The Great West Wing Rewatch: 2.12 "The Drop-In"

Joel: You know, this episode actually bothers me a little bit. It’s made very clear to us that Sam is working incredibly hard on this speech. Obviously he probably works incredibly hard on every speech he writes since the words he’s writing are going to be said by the President, but all the same, we take some time to see that Sam cares a great deal about this speech in particular. He’s slaving over every word, and he has visions of the speech bringing the room to it’s feet by the end. He has worked hard and has a final product that he is proud of. And the whole thing is taken out right from under him.

I’m not here to say if the President should have admonished the GDC or not. There are reasons both for and against that happening. But I don’t understand the thought process in intentionally leaving someone out of the discussion. It’s not like Sam had done anything wrong in the previous episode that resulted in leaving him out in the cold here. According to Toby it was simply that he didn’t want to have the discussion. Which doesn’t really work as a reason, because: 1. They have the discussion anyway, it’s just at the end of the episode instead of the middle, and 2. Having the discussion is what’s so great about this administration. Two opinions are brought forth, a discussion is had, and while it’s usually the president who makes the final decision, everyone leaves the room working toward the same goal. That couldn’t happen in this episode because Sam was working toward a goal that would be impossible thanks to factors that they were intentionally keeping him in the dark on. If nothing else, this results in a huge waste of Sam’s time and as the show loves to point out, these people are forever busy. None of them can afford to waste any time at any point.

Toby’s reason behind admonishing the GDC was because friends are honest with each other, which is an incredibly hypocritical thing for him to say in this particular episode.

Chris: I’ve gotta agree with Joel on this, as much as I think the president was justified in admonishing the GDC, it’s hypocritical for Toby to feed the press the “friends are honest with each other” line when he can’t even bring Sam in on the admonishment added to the speech he’s been obsessing over the entire episode.

Beyond that, we get some more Lord John Marbury in this episode and I always enjoy the back and forth between he and Leo. As far as the missile defense system, it plays to my personal philosophy that sometimes, it’s irrelevant to argue intent because the outcome was less than desireable. And it’s pretty much echoed with the president’s response when he was told that 9 out of 10 things went correctly with the test, however that point is irrelevant when the 1 thing missed was the missile that it was suppose to stop. Even if it had been successful in that one test, it could have stopped 9 nuclear missiles but the one that it missed is all that it takes to cause mass destruction. It is a sticky situation because coming up with a shield defense system will only cause our enemies to proliferate their own missile systems. So what’s a super power suppose to do?

A good president accepts the appointment of Lord John Marbury as Great Britain's ambassador to the United States