Recap / The West Wing S 02 E 16 Somebodys Going To Emergency Somebodys Going To Jail

Directed by Jessica Yu

Written by Aaron Sorkin & Paul Redford

Sam, who's been reeling from the news his father had an affair with another woman for 28 years, is trying to get all the pardon recommendations done for President Bartlet. Stephanie Gault (Jolie Jenkins), a friend of Donna's from college, wants Sam to add one more name; her grandfather, Daniel Gault, a special economic assistant to FDR and later a liaison to the State Department for Eastern European Affairs. Gault was accused of being a spy, jailed for perjury, and died in prison, and because Stephanie's father is dying, she wants to get her grandfather a pardon before that happens, especially since Sam used part of his senior thesis defending him. Sam agrees to do it, but finds out from Nancy McNally Gault really was a spy, and the secrets he passed led to people's deaths. Sam wants to go to Stephanie and tell her the real story, but Donna pleads for him not to, because he's in a bad place. In the end, Sam agrees to tell Stephanie he wasn't able to talk to the people he needed to, but he'd try again in three months, and the White House was open to the possibility of a pardon.

Also, it's Big Block of Cheese Day again, and Leo once again has assigned staffers to meet with various groups. Toby is bitter about the fact he's meeting with a group of people protesting the World Trade Organization meeting, though he's happy when he finds out C.J. has kept the TV media out. However, Rhonda Sachs (Roma Maffia), the police officer protecting him, goads him into engaging with the protesters. C.J. (and Josh), meanwhile, meets with a group called the Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality, who claim the standard map of the world (the Mercator) is entirely wrong because, among other things, it makes Europe look larger than it really is, and Africa and South America look smaller than they really are. They recommend the Peters Projection Map, which fixes that problem (among others), be taught in U.S. schools instead.

Elsewhere, President Bartlet tries to figure out where to set aside territory to build a Presidential Library.

This episode contains examples of:

