100,000 Airplanes

We go back to Jed on the monitor, behind the graphics with red, blue, and green lines, gabbing about how much respect he has for the Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House. Lisa asks Sam, "How much of this did you write?" Sam declines to talk about that. Blondie wonders, a little testily, whether Sam's going to be willing to talk about anything, or whether the whole thing's going to be an extraction. Sam doesn't really answer and seems to be suppressing a combination of a discomfort and impatience. They watch Jed some more. Lisa comments, "The lines don't seem to be doing much." Sam gestures for her to hang on. Jed prattles on about the U.S. winning the Cold War and "model[ling] freedom for a waiting world." What. Ever. Lisa: "Breaking out the greatest hits, huh?" Maybe you could shut up so Sam could hear the speech he's spent probably every waking moment of the last two months working on. To plenty of applause, Jed does some Dubya-style tough talkin' about dealing with evildoers, although thankfully he doesn't use that actual word. Lisa: "Now you're cookin'." Good thing you're here to tell Sam how it's going; God knows he wouldn't have a clue without your astute commentary. More tough talk directed in the general direction of terrorism and everyone in the Chamber stands up and applauds. The lines all jump up and Lisa announces, "That's a numbers spike!" Sam tells a technician to "crank that up," but what exactly he wants cranked, I'm not sure. Probably the volume, so he can hear something besides Lisa running her mouth. She says, "You broke 65[%] on all the lines!" She makes some notes. Sam tells her they nearly had one almost as big. She doesn't quite hear him, so he says it again. Lisa: "What was it?" Sam replies, "We almost cured cancer." Lisa: "Really." Sam makes a gesture with his thumb and forefinger barely apart, saying, "This close." Lisa, naturally, wonders what happened. Sam says, as he walks away, "Just one of those things." Credits.

Back at the White House, there's a post-speech party. Amy wanders up to a waiter and asks for a glass of Chardonnay. She's dressed in what looks like a plum velvet dress and jacket. Josh approaches her tentatively: "Hey, Amy." She asks, "Are you talking to me?" Josh says, "Yes." Amy asks, "What did I say about that?" Josh dutifully replies, "You said not to talk to you." Amy: "Yet you're doing it anyway." Josh: "Yes, I am." Amy: "You're doing it again." Josh: "Look..." Amy: "You're still doing it." Josh: "Amy..." She walks away, announcing, "I'm walking away now." Josh just hangs there for a moment, swallowing his frustration. He tells a waiter: "Ice and vodka." Just then, everyone turns to see Sam come in, with Lisa in tow. Everyone applauds as Sam thanks them. He adds, "I am at HaHa's in Cleveland on the 16th, and tip the waitresses." Meh. For a speechwriter who's being lauded for his writing, that's a pretty weak line. Josh hurries over and gives Sam a big congratulatory hug. I can only imagine how this will egg the Josh/Sam 'shippers on. Sam congratulates Josh, too, adding, "The dials are what we thought." When Josh sees Lisa sidle up alongside Sam, he plasters a mostly phony smile on his face that I would describe as a mixture of public politeness and glee that Sam didn't marry her after all, and says, "Lisa." She responds, "Josh." He asks, still grinning, "Still trying to get waived into Generation X?" Unfazed, she pleasantly counters, "Still a pompous jackass?" He chortles a bit and says, "Oh, you betcha." He leaves, saying he'll see them later. Sam and Lisa walk over to the bar area as Lisa asks him to tell her about the cancer thing. As Sam orders a Jack Daniels, he says it got cut. Lisa asks whether they were going to cure cancer. Sam says they were going to say that. If they decided not to, is that really something to discuss with the press? (Insofar as an apparently relatively clueless reporter for Vanity Fair qualifies as a member of the press. ["And don't even get me started on why it's unlikely that VF, or any magazine, would assign her to do a profile on her ex-fianc." -- Wing Chun]) Sam explains, "Curing it is someone else's department." Lisa wants to know how they decide what's going to be said in the State of the Union speech. Sam says it's a long story. Lisa: "I'm writing a long story." Sam asks the question on everybody's minds: "Do you do any kind of preparation before you come to report..." Lisa interjects, "I prefer to..." Sam: "Hang out at Moomba?" Well. Burn, I guess. She just stares at him. He relents and explains that the process starts about six weeks beforehand with budget meetings, to figure out how they're going to claim to pay for whatever it is they're going to claim they'll do. Sam actually expresses it with less cynicism than I just did, though.

