The Long Goodbye
So I've watched these episodes so many times that I never needed to rewatch anything before I recap. My memory is just jogged from the transcripts and screencaps. However, I haven't seen The Long Goodbye since it aired because I don't think of it was "West Wing". So I had to rewatch. Here's .
It's a decently done albeit maudlin episode and I'm impressed that this non-West Wing playwright (Jon Robin Baitz) who wrote the episode was able to write an in-character CJ. Allison Janney and Donald Moffat were great. This episode is also clearly a stand-alone but it does work with S4's overall theme of fatherhood. Toby becoming a father, a focus on Jed's relationship with Zoey, Toby reconciling with his dad, an emphasis on Will Bailey's dad before we learn about him and this episode makes a definite pattern in S4. All of that, I stand by my assertion that the The Long Goodbye not West Wing as I think about the show and I'm kind of a purist when it comes to this show. I look forward to getting back to normal and covering the awesome Inauguration Part I and the less awesome but still fun Inauguration Over There
CJ is briefing the press and it's apparent that this episode was filmed out of order because she has her S2-early S4 hairstyle. It's jarringly clumsy but I can't get too mad because I'd rather watch a CJ-centric episode where she has an attractive hairstyle than an unattractive one. She is also wearing an unusual outfit for her- two toned sweater set and a bit of a flared short skirt. The outfit does make sense because the episode is about putting CJ in an unusual surroundings for the audience to see her in and the outfit has a girlish feel that makes sense for CJ returning to her girlhood home.
Anyway, the press corps are being a bunch of yentas about CJ's high school reunion and the speech that she is slated to deliver.
REPORTER
Could you at least tell us what you think the promise of generation is, since you're chickening out?
C.J.
I'm not really sure, but like pornography, I know it when I see it. They came up with the title and because it's high school, I felt it was an assignment and I couldn't say no. Unfortunately, my job prevents me from certain pleasures and I'm not chickening out.
REPORTER
We don't get Josh is what you're saying.
C.J.
No fresh meat for the lions.
I think this playwright Baitz saw Celestial Navigation. We Josh for a bit thanking CJ for excusing him from press room duty. CJ insists that she can't go to the reunion because they need her.
TOBY
Go. I'll do the briefings.
C.J.
You can't. It's not your schtick. You don't know who to call on, where to look, when to smile and interrupt...
TOBY
Are you scared of that promise thing?
C.J.
Yes.
TOBY
No, that can't be it. It's your dad. I, sorry. I... uh... How's he doing?
I adore how Toby just knows her. The challenge with CJ is that she puts up such a convincing perfect front that she requires super-insightful friends to know when there are problems under her surface. Toby just fits that bill which is one of the main reasons why I adore their friendship.
C.J.
You're not allowed to use the words "Alzheimer's" or "doctors".
TOBY
Nevertheless, those are the relevant words.
C.J.
His wife scares me. The woman who takes care of him scares me. Molly, she was my English teacher. Believe me, she was a very tough grader.
TOBY
You're scared of your high school English teacher.
C.J.
Well, she's also now my stepmother, so it's just a little bit fraught.
TOBY
Did you ever not get an "A" in her class? Nevertheless, Dayton awaits...Psst. Finish your speech.
I do like the reversal that Toby is nudging CJ to finish her speech and Toby is the one briefing. Very cute.
CREDITS
CJ doesn't travel well. She can't get off her cell phone even in the middle of security and she's setting off alarms and hyperventilating from dragging her suitcase up flights of stairs, all the while she instructs/chats with/life coaches Toby.
C.J.
No, I didn't mean that you had no social skills Toby. I'm sorry if you think I was being insensitive to your... I-I think your very... you're a very pretty girl, Toby. Oh, um, by the way, I have... I have notes about the SEC appointment speech. I can't do this. I'll call you later. I'm going to have a heart attack.
It's raining in Dayton's terminal and CJ's talking on the show when she comes across with an old classmate.
I think CJ has a thing for guys with reddish/sandy hair. There's not a brown-haired guy in the bunch that she's been with other than Hoynes and he's just special.
C.J.
I'm hearing Violent Femmes and thinking Quaaludes and detentions and... tacos?
MARCO
Well, there was a little bit more to it than that.
Anyway, CJ comments on Marco's missing rock band and purple Mohawk.
C.J.
"Promise of a Generation." So what are you up to now?
MARCO
Uh... sorta... living in Paris.
C.J.
Paris? You were a baseball-playing punk rocker.
MARCO
And you were the smartest, funniest, saddest girl in Dayton.
Aw. I don't think that you can describe CJ in words, let alone with one sentence. However, you want to describe her glibly in one sentence, that's a heck of an accurate and poetic way to do it. I particularly love the melding of "funniest" and "saddest"- true, true, true.
Anyway, CJ heads into a car to go to her father's house but not before Marco stops to make the reunion a date-type thing.
MARCO
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, and a cracker, which helps with the bad food.
Marco is going back to Paris and CJ is going back to DC. I think it's pretty clear that he is looking for a one-night stand or just has thing about dating celebs. No judgment about the former especially since CJ, by accepting, intimates that she is open to a one night stand with him. I remember some fans criticized this one night stand as OOC but I do think that TWW fans have an uncomfortable tendency to not want to hear the possibility that CJ has meaningless, no-strings attached sex. It's like fandom can't see CJ as a heroine or role model if she has sex without commitment or a one-night stand with a married man and I call misogynistic bullshit on all of that.
Marco, in rush to fulfill standard gender-roles, opens and closes CJ's cab door for her.
TALMIDGE "TAL" CREGG
Claudia Jean. When you go out on a date you're supposed to call if you come in after midnight. Aren't you? Hmm?
C.J.
I'm sorry. I, uh...
LOL. Allison Janney's delivery totally intimates that her imagination is running away with her and she's considering the possibility that Tal heard about her and Marco. However, Tal is just funnin' and offers her a Manhattan. Even with his scattered mind, he does a very good job of acting like his wife is still living with him so keep up a front of stability for his daughter. CJ definitely got her fascinating talent for dishonesty borne of integrity from her dad. However, cracks emerge.
TAL
Tell me everything. I want to know everything. Let's sit up all night and catch up. I don't seem to do much of that anymore. Ticking clocks, you know, and so much to do.
The motif of "clocks" through the episode to contrast Tal's time running out is clever right now but it'll get quite heavy-handed later in the episode.
C.J.
How are you, daddy?
TAL
Well, I've been a little blue lately because I haven't been able to go fishing.
C.J.
It's February.
Hold it! How can it be February? The presidential inauguration on January 20th is the next episode and I didn't get the black screen with Brad Whitford informing that this is a "storytelling aberration, if you will" and cautioning me to not place this episode in the chronology of the show. Between CJ's different hair and this line, I think that this episode was supposed to air either earlier or after the inauguration. I can't decide but it's strange. Anyway, freezing weather and CJ's clear dislike for fishing aside, she agrees to go out fishing with him the next day.
Tal talks about being older in a scattered way and evades CJ's questions about Molly. CJ asks to go to the bathroom to freshen up but really just goes to be angsty and release a bit of tension.
CJ observes that the kitchen is a mess, clearly cottoning on that Molly is gone. Tal tries to distract CJ with making Italian custard. He does so in a scattershot way, dropping unsued and still lit cigarettes that CJ tries to put herself so the house doesn't catch on fire.
TAL
Yeah. Good. Good. Can't do it without that. It facilitates the whipping at a far greater rate. How's your job?
C.J.
We're happy. This is the time we...
