Almost from the moment it ended
critics knew that the Season 2 finale of The West Wing was something special. There were
articles about it papers and publications.
When the Emmy nominations came out a
few months later Martin Sheen would be nominated for Best Actor for it (though
he inexplicably lost to James Gandolfini for the second straight year). I can't
say with confidence that this was the episode the writers chose to submit for
consideration for Best Drama (considering that no less than seven actors would be nominated for Season
2, there were a lot of contenders playing threw Emmy voters minds during that
period) but considering the show would deservedly repeat for Best Drama and win
another seven Emmys alongside it. The episode would win for Best Single Camera
Picture Editing. It was inexplicably not nominated for Best Dramatic
teleplay - Two Gunmen was the only non-Sopranos episode nominated for writing - but Sorkin would win share in the Humanitas
Prize and it would be nominated by the WGA for Best Dramatic Teleplay that
year.
It currently ranks on imdb.com as the
highest rating episode by fans of the entire series. In 2009 TV Guide would
list it as one of the 100 greatest episodes of all time and a decade it would
be ranked as one of the 100 best of the 20th century. And what I
find all the more remarkable about a quarter of a century later is that it does
all of this by building all its drama to a cliffhanger that any viewer knew
shouldn't be one.
Consider this. For the second half of
Season 2 the Bartlet staff has been prepared for the reelection campaign. What
they don't know is that because of Bartlet's MS he promised Abby that he was
only go to serve one term. Not long after the State of the Union that year Abby
and Jed got into a fight because she believes he's decided to run for
reelection without telling her. She's very clear about what his MS will do to
him in a few years' time and she's concerned that if he stays in office it will
kill him.
In the leadup to this there have been
signs Bartlet has been thinking otherwise. The biggest tell came when Hoynes
began planning a trip to New Hampshire. In the landmark '17 People' episode
Toby realized something was up and confronted Bartlet on the lies he has told
the public and just how much trouble he's in. During the final three episodes
leading up to the season finale Bartlet has been revealing to his staff his
diagnosis while meeting with White House Counsel Oliver Babish (Oliver Platt,
who deservedly was nominated for an Emmy for his work) about whether he'd
involved 17 people in a conspiracy to rig a Presidential election. The last few
episodes have dealt with the entire staff learning the truth, prepared for
multiple investigations from a special prosecutor and Congress and most
devastatingly Joey Lucas doing a poll (without telling the details) that show
Bartlet would be annihilated if he were to run having disclosed his health for
reelection.
So much of the conflict that has
unfolded during these final episodes is whether Bartlet will run for
reelection. The thing is, even at 22, I knew that Sorkin was trying to create
drama where there wouldn't be. I didn't know the term 'schmuck's bait' in 2001
(the idea of writers trying to get viewers to believe in something that, if it
were to happen, would completely rewrite what the show they were watching was)
but I knew that The West Wing was being watched by anywhere from 20 to 25 million
viewers a week and that it had just swept the Emmys for Best Drama the previous
year as well as the Golden Globes and the SAG Awards. If Bartlet didn't run for
reelection then according to the Constitution NBC would have to end its hit
show in one season, two at the most and considering that in the spring of 2001 ER was still on the air after seven
years and Law
& Order was about to end
its first decade on the air I knew NBC had no intention of doing that.
Therefore Bartlet was going to run for reelection and to try and bring drama
out of that decision should have been a fool's errand.
To be clear none of the senior staff
know in the days leading up what that decision is going to be and in the
penultimate episode they make it very clear to Leo that they need an answer
because it's going to be the first question out of any White House reporter
after Bartlet reveals his diagnosis.
And then at the end of '18TH
and Potomac', Sorkin throws the darkest twist he will do as showrunner.
During this episode Mrs. Landingham
(Kathryn Joosten) has been concerning herself with buying her first new car. To
this point we know she and Bartlet go back a while but we don't know much more
about her then any of the other secretaries like Donna or Margaret. (When Janel
Moloney was made a series regular we began to learn more about her but Joosten
wasn't one.) It's only in this episode that we learn her first name: Dolores.
Before Mrs. Landingham leaves to buy her car Bartlet tells her they need to
talk when she gets back. He wants to tell her about his diagnosis personally.
In the final minute Charlie, who knew
her better than most, tells Leo that Mrs. Landingham was driving back home and
was hit by a drunk driver at the corner of 18th and Potomac.
"She's dead," he says stunned. Leo then has to tell Jed about this.