A little montage begins as Sam narrates the process: memos are written. We see someone dump a pile of Cerlox-bound documents on Ginger's desk. These memos come from all kinds of departments and politicians, including what Sam calls "outside notables" and as examples cites former presidents, Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Jesse Jackson, and potentially Mr. Rogers. We see Ginger take the documents into Sam's office. Staffers read some of the memos and pass them to Jed, who makes notes in the margins; we see Jed working late in the First Boudoir at night, while a body slumbers in the shadows of the bed behind him -- ostensibly Abby, of course, but really it's one of the gaffers under the blanket. Then comes the "President's First Thoughts Meeting," which is when they all want to kill themselves, according to Sam, because then POTUS tells them they're "nowhere." Lisa: "Why?" Sam: "'Cause we're nowhere." We see POTUS pacing around his office with lots of the staff in attendance. Sam says they try to figure out what people want to hear, as we see Joey holding court with Ed and Larry and others in the Mural Room. "And that's when anybody who didn't want to kill themselves before has certainly been converted to the cult." Lisa asks why it's so hard. Sam: "Because it's a white piece of paper." Lisa: "How high are the stakes?" Honestly, what sort of brain trust are we dealing with here? Sam asks how high she can count. Well, considering what we've seen of Lisa, I'm guessing...eleventy-six? As more shots of meetings and writing on whiteboards continue, Sam says they do whatever it takes to get started. Sam says they try new ideas, themes and slogans, and after a few weeks of that, they've still got a white piece of paper. We see Toby walk in front of a whiteboard with a lot of writing on it and scribble on top, "We're nowhere!" Back to the White House. Lisa helps herself to some hot pumpkin soup and some cheese gnocchi with a chvre brioche. No, she just plops some food on a plate as she observes, "So it's hard." Sam is made to say, "Hmm?" so that Lisa can repeat her line again. You'd think I'd like all this repetition, but it takes me just as much time to tell you about all the repetition as it would take to tell you new stuff, so it's not really all that much help to me. Sam says it's hard at the best of times: "Obviously, it got a little harder two weeks ago." Lisa: "What happened two weeks ago?" Sam doesn't answer, thinking, "My God, it's a good thing I didn't marry this dolt. What if our children were as pretty as I and as dumb as she?" A few moments pass, and Lisa says, "Congress censured the President." Sam confirms this.

Two weeks ago, Leo's office. The Fab Four are waiting for Leo when he comes in with some coffee. He walks behind his desk, noticing what's on it and not saying anything at first. Josh asks what's going on. Leo: "Late last night, early this morning, the President reached an agreement with the Leadership to accept a Congressional Censure." No one says anything. Josh sits down. C.J. asks how Jed is (twice, because...I don't know why. Ostensibly Leo doesn't hear her, but really, it's just because 7.4% of all lines on the show have to be repeated. It's a new California law). Leo claims he's fine: "It's over." Leo explains that it will be a Concurrent Resolution. C.J. says that they should leak it to soften up the ground. Leo agrees. She asks again whether Jed's all right. She seems to be the only one very concerned about this. Leo replies evenly, "He's about to be censured, and then he's going to deliver the State of the Union, and then he's going to run for re-election. My guess is that there are some things on his mind." He pauses and then says, "It's over. That's all." He sits down. Toby, Sam, and C.J. leave, but Josh stays behind, unseen at first by Leo, who's turned his laser-like focus to the work on his desktop. I just wish I had Leo's powers of concentration. As the door closes, Leo looks up and sees Josh sitting there silently. I don't know if it's because he needs to talk to Leo about something, or to give the three who weren't inside a chance to discuss things amongst themselves.

