OTH: The West Wing- "20 Hours in America" Pts I & II
"I didn't vote for him the first time, don't plan to vote for him the second."
Season 4 Episodes 1 and 2
Directed by Christopher Misiano
Written by Aaron Sorkin
Synopsis: President Bartlet is giving a campaign rally in Indiana, which his senior staff is watching on with trepidation. This is a busy day for the President (but what day isn’t?) and he quickly gets to the motorcade, which is all fine and good, except that Josh, Toby, and Donna all miss it. To catch up with the motorcade, the staffers hitch a ride with Cathy (Amy Adams), whose father owned the soybean field President Bartlet held his speech on. Their drive does not go according to plan, though, as Cathy’s soy-based car runs out of diesel. While Cathy and her boyfriend pick up a ride to go back to the farm for more diesel, while Donna calls Tyler, a campaign worker still in high school, to come over and take them where Air Force One is meant to take off. While the staffers are thinking that things are going awry when Tyler stops by to confront his “girlfriend”, they’re truly dismayed when they realize that the part of Indiana they’re in doesn’t observe daylight savings time, meaning that they’re an hour behind schedule and the flight has already taken off. Instead, he takes them to a train… which takes the staffers in the opposite direction of where they’re needed. The three end up at a hotel and arrange for a room as the flight they booked is delayed until tomorrow. While they kill time at the hotel’s bar, they focus on the TV, where C.J.’s press briefing is extended as she reports a tragedy- an explosion at a swim meet at Kennison State University. Everyone, in and out of the White House, are fully attentive to the unfortunate news she’s sharing. After the briefing, Josh and Toby are back to what they’ve been doing all day- bickering about Toby’s speech and campaign approaches, which Donna has no patience for. She brings up how the two have spent almost their whole day on the same subject and have barely interacted with the people around them. Humbled, the two take a chance and speak to a man at at the bar, who they discover is worried about how he’s going to pay for his daughter to go to college. The three eventually make it on their flight and are taking a shuttle to the White House, only for Toby to decide that he wants to stop partway through and walk over. Josh and Donna tag along.
With the President still away from the White House, Leo controls the Situation Room on his own. Unfortunately, news is not looking good, as Qumar is reopening the case into Abdul Shareef’s missing plane. The White House is already struggling with the Dow hitting a low of 300 points and really can’t afford this investigation, even if Leo and Admiral Fitzwallace are the only ones in the know. As well as Nancy McNally, who brings up a good point when she’s reminded- the one thing that will look worse if they’re accused of assassinating Shareef is if someone else is accused. This causes the President to fly back early, after giving one more rally at a military base.
With Josh and Toby out of office, it’s now Sam’s responsibility to staff the White House. While this is a little out of Sam’s wheelhouse, he has no choice and has one particular job to look into today- making sure President Bartlet is closer to hiring an Executive Secretary. Bartlet interviews Debbie Fidderer again, who we met last season, and he’s continually impressed by her, even if she won’t reveal why she was fired from the White House. President Bartlet, however, soon puts two and two together and tells Charlie to hire her right away. That’s one job down, and while Sam keeps up with his busy day taking over Josh’s work, he soon has to update a speech so the President can remark on the Kennison State tragedy at a fundraiser that evening. The speech is a hit, which Sam later finds out when he meets with a familiar face- Mallory, Leo’s daughter, who is back in town after splitting with her boyfriend.
C.J. has made it her responsibility to find a substitute Big Brother for Anthony, a troubled youth who Simon took care for. Anthony, who appears to blame C.J. for Simon’s death, has recently gotten in trouble, and she’s able to help Anthony avoid juvie time if she’s willing to find a White House worker to become his Big Brother. She asks Charlie first, who says he’ll consider it, but has a full schedule- he also doesn’t love the connotation, as they’re both young Black men. C.J. promises that there’s no motive for Charlie being asked and insists that Sam is next on her list, and true to her word, she asks Sam later at the White House. Unfortunately, however, she can deduce that he’s too busy and she backs off. This leaves C.J. at an impasse, which we’ll later see infuriates Anthony, who snaps at her after she takes time to give an impassioned briefing. Charlie hears, though, and slams Anthony to the wall and gives him an ultimatum- meet with him for breakfast, worktime and basketball on Saturdays, or go to juvie.
