S1e18- Six Meetings Before Lunch (No, honestly, I am dumb. Most of the time I'm playing smart.)

Quick hits:

• According to Ginger, Toby has had bad luck.  Very bad luck.  That's why we won't tempt the fates, and wait to celebrate until the 51st vote has been cast to confirm Justice Mendoza.  Then the Day of Jubilee can begin.
• There are people are seldom happy.  When they are happy, people are confused and concerned.  Toby is one such person.
• Donna has distinctive penmanship (best way to describe unintelligible scrawling ever).
• C.J. has a fish named Gail.  In this particular episode, Gail's fishbowl has a picture of panda bears in it.  Why is that relevant? Mandy wants to get a new Panda Bear for the National Zoo.  She wants Toby to help her, and that's why Toby is no longer happy.  
• Leo's taught his daughter to ask him for permission to have lunch with fascists.  I'm going to add that to the list of rules for my son.
• "If you haven't seen C.J. do “The Jackal,” then you haven't seen Shakespeare the way it was meant to be done." So, here is Shakespeare the way it was meant to be done.
• President Bartlet could take George Washington in a fight, minutemen or not.  

Two big topics in this episode: Slavery Reparations and School Vouchers.  As has always been consistently the case, the drama allows for the opportunity to present both sides of the argument: Josh has to talk to the nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights about a comment he made in a dust jacket of a book that advocated for reparations, and Leo (for fun) gave his daughter Mallory a copy of a position paper in favor of School Vouchers that Sam wrote.  

Finally, two little tidbits I found while researching this episode: 

1. The show received quite a lot of hate mail after the walk and talk between Charlie and Zoey that ended in a rather passionate kiss in the corridors of the West Wing.  This surprised Sorkin, who assumed that an interracial relationship wouldn't ruffle anyone's feathers.  
2. CJ's performance of "The Jackal" was inspired by an impromptu performance in her trailer, and Allison Janney's formerly secret talent found it's way into the script.  Not sure where Sorkin found the inspiration for this:
   

Looking at the balance of the entire episode and observing the image of Sam making an ass of himself, I'm struck by the racial through-lines here: a performance of Ronny Jordan's "The Jackal" by a white woman for a room of predominantly white White House staffers, the gathering Secret Service concern over threats to the President's African-American valet for dating his (white) daughter, all the while the white jewish guy from Connecticut is arguing with a black civil rights lawyer from Georgia.  Do we get this image of Sam (along with a brief moment of arhythmic movement by Josh) to point out the inappropriateness of cultural appropriation?  Or is it there to provide a contrast in acceptance with the hatred about Charlie and Zoey's relationship?  

Or is Rob Lowe just a terrible dancer?  

What's next?  S1e19- Let Bartlet be Bartlet 

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