Tal gets distracted and asks for Marsala wine which CJ finds next to a picture of her and President Bartlet.
TAL
Oh, good. You know, I-I like your man. His economic theories-- so generous, so good, but he-he hides his light under a bushel. Why is that?
C.J. sees the new cigarette in his hands.
C.J.
You already... Dad... He wanted to, uh... win. He did so with honor. We played clean.
TAL
Well, that he did, that you did. I'm proud of you.
C.J.
Thank you. You're writing?
TAL
Yeah. A handbook for the teaching of mathematics to a generation of mathematically
illiterate teachers.
C.J.
That's wonderful, Daddy.
TAL
I was thinking of asking you to write a forward, but I suppose that's unethical, no?
C.J.
Not at all. I'd be happy to.
TAL
Well, it seems to me that everything is intrinsically unethical these days.
C.J.
Numerical Idiocy. Catchy title.
TAL
Yeah, well, go to the supermarket. They can't make change. They can't tell you that if you drive at 40 miles an hour for three hours you've gone 260 miles.
C.J.
Daddy, 120.
TAL
I have found that this pot is the very most efficient way of making a custard and I can only surmise that it's because it doesn't allow the eggs to stay in one place long enough for them to get overcooked. [stops whipping the eggs]
C.J.
I think you have to keep whipping.
TAL
What? Hundred and twenty! Oh, God. Wow. Senior moment.
CJ suggests that Tal get some help.
TAL
I have to finish my book. Kids aren't being taught any of the important things: Inductive reasoning. Estimation. It's gone, it's all disappearing! Oh, stop staring at me, darling. You know you were brought up better than that.
Tal leaves for his room and CJ follows him back, looking unfamiliar in the house's rustic and messy surroundings.
C.J.
Where's Molly?
TAL
Well, I mean... of course... she left.
C.J.
She left? What does that mean?
Realistically, CJ's first reaction is to be self-righteously angry. However, righteous anger doesn't look as good on her next to Tal's sorrow as it does in say, the White House briefing room or in a senior staff meeting. Very nice character moment.
TAL
This obviously isn't much fun. Not what she signed on for.
C.J.
But this is what's happening. You don't just walk away. This is what's happening to you.
TAL
40 miles an hour for 3 hours has always been... 120. I don't know what I was thinking.
CJ sits next to him and tries to comfort him.
The next day, CJ is calling Toby on the phone and discusses some NEA thing and gives him much-needed advice. CJ is in a car outside of her stepmother's house. It's clear that CJ is trying to gather the courage to handle this very personal confrontation by checking on the phone to do her job which has evolved from S1-2 to be the only thing that CJ is confident of herself in. Awww.
Check out Bradley Whitford just standing in the shot without even a line of dialogue to increase the realism of the scene. That's what I like being a trooper. Most TV stars don't do that.
C.J.
I want to be clear about the briefing, Toby. What I meant when I said that you need to know who to look at and when to ask certain questions is avoid the calm ones. Get the anxious ones out of the way first, sweetie, to give the pros room to figure out what it is they really want. And avoid the ones who don't blink. They're power devils.
TOBY
I don't know what that is.
C.J.
Yes you do. Is anything happening?
I found the Toby/Annabeth scenes of S6 just as amusing as the next person did but this IMO, is a much realistic version of someone preparing Toby to brief. More of a focus on strategy than Public Speaking 101 and CJ is treating him like an accomplished adult who just happens not to do her job instead of infantalizing him.
TOBY
The usual chaos, but minus ten percent. How are things?
C.J.
Usual. Uneventful. Daytonesque.
Aw, Toby is trying to lighten CJ's mood, tease her and point out how much she adds with that little snarky line about the chaos. I love him so much.
TOBY
How's you father?
C.J.
Fine.
TOBY
And the wicked stepmother?
C.J.
Even finer.
TOBY
The weather?
C.J.
Perfection.
TOBY
I'll call you later.
Toby saw right through her answers but he's being called into the Oval Office. I find it significant that in an episode where CJ is off-balance and out of the White House, Toby remains her tie. You can't separate the two without badness happening (See S7).
CJ greets Molly's daughter.
LIBBY
No. I think I know exactly why you're here at 7:05 AM. Your stepmom. She's moved right back in.
C.J.
I prefer to think of your mother as my dad's third wife, Libby.
LIBBY
Yeah, well, let me tell you, it's been fun. Come on in, see if you can broker a deal. God knows I've tried.
The Runaway and Her Grandchild. I really don't like the actress who plays Molly and she chews a lot of scenery here. In other news, CJ looks impossibly gorgeous in corduroy slacks and a casual sweater.
MOLLY LAPHAM CREGG
I failed. I know. Please, no lectures.
C.J.
What happened?
MOLLY
Have you been there? Have you seen...?
LIBBY
Mom, nobody is...
MOLLY
I made a mistake. It was years of him being charming. You both know how... how charming the man can be.
C.J.
Yes, but...
MOLLY
I'm in the English department, he's in the math. There were lunches. There were quiet lunches for years. And we wait, both of us, waiting for years. After your mom dies and I had married what's-his name, we were still two missed connections. Two withered, married, ancient people waiting...
I adore Allison Janney's, "I so don't want to hear this seductive lunches with my dad and the waiting for my mom to die megillah" facial expressions.
C.J.
Why didn't you call me, Molly?
MOLLY
I didn't get to spend time with your father. We never had an affair. I'm sorry, but I
don't want to diaper...
C.J.
Shut up! Shut up. You were a wonderful teacher, Molly. You should be ashamed of yourself.
MOLLY
Well, I am. And did you know what the nickname for the disease is? "The long goodbye."
C.J.
Well, not in your case, though, is it? In your case, more accurately it's the short "see you later goodbye" isn't it?
The thing is that I do want to sympathize with Molly. I know "in sickness and in health", but how much does it suck to be into a man for years and when you finally get to be married to him, he develops Alzheimer. It's very easy to be sympathetic to Molly but the actress sucks so much that she never capitalizes on that and I'm fairly guilty of getting angry at anyone who would dare to give My Beloved Claudia Jean a sad face.
LIBBY
C.J....
C.J.
What happened to reciprocity? Do you ever imagine in a million years if the roles were reversed he would ever do this to you? This is-- what you're doing right now-- invalidates everything that came before all the good, the years of teaching. This cancels a good and valuable life. He needs you.
See, CJ is dead wrong. Molly is mistaking a moral mistake but "cancel out everything good she did"? Over-dramatic at best. This is another example of how CJ's communication skills that work so beautifully in politics come off hollow in this kind of setting. A hyperbolic speech about the immorality of the political opposition can sound good if it's well-said but it sounds harsh said to a scared, sad old women in a small kitchen.
MOLLY
I need him! You came for the reunion? You're giving a speech aren't you? It was in the paper. "The Promise of a Generation". We were going to go and stand in the back.
A rustic looking CJ and Tal are fishing in Ohio's February freezing waters. My toes are cringing in sympathy. Tal is lecturing CJ on how to use the fishing pole. Tal is quite the renaissance man. Between Tal's didactic lectures on most things, intellectual self-superiority, fascination with learning, fondness for challenging CJ by quizzing her and making her do stuff out her comfort zone, retro-Yankee way of speaking and tendency to react with anger when put put in a weak position, it's little wonder why CJ responds to Jed as a father figure.
TAL
Oh, sweetie, I know when young people lie. Did she say how long she's been gone? It seems like weeks. Has it been weeks or just a few days?
C.J.
Dad, you know we need to get some help if Molly won't come back. We do.