To those who are under thirty its
hard to describe the impact this had on viewers in 2001. While HBO had started
the practice of killing off series regulars on The Sopranos and Oz, it still wasn't happening on network TV at the same
level at that point. There were forebodings of things to come: in March of 2001
Joyce Summers had died at home of a brain aneurysm in the landmark episode of Buffy The Vampire
Slayer 'The Body' and
the week before this episode aired on The Practice ADA Richard Bey had been the victim
of a hail of bullets from allies of a criminal he'd just sent to jail. But Mrs.
Landingham's death hit differently. Indeed a California Assemblyman actually
adjourned the session in memoriam of her death, giving a eulogy in which he
called her 'a great American'. Thomas
Schlamme joked 'The California power problem will never be solved by these
group of people after hearing this.
Sorkin acknowledged that doing caused
him to be hated by a lot of people, including his dentist. But he admitted the
decision was that this was the best way to take the President to the edge at a
critical moment in his life. And as a creative decision it’s a masterstroke.
'Two Cathedrals' works because the
Bartlet administration is at a crossroads and no one in senior staff is in a
position to ask the question. Sam spends much of the episode saying that the
decision of Bartlet to reveal his diagnosis is one they should call off because
they don't know the answer to the question and considering that they are
dealing with both the funeral of someone who was one of their closest friends
and someone Bartlet has known for forty years no one wants to ask him until
after the funeral. And Martin Sheen, who usually plays Bartlet with a kind of
dynamism, spends the first half of the episode looking like he's barely
present. It's a lie in a sense – he's still able to talk about a coup in Haiti
and attend a meeting in the situation room about it – but when it comes to a
decision he has to make he's barely there.
And the second part of what makes
this episode a masterpiece is that we spend much of it in a flashback that
we've never seen: Bartlet when he was a teenager attending prep school, when he
first met Dolores, who was then only in her twenties and how they began to form
their relationship. More importantly we see something that's critical to his
psychology: Bartlet's father who he's never so much as mention in two seasons
even though we know about his brother, his children and even his mother.
This also serves as a critical point.
For most of those flashbacks we think we're getting one of those nostalgic
moments that is now meant in tragedy that tells the story of how Jed and
Dolores first met and how she brought out the best in him even at a young age.
And in the final flashback it reveals a trauma that Jed's been hiding his
entire life, that explains some of what he's doing even now – though it's not
until the final extraordinary five minutes we realize it.
And that is for something that makes
'Two Cathedrals' something that even for a show that has dealt with what was
even more unthinkable then dealing with politics: a scene in which the leader
of the free world has a confrontation with God. In a sense that's even more
radical then anything that was to follow in all the great shows that were to
come.
Faith would be important in some of
the TV series that were to come in the next decade, particularly shows such as Lost and Friday Night Lights. But increasingly God was seen either
as a symbol for the worst actions of humanity, such as in the terrorists on 24 or something that couldn't last in
America, such as the physical decline and eventual death of Reverend Smith by
Al Swearengen in Season 1 of Deadwood. And as we were about to enter a period where religious orthodoxy was
going to be used as a sign of American exceptionalism in politics (this episode
aired less then six months before the attacks of 9/11) so much of religion
would be framed in a strictly good or evil concept with no gray area in our
national dialogue. So its telling that arguably the greatest episode in the
show's long tenure centers on an incredible scene where the leader of the free
world engages in a three minute monologue where after the ceremony and before
he has to go back to the White House he asks Leo to seal the cathedral.
It was already established that
Bartlet was a practicing Catholic and Sorkin had make it very clear just how
important Bartlet's faith was to him multiple times. We'd seen him dealing with
it in 'Take This Sabbath Day' when he had a meeting with his former parish
priest, we'd seen him challenge a TV conservative on her interpretation of the
Bible but never had we seen anything like this.
We see in the flashbacks just how important Dolores was too him at a
young age. She tells him: "You need a big sister." And in a critical
conversation: "You're a boy king. You're a foot smarter then the smartest
kids in your class. You're blessed with inspiration."
To this point we've only seen Leo
sense the greatness in him, most notably at the start of the season in a
previous flashback when he encouraged him in the early days of his campaign for
President. The flashbacks make it clear Dolores knew it right off. This crisis
has done much to test his faith but he's basically kept it all in and now that
Dolores is gone, Bartlet spends much of the episode, particularly involving his
drive to the National Cathedral, barely present as Abbey tries to say that if
he gets behind Hoynes they have a chance of holding the White House.
