8.7/10. “Here Today” is the first really great episode of this young season, and it takes some pretty big fireworks to get us there, but it draws an unexpected parallel between President Bartlett and Candidate Santos that warrants a comparison to, of all things, Game of Thrones.
In the first episode of the series, Ned Stark, the patriarch of one of the great family of GoT’s quasi-medieval setting, is called to confront a deserter. He brings his young son along as he carries out the sentence for deserters, death, himself. He emphasizes to his child that this is part of the burden of leadership, that if you expect people to follow the laws of the land, you cannot shield yourself from the uglier parts of those laws, but instead must take responsibility for doing even the most grisly deeds in service of them.
President Bartlet seems to adhere to the same belief system. Though Toby and the President have always had their differences, it must be difficult for him to fire someone who’s been dutifully working for him for seven and a half years. (Bartlet hearing the news and asking if it’s possible to be totally astonished and yet not at all surprised at the same time was the perfect reaction.) And yet, even though Babash advises strongly against it (lest there be another name directly tainted by Toby’s confession), The President insists on firing Toby himself and in person.
It’s a tense, and sad scene. The President is understandably angry, weary, and disappointed. (There’s great gallows humor in Toby offering his letter of resignation and Bartlet asking whether this is his third or fourth.) Toby is neither strident nor repentant. He simply walks in and accepts his fate. The President takes no joy in his part either, though does twist the knife by emphasizing that he doesn’t believe Toby did something noble in particularly cutting fashion. This is unpleasant for all involved, and it’s an unpleasantness that Bartlet could have avoided, but chooses to face head on.
As Mrs. Bloom noticed, there’s a direct parallel to Santos here. Josh reports to the candidate that, given that the campaign is trailing in the race by nine points, they need to shake up the staff and that includes letting go of Ned, one of Congressman Santos’s longtime aides from when he began running for Congress. Like Bartlet, Santos trusts his advisors and accedes to the idea that this is what needs to be done, but he chooses not to face it; he chooses to leave it for Josh to be his hatchet man, and Josh basically denies Ned (and by extension Santos) the opportunity for the candidate to deliver this news face-to-face and deal with the resentment and the consequences.
What is the upshot of this parallel? Frankly, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s a hint that Santos doesn’t have the strength or the stomach to be President. We’ve had hints of a few “you’ve changed” plots with Santos before, but the show has mostly swerved on that front. Maybe we’re finally getting a flaw in this nigh-impossibly perfect candidate, something he’ll have to legitimately overcome in order to be worthy of earning the voters’ respect and the audience’s blessing to be Bartlet’s heir.
But while Ned is basically a redshirt, someone who’s been in the background to give Josh and Santos some people to banter with when the script called for it, Toby has been one of the fixtures and foundations of The West Wing since its beginning, and now he finds himself being shooed out of the White House, put into a car, and sent away, possibly never to return.
There’s a strong theme of alienation here, of the pain of being treated like a leper by your closest friends, by having strangers handle you like a criminal and a trespasser in a place you practically called home. One of the things that I really responded to in this episode is the silence that permeated it. The West Wing, true to its Sorkin-y origins, is a show of constant chatter, set in a place where things are constantly buzzing, constantly moving, constantly making noise.
Instead, in the wake of Toby’s confession, everything slows down and grows quiet. The score, which can occasionally be a little too overbearing or soaring in the series for my tastes, is only minimally deployed in the episode. In the opening scene after Toby tells CJ what he did, the pregnant pause between his confession and the arrival of White House counsel is allowed to linger, with the expressions on the two friends’ faces allowed to tell the story of what this means.
Afterward, Toby is questioned in exquisite detail by Babash in a room in which he’s sequestered. He responds in terse, succinct answers, trying to take the full blame for the leak and ensure that no one is brought down with him. Bartlet is right – this is par for the course for Toby, and Toby’s right too, that with his fierce stubbornness and commitment to principle regardless of consequences, he was destined to crash and burn in this fashion sooner or later. One of the benefits of a show reaching its final season is that it can stop handwaving certain things that feel like inevitabilities, or at least likely consequences for certain recurring actions, because indulging them would break the premise of the show. Toby’s single-minded devotion to his ideals was bound to get him in real trouble sooner or later, and The West Wing deserves kudos for embracing that.
Because this is the kind of thing Toby would do. He’s exactly the kind of person who would, filled with regrets of his inability to prevent his own astronaut brother’s death, take a stand to protect people like his brother, and against the militariziation of space, even if it’s a crime to do so. But he’s also the kind of person who, when his actions threaten to bring down one of his best friends (CJ), will fall on his sword, let himself be a martyr for his cause, emphasize that he acted alone, and take his medicine no matter how painful that punishment may be.
Two people, two of the core characters in the show, have faced something terrible with open eyes and embraced their responsibilities regardless of how unpalatable they seem, because it’s what they’ve reaped from what they’ve sewn, it’s what they must do because of who they are and what they do. But one character, the man poised to carry the mantle of The President in the election, shies away from it. The atmosphere around the west wing after this revelation is that of a death in the family. There is a solemnity, a shock to all of this. Toby, The President, and even a clearly wounded CJ accept this horribleness and face it as dutifully as they can under the circumstances. Santos delegates, keeps himself above it. It’s a glimpse of how the old guard doesn’t falter, even in the face of something they wish with all their hearts didn’t have to happen, but the new blood defers, and in the process, seems lesser than what came before.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-10-06T22:39:02Z
8.7/10. “Here Today” is the first really great episode of this young season, and it takes some pretty big fireworks to get us there, but it draws an unexpected parallel between President Bartlett and Candidate Santos that warrants a comparison to, of all things, Game of Thrones.