TAL
Oh, someone to come in and referee me.
C.J.
We would figure something out.
TAL
You mean, more than a nice lady from Catholic family Services?
C.J.
Well, we have to find some way because you being alone won't work out now.
TAL
Why not? I can work around the clock, there's so much to do. There's a whole chapter on "Women and Math Anxiety" because for years-- now, why is that women underperformed in math?
C.J.
The teachers were sexist men?
Love huh!
TAL
Exactly. So there's blocked women to be helped.
On that note, Tal helps CJ with her fishing pol and evades all of CJ's efforts to help Tal.
C.J.
Have you... done... have you done anything, seen doctors?
TAL
Doctors? Ach. My age smells of liniment and waiting rooms. No, I've researched. There's a new drug, Reminyl. Buys you a few months, they say.
C.J.
We could arrange to see someone. Lee Voight, he's your friend. He's a terrific neurologist.
TAL
It's such a beautiful day, Molly. I'd prefer not to screw it up with all that.
C.J.
Dad, I'm not...
TAL
Molly, please, please! This nagging-- can't we just enjoy it here?
C.J.
Dad, I'm not Molly.
TAL
You're not Molly. You're not Molly.
He turns to look at C.J and starts screaming.
TAL
Who... Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you? Who are you? 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!
Man, Allison Janney's face. This speech is also Donald Moffat's moment. He really invests the audience in his character's well-being. Tal looks at C.J. again and finally recognizes her. C.J. begins to walk towards him.
C.J.
Dad... you... cannot expect me to silently do nothing. You're going to require care.
TAL
I wasn't built for it. You came for the prom, not for this.
C.J.
Reunion. I'm not going.
TAL
Coward. 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.
CJ loves her job so much but I can even see CJ doing that if Tal asked her but slowly becoming resentful about it. I've read several excellent fics where this happened. Thank goodness he turns that down.
TAL
"We sail," said Pascal, "in a vast sphere," Claudia Jean, "ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end." [caresses her cheek] I'd much rather see you on TV, darling, than sitting opposite me, watching a demolition derby going on in my brain.
CJ and Tal are meeting with Dr. Voight. I also like the actor that plays Dr. Voight.
DR. VOIGHT
Look, it's subtle disease and it creeps up on you, Tal. 175,000 people will be diagnosed this year.
TAL
Why on earth would a statistic like that comfort me?
DR. VOIGHT
I thought you liked numbers. I'm not trying to comfort you. I'm talking to you like an old pal. You used to play golf with me, and you just stopped.
TAL
I what? I used to play golf... and I stopped?
DR. VOIGHT
I wondered why; now I know. We like to say it's not a disease where you forget where you put the key, it's where you forget what the key is for.
TAL
I know what the key is for and I know what the door is for and I think I'll use it.
Tal gets up and CJ pull him down.
DR. VOIGHT
Yeah, they're not bad. They're not knock-them-out-of-the-ballpark either. We can slow it down.
TAL
Oh... good. He can slow it down. What a concept.
DR. VOIGHT
You shouldn't be alone, Tal. Having someone there helps keep it at bay. Alone is not good.
TAL
I'm not alone. I have my book and a cat, right? So, we have a little while, unfortunately, before I begin not to recognize you, Lee.
DR. VOIGHT
But you didn't recognize me. You covered and I saw it and that's going to last longer and happen more and more and, by the way, what the hell happened to Molly?
TAL
It's, "quote" hard on the spouse, isn't it? I read that.
C.J.
We need to make plans, Lee.
DR. VOIGHT
Let's not sugarcoat this. Known you for a long time and I just want to say this because I've known you've always been a straight shooter. Because you hate being a burden, you're probably aware that it's harder on the people around you than it will be on you. For you, it will be... not unpleasant particularly if we put you on the right drugs-- including antidepressants-- it won't hurt.
TAL
If only that were true, kids.
After Tal leaves, Dr. Voight recommends that CJ put Tal in a home.
Tal and CJ are in the car. Tal still thinks that CJ is going to her prom and CJ is still insisting that she's not going to her reunion.
TAL
You damn well are. Your speech: "The Promise of a Generation". Awfully grand title, no?
C.J.
They came up with it. I agreed because I wanted to be here to see you.
TAL
No, you didn't.
C.J.
You could come and live in Washington with me. I have room.
TAL
Do you? Can you imagine? Talk about ruining a good thing.
CJ cottons onto Tal's symptoms.
C.J.
I know why you started smoking again. It's because you use the time it gives you to work stuff out. You use the cigarettes to stall for time.
TAL
No, sweetie, I started smoking again because I forgot that 20 years ago I quit.
C.J.
Great, that's great.
TAL
See, I know exactly what I'm doing.
The light turns green as CJ gets a call on her cell.
TOBY
So how's it going?
C.J.
Please tell me everything's okay.
TOBY
All quiet in the West Wing.
Tal stopped in the middle of the road because he forgot the directions and the cars are all honking.
TOBY
What's all that honking? You in a parade? They having a parade for you?
CJ hangs up and tells Tal to pull over so she can drive. At this point, CJ's about had it.
C.J.
I mean... tell me... things like your checkbook, your money, things like that-- what do you propose to do? Tell me. You're smart, tell me.
TAL
You know I'm pretty good with numbers.
C.J.
Oh? If we drove for 3 hours at 40 miles an hour? I mean, tell me! You are holding on to something that...
TAL
What am I holding on to? My consciousness? My identity?
C.J.
...can't be willed away by sheer force of personality, dad.
TAL
Tell me, brilliant woman that you are, would you hand over those things without a fight? I need a little more time, C.J. If I let it in at it's own pace, it'll just get dark faster.
The Creggs sit, totally freaked out and angry. We need soothing piano tunes as we cut to the evening at the house. Tal is playing the piano as CJ gets ready for the reunion. The camera is being unusually graphic as we see CJ half-dressed. It's a little weird.
Tal is watching the pres conference and insulting Toby.
TAL
That man lacks grace and charm.
C.J.
Do you think?
TAL
They really need you.
C.J.
Yeah, they kind of do.
Marco comes in and he and have Tal have a moment.
TAL
You're no longer a rabid punk rocker, I see.
MARCO
How could you possibly remember that? I was your student for one semester.
TAL
Oh, I remember the detentions and the ditching and the low test scores and your imperviousness to algorithms. Let's get you a drink.
MARCO
Scotch.
TAL
You were better-looking with the mohawk, son.
MARCO
Yeah, my mom thinks so, too.
TAL
So, what're you up to now?
MARCO
I'm a horologist.
TAL
You fix watches. You were in trouble.
MARCO
Yeah, Yeah, I, uh, I spent a lot of time in detention.
TAL
No, no, After. You were in prison.
CJ comes down the stairs, looking very beautiful in a black dress with her hair curlier on the ends than she normally wears her hair.
C.J.
No, Dad, no. [to Marco] He gets confused. Dad, no, wasn't... Marco... wasn't in prison.
MARCO
Yes, I was. I did a year. It wasn't hard; I was younger. Stock tips. Anyway... I-I lost most of what I had and moved on.
Amusingly on finding out that Marco was in prison, Tal pulls out his golden watch for Marc to fix. Of course, Marco wasn't going to steal from Tal but the juxtaposition of jail bird conversation with Tal pulling out his watch for Marco to handle is interesting.
MARCO
Wow! 1931 Hamilton. One of the few thoroughly American watches. Each piece, each part, handmade in the U.S. of A. Not many American watch-makers.
TAL
My dad's.
MARCO
Huh. You're losing time, Mr. Cregg.
