stacy to get that envelope back: "I gotta call the DoD."
As they leave the building, someone calls out to Toby: "Who writes this hand-holding crap for the President anyhow?" Hey, it's Bill Scully! I never liked that guy. Scully, not that actor. Toby turns and says, "Free food and the gentlelady from Tennessee." Scully retorts that the food wasn't free, and asks if the President was really comfortable defining fifty years of security policy as "bullying." Actually, I think that's kind of a generous word for it. Toby says, "I don't think he was talking about the last half-century and neither do you." Scully asks what happened to politics stopping at the water's edge. Toby says food is apolitical. Since when? Scully: "Not at 10:30 tonight it isn't." He adds that they're going to have a hard time getting Hardin on the phone. Toby asks, "Jimmy, you want to tell me something I don't know?" Scully says he's got a yea vote for him: his own. He asks if he can be in Toby's office in an hour. Toby asks him if he can make it half an hour. He can't.
Back at the White House, someone brings Charlie the blue envelope, which he takes back to his desk. He rereads the letter and gets the Pentagon on the speakerphone, asking for Sergeant Major Moreland. A Colonel Wolf answers the phone, and Charlie explains that he wanted Sergeant Moreland. Colonel Wolf wants to help. Charlie doesn't want to impose, saying that he plays basketball with Barry Moreland. Colonel Wolf says, "Sergeant Moreland works for me, Mr. Young. How can I help the President?" Ruh-roh! Charlie starts to protest again but then decides to tell his story, winding up by asking whose eyes he can put this letter in front of. Colonel Wolf says he'll look into it, and asks Charlie to send the letter today. Charlie thanks him and says he will.
Josh is in the Roosevelt Room, staring at the whiteboard listing the votes, when Will approaches him again. He says, "Can't find Hardin?" Josh lists all the places they're looking for her. Will apologizes for bothering him again when he's under such pressure, but the speech… He says he cut "enduring wisdom." "'The American people have spoken. They have chosen to return to Washington a President of one party and a Congress of another." Josh interjects, "You say that like constitutional scholars made a conscious choice, weighing checks and balances." Will says they did make a conscious choice: "And in their defence, a lot of people have a hard time seeing the difference." Josh: "Are any of those people in this room?" Will says no. Josh spreads his arms, gesturing with his hands to indicate the diametric opposition of party goals: "One wants to save Social Security, the other wants to privatize it; one wants to make polluters pay to clean up pollution, the other wants to give tax breaks so they can pollute more; one wants to send aid to countries…" Note that he's using his left hand for Democrats and right hand for Republicans. That was probably unconscious. Josh interrupts: "Okay," and points out that Cantina voted no to both Kosovo peacekeeping and UN dues: "He's just going to burn time." Josh: "No kidding." Will leaves.
Josh sees Toby out in the hall and calls out to him. Glancing into Toby's office and seeing Bill Scully, Josh asks, "Hoebuck?" (Hoebuck? What is this, Joe Millionaire?) Toby says Hoebuck came to him. Josh says Hoebuck authored a bill to insert the word "God" into the Pledge of Allegiance four more times. Um, where? Where, exactly, could you fit the word God in there even another two times without rendering it completely nonsensical? Toby: "Yeah, well, once you've broken that down, what the hell does it matter?" He walks to his office, dumping his coat on Ginger's desk as he goes. She doesn't look too happy about it. No coat tree in his office? There's some other woman in the office too, who's neither greeted nor introduced. Hoebuck cuts to the chase: in exchange for his vote on the foreign aid bill, he wants $115,000. In small, unmarked bills. Just kidding about the last part. Toby corrects him, saying Hoebuck meant to say "a million." Hoebuck: "I appreciate the Democrats know how to read my mind but I meant $115,000." Toby: "For what?" Hoebuck wants to pay people to pray. Toby: "Out of the federal budget?" Hey, I'll take the money. I'll pray up a storm. Er, not literally. Unless, you know, rain is needed. Anyway, Hoebuck says "Yeah." Toby: "And this woman leads a world-class team of psychiatrists?" Hee. Hoebuck chuckles, saying Toby's awfully close: "This is Dr. Gwendolyn Chen. She's the Chief Cardiologist at Duke Medical Centre. Have you ever heard of intercessory prayer or remote prayer?" Toby: "This is where you draw up a list of sinners…" Hoebuck explains, "People pray for you even though you're not aware of it." Toby says C.J. got spammed with that a few months ago. Hoebuck: "Was that before or after her agent got shot at a fruit stand?" Fruit stand? Wasn't it a convenience store? That wasn't a kumquat he was buying, it was a Snickers. Toby asks, "You really want to make a rim shot out of a Secret Service Agent getting dead?" Hoebuck: "You really want to refer to people's prayers as spam?"
