The Long Goodbye

Shout-out to Elwood P. Dowd.

Press briefing. One reporter asks C.J. if Josh wasn't scheduled to do the press briefings today and over the weekend. I'm sorry, you must be new, or maybe you're talking about some other Josh. Because Josh "Secret Plan to Fight Inflation" Lyman couldn't possibly be scheduled to handle press briefings. Unless everyone in the White House has fallen down and hit his or her head. I know Sorkin didn't write this one, but surely someone vetted it for shreds of continuity. C.J. tells the reporter it's just her. Katie wants to know if that means C.J.'s not going to her high-school reunion in Dayton. C.J. says, "Yup," and tries to move it along, but Katie -- oh, tenacious, professional, underrated little Katie -- presses her, saying that C.J. was supposed to be giving a speech at this reunion entitled "The Promise of a Generation." Yikes. I'd be skipping out, too. Well, that is, if I were planning to attend any high-school reunion of mine, which I wouldn't be, unless forced to do so at gunpoint. This year would be my twentieth reunion, and it's C.J.'s too. So we're the same age. Except she's taller, thinner, more gorgeous, funnier, smarter, wealthier, and more successful than I am. Friggin' bitch. ["Well, she's taller, sure, but I don't know about all that other stuff." -- Wing Chun] I, on the other hand...well, at least I've had sex more than once in the last four years. Good thing for you people, too. Picture how much crabbier I'd be. Okay. I remind myself that I love C.J. I do, I really do. I love Allison Janney even more, and she kicks plenty ass in this show, so let's get on with it. C.J. wants to know how the members of the press corps know about that speech, and several reporters wave their copies of the Dayton Daily Bugle or whatever. Another reporter wants to know what C.J. thinks the promise of a generation is. I'm guessing the best answer to that question is "unrealized." C.J. replies, "I'm not really sure, but like pornography, I know it when I see it." She tells them she felt she couldn't say no to the speech, but her job prevents her from certain pleasures (like getting laid more than once every four years, for example). The reporter says, "We don't get Josh, is what you're saying?" C.J.: "No fresh meat for the lions." She calls a full lid.

In the hall, Josh thanks C.J. and says, "I couldn't go out there. Like they had this sadistic, anticipatory glee." Josh follows C.J. to her office as she says she has to stay. She runs into Toby, who wants to know why she's still there. She says that Josh can't do the briefings, and anyway, she missed the last flight to Dayton. Carol -- who's accreted to this pedeconferencing glob -- says there's another flight, and she's booked C.J. on it. Toby urges her to go, and says that he'll do the briefings. C.J. says he can't: "It's not your shtick. You don't know who to call on, where to look, when to smile and interrupt..."

Carol and Josh split off to their respective spaces and C.J. enters her office. Toby stands in the doorway, wondering if she's scared of "that promise thing." She says she is. Toby doesn't think that's it. He's already figured it out, but waits a respectful moment or two like he's just figuring it out now and says, "It's your dad." Richard Schiff looks like he's lost weight. Someone get him a hoagie. He's going to need his strength when those twins arrive. Speaking of which...I want to see Andi again. I hope we don't have to wait until May to see her. Very unhappy recapper if that happens. Hey, C.J.'s got an Aeron chair, too! Did everyone on the show get Aeron chairs when I wasn't looking? C.J. just looks at Toby, like he's right but she's not prepared to talk about it. He apologizes and asks how he's doing. C.J. says, "You're not allowed to use the words 'Alzheimer's' or 'doctors.'" Toby says those are the relevant words. C.J. sighs and says, "His wife scares me." Apparently, C.J.'s stepmother was also C.J.'s high-school English teacher. C.J. says the situation is a "little bit fraught." Toby wonders, "Did you ever not get an A in her class?" C.J. just gives him a look. He starts to leave and says, "Nevertheless, Dayton awaits." At the door, Toby says, "Psst...finish your speech." The camera drifts down to C.J.'s luggage by the door.

C.J.'s at the airport, chattering away on the phone to Toby, giving him lots of last-minute instructions as she goes through Security, relinquishing various items and continuing to set off the alarms until she finally gives up her phone for the moment it takes to go through the detector. She struggles to drag her suitcase up a non-working escalator as she reassures Toby: "No, I didn't mean that you have no social skills, Toby...I'm sorry if you think I was being insensitive to your...I think you're very...you're a very pretty girl, Toby." Hee. As she nears the top of the escalator, the struggle with the luggage and the phone becomes too much, and C.J. says she'll call him later.