In the first episode of the series, Ned Stark, the patriarch of one of the great family of GoT’s quasi-medieval setting, is called to confront a deserter. He brings his young son along as he carries out the sentence for deserters, death, himself. He emphasizes to his child that this is part of the burden of leadership, that if you expect people to follow the laws of the land, you cannot shield yourself from the uglier parts of those laws, but instead must take responsibility for doing even the most grisly deeds in service of them.
President Bartlet seems to adhere to the same belief system. Though Toby and the President have always had their differences, it must be difficult for him to fire someone who’s been dutifully working for him for seven and a half years. (Bartlet hearing the news and asking if it’s possible to be totally astonished and yet not at all surprised at the same time was the perfect reaction.) And yet, even though Babash advises strongly against it (lest there be another name directly tainted by Toby’s confession), The President insists on firing Toby himself and in person.
It’s a tense, and sad scene. The President is understandably angry, weary, and disappointed. (There’s great gallows humor in Toby offering his letter of resignation and Bartlet asking whether this is his third or fourth.) Toby is neither strident nor repentant. He simply walks in and accepts his fate. The President takes no joy in his part either, though does twist the knife by emphasizing that he doesn’t believe Toby did something noble in particularly cutting fashion. This is unpleasant for all involved, and it’s an unpleasantness that Bartlet could have avoided, but chooses to face head on.
As Mrs. Bloom noticed, there’s a direct parallel to Santos here. Josh reports to the candidate that, given that the campaign is trailing in the race by nine points, they need to shake up the staff and that includes letting go of Ned, one of Congressman Santos’s longtime aides from when he began running for Congress. Like Bartlet, Santos trusts his advisors and accedes to the idea that this is what needs to be done, but he chooses not to face it; he chooses to leave it for Josh to be his hatchet man, and Josh basically denies Ned (and by extension Santos) the opportunity for the candidate to deliver this news face-to-face and deal with the resentment and the consequences.
What is the upshot of this parallel? Frankly, I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s a hint that Santos doesn’t have the strength or the stomach to be President. We’ve had hints of a few “you’ve changed” plots with Santos before, but the show has mostly swerved on that front. Maybe we’re finally getting a flaw in this nigh-impossibly perfect candidate, something he’ll have to legitimately overcome in order to be worthy of earning the voters’ respect and the audience’s blessing to be Bartlet’s heir.
But while Ned is basically a redshirt, someone who’s been in the background to give Josh and Santos some people to banter with when the script called for it, Toby has been one of the fixtures and foundations of The West Wing since its beginning, and now he finds himself being shooed out of the White House, put into a car, and sent away, possibly never to return.
There’s a strong theme of alienation here, of the pain of being treated like a leper by your closest friends, by having strangers handle you like a criminal and a trespasser in a place you practically called home. One of the things that I really responded to in this episode is the silence that permeated it. The West Wing, true to its Sorkin-y origins, is a show of constant chatter, set in a place where things are constantly buzzing, constantly moving, constantly making noise.
Instead, in the wake of Toby’s confession, everything slows down and grows quiet. The score, which can occasionally be a little too overbearing or soaring in the series for my tastes, is only minimally deployed in the episode. In the opening scene after Toby tells CJ what he did, the pregnant pause between his confession and the arrival of White House counsel is allowed to linger, with the expressions on the two friends’ faces allowed to tell the story of what this means.
Afterward, Toby is questioned in exquisite detail by Babash in a room in which he’s sequestered. He responds in terse, succinct answers, trying to take the full blame for the leak and ensure that no one is brought down with him. Bartlet is right – this is par for the course for Toby, and Toby’s right too, that with his fierce stubbornness and commitment to principle regardless of consequences, he was destined to crash and burn in this fashion sooner or later. One of the benefits of a show reaching its final season is that it can stop handwaving certain things that feel like inevitabilities, or at least likely consequences for certain recurring actions, because indulging them would break the premise of the show. Toby’s single-minded devotion to his ideals was bound to get him in real trouble sooner or later, and The West Wing deserves kudos for embracing that.
Because this is the kind of thing Toby would do. He’s exactly the kind of person who would, filled with regrets of his inability to prevent his own astronaut brother’s death, take a stand to protect people like his brother, and against the militariziation of space, even if it’s a crime to do so. But he’s also the kind of person who, when his actions threaten to bring down one of his best friends (CJ), will fall on his sword, let himself be a martyr for his cause, emphasize that he acted alone, and take his medicine no matter how painful that punishment may be.
Two people, two of the core characters in the show, have faced something terrible with open eyes and embraced their responsibilities regardless of how unpalatable they seem, because it’s what they’ve reaped from what they’ve sewn, it’s what they must do because of who they are and what they do. But one character, the man poised to carry the mantle of The President in the election, shies away from it. The atmosphere around the west wing after this revelation is that of a death in the family. There is a solemnity, a shock to all of this. Toby, The President, and even a clearly wounded CJ accept this horribleness and face it as dutifully as they can under the circumstances. Santos delegates, keeps himself above it. It’s a glimpse of how the old guard doesn’t falter, even in the face of something they wish with all their hearts didn’t have to happen, but the new blood defers, and in the process, seems lesser than what came before.