Toby asks Dr. Chen what she's doing there. Dr. Chen starts to say that they performed a double-blind, placebo-controlled study. Toby: "This isn't happening." Hoebuck points out that Duke is non-sectarian and Dr. Chen is agnostic. Toby: "Huh." Hoebuck says that out of a thousand heart patients in the CCU, half were prayed for by volunteers; the other half weren't. Dr. Chen says she know it sounds crazy, but the patients that were prayed for had 11 percent fewer heart attacks and strokes and far fewer complications. Hoebuck that there have been more than a dozen such studies. Toby asks if any of them were published in The New England Journal of Medicine. Hoebuck asks for $115,000 for a wider study by the NIH, in exchange for a yea vote on a $17 billion foreign aid bill. He and Dr. Chen leave. I'm quite fascinated by the concept of intercessory prayer, but the problem is that there's absolutely no way to know that the people in the un-prayed-for groups are not, in fact, being prayed for. Just because the volunteers aren't praying for those people doesn't mean nobody else is. And even if you could secure the cooperation of absolutely everyone known to any given patient, and they agreed not to pray for their loved one, you still couldn't know that someone else isn't praying for that patient. I've prayed for people whose names I don't even know, people I barely know of (for example, a woman my husband knows in passing wrote to several colleagues before Christmas, when her daughter gave birth to a baby with birth defects, asking people to pray. I've never met this woman or her daughter, much less the baby in question, but I still prayed for the baby's health). Much as I would like to be able to prove that intercessory prayer works, I think it's impossible. There's no way to compensate for the unknown factors. I think the most that can be hoped for is to show that intercessory prayer doesn't hurt and might help.
Donna arrives at the airport, looking for Hardin. She finds Ellen, Hardin's assistant. Ellen pretends to be pleased to see Donna. Donna asks where Hardin is. Ellen plays dumb. Donna says she was supposed to be on Delta 15, but wasn't. Nor was she on two other flights that came out of Atlanta. Ellen says she came in this morning. Donna explains that she's trying to arrange a call to the Senator. Ellen lies through her teeth, saying she's not sure where Hardin is right now, but as soon as she tracks her down she'll set it up. Donna thanks her and walks away; as she does, she notices a guy collecting file boxes from the luggage carousel. She approaches a passenger with an envelope under his arm and says, "Sir? Excuse me, My name is Donna and if you look at me I think you'll know I'm not going to steal from you or waste your time in any way. Can I borrow that envelope for just one moment?" Trusting Guy readily agrees. Well, that was certainly a lot easier than convincing Christian Slater to trade votes with her. Frankly, I don't care how trustworthy her farm-girl ass looks, I wouldn't let a stranger in an airport take any of my belongings and then give them back to me. She grabs it and zips over to the guy at the luggage carousel and says, "Excuse me, is it Rick?" Carousel Guy: "Jason." Donna: "Jason! I'm sorry, I'm new. This needs to get to the Senator. Are you going in the car to Dirksen?" Jason says he's going to Dirksen, but the Senator's at the Women in Media luncheon. Donna: "Right! Stupid, stupid. Thank you." She walks away, and gives the envelope back to Trusting Guy.
