In the tenth episode of the fifth season of The West Wing, Bartlet attends the funeral of a previous President, unearthing the challenges of his job and the present turmoil in Saudi Arabia. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch The West Wing.
You know, just in terms of this show’s politics, this is a fascinating episode, particularly because the writers are so honest about the detrimental affects of what the United has done in the past. While the show has a different set of Presidents in the 20th century, they’re still able to address real things, and that’s so interesting to me! Anyway, there is a lot to cover here, so let’s get to it.
Josh
Can we all just imagine that Josh and C.J. both got dealt Big Block of Cheese Day assignments? Because that’s totally what this feels like. I love it when The West Wing goes straight for absurdity, though with Josh’s story, it’s actually kind of thoughtful! He’s stuck brokering a peace between two states over a “stolen” copy of the Bill of Rights that Connecticut possess that used to belong to North Carolina. It ends turning into a neat chance to pit Angela and Josh against one another briefly, since they’re from North Carolina and Connecticut, respectively. OH GOD, I WAS SO HAPPY ANGELA TOLD JOSH OFF FOR TRYING TO TALK TO HER, A BLACK WOMAN, ABOUT EQUAL RIGHTS.
In the end, it was a nice, humorous plot that didn’t involve me wanting to eject myself into the upper stratosphere. Thank you for this, The West Wing. I needed this.
C.J.
And the same goes for C.J.’s story. NO HEARTBREAK ANYWHERE. Stephen Tobolowsky, who I recognized from like A BILLION OTHER THINGS, is great as the DARPA rep, Dr. Milkman. It reminded me of some of the earlier episodes where C.J. gets super interested in really bizarre issues brought to here, and it’s just so GREAT to watch her become more and more paranoid with every new thing Dr. Milkman tells her. GAIT ANALYSIS.
Also, DARPA is very real!!! They essentially created ARPANET, an early predecessor of the INTERNET. HISTORY.
Toby
Oh my god, TOBY GETTING HAMMERED ON JACK DANIELS AND SINGING ABOUT SUICIDE TO DONNA WHILE CHARLIE TAKES THE ALCOHOL AWAY FROM HIM. I didn’t know that I needed this but I needed it so much. This feels so much more like the Toby I’m used to than the one who is yelling at Will and being needlessly cruel. Toby has constantly been one of the more liberal people in the West Wing, so it makes perfect sense that he’d be drunkenly unable to write a proper eulogy about a man who he completely and utterly despises. I’ll touch more on Lassiter and Newman later, but it was clear that Lassiter was modeled after someone like Ronald Reagan, beloved by conservatives everywhere, and hated by anyone who found his imperialistic foreign policy to be downright malicious. And so Toby turns to alcohol after he has to spend time around people whose foreign policy is inherently responsible for the disasters in the Middle East that Bartlet and his team have to deal with. Would things have been different if Lassiter and his men had not used the world stage to act out a ruinous policy?
I like that it takes Bartlet’s advice to help Toby write a wry and sober eulogy for Lassiter. He reminds Toby of something that only those in the White House know: that appearances aren’t always what they seem to be when it comes to Presidents. That doesn’t invalidate how Toby feels about Lassiter, but it was a nice way to remind him that things are more complicated than they seem. Which is a neat bit of foreshadowing for the end of this episode and – oh, let me just talk about it.
Bartlet
I CAN’T GET OVER THIS: MARTIN SHEEN, JAMES CROMWELL, AND JOHN GOODMAN ALL ACTING IN THE SAME ROOM, ALL ONE-TIME PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES. IT’S SO AMAZING. IT IS SO AMAZING. God, here’s another thing I didn’t know I needed: James Cromwell as President Newman insulting President Walken on Air Force One. It was like I was breathing a new form of oxygen I didn’t know existed.
So, prior to boarding Air Force One, Bartlet is dealt a doozy of a crisis in Saudi Arabia, where protestors are starting to gather en masse to ask for democratic elections. As usual, I’m left a little bit uncomfortable by this show’s willingness to tell such stereotypical stories involving the Middle East, though “The Stormy Present” isn’t such a disaster when compared to some of the stuff in the past. It feels a bit more nuanced than before, particularly due to what I mentioned earlier: the writers’ willingness to call imperialism what it is. Again, it’s kind of strange to see it in the show because I didn’t expect it. But President Newman is quick to criticize what President Walken did in his short time in office, and Bartlet is reluctant to authorize military action if this really is the real deal. Prince Bitar isn’t much help. (And I just realized the actor who played Bitar, Maz Jobrani, was Dr. Bhamba from Better Off Ted!!!) He offers awkward assurances that the royal family has the situation under control, that the people of Saudi Arabia do want change – as long as it’s manageable, of course.
But it doesn’t seem like this is a manageable situation. As it gets worse, Bartlet openly discusses the issue with Newman and Walken. I particularly loved that while Newman was very opinionated on the issue, he admitted that even during his time, he didn’t have all the answers. There was no way Bartlet could, either. (Newman was quite Jimmy Carter-esque, no?) So what is he supposed to do about the situation in Riyadh?
I think you could interpret the scene in Lassiter’s office a number of ways, but I still can’t escape the idea that it was one of the most haunting things I’ve ever seen in this show. Clearly, the eerie cold opening was a trick; we thought the letter being written was put in Bartlet’s desk. But here, Lassiter’s widow reveals that the presidency stayed with her husband in a very real, very unreal way. He replicated the Oval Office in his library. Oh my god, that was fucked up. And that reference Walken made earlier – about Lassiter’s weird trips around the world – is finally explained in this scene. We find out he traveled the world to any place where American blood was shed and he brought dirt back from that location.
Given the contents of the letter that he wrote to Bartlet – about touching humanity, about resisting the desire to be an absolute power, about realizing that the decision to go to war is too detached from what the means to humanity – I think you could say that Lassiter grew to regret the choices he made in office, that he regretted sending so many men and women of the military to die in foreign countries, and that he wished he’d shown restraint in ordering violence. It’s such a powerful, disarming scene, to see one man’s obsession spread about like that, and I think Lassiter’s widow knew that. It touches Bartlet, and he takes Lassiter’s advice, visiting the Lincoln memorial in the hope that some wisdom will speak to him.
We don’t know if it works, but I never saw that as the point of this story. I preferred that it was left ambiguous, so that we may wonder what wisdom there might be to gain from Abraham Lincoln. It’s a neat end to an episode that began with Lincoln, too, and a sobering cry for us to consider the affects of war and imperialism.
The video commission for “The Stormy Present” can be downloaded right here for just $0.99.
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