• Ambiguous Gender: Played with in-universe:
  Nancy McNally: I’m the only woman on a conference call. Delaney can’t tell when it’s me talking. Do I have a bizarrely androgynous voice?
• Break the Cutie: Bad enough that Sam's already reeling from his father's revelation that he's been having an affair with another woman for 28 years, but then he learns that Daniel Gault, a personal hero whom he wrote a senior thesis in defence of, actually was a Soviet spy. He doesn't handle it well.
• Call-Back: Not just to Big Block of Cheese Day, but also Josh refers to when he got shot, as does Agent Casper.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Sort of; Sam's feelings of betrayal and bitter denunciation towards Daniel Gault once he learns the truth about his espionage activities clearly overlap with his feelings towards his father.
• Classified Information: The truth about Daniel Gault is still highly classified, which leads Sam and Stephanie to believe the FBI are just too embarrassed to admit he was innocent. Nancy McNally provides Sam with a redacted file that proves Gault was guilty while obscuring any information Sam doesn't need to see.
  Sam: I'm saying I'm not allowed to see that and you could get into trouble for showing it to me
  Nancy: I could go to jail for showing it to you, which obviously I'm not going to do.
• Comically Small Bribe: Played with:
  Dr. Fallow: Plain and simple, we'd like President Bartlet to aggressively support legislation that would make it mandatory for every public school in America to teach geography using the Peters Projection Map instead of the traditional Mercator.
  Josh: Give me 200 bucks and it's done.
  Professor Huke: Really?
  C.J.: No.
• Common Knowledge: In-Universe; the whole point of the "Cartographers for Social Equality" subplot.
  Sam: It's just there are certain things you're sure of... like longitude and latitude.
  Donna: Sam, I don't know if this is the best time to tell you, but according to C.J., I wouldn't be so sure about longitude and latitude.
• Continuity Nod: Agent Casper mentions that the FBI are aware that Toby was was the one who requested the Secret Service remove the protective canopy that would usually cover a President when exiting a building.
  • Speaking of the season 2 premiere, Leo's comment under Hypocritical Humor is referring to the moment during Governor Bartlet's campaign where Leo fires an entire room of campaign staff because he'd rather work with Toby.
• Cooldown Hug: Donna gives this to Sam after he ultimately decides not to tell Stephanie the truth about her grandfather.
• Deadpan Snarker: Along with all the regular cast, Officer Rhonda Sachs.
  Toby: Make all the jokes you want but let me tell you something; they claim to speak for the underprivileged, but here in the blackest city in America, I’m looking at a room with no black faces. No Asians, No Hispanics. Where the hell’s the Third World they claim to represent?
  Officer Sachs: Lot of Third-Worlders in the Cabinet Room today, were there?
  Toby: You're starting to bother me.
• Diegetic Switch: When "New York Minute" plays over the opening sequence, it starts out as just score music, but as Leo walks by Sam's office, it becomes the song that's playing on Sam's radio when his alarm goes off, and Leo turns the radio off.
• Expy: Daniel Gault is clearly a stand-in for Alger Hiss.
• Feet of Clay: For Sam, he finds out heart-breaking truths about both his father and Daniel Gault.
• Foreshadowing:
  • "Mr. President, is there anything we need to talk about?" "Not yet, okay?"
  • At the very beginning, Sam notes that the protests gathering in the city include a collection of people picking the National Geographic Society. Leo is bewildered as to why anyone would picket such a seemingly harmless and irrelevant place. Later in the episode, CJ meets with the Cartographers for Social Equality, who are presumably affiliated with said protestors, and who proceed to point out that there actually are reasons why people consider geography a political issue.
• Freudian Slip: Played for Drama:
  Sam: There was a translator in the Hungarian trade mission named Shaba Demsky. She was murdered in 1952. She was about to reveal the name of a Soviet agent called Black Water. This girl’s going to find out who her father was.
  Donna: Sam....you meant grandfather.
• Funny Background Event: When Leo tells everyone in the Roosevelt Room their assignments are final, and he's sure Margaret worked long and hard to make sure each staffer got the appropriate assignment, Margaret shakes her head. When Leo turns around, she nods her head in agreement.
• Heroic BSoD: Sam after finding out Daniel Gault was really a spy.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  Leo: Little thing called team morale, Josh. You gotta make people feel good about themselves. (walks into the Roosevelt Room) All right, shut the hell up, everybody! I've fired more people than you before breakfast.
  • Also, when Charlie tells President Bartlet his first choice for a Presidential Library site runs counter to the Historic Barns and Bridges Preservation Act:
    President Bartlet: What plaid flannel-wearing, cheese-eating, yahoo of a milkman governor signed that idiot bill into state law? (Beat) It was me, wasn't it?
  • Toby keeps railing about the free-trade protesters about how they don't comprehend the benefits that trade brings to the table. Office Sachs sardonically notes "Gee, wonder if someone around here could explain it to them."
• Literary Allusion Title: The episode title is a lyric from the Don Henley song "New York Minute" ("Lying here in the darkness/I hear the sirens wail/Somebody going to emergency/Somebody's going to jail''). The song Book Ends the episode, and the instrumental part also serves as a Leitmotif during Sam's scenes.
• Misplaced Retribution: Narrowly averted. When he's angry over learning the truth about Daniel Gault, Sam intends to let Stephanie have the truth with both barrels over Donna's desperate protests, but realises just in time that it's merely misplaced spite towards his father and backs off a bit.
• The Mistress: Sam has recently learned that his father has been keeping a mistress for 28 years and is obviously deeply hurt by the revelation.
• Mood Whiplash: The episode flips between the comical stuff C.J. and Toby endure during the Big Block of Cheese Day to the increasingly serious and troubling revelations Sam uncovers during his attempt to pardon one of his early idols.
