I was so busy hitting the refresh button on election returns that it took me a while to get around to watching "Commander In Chief". Last night's episode dealt with 3 story arcs:
- The confirmation of Democratic General Warren Keaton (Peter Coyote) to Vice President.
- The leak & revelation to the public that President Bridges DID NOT want Mackenzie Allen to succeed him.
- The "crazy" first kids getting into more trouble.
(Spoilers After The Jump)
- The episode begins with news of a new book entitled "Stolen Presidency", which details the late President Bridges disapproval of Mackenzie Allen succeeding him. This begins an investigation to discredit the discrepancies in the book, and find whoever the mole is inside the White House. The First Husband delays his trip to New York to accept the job as MLB Commissioner in order to direct the counter-attack. He believes the White House Chief Of Staff, Jim Gardner (Harry Lenix), is the leak given that he's a holdover from the Bridges Administration & was privy to most of the info in the book.
- This leads President Allen to remember how she was being relegated to minor tasks by Bridges. When she confronts her Chief Of Staff to ask if he's the leak, he denies it & offers his resignation because of the lack of trust. Gardner eventually tells Allen that he believes President Bridges himself leaked the information to the writer. He tells her that Bridges always felt threatened by being overshadowed by her. At the end of the episode, President Allen sends the resignation letter back to Gardner unopened, but it's also revealed that he's sleeping with Arch-Nemesis Nathan Templeton's Chief Of Staff.
- All of that is happening in the backdrop of confirmation hearings for Vice President nominee Warren Keaton. On the surface, Keaton gives a masterful performance. However, Speaker Templeton knows a secret about Keaton that terrifies him. It has something to do with Keaton's daughter & grandchild. When one of Templeton's hack Congressmen starts questioning Keaton about it, Keaton becomes uncomfortable. Templeton cuts off the questioning and meets with Keaton. He assures Keaton that he sympathizes with him, and won't let the questioning go forward. He denounces the "Politics Of Personal Destruction". He promises to move the nomination to the floor & have him confirmed by the next day. Keaton is suprised & tells Templeton that he "won't forget this". After Keaton leaves, Templeton's Chief Of Staff says "with what we got, we own him".
- My question is: What good does it do to own the Vice-President? The VP doesn't even have a vote (unless there's a tie in the Senate, & how often does that happen), and the position only has the power the President delegates to it. Templeton doesn't need spies in the White House, he's got plenty of them, and add to it that his Chief of Staff is already screwing the White House Chief Of Staff. What angle could Templeton have?
- Leaving aside the First Son who decided to use the White House Auto-Pen to get his Mother's signature on a "D" term paper, the First Daughter continues to put herself & her mother's career in precarious situations. Last week, she got her Secret Service agent fired after asking for & getting alone time with her boyfriend. This week she almost became amatuer-porn fodder, after her boyfriend attempted to tape the 2 having sex. She stopped him before things went too far. At first, I thought there would be no way that the Secret Service would allow a First Child to go to a party like the one shown last night. However, I remembered that Jenna Bush supposedly partied with Ashton Kutcher & smoked pot at a Hollywood party. So, who knows?
- Another minor plot point was a White House assistant worrying about a Random drug test. He's HIV positive, and on medication. He approaches Gardner worried that he's going to come back positive. Gardner tells him not to worry, because the drug screen tests for controlled substances & probably won't come back positive. I have to believe people HIV positive have worked in the White House in the last 10 years. I wonder if this is based on a real situation that happened?
- The episode ends with President Allen asking her husband to refuse the Commissioner job, and stay & help her. She decides to have a press-conference to explain her refusal to resign. She agrees to stay as long as it takes to answer as many questions as they want to ask, as long as that's the end of it. She argues that the VP doesn't serve at the leisure of the President, but owes their loyalty directly to the people. I have to say the pulling out of the chair, and the sitting down "for as long as it takes" seemed to be taken from Hillary Clinton's "Pink Press Conference".
Next week's episode should be interesting. Last night was the last of the Rod Lurie batch. The next episode is the first Steven Bochco episode and should tell whether the tone of the show will change from Rod Lurie's direction...
