The West Wing S03E10

It's nighttime now, and Brooke and Chris are driving home in a white Volkswagen Beetle. Okay, I forgive the hair and the clothes and the glasses, because this is one of my favourite cars. He walks her to the door of her house (another beautiful, huge, old-fashioned place). She asks if he'd like to come in; he thinks he'd better not. She asks again if he's okay; he claims that he is. She smooches him and says she had a wonderful time. It starts to rain heavily. My head is already hurting from the clichs and formulae that are limping through the film. She asks again if he'd like to come in. He says, "Better not. Some things are worth waiting for." He macks on her some more. He leaves, and as she watches him go, she suddenly calls, "Johnny, wait!" She runs out into the rain for some more smooching and to tell him, "I'm so crazy about you!" Personally, I suspect her of being after the car, but I may be projecting here. He tells her he's going to marry her. She says, "You better!" And they swap some more spit. Enough already. She runs back to the porch and calls out, "Drive carefully!" That's what I always say when people leave my house. That's the sort of old lady I am. He says he will.

Off Johnny goes, in the Bug. It's foggy as well as raining heavily. As he drives along, another set of lights is heading toward him. Uh oh: it's a guy driving an eighteen-wheeler, and he's jerkily dozing off and waking up again. He loses control of the vehicle, and the trailer detaches from the cab, which drives off into a field. The load is a refrigerated truck full of milk, and it slides length-wise down the hill toward Johnny. Of course he doesn't see it in time to swerve out of its way, and crashes into it. Cow juice everywhere. (Insert your own joke about crying and spilt milk here.) The truck driver runs toward the overturned Bug and opens the door.

Brooke -- wearing pyjamas, boots, and a winter coat -- flies into a hospital with the architecture detail of a mansion. Her face drawn, she finds her way to Johnny's room, where she finds him unconscious, heavily bandaged, bleeding here and there, and with a tube in his mouth. Naturally, she cries. She tearfully pleads, "Johnny, don't leave me, please." She says she knows he'll get better, and that they're going to get married. Silly girl.

The shot is of a foreboding brick and concrete fence, and an engraved copper sign that reads "The Weizak Clinic." It's winter. The Weizak Clinic is in another fabulous old house. I'm hating the film, but I want to live in the set. We see Johnny awaken in a hospital bed. He's all fixed up, but looks slightly dazed, and his face is quite ashen; his lips are dry and cracked. He looks to his left only to see a fuzzy-haired, white-coated guy standing there wearing heavy black-framed glasses that look just like the ones Dr. Hibbert gives Bart in the episode where he turns into a nerd due to his various medical appliances and problems. The dude introduces himself as Dr. Sam Weizak, the director of the clinic. He tells Johnny that he's been their guest for a while. Doc asks how he feels; Johnny says his throat hurts. Weizak gives him some water. Weizak explains that Johnny was involved in a severe traffic accident, and asks whether Johnny remembers it. Johnny asks if he's okay. The doctor says he's been smashed up pretty badly. Johnny lifts his arms and looks at them. They seem fine. He feels his face and says, "No bandages. How come?" The doctor doesn't answer but just says that he's going to bring in Johnny's parents now.

Johnny's elderly parents naturally seem relieved to see him awake. His mother announces that it was a miracle. Johnny says he was lucky; gesturing with his arm, he indicates, "Not a scratch." His mother kisses his hand and says, "The Lord has delivered ya from your trance." The doctor interjects, "Remember what we discussed, Mrs. Smith, please." Johnny wants to know what she's talking about. The doctor explains that he's been in a coma. Johnny naturally wants to know for how long. His father jumps in to say, "We're just glad to have you back, son. That's all that matters." Johnny grabs his dad's coat lapel and says, "How long?" His mother tells him "Five years." She is one of the youngest-looking old ladies I've ever seen on TV. Oh, good Lord: I just checked the IMDB to look up the actor playing his mom, and it's Jackie Burroughs. ["In MBTV terms, she was most recently spotted playing a clairvoyant old lady onSmallville." -- Wing Chun] I thought she looked familiar. Assuming this was filmed no later than 1982, she could not have been more than forty-three at the time of filming. She's four years older than Walken, and she's playing his mother. So annoying. Also, Cancer Man (William B. Davis) is supposed to be playing an ambulance driver in this flick somewhere (his first film credit), but I couldn't find him. Anyway, Johnny's still trying to take in the news of his five-year coma, and asks, "What about Sarah?" His father looks grave. His mother advises, "Cast her from your thoughts, Johnny. She's turned her back on you." Well, come on...five years? It's not like she vamoosed after three weeks. His mother explains that Sarah (formerly known as Brooke) is married to someone else now. Johnny covers his face with his arms and turns away to cry. He's got a new hairdo, layered and puffily blow-dried. Apparently someone gave him the 'do while he was in the coma, probably while he was actually lying down.