Dayton, Ohio. It's raining when C.J. arrives; she's on the horn to Toby again. Or Toby's voicemail, it sounds like. She gets cut off, but tells him she'll email him. While she's getting herself organized, some guy strolls up with his luggage and says, "Wow. You look basically exactly the same." C.J.'s too distracted to look up or pay much attention. The bespectacled guy, played by Matthew Modine (with blonder hair than I remember him having, and with a vaguely John Carter-ish vibe) says he didn't think she'd be coming: "I feel...slightly so much better now." He's got C.J.'s attention at this point and she looks at him, trying to place him: "I'm hearing Violent Femmes and thinking Quaaludes and detention and...tacos?" Modine throws his cigarette aside and says, with a gently mischievous smile, "Well, there was a little bit more to it than that." C.J. smiles, and says, "Marco." Polo! "Marco Arlen." Old boyfriend? I don't get that vibe. Marco and C.J. shake hands. C.J. wonders where his band is. Marco laments the demise of The Mollusks of Lust. I shit you not. The hell? Come on, I can think up a better punk band name than that without even trying. Raging Snot. Putrescence. Ronald Reagan's Butthole. If I put my arm into it I could really come up with some good stuff. C.J. inquires about Marco's purple and magenta Mohawk. March says that, unlike The Mollusks, Mohawks are making a comeback, only as faux-hawks. C.J. wonders if he's dreading this reunion. Marco admits that he is, but adds that he's not the one making a doofy speech about generational promise. C.J. asks what he's up to now. He shrugs, like he's embarrassed about it: "Sorta...living in Paris." So that was probably one of those extra-stinky Gauloises he threw aside. Yecch. There's a punk band name for you: "Extra-Stinky." Extra-Stinky and the Cancer Stix. C.J. says, "Paris...you were a baseball-playing punk rocker." Marco: "And you were the smartest, funniest, saddest girl in Dayton." C.J. thanks him: "I think that might have been a compliment." Marco asks about C.J.'s dad, and whether he's still teaching math. C.J. says he has a new job now: getting married. Her father has been married twice since C.J.'s mother died, currently to the aforementioned English teacher: "Her job is baking and hating me. Did you ever have Mrs. Lapham?" He did, and she hated Marco, too. His shuttle arrives and C.J. hails a cab. They shake hands and go off to their respective vehicles, but Marco turns and says tentatively, "Hey...listen...at the risk of being...anything...you wouldn't want to go to this thing together, would you? I mean, we could get a vodka first, which helps with the fear." Alcohol: the cause of and solution to all of life's problems. He continues: "And a cracker, which helps with the bad food." Vodka and a cracker? Is this what dating has come to? All right. Happy to be married. C.J. tells Marco she hopes for his sake that that's a shuttle to Mandyville, since all her love interests end up disappearing or dying. No, she just agrees and Marco, eager to be chivalrous, opens the cab door for her.