This is where the watch-metaphor becomes heavy-handed.
MARCO
Yeah, isochronism is out of beat.
C.J.
Is it?
MARCO
Yeah. This is your balance cock and your hairspring. The fourth wheel and the third wheel here.
C.J.
That's me.
LOL. I love Allison Janney's "Can we go already?!" tone through the scene particularly since this scene is so dull and obviously written. Way to get the audience to agree with you, girlfriend! Seriously "Allison Janney: Making Bad Writing into Something Ranging from Quite Watchable to Downright Awesome Since....Can't Nail Down a Specific Year".
TAL
Hmm. Oh, what am I thinking? You kids should get going.
C.J.
Maybe we should.
TAL
I've always cherished this thing. My father kept perfect time-- marked it, measured it with this-- the hellos and good-byes. It keeps faltering; nobody can do anything.
MARCO
Well, I could retool it. It wants a timing machine. Send it to you in a few weeks
from Paris.
TAL
France? You're a convicted felon. How do I know you won't steal it?
MARCO
I'm not a recidivist. It would be a pleasure, Mr. Cregg. After all, you taught me how to calculate the number of stones in the Great Pyramid.
TAL
I did?
MARCO
Mm-hmm.
TAL
How do you do that? I can't remember anything. For days sometimes.
He gets up to light a cigarette, but notices a picture and picks it up.
TAL
I... I can't remember who this is.
He shows a picture of CJ, probably around the age of four.
Very cute.
MARCO
We should be going, Mr. Cregg.
TAL
Forgive me.
CJ is starting to cry in the foyer and Marco jokingly plays with her joke to try to get a laugh.
In the next scene, CJ and Marco are in the car watching and unfunilly snarking on their former classmates at the reunion. CJ gets a call from Toby but she sees the caller ID and doesn't answer it because she's too depressed.
C.J.
I don't think I can... face it right now.
MARCO
When do you give your speech?
C.J.
After dinner, before the scary dancing.
MARCO
After dinner?
Marco takes that as his cue and he fires up his engine, literally and figuratively. We pan across Tal playing the piano and Molly staring at herself in the mirror.
Orangey love nest. I did wonder if there was any significance to Danny being back in Washington and making trouble and CJ having a one-night stand here. I kind of want to find a pattern because CJ rarely gets real romance so it's a little strange for her two romantic plot-lines running at the same time.
However, I end up short a big explanation perhaps because it's because this episode really looks out-of-order or I get annoyed when fans paint all of CJ's personal connections, romances or chemistry with people as blips or justifications for CJ/Danny 4Ever!1! So I'm loathe to make the standard explanation like, "One of the reasons that CJ tumbled into bed with Marco is because she's frustrated that she can't do that with Danny".
MARCO
Anyway, you're about to find out.
C.J.
What am I about to find out?
MARCO
The bittersweet thrill of high school popularity. There were days, some days, when... we'd played at a party. The Mollusks or we'd won a baseball game and... there was just that... thing, that...
C.J.
Hmm.
MARCO
...everybody loving you in that moment.
I take that subtext as CJ wasn't popular in high school but Marco had his moments. Anyway, they make pillow-talk so pretentious that you know it was scripted.
C.J.
Are you saying you're one of those people who think like, in F. Scott Fitzgerald, their
best years were 20 years prior?
MARCO
Oh, God no. No, I think the best day's gotta be the next day. Life is all... "what's next?" It's like those billboards where, before the actual ad goes up, they put in, in big block letters... "Watch this space."
Molly comes back to Tal and they reunite. CJ is giving her speech and she has mad skillz because her hair is perfectly coiffed and her make-up isn't smudged at all. She's as fresh as a very angsty and rather businesslike daisy.
C.J.
My name is C.J. Cregg. As you know, I work for the President of the United States. This is why I was asked to make a short speech for our reunion. It's a terrible subject, a terrible idea, "The Promise of a Generation." So bad, I was going to start out with a joke and fill the whole thing in with more jokes. But I find the topic has gotten under my skin while I wasn't paying attention, because every generation has promise, and every generation fails that promise in some respects. How can we not? What is promise if not something that's impossible to live up to? My boss had to recently make his case to the American people that he was worth re-electing, and it was... not an easy process, nor should it be. And in its wake, I've been thinking a lot about civility, civic duty, and kindness, and how pervasive and powerful they are, how enduringly persuasive those qualities are in American life, and how I see them all around me, day after day. America is a terribly difficult idea filled with promise and impossible to live up to. Promise is inchoate and promise is what binds us.
Tal and Molly watch CJ give her speech from the back.
I don't like this speech. It's graceless for CJ to attack the subject of the speech. It is in-character that CJ's first plan of attack was to just fill the speech with jokes and like I said before, it's impressive that this playwright was to write an in-character CJ while putting her in not typical surroundings and having her do un-CJ things. Although, he was very much helped by Allison Janney having such a strong sense of who CJ is and always playing that to the hilt.
However, the speech doesn't grasp on to that with some damn jokes. Just one or two jokes could made the speech feel more in-character and could have even ratcheded up the angst quotient to hear CJ making empty/bitter/very ironic jokes, a trope that Sorkin has employed beautifully with CJ's famous sense of humor many times and the post-Sorkin writers learned to do around Season 7. Worst of all, the speech becomes disorganized after the third sentence. What does Jed's reelection have to do the promise of a generation. Way too early in the speech, CJ just lists values making the speech boring and repetitive from the outset. I also think that reunion speech should make at least a bit of an effort to reflect on the class and their generation, in particular, or it can feel like too much of a vanity exercise from a powerful, famous person which is what speech was shaping up into. I hope that CJ doesn't mind constructive criticism. (Toby voice)
As she talks, the camera pans against high school pictures. In the middle of her speech, a panicked Toby calls.
C.J.
I hope it's monumental and not some joke timed for the exact moment I'm giving my speech, Toby.
TOBY
It is. Two car bombs outside our embassies in Asia. One went off, one didn't. A message to expect more of the same within the next 24 hours: Four.
C.J.
Oh, jeez. How many...?
TOBY
No casualties, thank God. If you can try and-and get back, uh... There are no direct flights, but if you connect out of Chicago, you can be in, we think, at 6:30 in the morning.
C.J.
Um... let me get moving. I'll call you in a few minutes on my way to the airport.
CJ leaves. I know that some criticized CJ for being rude there but I don't get that. Major crisis trumps reunion speech. Anyway, I'm sure that the Class of 1983 or 1978 appreciates the speech being cut short. (I assume that this was either CJ's 20th or 25th high school reunion. Those are the standard numbers for reunions and I can plausibly see CJ as 38 or 43 at this time.)
TAL
Are you all right?
C.J.
I have to go. Tal, I-I don't know what to do about this situation.
Interesting that CJ spent most of the episode calling Tal, "Daddy" but now she calls him by his first name. I think that it's intentional. CJ has snapped back into her work persona.
TAL
Well, nobody does; we'll just try and figure it out. I mean, between the lot of us, there's surely one superior mind still working; I don't know whose.
C.J.
Right.
MOLLY
We'll drive with you to the airport if you like.
TAL
C.J. Before I forget. Tell Marco, send it back to me soon. Please.
He places the watch in her hands.
TAL
And working. Time matters.
Tal turns around to walk off, but C.J. grabs his hand.
C.J.
I'll see you next week.
TAL
You can't keep flying back and forth.
A huge component of CJ's guilt complex. Her job prevents her from really being there for her father and she couldn't even do anything to stop the Alzheimer but his deterioration miles away from her is a constant reminder of her perceived failure. It's a heck of a burden to carry. Father and Daughter embrace and she kisses him on the cheek.