In the scene -- possibly the same day -- a nurse comes into Johnny's room to distribute some linens. He's sleeping. She decides to wipe his face with a cold cloth; as she is doing so, he suddenly clutches her wrist, and she screams. Johnny's eyes fly open, and he lifts his head off the pillow; he looks off to his left, where we see a dollhouse on fire and a little girl huddling in the corner of her bedroom screaming. He says the name "Amy" a couple of times. The nurse, her wrist still in Johnny's grasp, says that her daughter's name is Amy. He tells her that her daughter is screaming and that the house is burning. "It's not too late," he says. More shots of the fire spreading and the child screaming. Johnny keeps telling the nurse it's not too late, hurry up, her daughter's screaming. The nurse looks horrified and runs out. Sure enough, when the nurse arrives at her house, it's on fire; a fireman runs out with her daughter and puts her in her mother's arms.

Back at the clinic, Johnny's sitting up in a chair, wearing an ug-lay bathrobe; the head and neck brace he's wearing has a white headband-like piece that is very odd-looking. His hair looks even poofier now that he's upright, and goofier due to the headband. Everybody Wang Chung tonight. Dr. Weizak is telling him that they need to get his body back into shape; Johnny's been exercised while in his coma, but his ligaments have shortened. Johnny wonders if he'll have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Doc says he won't, not for very long. The doctor's good, in that I can't tell yet whether he's evil (and I haven't read the novel, obviously, so I really don't know). He announces that Johnny's therapy will be "long and painful, but it will work." Johnny sighs and takes the doctor's hand to thank him. As he grasps Weizak's hand, he suddenly has flashes of scenes of war: tanks circling around some buildings, lots of fire and smoke, explosives going off, people screaming. He lurches in his chair a bit and then looks at the doctor, saying, "The wolf is loose!" For some reason, with the headband on, the effect is rather ludicrous. The doctor asks if he's all right. Johnny sees more images of the same things, with people riding on horses and more tanks. He whispers, "Horses...fire." People are fleeing any way they can; a young blonde woman and her little boy make a run for it, and she pushes him onto a wagon loaded with people; it rolls away as the boy reaches for his mother and she screams. Johnny announces, "The boy is safe." He's still clutching Weizak's wrist, and Weizak is trying to struggle free. In the vision, a man with a gun gestures to the blonde woman to come with him, and she runs to hide with him. Johnny struggles to his feet, repeating, "The boy is safe," and of course, falls down as soon as he gets up. He lies crumpled on the floor; Weizak rushes over, helps him sit up, and asks him to tell him about the boy. Johnny says, "You're the boy." Weizak doesn't understand. Johnny continues, "She saved you. She's alive, Sam." Weizak doesn't know what he's talking about. Johnny says: "Your mother." Weizak claims that's impossible. Johnny insists that she survived. Weizak says his mother is dead. Johnny maintains that she is alive, and that Johnny knows her name and where she lives. Weizak keeps saying it's impossible. How could he know that? Johnny says he's scared: "What's happening to me?"

Weizak's in his office, staring at a piece of paper. He finally picks up the phone, dials a number, and asks to speak to Johanna. Johanna comes to the phone; when Weizak hears her voice, he doesn't say anything, but removes his glasses with a trembling hand. Johanna keeps saying hello, but Weizak says nothing; he just covers his eyes with his hand.

Johnny's sitting in his wheelchair at a table with Weizak, who says, "Well, you are either in possession of a very new human ability...or a very old one." An orderly knocks and brings in some food. Weizak says they're going to have him back on his feet in a day or two. The doctor also tells him that he was right about his mother. He explains that he couldn't talk to her, and hung up. He feels "it wasn't meant to be." Johnny seems dismayed by this.

Outside the clinic, Johnny's using crutches to practice walking. He's being encouraged by one of those energetic trainer types, who are always bouncing and springing about and slinging peppy little exhortations. Mind you, they're doing this attempted walking on a sidewalk thickly covered with ice. Hey, that sounds like an excellent plan for a guy to get back on his feet. The trainer complains that Johnny's only done eight lousy steps, and announces, "I'd really like to see you do some serious chugging." Shut up, dude. The trainer says he's going to take a run around the building, and tells Johnny to keep chugging. At that moment, Sarah comes out of the front door of the clinic. She has short hair now. It suits her much better than long hair, so she looks even cuter now. She says she didn't know if she should come or not. Johnny says it's all right.

