#tww thoughts

[bartletslesbians]

Drunk guy in The California 47th

I rewatched this scene a few times after @broadwaybaggins suggested an alternate version of it and there is so much to this one scene and every interaction in it that I just have to talk about. It's brilliantly done, actually.

The scene, for reference:

First things first, a small little thing at the start: CJ is telling Toby that he should take over Sam's campaign, and this is clearly an ongoing conversation but I love that in this clip, Andy is simply sitting there enjoying her snacks and pointing her pinky at CJ to make clear she agrees without having to say anything. She's not involved, but she has opinions. They're CJ's.

But then with the meat of it.

This guy walks past with his wife and tells Andy "Miss Wyatt, those kids you got in there deserve a father" and there's two things about that. One, it's not an accident that he calls her miss instead of Congresswoman. Two, he is fully ready to walk away after saying this. If Andy hadn't responded, he would've been out the door.

But she responds. Which is good on her; she's here on a worktrip and some random guy is being a misogynistic prick about her pregnancy. She responds. And I love that one thing she chooses to correct him on (aside from the fact that the twins have a father), is that it's Congresswoman, not miss. I like that she insists on her title; she's earned that damn title, and especially when it's her marital status that's the point of controversy, it matters that he calls her miss.

Noteworthy: when Andy first responds, Toby can be heard in the background saying Andy. It sounds like a warning, it sounds like a get back here before she's even gotten up. He does not want her to say shit to this guy. When she does get up, Toby can be seen right behind her, still seated at that moment, and he kind of looks down, it's like he's sighing, before he starts moving to put his glass down. (Later, the second this guy gets up in Andy's face, Toby's rushing behind her to get in between them.)

Toby is both very protective of her and ready to get in between her and a drunk angry man at a moment's notice, and so not in the mood for her picking a fight over this issue right now. Which I also want to say feels right in combination with "the kids are going to need their father around full-time" being one of the arguments Toby makes to her the third time (I think) he tells her to marry him (in Game On). The drunk guy's issue is not actually that different from what Toby (and CJ, and by extension most of the administration) have been telling Andy, it's just the level of disrespect and aggression that's very different.

And that's what makes this different, too, for Andy. Because this man despises her, actually. He says "you may not realize it, but you are an example to young women, and there's something to be said for acting like it" but especially the way he's leaning closer, using his hands, emphasising acting like it when he talks to her? He hates her, and he hates her specifically because she's not getting married to the father of her kids. On purpose.

And that's a kind of attitude Andy's not used to. She's used to this similar sentiment of "marry the father of your kids" from literally the people coming to her defense right now, but she handles that well, she handles that playfully, easily, she's tired of them and she knows how it works. This man's mad at her, and you can see that she is simultaneously pissed off and wanting to respond to him, not wanting to back down and let this man talk to her like this, while also clearly not being comfortable with it. She looks unsure, she's being too polite with her words, she sounds hesitant, and that angers him too. When she says "well, I'm sorry if you-" and he interrupts her in a near yell "yeah you should be sorry"? Bird York plays it beautifully: she's pissed, and also she's a little scared.

Because that's the thing, right? She was preparing for a fight about this pregnancy. We know that Andy was looking forward to getting sued over this pregnancy. We know that the thought of pissing people off with it excited her. But she was preparing for politics; a policy fight. A tough campaign, debates, media coverage and press statements and everything that comes with scandal in politics. That's what she was gearing up for. Not this. She was ready for a political fight about being pregnant in a way that pissed people off, but that doesn't change the fact that it's scary when a drunk man towers over you and gets in your face to angrily tell you you should be damn sorry for not being married, for being a bad example, for not giving your kids a dad.