It's a decently done albeit maudlin episode and I'm impressed that this non-West Wing playwright (Jon Robin Baitz) who wrote the episode was able to write an in-character CJ. Allison Janney and Donald Moffat were great. This episode is also clearly a stand-alone but it does work with S4's overall theme of fatherhood. Toby becoming a father, a focus on Jed's relationship with Zoey, Toby reconciling with his dad, an emphasis on Will Bailey's dad before we learn about him and this episode makes a definite pattern in S4. All of that, I stand by my assertion that the The Long Goodbye not West Wing as I think about the show and I'm kind of a purist when it comes to this show. I look forward to getting back to normal and covering the awesome Inauguration Part I and the less awesome but still fun Inauguration Over There
CJ is briefing the press and it's apparent that this episode was filmed out of order because she has her S2-early S4 hairstyle. It's jarringly clumsy but I can't get too mad because I'd rather watch a CJ-centric episode where she has an attractive hairstyle than an unattractive one. She is also wearing an unusual outfit for her- two toned sweater set and a bit of a flared short skirt. The outfit does make sense because the episode is about putting CJ in an unusual surroundings for the audience to see her in and the outfit has a girlish feel that makes sense for CJ returning to her girlhood home.
Anyway, the press corps are being a bunch of yentas about CJ's high school reunion and the speech that she is slated to deliver.
REPORTER
Could you at least tell us what you think the promise of generation is, since you're chickening out?
C.J.
I'm not really sure, but like pornography, I know it when I see it. They came up with the title and because it's high school, I felt it was an assignment and I couldn't say no. Unfortunately, my job prevents me from certain pleasures and I'm not chickening out.
REPORTER
We don't get Josh is what you're saying.
C.J.
No fresh meat for the lions.
I think this playwright Baitz saw Celestial Navigation. We Josh for a bit thanking CJ for excusing him from press room duty. CJ insists that she can't go to the reunion because they need her.
TOBY
Go. I'll do the briefings.
C.J.
You can't. It's not your schtick. You don't know who to call on, where to look, when to smile and interrupt...
TOBY
Are you scared of that promise thing?
C.J.
Yes.
TOBY
No, that can't be it. It's your dad. I, sorry. I... uh... How's he doing?
I adore how Toby just knows her. The challenge with CJ is that she puts up such a convincing perfect front that she requires super-insightful friends to know when there are problems under her surface. Toby just fits that bill which is one of the main reasons why I adore their friendship.
C.J.
You're not allowed to use the words "Alzheimer's" or "doctors".
TOBY
Nevertheless, those are the relevant words.
C.J.
His wife scares me. The woman who takes care of him scares me. Molly, she was my English teacher. Believe me, she was a very tough grader.
TOBY
You're scared of your high school English teacher.
C.J.
Well, she's also now my stepmother, so it's just a little bit fraught.
TOBY
Did you ever not get an "A" in her class? Nevertheless, Dayton awaits...Psst. Finish your speech.
I do like the reversal that Toby is nudging CJ to finish her speech and Toby is the one briefing. Very cute.
CREDITS
CJ doesn't travel well. She can't get off her cell phone even in the middle of security and she's setting off alarms and hyperventilating from dragging her suitcase up flights of stairs, all the while she instructs/chats with/life coaches Toby.
C.J.
No, I didn't mean that you had no social skills Toby. I'm sorry if you think I was being insensitive to your... I-I think your very... you're a very pretty girl, Toby. Oh, um, by the way, I have... I have notes about the SEC appointment speech. I can't do this. I'll call you later. I'm going to have a heart attack.
It's raining in Dayton's terminal and CJ's talking on the show when she comes across with an old classmate.
I think CJ has a thing for guys with reddish/sandy hair. There's not a brown-haired guy in the bunch that she's been with other than Hoynes and he's just special.
C.J.
I'm hearing Violent Femmes and thinking Quaaludes and detentions and... tacos?
MARCO
Well, there was a little bit more to it than that.
Anyway, CJ comments on Marco's missing rock band and purple Mohawk.
C.J.
"Promise of a Generation." So what are you up to now?
MARCO
Uh... sorta... living in Paris.
C.J.
Paris? You were a baseball-playing punk rocker.
MARCO
And you were the smartest, funniest, saddest girl in Dayton.
Aw. I don't think that you can describe CJ in words, let alone with one sentence. However, you want to describe her glibly in one sentence, that's a heck of an accurate and poetic way to do it. I particularly love the melding of "funniest" and "saddest"- true, true, true.
Anyway, CJ heads into a car to go to her father's house but not before Marco stops to make the reunion a date-type thing.
MARCO
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, and a cracker, which helps with the bad food.
Marco is going back to Paris and CJ is going back to DC. I think it's pretty clear that he is looking for a one-night stand or just has thing about dating celebs. No judgment about the former especially since CJ, by accepting, intimates that she is open to a one night stand with him. I remember some fans criticized this one night stand as OOC but I do think that TWW fans have an uncomfortable tendency to not want to hear the possibility that CJ has meaningless, no-strings attached sex. It's like fandom can't see CJ as a heroine or role model if she has sex without commitment or a one-night stand with a married man and I call misogynistic bullshit on all of that.
Marco, in rush to fulfill standard gender-roles, opens and closes CJ's cab door for her.
TALMIDGE "TAL" CREGG
Claudia Jean. When you go out on a date you're supposed to call if you come in after midnight. Aren't you? Hmm?
C.J.
I'm sorry. I, uh...
LOL. Allison Janney's delivery totally intimates that her imagination is running away with her and she's considering the possibility that Tal heard about her and Marco. However, Tal is just funnin' and offers her a Manhattan. Even with his scattered mind, he does a very good job of acting like his wife is still living with him so keep up a front of stability for his daughter. CJ definitely got her fascinating talent for dishonesty borne of integrity from her dad. However, cracks emerge.
TAL
Tell me everything. I want to know everything. Let's sit up all night and catch up. I don't seem to do much of that anymore. Ticking clocks, you know, and so much to do.
The motif of "clocks" through the episode to contrast Tal's time running out is clever right now but it'll get quite heavy-handed later in the episode.
C.J.
How are you, daddy?
TAL
Well, I've been a little blue lately because I haven't been able to go fishing.
C.J.
It's February.
Hold it! How can it be February? The presidential inauguration on January 20th is the next episode and I didn't get the black screen with Brad Whitford informing that this is a "storytelling aberration, if you will" and cautioning me to not place this episode in the chronology of the show. Between CJ's different hair and this line, I think that this episode was supposed to air either earlier or after the inauguration. I can't decide but it's strange. Anyway, freezing weather and CJ's clear dislike for fishing aside, she agrees to go out fishing with him the next day.
Tal talks about being older in a scattered way and evades CJ's questions about Molly. CJ asks to go to the bathroom to freshen up but really just goes to be angsty and release a bit of tension.
CJ observes that the kitchen is a mess, clearly cottoning on that Molly is gone. Tal tries to distract CJ with making Italian custard. He does so in a scattershot way, dropping unsued and still lit cigarettes that CJ tries to put herself so the house doesn't catch on fire.
TAL
Yeah. Good. Good. Can't do it without that. It facilitates the whipping at a far greater rate. How's your job?
C.J.
We're happy. This is the time we...
Tal gets distracted and asks for Marsala wine which CJ finds next to a picture of her and President Bartlet.