C.J. arrives at her parents' house and hesitates as she goes up the walk. Her dad, played -- superbly, I will add -- by Donald Moffat, opens the door and waits for her to reach the steps, then says, "Claudia Jean, when you go out on a date, you're supposed to call if you come in after midnight. Aren't you? Hmm?" Is he kidding her or is he genuinely confused? C.J.'s not sure, and she starts to apologize. Dad laughs and beckons her in. He tells her Molly made cupcakes for them before retiring. As they get in the door, Dad says he wants to sit up all night and catch up. He says he doesn't do that much anymore: "Ticking clocks, you know, and so much to do." His house is very nice inside; lots of wood and glass and leather, pleasantly cluttered, a sort of up-to-date Arts and Crafts feel to it. The set designers on this show just never disappoint me. I'll take this house if I can't have the one in Manchester. C.J. says, "How are you, Daddy?" The "Daddy" thing doesn't ring true for me; I just don't see C.J. calling her father that except maybe jokingly, as I occasionally do with my father, or maybe in an extremely emotional situation. Dad's bummed because he's been unable to go fishing lately. C.J. points out that it's February. So...we're past the inauguration? Except that that's the focus of the two new episodes, which air in February, so I guess they're going to be in retrospect. Also: isn't this kind of an odd time for a reunion? Aren't most of them near the end or beginning of a school year? Whatever. Dad knows, but he's got these "flirtatious" new Italian flies he wants to try out, and asks C.J. to go fishing with him for an hour in the morning. He knows it's going to be cold but thinks it might be "bracing." The fact that something is "bracing" is pretty much always a reason not to do it, if you ask me. As Dad pours drinks for the two of them, he rambles on about not letting the weather dictate things, and tells C.J. it'll be just like the old days, over C.J.'s weak objections that she never really loved fishing. Dad waxes on about how, as you get older, the little things mean more and more. The widower two doors down, Mr. Moyers, wanted nothing much after losing his wife except to be taken to the Astro Dinette for tuna melts. Which apparently Dad does with him now. I notice C.J.'s dressed in an outfit that emphasizes girlishness: a two-tone beige and brown sweater set and a knee-length A-line skirt with kind of a flared hem. Dad turns up the music on the record player (Miles Davis, "Kind of Blue"), and C.J. worries that the sound will wake Molly up. Dad says they could blast Elgar in there with twenty-five speakers and not wake her up. C.J. asks about her stepmother. Dad says she's "marvellous. Fun. Funny. Lots of rules." He asks if C.J.'s hungry, and walks to the kitchen. C.J. says she'll be right there; she's just going to wash her face.

In the bathroom, C.J. just sets down her glass, paces around for a minute, looks at herself in the mirror, and leaves again, grabbing her glass.

In the kitchen -- which is much more cluttered than the living area, with lots of books, dishes and even a typewriter on the counters -- C.J. points out that Mr. Moyers lived in Shaker Heights and the Astro's in Cleveland. Dad impatiently says that he knows that: he meant Marienthall, not Moyers. He mentions, before C.J. can say anything about it, that he started smoking again, though he knows he's not supposed to. C.J. wonders why the kitchen is such a mess. Dad says there's a lady who comes in, but who knows when? He admits to not knowing where anything is in there. C.J. starts to ask something, but Dad interrupts, saying that lately, he's been perfecting a zabaglione and asks if she knows what it is. I bet Keckler does. C.J. says it's an Italian custard sauce. Dad strikes a match and says it's a custard fabled for its restorative properties. He continues: "Somewhere in this kitchen is a copper pot with a curvy ass." He needs it. C.J. finds it and wipes it off. He says it facilitates the whipping at a far greater rate. Dad asks about her job. C.J. says they're happy, but before she can say much more, Dad interrupts again: "Somewhere in this hellhole of a kitchen is a really good bottle of Marsala wine." C.J. turns and put out the cigarette he left burning in an ashtray as Dad lights another one and continues with the zabaglione. Yecch. Everything about smoking disgusts me, but nothing more so than people smoking while preparing food. C.J. says that the administration has a window in which they get to do actual work. She finds the bottle of wine, stuck to an envelope, and takes it off a shelf to a framed picture of her with POTUS. Dad says he likes Bartlet, because of his economic theories: "So generous, so good." C.J. unsticks the envelope from the wine bottle, sniffs it (for some reason), and tosses it aside as her dad asks why Bartlet hides his light under a bushel. She says he did it to win: "He did so with honour. We played clean." Dad says they did, and that he's proud of her.

C.J. hands Dad the wine and glances at the typewriter, observing, "You're writing." Dad says he's writing a mathematics handbook for a generation of mathematically illiterate math teachers. C.J. says that's wonderful, as she picks up a thick manuscript. Dad says he was thinking of asking her to write a foreword, but supposes that's unethical. C.J. says it's not at all, and would be pleased to do it. She says the title is catchy: "Numerical Idiocy." Ha! My husband would love to see a book like that on the shelves. Dad complains, "Well, go to the supermarket, they can't make change!" True, dat. "They can't tell you that if you drive at forty miles an hour for three hours, you've gone 260 miles." C.J. puts out his latest cigarette. He pauses as if something about that doesn't sound right to him, and C.J. says, "Daddy, 120." He whips his custard and rhapsodizes about the virtues of the pot. He stops whipping, distracted by some faint rustling in his brain, and C.J., watching him carefully, warns him that he needs to keep whipping. He looks at her and says, "What? Ah, 120!" He taps his forehead and blames it on a "senior moment." He pauses, tosses the whisk down into the pan with frustration, and takes a drag off a cigarette I didn't even see him light. Maybe it's a continuity error. Either way, this guy's gonna get a house call from Smokey the Bear. C.J. suggests that maybe Dad needs more help. Dad says that everybody needs more help. C.J.: "Yes, but I don't think you're doing as well as..." Dad turns away from her suddenly and says he has to finish his book: "Kids aren't being taught any of the important things. Inductive reasoning, estimation...it's gone, it's all disappearing!" Without looking at her, Dad says, "Oh, stop staring at me, darling. You know you were brought up better than that." He leaves. C.J. turns off the stove.