C.J. and Leo are outside the West Wing, staring at a very cute brown goat in a small wooden pen. He's being petted by his handler. I think I smell a rehash of the turkey plot from "Shibboleth," but it might just be the goat. C.J.'s wearing an absolutely gorgeous wrap coat that I covet. That, and the Cabriolet, and I'm happy. Finally C.J. speaks: "First of all, that's not a cow. It's not! It's a goat." Leo's got that pissed look. C.J. turns to Leo and sheepishly (snort) says, "Yeah, I may have agreed to something about a goat." Leo, quietly: "Did the First Lady get you drunk and take you shopping?" C.J.: "Leo…yes." She turns to the goat handler, who's more than a little reminiscent of Marvin or Milton or whatever the turkey wrangler's name was, and protests that since the organization's name is Heifer International, she was under the impression it was going to be a cow. Leo, angrily: "Lending Presidential aura to the photo?" C.J. says she thinks they'll wait until after the vote at 10:30, because if they lose the vote it would be a mistake for the vote to run tomorrow. Leo: "How big a mistake?" C.J. "One from which my job certainly would have hung in the balance." Leo: "In the balance?" She turns to Goat Boy and asks, "Goats are heifers, too?" He doesn't know. Some Goat Boy. Hey, as a representative of this organization, not to mention the animal's handler, shouldn't he know a little more about this? Goats are ruminants, but are they bovines? I believe heifers are by definition "bovines" so unless goats are bovines, they can't be heifers. But this charity provides all sorts of livestock (even bees! Bees!), as clearly indicated on their website, and I would think either C.J. would have looked into this herself or had Carol do it. Anyway. Leo declares, "If the President's wearing a hat, or that thing's wearing a Bartlet button, I'm hiding snakes in your car." He stalks off. C.J.: "Come on, don't say that! Not even to joke!" Leo turns and adds, "You're never gonna know where they are…" C.J. shrieks: "Leo!" Leo continues, "…or if you got 'em all out." He says to Goat Boy, "Excuse me," and walks off, threatening, "Gonna lay their eggs right in your glove compartment." C.J. turns back to Goat Boy and says it's going to be a while, and asks him to wait. Goat Boy replies, "Well, uh, Ron doesn't do that well in the cold." C.J.: "Are you Ron?" Goat Boy says, "I'm Mike." C.J.: "Of course. We'll find an empty room for him." Mike says he has oats in the truck. C.J.: "Well, you should bring the oats, because the Mess closes at six." Hee. The camera lingers on the adorable, long-floppy-eared goat, who's got way more personality than Pierre EscargoAway, let me tell you.
Charlie's working at his desk when Ginger delivers an envelope, saying it's a memo he's ordered from the Pentagon. Charlie states that he can't order memos from the Pentagon, or from anywhere for that matter. He takes the package, continuing to list his objections to all of this. He asks, "Who at the Pentagon thinks I can order a memo?" Ginger looks at her list and says, "The Secretary of Defense." Charlie says there's been a mistake, and ascertains that Ginger hasn't shown this to anyone else. She hasn't, but points out it's cc'ed to the Joint Chiefs and the Secretary of State. Charlie, grabbing the phone: "Uh-huh. Anyone here?" Meaning the Oval Office. Ginger: "POTUS, VPOTUS, Leo McGarry, and you." Charlie hangs up the phone. Ginger wonders what the memo says. Charlie takes out the documents and reads, "'Revised DoD Offsets and Cost Structure Adjustments for the Coming Fiscal Year.' And every other fiscal year. The table of contents is six pages long!" Ginger says he should read it, and wanders off.
Donna's hanging around in a commercial kitchen somewhere. A chef asks her, "Donnatella, you want me to fix you up a piece of salmon?" Donna: "No thanks, Giuseppe." He offers some fettucine: "Beano's using a new cream." Beano? I don't know. That's what the closed captioning says. Donna says she tried it last week at the technology conference: "It's the best. Listen, the dais still exits through here, right?" Giuseppe says she can go in there and just stand in the back. Another chef -- I'm calling him Harvey -- tells him that she's trying not to scare somebody: "Would you leave the child alone?" The child? Oy. Giuseppe: "I'm trying to feed her some food." Harvey says to Donna that Giuseppe's spent all his twenty-two years in D.C. in the kitchen and he doesn't know how things work. Giuseppe: "Maybe I could learn something if I beat you about the head with a sturdy ladle." Suddenly Ellen comes through the kitchen, and when she spots Donna she says, "Wow. You know what you are? You're the little aide who could." Donna says, "She wasn't on the dais." Ellen says she had to cancel and she read a letter in Hardin's absence. Donna starts to say something when her cell phone rings. It's Josh. She says, "That's great…who? All right." She tells Ellen, "We've got two yes votes, McMichael and Schapp. The Senator can come out of the woods." Donna takes off. We see a shot of a woman sitting behind a desk, with another woman and a man standing around her desk. She hangs up the phone with a look I read as trepidation. I guess that's Hardin.