Sam, C.J., and Toby amble morosely into the Roosevelt Room. Sam says, "This is like the Civil War. When's the last time Congress rebuked a sitting President?" Toby says that it was during the Civil War. Sam wonders how they're supposed to carry on now. As C.J. asks whether they should postpone the State of the Union, wondering what the pertinent rules are, we see Josh through the French doors as he walks by in the hallway outside. He notices them in there and comes in as Toby says that POTUS could basically fulfill his obligation to keep Congress informed by buying that branch of the legislature a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Sam says that if they postpone or cancel, they're admitting defeat. C.J. points out that accepting censure is pretty much admitting defeat, and "you don't ask the school bully out for lunch the day after he stole your lunch money." Perhaps not, although I hardly think Congress in this case is analogous to the "school bully." Sam says, "You don't go on a starvation diet, either. And we can spin the censure as a bipartisan..." C.J. mildly says, "You can't spin the formal denunciation from the Legislative Branch. It spins itself." I'm awfully tired of hearing the word "spin." Not just on this show. I'm just tired of the whole concept. C.J. continues over Sam's attempt to interject: "It's our biggest press hit of the year, our biggest pre-convention campaign exposure...I don't know how you make a formal report to Congress when Congress just called you a liar!" Josh, sitting behind C.J., says, "I say we strap a polygraph onto the TelePrompter." No one even chuckles. Josh gets up and walks around to the head of the table, saying softly, "Humour...to lighten the load." Then, subtly assuming the leadership role he actually has in relation to them, Josh states: "I recommended he take the censure, and if any of you had been on the inside, you'd have recommended it, too. How does he deliver the State of the Union in two weeks? He's the President of the United States. When he walks into the House Chamber, they're all going to stand up. Anyone here not believe this President can take it from there?" No one says anything. Josh says, with typical Lymanesque bravado, "I still got my lunch money." He tells Toby and Sam they have to "dig in." Josh asks if there's anything else. C.J. and Josh each exhale a kind of chuckle mixed with a snort -- a snuckle? -- and C.J. smiles, as does Josh.

Josh leaves. C.J. and Sam walk out a different door, as C.J. says, "Hey, Sam? Well argued." The hall they walk out into is pretty much the exact colour I've just today painted the hall between the kitchen and Frink's office, and will probably paint the kitchen. At least, it is on my TV. The colour scheme of my house has been deeply influenced on both a conscious and subconscious level by the set of this show. I just love the colours and a lot of the lighting on the show, and I will reiterate my plea for the set people to come and help me make some decisions here. I'd feed ya real well and lavish you with praise and everything. Anyway, Sam asks C.J., "Whaddya want?" C.J.: "What kind of attitude is that?" Sam's not in the mood to kibitz. C.J. tells him Vanity Fair wants to do a profile on him, starting with reporting on the night of the State of the Union. Sam impatiently asks, "Why don't they just cover the State of the Union?" Because you're going to look a lot hunkier on the cover than a sheaf of white paper, or even a handful of Congressmen all dressed in grey Armani evening wear, artfully draped over swanky chaises longues. C.J. says that this is the magazine's way of covering it. She also points out that she knows the writer they've assigned to the project: Lisa Sherbourne. Sam replies, "That's funny, because I used to be engaged to someone named Lisa Sherbourne." Sam states that he's not doing it. C.J. persists.

Sam walks into his office, saying he thought the policy was that they don't do staff profiles. C.J. says there's no such policy; Sam thinks there should be, in order to keep the focus on the Presidency. "People should think he writes the State of the Union." C.J.: "I think people know about speechwriters." Yeah, well, you haven't met Ms. Sherbourne, apparently. Sam: "Then there's no more story to tell." Sam spins around in his chair, turning his back on C.J. She goes around behind his desk and perches so that she's facing him, and asks, "In the past, did it help or hurt that the campaign had a youthful and energetic energy?" Sam: I'm not sure you can say 'an energetic energy.'" C.J. persists; Sam admits it helped. C.J.: "Do we need help right now? Do young women read Vanity Fair?" Actually, with someone who looks like Sam, I think you can include "young men" in that group too. I get the impression some men might switch teams for him. Sam says, "So let them cover the President." I get the feeling Sam is not only uncomfortable being used as a piece of meat, but also too modest to say so. C.J.: "They do cover the President. Right now they want you. And I want to give you to them." Sam, knowing he lost the game before he even got on the field or court or what-have-you (there she goes, mangling the sports metaphors again), asks, "It's gotta be Lisa Sherbourne?" C.J. asks, "Hey, is the reason you guys didn't get married because her name would have been Lisa Sherbourne-Seaborn?" Hey, maybe it just would have been Lisa Sherbourne. My name isn't Deborah Lastname-Frink'slastname. Sam looks at her exactly the way I would and says, "Yeah. That's the reason." C.J. gets up to leave, pleased with herself, and says, "I could do this for a living."

