Anna Deavere Smith. Actually she’s the head of the NSA - Nancy McNally is her character’s name. It’s SecDef that we haven’t met yet.
waterj2, the staff member in the episode you’re thinking of was Sam Seaborn, the Deputy Communications Director, played by Rob Lowe. jonfromdenver, the character you want is Josh Lyman, the Deputy Chief of Staff, played by Bradley Whitford (who is the favorite for the best supporting actor emmy this year.)
I don’t know why I thought Spencer was the NSA. It makes sense him being the Chief of Staff since his role is so prominent.
Anna Deveare Smith is the Head of the NSA. (She’s showed up a few times, the only time I remember specifically is “Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail” She hands the file on the guy to Sam and tells him to stop persuing the issue.
(She was also an American President actor)
BTW, who was the girl who asked the question to which Sam answered “Israel.” I know I’ve seen here somewhere before and simply can’t place her.
Fair enough. She was also in Philadelphia, wasn’t she?
A few other questions:
Have we met the Speaker of the House?
Has Clinton ever been mentioned specifically? Nixon is the only president I believe I have heard mentioned (post FDR).
Whitford is my favorite. I think he AND his wife are taking home emmys this year.
Did I hear correctly, or did that terrorist supposedly cross the Ontario/Vermont border? I would be concerned about that too, namely that the two don’t border!
And was the smart kid gonna be offered a job on the spot? Guess it didn’t happen since this episode exists outside space and time, um, I mean continuity… or whatever it is…
I must admit to not catching this show on a regular basis, but I had no idea that the evil interegator was so bias and prejudice. Does the series deal with how someone with such biases works in the White House, and does the President share his views? Then again, maybe they just agree to disagree, which does I guess lead to dramatic conflict and high ratings. I guess, I need to watch this show more regularly…
I think he was just going to tell him that he respected him,admired him, etc. He HAD been giving him a hard time, so he just wanted to make peace. Probably tell him that he had been like him as a kid. my take.
Yes, you need to watch it. I am slightly right of center, and still enjoy the entertainment factor.
As for Leo, he isn’t a bigot. That’s what he meant when he said “people who know, know I don’t usually act that way.” Leo was supposed to convey the feelings that a lot of us have. We are so frustrated and scared of terrorism, that even though we don’t rationally feel the way he did, we sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that way. Leo is a big liberal on the show (though he is a realist who the prez thinks pushes him to the center). He isn’t the type to be a biggot. He’s never shown anything before to suggest it.
I was rather bored by the whole episode, frankly.
As one of the more vociferous right-wingers here, you’d probably EXPECT me to hate “The Left…”, um, “The West Wing.” But in general, I like it. Intelligently written TV dramas are rare, and have to be appreciated. I’ve usually liked most of Aaron Sorkin’s work, and actualkly looked forward to this special edition.
But I found the whole episode simplistic, didactic, condescending, predictable, and (worst of all) untrue to the entire tone of the series. Turning Leo into a racist, out of the blue (NOTHING over the past two years gave us any reason to suspect he was a closet Arab-hater), was a desperation move, and just didn’t work for me.
Yes, ADS was in Philadelphia. Also the movie Dave. She’s most famous for her one-woman shows “Fires in the Mirror” (about the hit-and-run in Crown Heights) and “Twilight: Los Angeles” (about the Rodney King riots.) She is immensely talented.
I don’t think we’ve met the Speaker of the House. We’ve met the Chief of Staff for the Senate Majority leader. That was Ann Stark, the woman who played Toby in “The Leadership Breakfast.” She stated in the episode that he was going to run against Bartlet. Played by the phenomenal Felicity Huffman.
We’ve also seen the House Majority Whip, Rep. Shallick (played by Corbin Bernsen, of LA Law.)
Sorkin deliberately doesn’t mention any recent presidents. I think that originally he wanted to stop at Eisenhower, but Nixon got thrown in, by mistake perhaps. He doesn’t want people trying to tie in the fictional world to the real one too closely - it intereferes with the suspension of disbelief he wants for the show.
I love him too. And I agree that he and his wife (the mother on Malcolm in the Middle, fyi) are both likely to win.
Sorkin has a stated policy of not mentioning any presidents after Eisenhower. His rationale is that you’ll start thinking, ‘Well, if Kennedy was president then Johnson must come next, then Nixon, then Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton…’ and it’ll mess up the suspension of disbelief. There’s been a few slip-ups on that - I can distinctly remember someone mentioning LBJ once. And an oblique mention of the Whitaker Chambers incident (no one actually said Nixon’s name). There have been mentions to confirm that American history’s followed the same general outline, even if the presidential succession is different - discussions of Vietnam, the Gulf War, etc. (What would be really intersting for them to address in this area is how on Earth 1998 and 2002 got to be election years…)
The Leo thing also threw me completely for a loop, and I’m glad I don’t have to work that episode in with the rest of the series. (I even thought, for a while, that he and the staffer did this every time there was some kind of crash as a diversionary tactic, or front, or something so the appropriate agencies could do their job in the background while in the foreground, it looked as though the Chief of Staff was doing something if someone was paying attention. It was so very completely unlike anything Leo had ever done, I thought the character must have been playacting.)