Will meets up with Elsie in the Mess. She tells him a fairly weary old Jewish mother joke. Will says humourlessly that it's good. Elsie: "You like it?" Will: "Yeah, if the President's been booked into Ha-Ha's in Cleveland." Hmm. That was one of Sam's lines last year. Elsie wasn't suggesting it for the speech; she was just telling him a joke. Will says it was funny: "What do you want from me?" They pedeconference, going on and on about not much, politicians, voters, blah blah blah. Sorry, I just find Elsie too annoying to recap this in detail. And for some reason Danica McKellar's tone in this scene is particularly grating. I hope she's not on here much, because I enjoy Josh Malina and want to cover his scenes but I really can't take her, and she's more likely to have scenes with him than anyone else. Will mentions a quotation from Churchill: "The best argument against democracy is five minutes with the average voter." They're in front of his office now, and he thanks her for the coffee. She calls him Willy, which he tells her not to do. She says that he took the office of a guy who "obviously became part of the family." She says the other staffers will "stop with the bicycles and Seaborn posters and the cold shoulder." Will knows. He insists he's focused. Elsie: "Hey, cool goat…when'd you get it?" Will turns into his office, dismissing her with, "Professional comedian, Elsie…" When he sees the goat, he cries, "Aah!" The goat is tethered to his desk. Elsie says she thinks it's great that he keeps oats in the office, just in case. He tells her to leave now: "I'm focused, please." She leaves. Will regards the goat, which makes a baa-ing sound. Will: "Right."
Toby comes to see Josh: "What's going on?" Josh says Donna tried to flush her out: "And she did it well, but…she named names." Josh explains that Hardin's staff made two phone calls and the Senator crawled back into her hidey-hole. Toby sighs and announces that Hoebuck's crazy. He explains to Josh what Hoebuck wants, probably expecting Josh to join in with trashing the craziness of it all, but instead Josh gets incredibly interested in the fact that this guy's vote can be bought for the bargain basement price of $115,000. Toby fires up his church-and-state objection, but Josh says, "I don't care if we're investing in communion wafers." Is that a growth industry? I don't know. Toby repeats his objection; Josh says they'll deal with that problem tomorrow. Toby says he already dealt with it today. Josh: "Not yet, and the clock's running." He's taking it to Leo.
Charlie's in the Oval Office, standing to Jed, who's sitting down, reading the Pentagon memo Charlie ordered. Charlie sheepishly tries to explain what happened. The clock ticks loudly, as it always does in the quieter Oval Office scenes, and Charlie admits that he was trying to show off for Zoey. Aw. Jed looks up and studies Charlie's face for a moment but doesn't say anything. Finally he admits that there are a couple thousand military families on food stamps: "I can't stand it. The Pentagon knows it." That's a pretty appalling situation. He continues, "Some families are eligible, some aren't. To change it, they'd have to raise everyone's pay, which they can't do, and this memo's a reminder. It's a 'get off our backs' memo. And you thought you were done with turf wars." Charlie: "Did it cause any damage?" Jed: "You decommissioned two aircraft carriers." He gets up and walks to his desk. Charlie: "Really?" Jed: "No." Charlie thanks him and says he'll be outside. Jed suddenly says, "Boy, Zoey's growing up nicely, isn't she?" Charlie: "Yesssss, she is." Jed glares at him, hesitating before he says, "I'm on your side in this thing, but just barely. Just by a little bit, because he's French and royal." I thought he was from a background of nobility, not royalty. Oh well, I wasn't paying that much attention when he was introduced because a) I didn't recap that episode and b) I figured he was a one-off character. Jed continues: "These are very special, very limited circumstances under which we're allies, you and I." Charlie gets it. Jed asks if he still has the letter. He tells Charlie to put it in his bag tonight.
Leo knocks and enters the Oval Office from his office, followed by, well…the Fabulous Three. Doesn't have quote the same ring, does it? Jed greets them as "Mr. McGarry, Mr. Ziegler, Mr. Lyman, Miss Cregg" and adds, "It's the Temptations! I love you guys!" They all stand in a line in front of his desk, and Leo says, "You only think you've heard everything, but you haven't." Jed: "Hit me." Toby tells him about Hoebuck voting yes for $115,000. Jed thinks it should be "million," but Josh quickly jumps in to emphasize the "thousand" part. Jed: "For an RV? What's he want?" Leo tells him. Jed likes it. He wants a button on his desk that he can press and have forty-nine people pray for him. C.J.: "I got remote prayed-for by three million people." Jed: "How'd it work out?" C.J.: "Good for me. Can't vouch for what it was they were praying was gonna happen." Jed: "Well, that's the problem." Josh, somewhat exasperated but with a half a smile: "Excuse me. The earth is rotating rapidly on its axis." Brad Whitford looks particularly good in this episode. Jed: "Okay, well, good news. Keep us posted on that." Josh says it's nearly 8:00 and they should be talking about Hoebuck. Jed: "Oh wait…you guys didn't come in here to tell me something funny?" Toby, dead serious: "Three of us did." Heh.