TAL
Oh, good. You know, I-I like your man. His economic theories-- so generous, so good, but he-he hides his light under a bushel. Why is that?
C.J. sees the new cigarette in his hands.
C.J.
You already... Dad... He wanted to, uh... win. He did so with honor. We played clean.
TAL
Well, that he did, that you did. I'm proud of you.
C.J.
Thank you. You're writing?
TAL
Yeah. A handbook for the teaching of mathematics to a generation of mathematically
illiterate teachers.
C.J.
That's wonderful, Daddy.
TAL
I was thinking of asking you to write a forward, but I suppose that's unethical, no?
C.J.
Not at all. I'd be happy to.
TAL
Well, it seems to me that everything is intrinsically unethical these days.
C.J.
Numerical Idiocy. Catchy title.
TAL
Yeah, well, go to the supermarket. They can't make change. They can't tell you that if you drive at 40 miles an hour for three hours you've gone 260 miles.
C.J.
Daddy, 120.
TAL
I have found that this pot is the very most efficient way of making a custard and I can only surmise that it's because it doesn't allow the eggs to stay in one place long enough for them to get overcooked. [stops whipping the eggs]
C.J.
I think you have to keep whipping.
TAL
What? Hundred and twenty! Oh, God. Wow. Senior moment.
CJ suggests that Tal get some help.
TAL
I have to finish my book. Kids aren't being taught any of the important things: Inductive reasoning. Estimation. It's gone, it's all disappearing! Oh, stop staring at me, darling. You know you were brought up better than that.
Tal leaves for his room and CJ follows him back, looking unfamiliar in the house's rustic and messy surroundings.
C.J.
Where's Molly?
TAL
Well, I mean... of course... she left.
C.J.
She left? What does that mean?
Realistically, CJ's first reaction is to be self-righteously angry. However, righteous anger doesn't look as good on her next to Tal's sorrow as it does in say, the White House briefing room or in a senior staff meeting. Very nice character moment.
TAL
This obviously isn't much fun. Not what she signed on for.
C.J.
But this is what's happening. You don't just walk away. This is what's happening to you.
TAL
40 miles an hour for 3 hours has always been... 120. I don't know what I was thinking.
CJ sits next to him and tries to comfort him.
The next day, CJ is calling Toby on the phone and discusses some NEA thing and gives him much-needed advice. CJ is in a car outside of her stepmother's house. It's clear that CJ is trying to gather the courage to handle this very personal confrontation by checking on the phone to do her job which has evolved from S1-2 to be the only thing that CJ is confident of herself in. Awww.
Check out Bradley Whitford just standing in the shot without even a line of dialogue to increase the realism of the scene. That's what I like being a trooper. Most TV stars don't do that.
C.J.
I want to be clear about the briefing, Toby. What I meant when I said that you need to know who to look at and when to ask certain questions is avoid the calm ones. Get the anxious ones out of the way first, sweetie, to give the pros room to figure out what it is they really want. And avoid the ones who don't blink. They're power devils.
TOBY
I don't know what that is.
C.J.
Yes you do. Is anything happening?
I found the Toby/Annabeth scenes of S6 just as amusing as the next person did but this IMO, is a much realistic version of someone preparing Toby to brief. More of a focus on strategy than Public Speaking 101 and CJ is treating him like an accomplished adult who just happens not to do her job instead of infantalizing him.
TOBY
The usual chaos, but minus ten percent. How are things?
C.J.
Usual. Uneventful. Daytonesque.
Aw, Toby is trying to lighten CJ's mood, tease her and point out how much she adds with that little snarky line about the chaos. I love him so much.
TOBY
How's you father?
C.J.
Fine.
TOBY
And the wicked stepmother?
C.J.
Even finer.
TOBY
The weather?
C.J.
Perfection.
TOBY
I'll call you later.
Toby saw right through her answers but he's being called into the Oval Office. I find it significant that in an episode where CJ is off-balance and out of the White House, Toby remains her tie. You can't separate the two without badness happening (See S7).
CJ greets Molly's daughter.
LIBBY
No. I think I know exactly why you're here at 7:05 AM. Your stepmom. She's moved right back in.
C.J.
I prefer to think of your mother as my dad's third wife, Libby.
LIBBY
Yeah, well, let me tell you, it's been fun. Come on in, see if you can broker a deal. God knows I've tried.
The Runaway and Her Grandchild. I really don't like the actress who plays Molly and she chews a lot of scenery here. In other news, CJ looks impossibly gorgeous in corduroy slacks and a casual sweater.
MOLLY LAPHAM CREGG
I failed. I know. Please, no lectures.
C.J.
What happened?
MOLLY
Have you been there? Have you seen...?
LIBBY
Mom, nobody is...
MOLLY
I made a mistake. It was years of him being charming. You both know how... how charming the man can be.
C.J.
Yes, but...
MOLLY
I'm in the English department, he's in the math. There were lunches. There were quiet lunches for years. And we wait, both of us, waiting for years. After your mom dies and I had married what's-his name, we were still two missed connections. Two withered, married, ancient people waiting...
I adore Allison Janney's, "I so don't want to hear this seductive lunches with my dad and the waiting for my mom to die megillah" facial expressions.
C.J.
Why didn't you call me, Molly?
MOLLY
I didn't get to spend time with your father. We never had an affair. I'm sorry, but I
don't want to diaper...
C.J.
Shut up! Shut up. You were a wonderful teacher, Molly. You should be ashamed of yourself.
MOLLY
Well, I am. And did you know what the nickname for the disease is? "The long goodbye."
C.J.
Well, not in your case, though, is it? In your case, more accurately it's the short "see you later goodbye" isn't it?
The thing is that I do want to sympathize with Molly. I know "in sickness and in health", but how much does it suck to be into a man for years and when you finally get to be married to him, he develops Alzheimer. It's very easy to be sympathetic to Molly but the actress sucks so much that she never capitalizes on that and I'm fairly guilty of getting angry at anyone who would dare to give My Beloved Claudia Jean a sad face.
LIBBY
C.J....
C.J.
What happened to reciprocity? Do you ever imagine in a million years if the roles were reversed he would ever do this to you? This is-- what you're doing right now-- invalidates everything that came before all the good, the years of teaching. This cancels a good and valuable life. He needs you.
See, CJ is dead wrong. Molly is mistaking a moral mistake but "cancel out everything good she did"? Over-dramatic at best. This is another example of how CJ's communication skills that work so beautifully in politics come off hollow in this kind of setting. A hyperbolic speech about the immorality of the political opposition can sound good if it's well-said but it sounds harsh said to a scared, sad old women in a small kitchen.
MOLLY
I need him! You came for the reunion? You're giving a speech aren't you? It was in the paper. "The Promise of a Generation". We were going to go and stand in the back.
A rustic looking CJ and Tal are fishing in Ohio's February freezing waters. My toes are cringing in sympathy. Tal is lecturing CJ on how to use the fishing pole. Tal is quite the renaissance man. Between Tal's didactic lectures on most things, intellectual self-superiority, fascination with learning, fondness for challenging CJ by quizzing her and making her do stuff out her comfort zone, retro-Yankee way of speaking and tendency to react with anger when put put in a weak position, it's little wonder why CJ responds to Jed as a father figure.
TAL
Oh, sweetie, I know when young people lie. Did she say how long she's been gone? It seems like weeks. Has it been weeks or just a few days?
C.J.
Dad, you know we need to get some help if Molly won't come back. We do.
TAL
Oh, someone to come in and referee me.
C.J.
We would figure something out.
TAL
You mean, more than a nice lady from Catholic family Services?
C.J.