In a visiting room inside, Johnny remarks on Sarah's haircut. She says, "You lost weight." Well, duh. He affably replies, "They call it the coma diet: lose weight while you sleep." They both laugh merrily. No, not really. She mentions that she got married; he says he heard. His hair is blown dry so that it is almost vertical. It's really awful. Of her husband, Sarah says, "I think you'd like him." Oh, please. Yeah, I bet they'll go hunting and fishing together. Johnny wisely ignores this and asks, "You still teach?" She says she doesn't: "Mothering's a full-time job." Johnny didn't know she had kids. She thought Johnny's father would have told him. She says her son, Denny, is ten months old. Johnny smiles and says he's glad for her. She takes her coat off, and notices him looking at her with some degree of pleasure. She sits down and sadly says, "Please don't look at me like that." He asks, "What am I going to do? For you, five years have come and gone. For me, it's just the day. My feelings haven't changed yet." Sarah wonders why this had to happen. Johnny casually says, "Bad luck." She says she never should have let him go that night. He reminds her that it was his idea: "What a jerk." He laughs. She just looks miserable. She tells him everyone's talking about him. He thinks it's because he survived such a bad accident, but she tells him it's because of his psychic abilities. He says he keeps thinking of a line from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow about Ichabod Crane's disappearance: "As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled their head about him anymore." Sarah asks if that's what he's afraid of; without hesitation, he replies, "That's what I want." But he's not very convincing.

Johnny is sitting at a table with a little girl, who is struggling with reading. Apparently, he's making a living by tutoring people in his home. Her mother arrives, honking the horn, and Johnny lets his student out the front door. At the same moment, a man gets out of a limo and comes up the walk, introducing himself as Roger Stuart, and asking to speak to Johnny.

Inside the house, Roger explains that he would like Johnny to tutor his son Chris, who is bright, but withdrawn and anti-social and not doing well in school. Johnny says he doesn't know if he can help Chris without meeting him. Roger says that Chris refused to come with Roger today, and that Johnny would have to come to his house. Johnny says it's out of the question. Roger pleads with Johnny, saying that if he'll come out to the Stuart house and get to know Chris, Johnny can then bring Chris back to Johnny's house for lessons. Johnny relents, and Roger says he'll send a car to pick Johnny up the morning. As Johnny watches Roger leave, he notices the billboard in the park across the street, which is still under construction. Now the ad on it is almost fully pasted up, and it's promoting the senatorial campaign of Greg Stillson, who's wearing a hardhat in his photograph. Why exactly this billboard is being erected so that it directly faces a single residence is anyone's guess. Johnny pulls the blind down.

The morning, Johnny rides in a very swanky old limo to Roger's huge, stately house. Inside the house, Roger is chatting with someone whose voice we hear before we see his face: it's Martin Sheen's voice, doing a southern accent. Ah, this is the reason this reeking bag of formulaic dreck is being recapped at all. Sheen plays Greg Stillson. Obviously, he was twenty years younger and rather cuter here, so keep that in mind. My God, he's certainly kept his hair well. Stillson's flunky is helping him put on his jacket and coat (alas, no coat flip) as Stillson tells an obnoxious story about an opponent of his, who handed out dollar bills to black people in a ghetto; Stillson says that he went down there and told them to get all the dollar bills they could, but that when voting day came, they should go into the booth and vote for whomever they pleased. And Stillson won that election by twenty-nine percentage points, and they've been winning ever since, and "those people spent that money with a clear conscience!" Roger, Stillson, and the flunky all laugh heartily. Yeah, great story. The butler has just finished letting Johnny in, and Roger greets him warmly and introduces him to Stillson and the flunky, Sonny. Instead of a proper handshake, Stillson slaps a campaign button the size of a bread plate into Johnny's hand. Stillson makes one last pitch for Roger's support on his way out the door, and pins a button on him. Meanwhile, Sonny just gives Johnny the stink-eye. Sonny has the ferret-faced look of a low-grade thug. Stillson says, "I need your expertise, I need your input...and most importantly, I need your money!" Stillson erupts in a big, good-ol'-boy laugh. I hate this character, but Sheen is so adorable. Out on Roger's porch, Stillson declares over-enthusiastically, "My God, what a glorious day!" Sonny, on his heels, says, "Amen." Oh, lord.