Jed points, and Josh and vigorously waggles his finger, saying, "You, you, are the wildcard, my friend, because you will throw out the baby, the bathwater, and the bubbles at curtain time if it means…" Josh: "Excuse me, sir…" Jed: "Feel free to interrupt." Josh: "Do you think, Mr. President, the people who get this money care about an NIH study?" Jed hollers, "I don't care if they care! Icare! And oh, by the way, so do you!" Josh argues that $115,000 is what Commerce spends on Post-Its. They should just steal them from another department, like everyone else does. Jed sighs and looks mad. He says, "Toby." Toby's ready: "Threats to civil liberties only ever come a few dollars at a time." Josh replies that it's a medical study: "The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty doesn't prohibit radiation therapy. Sufi Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Indian shamans, the study says it works with everybody, so it's not promoting Christianity." Just religion. Jed: "Well, in my faith, we've known it's worked for two thousand years. I never knew there was data available, but okay." Leo asks if there's anything else. He says there isn't.
They all start to leave, and Jed says, "Maxine." C.J. says to Josh under her breath as she passes him on her way out, "That's you." Josh knows. He turns around and apologizes for interrupting. Jed says he doesn't care: "But what I was going to say…" Josh: "I'll toss it all overboard if it means winning, and I think that's not true, and I'd ask you to support that with evidence." Man, somebody's secure in his job. Jed looks at Josh and then looks down at his desk. Josh: "I'm sorry, I don't know why I keep doing that." Maybe you need to see Stanley again. Jed walks toward Josh, saying, "You're not willing to toss it overboard to win. You're willing to toss it overboard to avoid disappointing Leo. You know what the difference is between you and me? I want to be the guy; you want to be the guy the guy counts on." Josh recognizes the shining truth of that and pauses for a moment before saying, "We lost." Jed: "We know." Josh suggests introducing another continuing resolution: "Ninety days." Jed: "And work down?" Josh: "Seventy-five percent of current funding, maybe?" Jed: "If we can get it." Josh mentions that if they introduce another continuing resolution, about ten Democrats will use it as an excuse to vote no on this. Meaning they'll lose by a larger margin. Jed: "When I lose, I don't look for consolation in the score, and I know for sure, you don't. So it's what we should do, right?" He says, as he returns to his desk, that it's an unbelievably tough beat. Josh: "Yes, sir." Suddenly Jed asks, "Hey, Zoey's growing up very nicely, isn't she?" Josh, who just can't seem to get control of his mouth today: "Man, I'll say." Jed gives him the stink-eye. Josh: "You know, I go for 'kiss-ass' today and the ball goes in the gutter." That's all for their meeting.
Josh wanders out of the Oval Office (past Charlie's desk, which I would swear has an Aeron chair behind it…did he always have that?) to find Donna sitting in an armchair waiting for him. She begins, wearily: "I said the names." Josh says he doesn't think it mattered; Hardin can count to fifty-one. She apologizes. He tells her to shake it off: "And don't listen to the naysayers: you got a big future as a stalker." Donna thinks she always had the makings. Frankly, so do I. Josh says, "I just had an interesting moment. I recommended to the President that he buy a yea vote for $115,000 and the Bill of Rights." Then we do the million/thousand thing again. Josh explains the study. Donna: "Is it me, or is this getting harder?" Josh: "It's getting harder." (Snerk.) (Yes, I'm nine.) Josh says he would say they're going to make more enemies this time around, but he's not sure anyone's left on the list. Donna smirks and asks, "You took funding for remote prayer to the President?" Josh laughs and says he did it with gusto. She says that's because he doesn't know the story of Fishhooks McCarthy. Josh would like to know if this is a real person or a Donna person. Donna: "Corrupt politician on the Lower East Side in the '20s. Every morning he stopped at the St. James Church on Oliver Street and said the same prayer: 'O Lord, give me health and strength. We'll steal the rest.'" Hey, my best friend lives on that very same Oliver Street. Josh: "Not that there needs to be, but…was there a point?" Donna: "You've got health and strength. Both of which, coincidentally, I prayed for after hot lead was shot into your body." Josh: "Yeah…'You're going to need some Kryptonite, by the way.'" She tells him to settle down. She reminds him he's got health and strength. Hell, I'd settle for those things. Forget the Cabriolet. Josh: "And we'll steal the rest?" Donna: "Bet your ass." Josh: "All right. Good work tonight." He leaves. Donna smiles. Great scene between the two of them. They play so well together. Isn't this mature conversation better than when they're running around passing notes and acting like they're in ninth grade? Or fourth? Yes, it is. Don't even try to tell me it's not.