Well, we have to find some way because you being alone won't work out now.
TAL
Why not? I can work around the clock, there's so much to do. There's a whole chapter on "Women and Math Anxiety" because for years-- now, why is that women underperformed in math?
C.J.
The teachers were sexist men?
Love huh!
TAL
Exactly. So there's blocked women to be helped.
On that note, Tal helps CJ with her fishing pol and evades all of CJ's efforts to help Tal.
C.J.
Have you... done... have you done anything, seen doctors?
TAL
Doctors? Ach. My age smells of liniment and waiting rooms. No, I've researched. There's a new drug, Reminyl. Buys you a few months, they say.
C.J.
We could arrange to see someone. Lee Voight, he's your friend. He's a terrific neurologist.
TAL
It's such a beautiful day, Molly. I'd prefer not to screw it up with all that.
C.J.
Dad, I'm not...
TAL
Molly, please, please! This nagging-- can't we just enjoy it here?
C.J.
Dad, I'm not Molly.
TAL
You're not Molly. You're not Molly.
He turns to look at C.J and starts screaming.
TAL
Who... Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you? Who the hell are you? Who are you? 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!
Man, Allison Janney's face. This speech is also Donald Moffat's moment. He really invests the audience in his character's well-being. Tal looks at C.J. again and finally recognizes her. C.J. begins to walk towards him.
C.J.
Dad... you... cannot expect me to silently do nothing. You're going to require care.
TAL
I wasn't built for it. You came for the prom, not for this.
C.J.
Reunion. I'm not going.
TAL
Coward. 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.
CJ loves her job so much but I can even see CJ doing that if Tal asked her but slowly becoming resentful about it. I've read several excellent fics where this happened. Thank goodness he turns that down.
TAL
"We sail," said Pascal, "in a vast sphere," Claudia Jean, "ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end." [caresses her cheek] I'd much rather see you on TV, darling, than sitting opposite me, watching a demolition derby going on in my brain.
CJ and Tal are meeting with Dr. Voight. I also like the actor that plays Dr. Voight.
DR. VOIGHT
Look, it's subtle disease and it creeps up on you, Tal. 175,000 people will be diagnosed this year.
TAL
Why on earth would a statistic like that comfort me?
DR. VOIGHT
I thought you liked numbers. I'm not trying to comfort you. I'm talking to you like an old pal. You used to play golf with me, and you just stopped.
TAL
I what? I used to play golf... and I stopped?
DR. VOIGHT
I wondered why; now I know. We like to say it's not a disease where you forget where you put the key, it's where you forget what the key is for.
TAL
I know what the key is for and I know what the door is for and I think I'll use it.
Tal gets up and CJ pull him down.
DR. VOIGHT
Yeah, they're not bad. They're not knock-them-out-of-the-ballpark either. We can slow it down.
TAL
Oh... good. He can slow it down. What a concept.
DR. VOIGHT
You shouldn't be alone, Tal. Having someone there helps keep it at bay. Alone is not good.
TAL
I'm not alone. I have my book and a cat, right? So, we have a little while, unfortunately, before I begin not to recognize you, Lee.
DR. VOIGHT
But you didn't recognize me. You covered and I saw it and that's going to last longer and happen more and more and, by the way, what the hell happened to Molly?
TAL
It's, "quote" hard on the spouse, isn't it? I read that.
C.J.
We need to make plans, Lee.
DR. VOIGHT
Let's not sugarcoat this. Known you for a long time and I just want to say this because I've known you've always been a straight shooter. Because you hate being a burden, you're probably aware that it's harder on the people around you than it will be on you. For you, it will be... not unpleasant particularly if we put you on the right drugs-- including antidepressants-- it won't hurt.
TAL
If only that were true, kids.
After Tal leaves, Dr. Voight recommends that CJ put Tal in a home.
Tal and CJ are in the car. Tal still thinks that CJ is going to her prom and CJ is still insisting that she's not going to her reunion.
TAL
You damn well are. Your speech: "The Promise of a Generation". Awfully grand title, no?
C.J.
They came up with it. I agreed because I wanted to be here to see you.
TAL
No, you didn't.
C.J.
You could come and live in Washington with me. I have room.
TAL
Do you? Can you imagine? Talk about ruining a good thing.
CJ cottons onto Tal's symptoms.
C.J.
I know why you started smoking again. It's because you use the time it gives you to work stuff out. You use the cigarettes to stall for time.
TAL
No, sweetie, I started smoking again because I forgot that 20 years ago I quit.
C.J.
Great, that's great.
TAL
See, I know exactly what I'm doing.
The light turns green as CJ gets a call on her cell.
TOBY
So how's it going?
C.J.
Please tell me everything's okay.
TOBY
All quiet in the West Wing.
Tal stopped in the middle of the road because he forgot the directions and the cars are all honking.
TOBY
What's all that honking? You in a parade? They having a parade for you?
CJ hangs up and tells Tal to pull over so she can drive. At this point, CJ's about had it.
C.J.
I mean... tell me... things like your checkbook, your money, things like that-- what do you propose to do? Tell me. You're smart, tell me.
TAL
You know I'm pretty good with numbers.
C.J.
Oh? If we drove for 3 hours at 40 miles an hour? I mean, tell me! You are holding on to something that...
TAL
What am I holding on to? My consciousness? My identity?
C.J.
...can't be willed away by sheer force of personality, dad.
TAL
Tell me, brilliant woman that you are, would you hand over those things without a fight? I need a little more time, C.J. If I let it in at it's own pace, it'll just get dark faster.
The Creggs sit, totally freaked out and angry. We need soothing piano tunes as we cut to the evening at the house. Tal is playing the piano as CJ gets ready for the reunion. The camera is being unusually graphic as we see CJ half-dressed. It's a little weird.
Tal is watching the pres conference and insulting Toby.
TAL
That man lacks grace and charm.
C.J.
Do you think?
TAL
They really need you.
C.J.
Yeah, they kind of do.
Marco comes in and he and have Tal have a moment.
TAL
You're no longer a rabid punk rocker, I see.
MARCO
How could you possibly remember that? I was your student for one semester.
TAL
Oh, I remember the detentions and the ditching and the low test scores and your imperviousness to algorithms. Let's get you a drink.
MARCO
Scotch.
TAL
You were better-looking with the mohawk, son.
MARCO
Yeah, my mom thinks so, too.
TAL
So, what're you up to now?
MARCO
I'm a horologist.
TAL
You fix watches. You were in trouble.
MARCO
Yeah, Yeah, I, uh, I spent a lot of time in detention.
TAL
No, no, After. You were in prison.
CJ comes down the stairs, looking very beautiful in a black dress with her hair curlier on the ends than she normally wears her hair.
C.J.
No, Dad, no. [to Marco] He gets confused. Dad, no, wasn't... Marco... wasn't in prison.
MARCO
Yes, I was. I did a year. It wasn't hard; I was younger. Stock tips. Anyway... I-I lost most of what I had and moved on.
Amusingly on finding out that Marco was in prison, Tal pulls out his golden watch for Marc to fix. Of course, Marco wasn't going to steal from Tal but the juxtaposition of jail bird conversation with Tal pulling out his watch for Marco to handle is interesting.
MARCO
Wow! 1931 Hamilton. One of the few thoroughly American watches. Each piece, each part, handmade in the U.S. of A. Not many American watch-makers.
TAL
My dad's.
MARCO
Huh. You're losing time, Mr. Cregg.
This is where the watch-metaphor becomes heavy-handed.
MARCO
Yeah, isochronism is out of beat.
C.J.