And that's when Toby interjects, getting right in between her and the guy. (And he makes a point of calling her The Congresswoman, too. Just 'she' could've easily worked in this moment, but he specifically chooses to remind the guy again that Andy's a Congresswoman, that that means something.) That's when CJ gets up to join them. That's when Charlie gets involved. And Andy looks at Toby when he stands in front of her and she has this look of being unhappy that he's there and she's not doing this herself while also immediately accepting that he is, taking a step back, standing behind him. If this was a policy thing, she wouldn't have needed his backing up; she doesn't want to need it here, and she doesn't like that he felt the need to interrupt and she doesn't like that it's good, actually, that he did. (Especially when, as we hear later, the guy's friend joins them soon after, and it gets actually violent.)

But really just... it's such a good scene. I love the way Bird York plays Andy's not contradicting but still complicated feelings about this; that readiness to pick a fight while also immediately being able to see that this isn't what she's used to, and that's scary, actually. I love the nuance in Toby not wanting Andy to make an issue out of this, not wanting her to pick a fight over this, not seeing it as that pressing of an issue until the guy gets aggressive over it, and then being the first to get up and get between them. I love the again not really a contradiction because both feel right to this dynamic, but the contrast, between his warning "Andy" and his making sure to say "the Congresswoman". This entire scene and how it highlights both Toby and Andy's relationship but also a small example of the sexist scrutiny and backlash Andy is facing from really both sides of the aisle, is just so interesting to look at and just so well done. One of my favorite parts of the episode (which is saying something, considering this is also the episode of "nuh-uh, I saw him first, girls".)

Honorary mentions too to Charlie immediately getting involved when he sees something happening, without even knowing the actual context (and the fact that the man's wife immediately goes this is the one who was with the daughter and the lowkey racist undertones in that.) Like, I love that he's there the moment Toby is, and I don't imagine Charlie and Andy ever really got a chance to talk outside of maybe Airforce One, but he's still throwing a punch in a fight started over her dignity. And also to Donna's "communists look exactly like non communists" which is so out of the blue in the conversation but Toby still responds to it with "tell me about it" and I adore their friendship.

[bartletslesbians]

Wait I thought the thing with hoynes and cj was consensual when did they say it was SA

(Obvious warning here for discussions of sexual assault!)

This is a matter of interpretation, and it’s never explicitly stated in the show, but I’m also always a little bit surprised when people don’t see it that way at all! (Not to say that that’s wrong! Just that from the first time I watched it, it having been sexual assault is very much how I took it.)

This all comes from Full Disclosure, but it’s also imo very important to take into account La Palabra in this! That’s the episode where Hoynes is accused of sexual misconduct (that’s how it’s referred to on screen) of a college student who interned for him, which is what makes him lose the primaries. That doesn’t affect the dialogue in Full Disclosure, obviously, but it’s part of the way that episode can be interpreted because clearly Hoynes is not actually above this type of behaviour. When CJ talks about ‘other women’, the college girl is part of that.

But focusing on Full Disclosure: mainly, my interpretation of it not having been consensual at all, comes from the way CJ phrases it TO Hoynes. Of course, later, with Toby, she refers to it as a mistake she made, as shame she feels about being the Other Woman. You can take that as the objective truth about the night, you can take that as CJ witholding something from Toby, you can take that as CJ kind of having been telling herself that version of the story. None of those are necessarily incorrect.

More under the cut cause this got long!

But when she talks to Hoynes. First, she comes to him specifically and personally, as opposed to having anyone else deliver the list of faults they made about him, because what she has to say she HAS to say to his face. This is so important to her. And she needs to feel remotely in control while doing it. But she starts that by telling him that she would much prefer to be kept out of the book Hoynes is writing.

Up until then, we’ve seen her shaken up and terrified the entire episode because Hoynes is writing a book and she’s been told she’s a subject. (Brock tells her this when they talk about the piece about the book.) She tells him that she wants to be kept out of it. I think it’s pretty clear that what she doesn’t want to have written in that book is that she slept with this married Senator as he was at the time, that’s what she tells Toby later, that’s how she initially phrases it to Hoynes (when she says ‘the way you came onto me’, she doesn’t elaborate any further.)

Having allegedly slept with Hoynes is the piece of information she doesn’t want to be made public, the piece of information she is terrified of having shared with the public. That’s the story she’s ashamed of being told.