Out in the hall, Will catches up with Josh again. Josh: "What's up, Mr. Daley?" Will corrects his name again. Josh says if they're lucky, foreign aid's going to be funded for another ninety days at seventy-five cents on the dollar: "No one who's ever said they wanted bipartisanship has ever meant it. But the people are speaking. Because 68 percent think we give too much in foreign aid, and 59 percent think it should be cut." Will notes that he likes that statistic. I love the light fixtures in this hallway. I want one like that for my upstairs hall. Josh says he does; Will asks why. Josh explodes: "Because nine percent think it's too high, and shouldn't be cut!" Dude, simmah. "Nine percent of respondents could not fully get their arms around the question. There should be another box you can check for, 'I have utterly no idea what you're talking about. Please, God, don't ask for my input.'" Will asks why foreign aid is important. Josh says it fosters democracy. Will: "There you go." Josh affects what I think is supposed to be some kind of British accent and says, "Well, well-played young man! Very good, yes, yes." Josh keeps walking, and Will rushes to catch up with him, pointing out his change of voice. Josh cites the Churchill quotation Will cited earlier. Will says Churchill also said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others. Josh says he'll work with him on the legislative section of the speech after the vote. He suggests getting some food. Will agrees, but excuses himself to go speak with C.J.
He walks up to her as she's speaking to Carol and says, "Excuse me, I believe you put a goat in my office, and I just want you to know that I stand here with full humour and total focus." C.J. started walking toward him when he approached her, so now he's backing up down the hallway as she keeps coming at him. "You can fill my office with bicycles, you can cover the windows with 'Seaborn for Congress' posters, you can bring in 101 Dalmatians. I'm focused on what I'm doing." They stop moving and C.J. asks, "Who are you?" He says he's Will Bailey. She introduces herself and shakes his hand. She starts walking, saying she didn't put the goat in his office and that it must have been someone else. She says she put it in the office being used by a new guy Toby and Josh were trying to give a hard time. She stops, "Oh, wait!" Will asks if she understands that he's working on the Inaugural Address. C.J. "How's that going?" Will semi-shouts: "There's bicycles and goats in my office!" Will collects himself and asks, "All right. Any care and feeding I should know about?" C.J. says the goat has a handler, and says she'll get it out of his office. Will insists on taking his hazing "like the Eton valedictorian that [he is]." He asks for the name of the handler. C.J. tells him. He asks, "The goat has a name?" C.J.: "Ron." Will thanks her and leaves. C.J. smiles. He's certainly being a sport about all this.
Donna buttonholes Ellen in the Republican cloakroom: "Where do you learn to run out the clock like that?" Ellen sighs and says Hardin's voting her conscience. Yeah, whatever. Donna says Hardin understands foreign aid: "I've heard her talk about it. She's supposed to do what's right." Ellen argues she's supposed to do what the people think is right. Donna makes a last-ditch attempt, asking Ellen to take the cell phone and walk it to Hardin on the floor: "That's all you have to do." While Ellen wrestles with her own mighty conscience, finally taking the phone, they hear a voice on the PA system announce that time has expired and the yeas and nays have been ordered. Ellen: "Win some, you lose some." Donna gives her a weary smile and says, "Can I tell you something? Josh has asked me to work Saturdays, work Sundays, and at least once a week he has me there after 1:00 AM. He's asked me to transpose portions of the federal budget into base 8, go to North Dakota and dress as an East German cocktail waitress. In five years of working for him, he's never asked me to hide him from something." Take that, pipsqueak. She asks for his phone back. She takes it and leaves. I think I speak for almost everyone when I say we'd like the details of this cocktail waitress thing.