Is it?
MARCO
Yeah. This is your balance cock and your hairspring. The fourth wheel and the third wheel here.
C.J.
That's me.
LOL. I love Allison Janney's "Can we go already?!" tone through the scene particularly since this scene is so dull and obviously written. Way to get the audience to agree with you, girlfriend! Seriously "Allison Janney: Making Bad Writing into Something Ranging from Quite Watchable to Downright Awesome Since....Can't Nail Down a Specific Year".
TAL
Hmm. Oh, what am I thinking? You kids should get going.
C.J.
Maybe we should.
TAL
I've always cherished this thing. My father kept perfect time-- marked it, measured it with this-- the hellos and good-byes. It keeps faltering; nobody can do anything.
MARCO
Well, I could retool it. It wants a timing machine. Send it to you in a few weeks
from Paris.
TAL
France? You're a convicted felon. How do I know you won't steal it?
MARCO
I'm not a recidivist. It would be a pleasure, Mr. Cregg. After all, you taught me how to calculate the number of stones in the Great Pyramid.
TAL
I did?
MARCO
Mm-hmm.
TAL
How do you do that? I can't remember anything. For days sometimes.
He gets up to light a cigarette, but notices a picture and picks it up.
TAL
I... I can't remember who this is.
He shows a picture of CJ, probably around the age of four.
Very cute.
MARCO
We should be going, Mr. Cregg.
TAL
Forgive me.
CJ is starting to cry in the foyer and Marco jokingly plays with her joke to try to get a laugh.
In the next scene, CJ and Marco are in the car watching and unfunilly snarking on their former classmates at the reunion. CJ gets a call from Toby but she sees the caller ID and doesn't answer it because she's too depressed.
C.J.
I don't think I can... face it right now.
MARCO
When do you give your speech?
C.J.
After dinner, before the scary dancing.
MARCO
After dinner?
Marco takes that as his cue and he fires up his engine, literally and figuratively. We pan across Tal playing the piano and Molly staring at herself in the mirror.
Orangey love nest. I did wonder if there was any significance to Danny being back in Washington and making trouble and CJ having a one-night stand here. I kind of want to find a pattern because CJ rarely gets real romance so it's a little strange for her two romantic plot-lines running at the same time.
However, I end up short a big explanation perhaps because it's because this episode really looks out-of-order or I get annoyed when fans paint all of CJ's personal connections, romances or chemistry with people as blips or justifications for CJ/Danny 4Ever!1! So I'm loathe to make the standard explanation like, "One of the reasons that CJ tumbled into bed with Marco is because she's frustrated that she can't do that with Danny".
MARCO
Anyway, you're about to find out.
C.J.
What am I about to find out?
MARCO
The bittersweet thrill of high school popularity. There were days, some days, when... we'd played at a party. The Mollusks or we'd won a baseball game and... there was just that... thing, that...
C.J.
Hmm.
MARCO
...everybody loving you in that moment.
I take that subtext as CJ wasn't popular in high school but Marco had his moments. Anyway, they make pillow-talk so pretentious that you know it was scripted.
C.J.
Are you saying you're one of those people who think like, in F. Scott Fitzgerald, their
best years were 20 years prior?
MARCO
Oh, God no. No, I think the best day's gotta be the next day. Life is all... "what's next?" It's like those billboards where, before the actual ad goes up, they put in, in big block letters... "Watch this space."
Molly comes back to Tal and they reunite. CJ is giving her speech and she has mad skillz because her hair is perfectly coiffed and her make-up isn't smudged at all. She's as fresh as a very angsty and rather businesslike daisy.
C.J.
My name is C.J. Cregg. As you know, I work for the President of the United States. This is why I was asked to make a short speech for our reunion. It's a terrible subject, a terrible idea, "The Promise of a Generation." So bad, I was going to start out with a joke and fill the whole thing in with more jokes. But I find the topic has gotten under my skin while I wasn't paying attention, because every generation has promise, and every generation fails that promise in some respects. How can we not? What is promise if not something that's impossible to live up to? My boss had to recently make his case to the American people that he was worth re-electing, and it was... not an easy process, nor should it be. And in its wake, I've been thinking a lot about civility, civic duty, and kindness, and how pervasive and powerful they are, how enduringly persuasive those qualities are in American life, and how I see them all around me, day after day. America is a terribly difficult idea filled with promise and impossible to live up to. Promise is inchoate and promise is what binds us.
Tal and Molly watch CJ give her speech from the back.
I don't like this speech. It's graceless for CJ to attack the subject of the speech. It is in-character that CJ's first plan of attack was to just fill the speech with jokes and like I said before, it's impressive that this playwright was to write an in-character CJ while putting her in not typical surroundings and having her do un-CJ things. Although, he was very much helped by Allison Janney having such a strong sense of who CJ is and always playing that to the hilt.
However, the speech doesn't grasp on to that with some damn jokes. Just one or two jokes could made the speech feel more in-character and could have even ratcheded up the angst quotient to hear CJ making empty/bitter/very ironic jokes, a trope that Sorkin has employed beautifully with CJ's famous sense of humor many times and the post-Sorkin writers learned to do around Season 7. Worst of all, the speech becomes disorganized after the third sentence. What does Jed's reelection have to do the promise of a generation. Way too early in the speech, CJ just lists values making the speech boring and repetitive from the outset. I also think that reunion speech should make at least a bit of an effort to reflect on the class and their generation, in particular, or it can feel like too much of a vanity exercise from a powerful, famous person which is what speech was shaping up into. I hope that CJ doesn't mind constructive criticism. (Toby voice)
As she talks, the camera pans against high school pictures. In the middle of her speech, a panicked Toby calls.
C.J.
I hope it's monumental and not some joke timed for the exact moment I'm giving my speech, Toby.
TOBY
It is. Two car bombs outside our embassies in Asia. One went off, one didn't. A message to expect more of the same within the next 24 hours: Four.
C.J.
Oh, jeez. How many...?
TOBY
No casualties, thank God. If you can try and-and get back, uh... There are no direct flights, but if you connect out of Chicago, you can be in, we think, at 6:30 in the morning.
C.J.
Um... let me get moving. I'll call you in a few minutes on my way to the airport.
CJ leaves. I know that some criticized CJ for being rude there but I don't get that. Major crisis trumps reunion speech. Anyway, I'm sure that the Class of 1983 or 1978 appreciates the speech being cut short. (I assume that this was either CJ's 20th or 25th high school reunion. Those are the standard numbers for reunions and I can plausibly see CJ as 38 or 43 at this time.)
TAL
Are you all right?
C.J.
I have to go. Tal, I-I don't know what to do about this situation.
Interesting that CJ spent most of the episode calling Tal, "Daddy" but now she calls him by his first name. I think that it's intentional. CJ has snapped back into her work persona.
TAL
Well, nobody does; we'll just try and figure it out. I mean, between the lot of us, there's surely one superior mind still working; I don't know whose.
C.J.
Right.
MOLLY
We'll drive with you to the airport if you like.
TAL
C.J. Before I forget. Tell Marco, send it back to me soon. Please.
He places the watch in her hands.
TAL
And working. Time matters.
Tal turns around to walk off, but C.J. grabs his hand.
C.J.
I'll see you next week.
TAL
You can't keep flying back and forth.
A huge component of CJ's guilt complex. Her job prevents her from really being there for her father and she couldn't even do anything to stop the Alzheimer but his deterioration miles away from her is a constant reminder of her perceived failure. It's a heck of a burden to carry. Father and Daughter embrace and she kisses him on the cheek.