• Non Sequitur: Played for Drama; when Donna comes across Sam disconsolately flinging packets of sugar into a wastepaper basket in the cafeteria after learning the truth about Daniel Gault, Sam remarks that he came down there to practice, "because if you don't you might as well give the clarinet to a kid who'll use it." He's pretty clearly channeling an old argument with his father there.
• One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Or perhaps more accurately, One Dialogue Two Monologues; when Donna tries to stop Sam from giving Stephanie the truth about Daniel Gault with both barrels, he lays into her with a monologue about the real evil of Gault's treason... but the true subject of his anger clearly starts bleeding through:
  Donna: It was people pushing paper around fifty years ago! Why does it matter?
  Sam: It was high treason and it mattered a great deal! This country is an idea! One that's lit the world for two centuries! And treason against that idea is not just a crime against the living. This ground holds the graves of people who died for it, who gave what Lincoln called "the last full measure of devotion..." [He's near tears now, his voice cracking] Of fidelity... you understand the last full measure of devotion to... treason against them is...
• Self-Plagiarism: On an episode of Sports Night, Jeremy also learned his father had been having an affair with another woman for over 20 years. Like Sam, he responded to it by developing an obsession with an event from years prior.
• Series Continuity Error: Possibly. In "Celestial Navigation," the whole "secret plan to fight inflation" debacle causes CJ to ban Josh from being in her pressroom ever again. Despite this, Josh is allowed to sit in the background and enjoy CJ's meeting with Cartographers for Social Equality in said pressroom. Either CJ relaxed that ban in the intervening time or Josh is allowed into the room but not behind the podium. (There's also the possibility that CJ was just lashing out in anger and frustration in the earlier incident and did not intend the 'ban' to be completely literal, but rather as a way of reinforcing that there was no way in hell she would be letting him cover for her again — after all, literally banning the Deputy White House Chief of Staff from a critical room in the White House would be somewhat impractical and hard-to-enforce.)
• Serious Business: Maps. Which is Truth in Television as there's a big fight over which type of maps to teach our kids.
• Ship Tease: For C.J./Toby shippers, after C.J. reveals she's kept the TV cameras out of the meeting Toby's going to:
  C.J.: You want to make out with me right now, don't you?
  Toby: Well, when don't I?
• Shout-Out: Josh asks C.J. to call him if the cartographers find Brigadoon on the map.
• Straw Character: The episode doesn't take a particularly nuanced look at the anti-globalisation movement, depicting them mainly as over-privileged and slightly hypocritical white hipsters who are more interested in their own loudly expressed smug self-righteousness than actually debating the issues. Toby spends most of the episode watching them squabble pettily with each other in amusement, and notably we don't even see the speech with which he apparently wipes the floor with them.
• Take Our Word for It: We never see Toby wipe the floor with the anti-globalisation protesters with his rhetoric, but Josh assures Sam (and the audience) that he did.
• This Is Reality: When the cartographers suggest flipping maps upside down altogether to end north-south social inequality.
  C.J.: You can't do that!
  Cartographer: Why not?
  C.J.: Because it's freaking me out!
• Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Sam is enraged to find out that Daniel Gault really was a spy who betrayed the United States. As he says in his speech to Donna, treason isn't just a crime against living Americans, but also a betrayal of the sacrifices of every American who has died for the American ideal. Even though he's projecting a lot of his anger towards his father onto Gault, it's clear he has every right and reason to now despise Gault.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The anti-globalisation protesters are depicted like this; the main organiser clearly doesn't have much control over them, and to Toby's amusement they end up splitting into smaller groups of people arguing about which different things they should be shouting at Toby about.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When advising her on how best to persuade Sam to look into an appeal for Daniel Gault, Donna advises Stephanie to butter him up a bit by telling him she's heard he's the go-to guy for such matters, making him feel important and inclined to impress her. Later, after Sam's experienced the gut-punch of learning that Gault actually was a traitor and is feeling a bit betrayed and wounded, he chews her out a bit both for thinking he was the kind of guy who needed excessive flattery to do a favour for someone, and for actually saying that to someone else. Donna's taken aback and apologises.
• When I Was Your Age...: Toby is like this about the protesters.
  Toby: In my day, we knew how to protest.
  C.J.: What day was that?
  Toby: 1968.
  Josh: How the hell old were you when you were protesting?
  Toby: My sisters took me...The police are always seven steps ahead of them. The cops know exactly where they’re going to be and what’s going to happen. You know how they know? By logging onto their website. We had the underground. We had rapid response.
  C.J.: And by God, you were home by supper on a school night.
  • Officer Sachs later mocks Toby with this; "These kids today, with the hair and the clothes..."
• You Just Had to Say It:
  Stephanie Gault: I am getting you out of something though, right?
  Donna: Nothing, you got me out of the Big Block of Cheese Day meeting.
  Stephanie: What's..?
  Donna: I had the worst feeling you were going to ask.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Stephanie is representing her father, Daniel Gault's son, who is dying of a terminal illness and wants to clear his father's name before he passes. At the end Sam takes pity on them both by saying that he wasn't able to get the necessary clearances to have Gault considered for the latest round of pardons but will have another opportunity in three months, by which time Stephanie's father will be dead.