The scene starts after he waits until
the cathedral is empty and no one can hear. The moment its done he looks
towards the heavens and says simply: "You're a son of a bitch. You know
that? She buys her first new car and You hit her with a drunk driver? What? Was that supposed to be funny?!
And then it begins:
You can't
conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the Mercy of God," says
Graham Greene. I don't know whose ass he was kissing there cause I think You're
just vindictive. What was Josh Lyman – a warning shot? That was my son. What
did I ever do to Yours but praise His Glory and praise His name?
There's a
tropical storm that's gaining speed and power. They say we haven't had a storm
this bad since You took out that tender ship of mine in the North Atlantic last
year. Sixty eight crew. You know what a tender ship does? Fixes the other
ships. It doesn't even carry guns, it just goes around, fixes the other ships
and delivers the mail. That's all it can do.
Gratias Tibi ago,
Domine.
(In Latin, that translates to Thank
you God, and its clearly Bartlet becoming more aggressive.)
Yes, I lied. It
was a sin. I've committed many sins. Have I displeased You, You feckless thug.
That's one of the harshest things any
man, particularly a devoted Catholic like Bartlet, has ever said in a TV show
and its delivered more venomously then any obscenity filled oath by Tony
Soprano.
Then he scoffs.
3.8 million jobs,
that wasn't good. Bailed out Mexico. Increased foreign trade. 30 million new
acres of land for conservation. Put Mendoza on the bench. We're not fighting a
war. I've raised three children. That's not enough to buy me out of the
doghouse.
And then Sorkin after all that does
something that was more unthinkable. He has Bartlet deliver his harshest words
to God in perfect Latin with no subtitles. (He didn't even translate it in the original
script.)
There was no
such thing as Google translate in 2001 and I seriously doubt the average TV
viewer knew anything about Latin. So the next day in every paper and on TV the
translation was painstakingly written. Here is what he actually said:
Am I really to
believe that these are the actions of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To
Hell with Your punishments. I was Your servant here on Earth. I spread Your
word and did Your work. To Hell with Your punishments. To Hell with You!"
And then Bartlet deliberately lights
a cigarette and grinds it out on the floor of the Cathedral. Then he looks at
the heavens and says with perhaps the most contempt he's ever said about his
Vice President: You get Hoynes.
It still strikes me as a travesty
that Sheen didn't win the Emmy for this episode: Gandolfini had won the
previous year and would win again two years later. (I don't even he thought he
had a chance; when his name was called he wasn't even there to pick it up.) On
its own it would be the powerful segment of the episode but as Leo will tell us
in the next sequence: "We're about to get one to beat it."
The staff still has no idea and has
been preparing what they call 'Answer A' and Answer B: the two possible responses Bartlet will give
when he's asked about reelection. Before the final commercial break CJ tells Toby.
"It's Answer B."
It's keeping with The West Wing that haven't spent so much of the
last several episodes worrying about the consequences of what happens when
Bartlet reveals his diagnosis that we never actually see the interview in any
form: just hear a clip of it being played over the TV. While this is going on Toby talks to Leo and
says: "You think he's going to run again, don't you?"
Much of the next few minutes deal
with CJ telling Bartlet that when the press conference begins to go to the
medical reporter for the Times who'll ask him questions about his diagnosis to
prepare him before the inevitable question about reelection. Not long after
that Donna – who to this point we've never seen in a scene with Bartlet – is
called into the Oval Office. Donna, its worth remembering, was the first member
of the secretarial staff to be told about Bartlet's MS and Toby famously said:
"If the rest of America takes it like this, we may be okay."
She's the only person in the episode
to this point who doesn't treat Bartlet like a piece of China. She comes in
with the information about the tropical storm. Bartlet says he knows there's a
season for tropical storms and this isn't it. Donna confirms there hasn't been
one in May for the last hundred years.
In Bartlet's mind this storm has been sent by God to mess with him. And
that explains the final flashback and all of what follows.
In Young Jed and Dolores's
conversations she has been trying to tell him about the differences between the
salaries of the female staffers and the males one. His father is the headmaster
and she knows that if he talks to him it would have influence. In the scene
that follows he's clearly about to do it but his father (who we only know as
Dr. Bartlet) is upset for a different reason.
In the school newspaper Jed has given
a quote from Henry admonishing the books that the English professor has
censored. Jed tells him that the professor had banned Henry Miller, D.H.