And then she threatens him with telling “the whole truth” about Hoynes and that night and the kind of man he is.

Now, sadly, we know that being accused of sexual assault is also absolutely no guarantee of being an effective threat or even something someone will face actual consequences for.

But. Again, CJ is terrified and making threats here because the story she does not want out there is “slept with a married man”. She is asking him to keep that information to himself. Hoynes having had an affair with CJ Cregg is NOT, in any version of this, a threat against him. It’s just not. He’s already come clean about some affairs he’s had, he’s already on the mend for that, she can be so easily written off as a mistaken fling he had ten years ago. That won’t touch him; it’ll ruin her. It’s what she doesn’t want out there, it’s not something strong enough to threaten him with.

That’s not her threat. “The whole truth” cannot possibly mean what has already been stated. The whole truth that she can threaten him with cannot be “we consensually slept together”.

Now, I’ll give you that of course we don’t KNOW what “the whole truth” IS. In theory, it is not impossible that the whole truth means they had a years long affair and he promised her he’d leave his wife or he got her pregnant and there’s a secret baby somewhere, it’s not technically impossible. It’s not explicitly stated that the whole truth is sexual assault.

But it’s the most logical one, in my opinion. It’s the most easily understood one. It’s the most straightforward explanation for the pure terror she exhibits this entire episode, for the fragility in her conversation with Toby, for the fear and the importance of this meeting going well. Toby spends this entire episode worrying about how she is. He offers to accompany her to confront Hoynes so she doesn’t do it alone! That’s not normal behaviour if it’s a standard regrettable affair.

We later learn it wouldn’t have been the first time he did that to someone. CJ spends that entire episode terrified of a man who’s committed ‘sexual misconduct’ before telling his version of a story to the world, threatening him with the whole truth about that night with her, which can’t possibly be the version she’s threatening him to keep to himself.

Ten years ago (which is what he says, it could easily be rounded up, 8 or 9, but anyway), she was some young and up and coming unimportant campaign staffer and her was the next presumptive Democratic Nominee for President. She had no damn power over him, she couldn’t have done anything. Now, she’s the White House Press Secretary, and it’d still be a huge risk to her career to say that she was once sexually assaulted or raped by the now Vice President, but she knows how to do that now, she knows how to take that. She is able and willing to take a risk. (By the time La Palabra comes out, she’s Chief of Staff, and it’s different, and I wish we’d seen her reaction to that. But oh well.)

And it’s never explicitly stated, but I do think it’s not that subtly implied, that a sexual assault is not at all out of the question. And that’s always been how I interpreted it.

[bartletslesbians]

CJ in ‘take out the trash day’

I just rewatched this episode and it’s kind of the follow up to In Excelsis Deo in terms of the Lowell Lydell storyline (the gay teenager who was stripped naked and murdered for his sexuality) getting its closure. Which, for CJ, makes for an absolutely agonising episode that shows so many different things about her as a character and it really really speaks to me.

There’s three things happening for CJ this episode. There’s the Lydell storyline (in 1x10, we hear he was stripped and then killed by young teens who threw stones at his head, and CJ is the only one on the staff to make an active case for hate crime legislation, she’s clearly upset by it. In this episode, that hatecrime legislation is signed), there’s the sex ed report (basically saying that abstinence only teaching doesn’t work and that it’s better to teach teens how to have safe sex), and we get an update on her relationship with Danny (they’ve been kissing a lot, this puts CJ’s professionalism into question, she stops the kissing, and she almost leaks the Lydell story to him but he won’t let her.)

The only disclaimer to this is that I am as usual writing things about CJ from the basis of the headcanon that CJ is a queer woman, notably closeted at the time this episode takes place. A deeply important little canon note to take into account here, too, is that CJ went to Berkeley for college. That’s basically San Francisco. Given her age, this would have been in the mid 80s; putting her as a young queer woman in an epicentre of the AIDS epidemic. Which is really something to keep in mind in her reaction to being confronted with how little the government she works for cares about the lives and protections of gay people.