C.J. wanders through the house to find Dad, finally locating him in his bedroom. He's sitting on the bed, petting his cat. The bed seems to be empty. He tells her, "Archimedes is getting old." C.J. asks where Molly is. Dad: "Well, I mean...of course...she left." C.J. wants to know what that means. Dad: "This obviously isn't much fun. Not what she signed on for." C.J. says you don't just walk away. Dad mutters about the forty-miles-an-hour thing: "I don't know what I was thinking." C.J.'s dumsquizzled. She sits beside Dad on the bed and gently strokes the cat, too.

Saturday morning. C.J.'s driving somewhere in Dayton while she's on the phone with Toby giving him further instructions. Toby seems harried. C.J. pulls up in front of a house in a suburban development as she tells him to avoid the reporters who don't blink: "They're power devils." Toby claims not to know what that is; C.J. insists that he does. She asks if anything's happening. Toby says it's the usual chaos: "Minus ten percent." Toby asks how things are; C.J. says, "Usual. Uneventful. Daytonesque." She says, in response to his queries, that her father is fine and her stepmother is even finer, and the weather is perfection. Though not one of those things is true. Toby has to go, so they hang up.

C.J. gets out of her rent-a-Volvo, and a soccer mom-ish woman comes out of the house to greet her. They kiss each other on each cheek. The woman tells C.J. she has to stop being beautiful some time. C.J. says that would be today. The woman rags on her about the title of her speech. C.J. asks if she's going to the reunion. She's not. The woman says, "I think I know exactly why you're here at 7:05 AM. Your stepmom. She's moved right back in." C.J. follows the woman into the house, saying, "I prefer to think of your mother as my dad's third wife, Libby." Libby tells C.J. it's been fun, and invites her to see if she can broker a deal: "God knows I've tried." Inside, a cute kid who's vaguely Theo Sipowicz-esque announces, "I want lemolaide!" His mother tells him he'll get "lemolaide" after he washes the snail goo off his hands. Molly -- played by Verna Bloom, who will be sixty-three this year and looks easily ten years younger than that -- is crouching to him. She gets up and walks into the kitchen.

Before C.J. can say more than her name, Molly announces that she knows she failed. C.J. asks what happened. Molly asks if C.J.'s been there and seen the house. She carries on about how she made a mistake and about how charming C.J.'s father can be. There's something off about her performance -- not the defensiveness, which seems understandable enough, but something else I can't put my finger on. It's stagey, or something. I mean, the whole thing vibrates with the feel of being written by a playwright rather than a television writer, and that's not a bad thing, but there's just something out of place about the line delivery. Molly rambles on and on about her and Dad working at the same school and having quiet lunches together for years and how they waited while they sifted through other partners and they were two missed connections and two "withered, married, ancient people" just waiting. No one cares. C.J. wants to know why Molly didn't call her. Which is a damn good question. Seriously, I doubt C.J. cares much at this point about why or how Molly came to be with her father; no doubt she's already been over that in the past, when it first happened. However, abandoning a man with early Alzheimer's and not even notifying his children is pretty shabby. Speaking of children, I'd like to know where C.J.'s brothers are. We know she has them, but they don't rate a mention. Molly whines that she didn't get to spend time with C.J.'s dad; they never had an affair: "I'm sorry, but I don't want to diaper..." C.J. barks, "Shut up! Shut up." Word. Also, grow up. C.J. says Molly should be ashamed of herself. Word to that, too. Molly replies, "Well, I am. And did you know what the nickname for the disease is?" That line just seems to come out of nowhere. She tells C.J. it's called "The Long Goodbye." I've also heard it called the "disease of a thousand goodbyes." C.J. points out that, in Molly's case, it's more like the "short, 'see ya later' goodbye." C.J. wants to know: "What about reciprocity?" C.J. insists that in a million years, if the shoe were on the other foot, her father would never do this to Molly. She declares that what Molly's doing now invalidates everything that came before it, completely cancels out a good and valuable life: "He needs you!" Molly hollers: "I need him!" Molly turns her back and asks if C.J.'s here for the reunion; she mentions that news of her speech was in the paper. She says they were going to go and stand in the back. But C.J. has left and Libby's walked away by that time.