Danny and C.J. are eating Chinese food together. Danny: "You havin' that?" C.J.: "Yes." Danny: "All of it?" C.J.: "Yes!" Danny: "What about this?" C.J.: "Yes!" Danny: "I'm pointing at twenty-three packets of soy sauce!" C.J. insists, "I give 'em to the homeless." Danny remarks, "That's helpful." She asks if he's going to talk through the whole vote. He says they're going to lose this one 60-40. C.J.: "Danny…" Danny: "Did I ruin the end?' C.J. gestures with her chopsticks, making a tiny space between them, and asks, "Could you even have this much sensitivity?" Danny: "No." C.J.: "Why?" Danny says they blew it. C.J. says the Senate blew it: "We did everything but pass a hat!" Danny: "Nobody wants to put money in a hat in Botswana when you got hats that need filling here. You can't make this about charity. It's about self-interest." There's such a thing as enlightened self-interest. A world with less poverty, disease, and ignorance is a world with less terrorism, violence, and suffering. Danny: "We cut farm assistance in Colombia. Every single crop we developed was replaced with cocaine. We cut aid for primary education in northwest Pakistan and Egypt; the kids went to madrassahs. Why weren't you making a case that Republican senators are bad on drugs, and bad on national security? Why are Democrats always so bumfuzzled?" Hee. Excellent word. He adds, "By the way, sixty-five more flight schools today. Maisy hasn't found your guy. Don't worry. There are thousands more." C.J.: "You know something there, General Cho? If you had a story, you'd write it. If you don't have one, shut up." She shoves an egg roll in his mouth. "We just lost a vote. We're not bumfuzzled. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to cancel a photo op with a goat." She takes a swig of beer before leaving.
Jed wanders into the Mural Room where Toby, Will, Josh, Leo, and other staffers are watching the vote. Jed says to the room, "Tough beat, everybody. Thanks for the work. time we let Josh do it the way he wants." Josh asks Jed if he's met Will; Jed says, "Bill Haley." Will: "Will Bailey." C.J. and Carol come in, and Jed asks, "When's this thing with the cow?" C.J.: "It's a goat, now." Jed's really calmed down, because he's all smiles about that. C.J. says they'll cancel it. Jed, hesitant: "You think?" C.J.: "A milking goat?" She's worried that it could seem like a parody of foreign aid. He doesn't know. He tells the room C.J. wants to cancel the goat picture. Jed says, "Half the world's people live on less than two dollars a day. One hundred and thirty million will never step inside a schoolhouse. Ingredients for bombs can be purchased at hardware stores and we've just given the Third World what the doctor ordered: rollbacks." He asks C.J.: "Heifer International: they give free cows and goats to people who need milk?" C.J. says yes. It's not just that, though. Having animals allows them to breed and raise more animals, and to sell the milk and meat and offspring and other products to create greater self-sufficiency. These programs, along with the innovative microloan programs offered by other charities, are very successful and provide a meaningful alternative to handouts, which only encourage cycles of poverty and dependence. If you are looking for a worthy charity to support, these organizations deserve your consideration. ["Right on. My parents sponsor a number of pigs through Heifer International every year as holiday gifts. No, not me and my brother." -- Sars] Jed states, "Well, I don't think we're in any position to be snotty. Let's do it. Let's do it right now." He goes off to get his jacket. Carol brings the goat in; it's right outside. C.J. tells Leo, Josh, Will, and Toby that she thinks it will work, that it says, "Well, you're impoverished, and while we don't care, we don't want you to go away empty-handed, so we offer you this goat, Ron, to give you milk." Will, who I guess has had the opportunity to get to know Ron a little better than everyone else -- or perhaps he's just going by the name -- wonders if male goats give milk. C.J. says that of course they don't. Okay, maybe Ron's just the poster goat. C.J. "So we offer you this thing that will just gnaw on your stuff." Jed returns, announcing, "I'm not standing in this picture alone. This was a total team failure. Stand where you want, but I want my Chief of Staff and my chief political advisor standing near the goat." They get into position, and Toby says, "Hang on a second," and takes the ID badge off an anonymous staffer. He walks over to the goat and puts it around his neck, saying, "Now, we're ready." Jed puts his arm around Josh, saying, "Let's go. Set that clock for ninety days." The camera flashes. Awww.