From the expression on his face after they announce they’ve found the real terrorist, I think Leo was just as surprised as you. Which, of course, was the whole point: it’s a trap anyone can fall into if they let their anger get the better of them. I think Leo was 100% convinced that this was their guy, so he didn’t care what horrible crap he said to him. And when the guy was cleared, he suddenly realized what an incredible asshole he had just been.
>>Anyone else recognize the suspected terrorist? I am about 99% that it was Ajay Naidu who played Samir Nayeenanajar in office space.
My Indian roommate could not suspend disbelief that Ajay was playing a Middle-Eastern character when his true lineage is Indian. Personally, I like the fact that the guy does not pigeonhole himself.
>>I think Leo was 100% convinced that this was their guy, so he didn’t care what horrible crap he said to him. And when the guy was cleared, he suddenly realized what an incredible asshole he had just been.
Well come on now, all signs pointed to him as being a terrorist. He had a degree from a school known to produce spooks, his father donated to a radical group, he belonged to a fringe mosque, he visited a known terrorist country, his name was one of 3 in the country to match a known terrorist, on and on. However, his demeanor was so calm I knew he wasn’t guilty from the first scene (the cigarette seemed too staged for me).
I thought it was a good episode, but for the most part I don’t think they expressed anything even remotely profound.
Late checking in, just caught this on tape. Another infrequent viewer. Agree that this episode while even handed and handled adequately for a “rush job” was not up to the par of the few other shows which I’ve seen. Just didn’t really touch me on a visceral level, which should have been easy given the recent events. But perhaps that was a logical decision, to try and appeal to the average intellect and eschew the emotional response in this episode. There has been enough emotion on this issue for many in real life. Time to generate a logical discussion.
And yes it did get a bit preachy, but maybe it was warranted.
Now for some questions. I think our tape missed some stuff in the front end of the show. How did this start off? The first thing I caught was the kids being brought into the kitchen and some reference to “crash” status. What happened before this? Also what is the Rosslyn bridge reference which they were making? Finally, what has Brad Whitford been in before this, where do I know him from?
Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise. 
I was going to say the TV series High Incident and the movie Crimson Tide til I checked out imdb and found that it was Matt Craven I was thinking of.
Anyhoo, Brad Whitford has been in lots of stuff.
Thanks chique and Gadarene! Actually, I think it was the name that threw me off. I was thinking of the guy in Aerosmith. So any synopsis of the first few minutes which I missed? Please?!?
Instead of a normal teaser the actors talked a bit about the episode, purpose of it, and told us what was going to happen during the season. Not much, really.
After credits Whitford’s character was complaining how he wanted to go home NOW cos he was tired of getting stuck at the White House during the ‘crashes’…then got stuck in one again. And that’s about it. You made it in time for the good stuff 
It starts off with some FBI or CIA people reviewing a name and the aliases.
Then Donna and Josh are reviewing his schedule and he’s disappointed to find out he has to entertain some school kids. As he’s doing it, the crash phone goes off, because of the first scene. Apparantly, one of the names that came up is a guy who works at the White House. That means the white house has to be sealed. They make references to this being routine lately. So Josh takes the kids to the cafeteria.
Leo and the agents interview the suspect.
Although I understand the sentiment and reasons behind doing the episode, I found it incredibly shallow, and exhibiting the worst aspects of American liberalism.
Couldn’t they have found one non-Muslim, non-Irish example? The Tamil terror campaign in Sri Lanka, the Irgun/Stern Gang terrorists in pre-partition Palestine (of course they would have had to readdress the question of whether terrorism actually achieves its aims had they used that one). And the Shi’a assasins as the first example of terrorism? Perhaps they should have looked a little further into the Old Testament and looked at the biblical injunction to kill all the kith and kine of ones enemies (of course THAT would open the book on state-terror, nah, don’t want to go there either).
Also, the contention that terrorism springs from terrible conditions? Hmmmm, how deprived was the background of the Bader-Meinhoff group, or Timothy McVie for that matter?
It was a lot of platitudes, coated in half-truths, and delivered in a smug, preachy, we are so-much better than you quintessentially liberal manner.
Not American liberalism’s finest hour. But at least they did good in drawing attention to where one could donate aid to the victims of the WTC outrage.
No one here knows geography.
Ontario does not share a border with Vermont.