Lawrence, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room for being too homosexual. "He banned Fahrenheit 451 which is about banning books!"
Dr. Bartlet: "Was that clever?
Were you trying to be clever with words?"
Jed tries to explain. And Dr. Bartlet
hits him. Sorkin's script reads. "It's not the first time it happened but
Jed wasn't expecting it.
Dr. Bartlet: Is
there anything else?"
Jed mumbles. "It's not a
non-denominational service."
This is about how important being
Catholic is to Jed even then..
Dr Bartlet: "You're only
Catholic because you're mother was Catholic? And you're only a student here
because I'm headmaster? How's that for clever with words?"
Sorkin said about this: "Bartlet
is the son of a man who, we learn, is an intellectual Fredo. The father,
obviously convinced he married a Catholic whore, treats his son terribly for
many reasons, not the least of which is he adopted his mother's religion."
Sorkin makes it clear this magnificent exhortation was delivered as much to
his father as to God.
Then the doors blow open and Bartlet
shouts: "Mrs. Landingham." He realizes that he's just yelled for a
woman whose been dead for two days. And then Mrs. Landingham comes in. This
isn't Bartlet seeing a ghost; this is him using memories of her to make the
right decision. We know this because almost all the dialogue of Kathryn Joosten
are phrases she used either on the show and that their conversation has
elements that we saw in the flashback. The rest is him making the arguments to
run again.
God doesn't make
cars crash and you know it. Stop using me as excuse. The truth is your father was a prick who never got over that he
wasn't as smart as his brothers.
Bartlet asks for numbers and he gives
them himself, the things his administration hasn't accomplished, the problems
America faces, what he desperately wants to do in a second term.
Finally Landingham says: "Look
if you don't want to run for reelection, then I can respect that. But if you
don't want to run because you think you do and you think you'll lose, then God,
Jed, I don't even want to know you."
And then the final five magnificent
minutes as Dire Straits 'Brothers in Arms' starts and Charlie walks in offering
the President his coat. Instead Bartlet walks right into the pouring rain.
"He wants this," the script says.
As Bartlet is driven to the front of
the lawn – a necessity given the storm – we hear CJ answering the torrent of
questions. She tells him a list of prosecutors will be given to a three judge
panel, subpoenas will be issued to senior staff, Congress will no doubt
investigate. While the President is driven his cigarette butt is found by a
custodian. Bartlet seems to notice this.
As he arrives CJ reminds him of the
medical correspondent. The camera looks directly at him for a moment. Then
Bartlet deliberately says:
"Yes…Sandy
Sandy: Mr. President, can you tell us right now if
you'll be seeking a second term?
We cut to the stunned staff. They
didn't see this coming.
Bartlet: I'm
sorry, Sandy. There was a bit of noise there. Could you repeat the question?
She does. While he does so he puts
his hands in pocket and looks back at the pool of reporters.
Leo is the only one who can speak:
"Watch this."
Earlier in the episode Dolores told
Young Jed then when he's made up his mind to do something he sticks his hand in
his pocket, looks aways and smiles. Leo must know that too.
The last shot of the episode shows
Bartlet, looking to the side and a small but growing smile appears on his face.
Cut to credits. Season 2 over.
Technically it’s a cliffhanger but if you've watched the episode you know that
Jed has made up his mind. We don't have to wait until Season 3 (when much of
this final scene is replayed) to know his answer "Yeah. And I'm gonna
win."
Some have argued, despite the fact
that The
West Wing would repeat as
Best Drama at the Emmys for the next two years, that the series critically
peaked after 'Two Cathedrals'. While I understand the rationale for this argument
(and will explain in a different article) I don't hold with it. Sorkin would spend
Season 3 and 4, in many ways, with more ambitious storylines then he did in the
first two seasons, some that were far more serialized then he'd dared do in the
first two years. If they didn't work as well – and some did not – that didn't
mean the cast wasn't up to the challenge or that the incredible dialogue didn't
diminish one iota.
But I do agree that 'Two Cathedrals'
is almost certainly Sorkin's finest hour as a writer, if not The West Wing itself in many ways because its so
atypical. It's dark, grim, nearly apocalyptic and has faith put front and
center in a way that he or few shows ever did. And the real triumph is not
Bartlet's decision to run again. It's that his biggest battle – his faith in
God has been restored. Compared to that, how can running for reelection
possibly compare?
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