We’ve finally hit The West Wing’s fourth season, the last year it won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series, a distinction that puts the show in a special class of quadruple winners alongside Hill Street Blues, LA Law, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones. It’s an impressive record, and on paper, this is good company to be in, but I do believe by this point, reception for The West Wing was turning a little, and I don’t recall this being the strongest season of the show’s run. By no surprise, this will be Aaron Sorkin’s last year with the series.
The fourth season will be a good jumping point, though, as this is the show’s reelection cycle. Sorkin could have ended the series by having Bartlet lose and wrap things up with him (knowing that we have three more seasons ahead, come to your own conclusions). Instead, “20 Hours in America” paints Bartlet as someone who has to win, not because there’s jobs and his reputation on the line or even because he has something to prove, but because he has to. With the cat (in this case, the President’s MS diagnosis) out of the bag, it’s easy and fair to assume that it’s going to be an uphill battle for the President to regain his previous stature.
Never mind winning over voters who didn’t show up for him in the first place. Part of the fourth season’s double-length premiere has some of President Bartlet’s most trusted staffers meet with some of the common people, plenty of whom have no qualms in reminding them that they didn’t, nor intend to vote for him. In the show’s usual charm, this is a feature, not a bug of the characters Josh, Toby and Donna meet along the way, albeit one they can’t answer to.
I believe that the theme of “20 Hours in America” is that it’s important to listen to everyone, whether you think their opinion is worth following or not. Josh and Toby don’t realize this until the episode’s end, as they spend the majority of their time traveling through Indiana bickering at each other, but it becomes relevant elsewhere. This is a not very subtle dig at Washington elite who tend to look down at the more rural parts of the country no matter who they vote in favor for. Indiana doesn’t have a city as flashy as New York, Chicago or LA, nor does its vote matter as much as New York, Illinois or California, but that doesn’t make the people who live there irrelevant hicks. Their lives and opinions should matter as much as anyone, which President Bartlet allows them to believe, even if just for a moment when he’s in the area. His most significant staff members, however, paint a different picture for the bulk of the episode, and it’s easy to suggest that this lack of moral is a serious problem.
We have a lot of West Wing to cover and little time, so let’s call it here and try to meet up again soon.
Presidential Records:
Sorry, I know it’s been a while. Let’s get this out of the way- the series recently celebrated its 25th anniversary, which resulted in reunions at this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards and the White House. Sorkin recently commented on the latter and suggested that he has ideas for a revival, which I’m skeptical of… but after seeing some of his recent work, if this keeps him from directing more movies, let him have it. Hell, maybe a return to familiar faces is what he needs; I’m still feeling a high after seeing Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which has to be Burton’s best movie in ages.
Additionally, RIP John Amos. The legendary actor has enough essential roles to consider before Admiral Fitzwallace- Good Times and Coming to America came up the most in the social media retrospectives that I found- but I would be remiss to not discuss his impact on the West Wing. Sorkin likes to feature multiple characters who fight to prove that they’re the smartest person in the room, which is a job many actors love to take on, but Amos had no shame in allowing Percy to hold his own without extending beyond any sort of necessity. He’s just as capable as anyone he works with, and is content with that. A little goes a long way in this series, and few got it down better than Amos.
“First guy to miss has to shave his beard.”
Fun fact, John Gallagher Jr., who plays Tyler, will stay in the Sorkin family as he’s later a part of The Newsroom’s cast.
Margaret has all facets of human knowledge in her?
So yeah, there’s no Kennison State U. My spellcheck doesn’t even recognize the word Kennison. I’m not surprised that a fake university was used, though, because who wants to be recognized for a bombing, fictional or not?
$55K in 2002 is worth about $96K today, and $25K around $43K. That’s a solid six figures a year.
It’s kind of funny that Sam talks about lifting from Camelot for his speech, when “the streets of Heaven are too crowded with angels” is taken from Tom Hank’s Best Actor acceptance speech at the 94 Academy Awards.
Next Time: Bartlet continues to work around the Qumar crisis, which is about to come to a head before his and Governor Ritchie’s first debate.
But also, I have something else planned for tomorrow…