C.J.'s dad is standing in the shallow part of a stream, or maybe it's a river. C.J. -- in a funny little fishing hat, hipwaders, and a Burberry scarf (are they sponsors of this show or something?) -- stands a few feet away from him as he gives her pointers on fishing technique. He asks C.J. how Molly is: "I know you went to see her." C.J., surprised: "No, no." Her dad replies, "Aw sweetie, I know when young people lie." He wonders if she found out how long Molly's been gone; he's not sure if it's been weeks or just a few days. C.J. says they need to get him some help if Molly won't come back. Dad wonders if C.J. means someone more than a nice lady from Catholic Family Services. C.J. argues that Dad can't be alone. Dad doesn't see why not; he's so busy he can work around the clock. He says there's a whole chapter on "Women and Math Anxiety" he has to do. He wonders why women underperformed in math. Oh, don't get me started. C.J. proposes: "The teachers were sexist men?" Well, that's part of it. Dad agrees and says there are "blocked women" to be helped.

Dad walks over to help C.J. with her rod; he takes it and shows her how to throw her line, and hands it back to her. She keeps nudging gently: "You could hurt yourself." He says she could do the same: "Look at that hook. Practically a nipple piercing." Dad sure is hip. C.J. argues: "You will hurt yourself. We can afford it. I can afford it." Dad ignores her, complaining Molly didn't like to go fishing and considered it "devilish." He says he usually threw the fish back; he just likes to stand there and calculate the odds. C.J. awkwardly broaches the subject of doctors, and whether he's seen any. Dad poo-poos that, saying, "My age smells of liniment and waiting rooms." He says he's done research, and that there's a new drug called Reminyl, which apparently buys sufferers a few months. C.J. suggests seeing Lee Voight, a neurologist friend of her father's. Her father replies, "It's such a beautiful day, Molly. I'd prefer not to screw it up with all that." C.J. starts to explain that she's not Molly, but he interjects, asking "Molly" to give up with the nagging already. C.J.: "Dad, I'm not Molly!" Dad, still looking ahead at where he's throwing his line, sneers, "You're not Molly. You're not Molly." He turns to look at C.J., and when he sees her, doesn't recognize her at all and starts shouting, "Who...Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you? Who are you?" He backs up a bit as he rants, "All these damn women hounding me! My mother, my mother calls this morning to remind me to fold the socks when I get back in. And my daughter just abandoned me! Mothers, wives, daughters, and none of them stay! All these damn women!" C.J.'s not crying, but I am. Her face is full of pain, though. Dad stops roaring and glances around, confused. C.J. struggles to keep her footing against the current of the stream and the uneven bottom to walk slowly toward her father. She reaches him, and grasps his arm, lurching into him slightly. She quietly says, "Dad...you...cannot expect me to silently do nothing. You're going to require care." Dad looks straight ahead and says, "I wasn't built for it. You came for the prom, not for this." She corrects him: "Reunion. I'm not going." Dad: "Coward." He continues, "That world, the expertise, the solicitude...no. No, thanks. I want to go down with some silence, with my music, with some grace." C.J.: "I'll quit and take care of you." I'm surprised to hear her say it -- she loves her job -- but I actually believe she means it. Her father turns to her and quotes, "'We sail,' said Pascal, 'in a vast sphere,' Claudia Jean, 'ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.'" He caresses her cheek; even his touch doesn't dissolve the look of pleading and concern on her face. "I'd much rather see you on TV, darling, than sitting opposite me, watching a demolition derby going on in my brain." C.J. backs up slowly to her spot in the river, knowing there's little she can say to persuade him. She tosses her line, and they stand there, fishing in silence.