Back at the post-speech celebrations, we see C.J. wind her way through the Roosevelt Room (I think), carrying a glass. There's a man following her, and the eager, smiling way in which he's doing so makes you think they're hustling off to get a room together. I'm sure that's totally not what's going on, but I do wonder if they staged it that way to toy with us. I actually like it when they mess with our minds. If you don't believe me, watch it again. Sam looks around, spots Joey and Kenny coming through the Communications Department, and buzzes over to meet them: "Do you have anything?" She says no. Sam refuses to believe it, saying that if she didn't, she wouldn't be at the party. Joey says she likes parties. Sam keeps pushing. She's got preliminary numbers: just the first twenty minutes, and she says Sam doesn't want that. Lisa quietly sneaks up behind them, and Joey greets her. Sam turns to Lisa and explains that he needs a few minutes. Lisa doesn't go away; in fact, she says she can wait, so Sam indicates that he'd like her to wait elsewhere. She leaves.

After the commercials, Sam arrives at the Oval Office with his first draft and hands it to POTUS. Jed takes it and reads it to himself as he walks over and sits down in one of the side chairs. He says, "This is good." Sam replies, "You know we can't do it." Jed knows. Sam says, "We'd need to line up experts who can face the press, and in just two weeks..." Jed knows. Sam rambles, "Sloan-Kettering, Dana-Farber, the Cleveland Clinic, UCLA...." Jed adds, "We'd want to include the Society of Clinical Oncology." Sam: "And the NCI." Jed: "The OMB would have to score it. We haven't identified the offsets to pay for it." Well, no, but then, you only had this brainstorm a few hours ago, and yes, perhaps you can't do it for the State of the Union, but hey, isn't there an election coming up? A convention or two? Why not do it then? Start now. No need to abandon the whole idea, is there? Jed says, "We can barely tell them what the 'it' is." Sam continues, "Clinical trials under Medicare and Medicaid...Science and Technology Democrats...the pharmaceutical companies...." Jed sighs. "It was a good idea, though." Sam quietly says, "We have other good ideas." Jed grumbles, "So we don't get water from a rock. We just do our thing and take our chances." Sam thinks so. Jed stands up, commenting, "We're going to have to do it awfully well this time." Sam reminds him, "We've done that before." Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the visual portion of the TV broadcast disappears for a moment, as Jed dismisses Sam. I am thrown into utter panic, until the visual portion returns fairly quickly. I wonder briefly what it would be like to recap with only the audio but am grateful not to have to find out. ["I did that once." -- Wing Chun] Sam leaves. Jed slowly wanders back to the chair behind his desk.

Back at the party, Kenny calls C.J. away from the people she's chatting with. She joins a sizeable group of staffers in the hallway near Josh and Donna's area; the staff has gathered to hear what Joey Lucas has to say. Joey announces, "Something happened at the half-hour mark. They remembered why they liked him in the first place. The breakdowns are being handed around. But the really good news are the panel backs." I suddenly realize that Kenny's in love with Joey. And really, why wouldn't he be? She's great. She continues: "Sixteen Democrats, sixteen Republicans, and twelve Independents were asked identical questions two days ago and one hour ago. Two days ago, 48% said he was able to handle his job effectively. Tonight that number's 59[%]." There are murmurs of relief and delight from those assembled. But forty-four people constitute a meaningful sample? She's got more: "'Trustworthy': 60% up from 41[%]." Toby says, "Give us the real one." Everyone holds their breath as Joey says, "'Strong leader': 69%." Everyone erupts into cheers and shouts; Josh lapses ever-so-briefly into a little victory dance that is all too reminiscent of both Ed Grimley and Chandler Bing. These are not, suffice it to say, characters known for the serpentine funkiness of their moves. He walks over and gives Joey Lucas a big smooch on the cheek. Toby and Sam shake hands. Josh hugs Donna and gives her a light peck on the cheek. C.J. gives Toby several vigorous smooches on his cheeks. Kenny hugs Joey. Josh grabs C.J. and hoists her aloft. Sam high-fives Larry. See, I really do know which is which now. Everyone's whooping and clapping, and then POTUS comes in, with Leo on his tail. Jed puts his arms around Toby's and Sam's necks and says, "Somebody get these guys some pie!" Everyone laughs merrily. C.J. asks for a copy of the panel backs, because she didn't get one. Kenny zooms off. C.J. goes back to her office, passing Toby on her way, who exhorts her, "Dance with me!" She tells him to hang on, as she rushes back to her office to drop off some papers. I'm crushed that we don't get to see them actually dancing.