In In Excelsis Deo, CJ spent part of the episode being talked down to about her opinion that hatecrime legislation is a good thing. Sam tells her to tone it down, Leo tells her to back off, Danny tells her it’s wrong. She’s the only member of staff portrayed to think that there should be a difference in how we treat a hatecrime in the justice system. In this episode, she’s again the outlier in her reaction to the Lydell parents. The issue here is that Mr. And Mrs. Lydell were scheduled to be there when the hatecrime bill was signed, but Mandy noted that Mr. Lydell was quiet when she spoke to them, so the staff assumes he’s homophobic and will cause trouble at the signing, and that’s not the kind of press they need.

CJ spends part of the episode fighting the idea that he really would be ashamed of his son being gay even after he was murdered (and quite gruesomely so) for it. Which, if you take CJ as a straight woman, is quite naive allyship. Of course plenty of parents are still ashamed of their children’s sexuality even if they’re dead, that’s a pretty basic thing, as sad as it is. But, if you’re looking at CJ as a queer woman in government, it’s less misguided naivety, and more… I want to say intentional wishful thinking?

Having seen some of the worst that happens when the government decides queer lives don’t matter to them, and knowing that while Jed Bartlet is a progressive man for the time, gay rights is just not on his agenda, but then on whose is it, there is a specific choice she has to make about her own work for that government. We don’t know that much about her relationship with Tal, besides knowing she loves him very much, does not get along with his new wives, and she doesn’t visit much.

Plenty of queer people fall into the ‘trap’ of telling themselves that sure, the world might hate them, but surely, surely, their family can be different, their friends can be different, surely they WILL still think of you as respectable, as a friend or family member, as someone worthy of love and protection, or just as human. It’s easy to know that your friends are good people, and hope without looking for confirmation immediately, that that includes that they won’t be homophobic. This is still a thing today, and I think it would be a deeply relevant feeling for CJ at the time, too.

She loves the people she works with. It’s a lot easier to do the work she does, if she doesn’t take time to think about how easy it might be for some of them to switch up on her if they knew she was queer. The disbelief in “but his son was killed for being gay, surely-“ is still naive in a way, but less about ignorance and more about lived experience and a need to believe in something nicer than that, when it’s said in the unspoken context of “surely, you’d give a damn if it was me”.

And the rest of the staff (mainly Mandy and Leo, and then Danny) are kind of speaking to her with the tone of ‘yeah, duh’ when she asks how it’s possible that a man would lose his son in a crime like this and still be ashamed of him. Which is fair in a way because it is quite an obvious thing! But it just is such a painful reaffirmation that CJ is the outlier in this entire discussion, the same way she was in 1x10.

But she’s right. Mr. Lydell is not homophobic, in fact he is much more upfront about gay rights than anyone in this administration has been out loud. His monologue to her is simply beautiful. I won’t type the whole thing out, but it includes his question how it’s possible that this President would take “such a lame-ass position on gay rights”, “what quality of being a parent does he think my son lacked” and, which I think hits the hardest for CJ in particular: “I’m not ashamed my son was gay. My government is.”

Which brings us to the second half of this story. Because when CJ and Mandy leave the room, CJ is on the verge of tears. (I’m not exaggerating, watch that scene back; her eyes are shining over when she talks to Mandy, she’s rubbing her face, she sounds Agitated. She’s simply not okay.) Despite knowing that her task here was to make sure the Lydells will be supportive of the President and be good press for the hatecrime bill, she wants them there anyway.

It’s painful, knowing that for the administration, good press for this means “not homophobic, but also not too loudly pro gay”. It’s painful being reminded so forcefully that this government is, in fact, so weak on gay rights, and so ashamed to talk about gay rights. CJ is so clearly upset about it, and Mandy has to loudly tell her to get it together already. She’s giving so much of herself to this President, to this administration, to this government. And what is she doing it for? Would they have her back the same way she always has to have theirs if the problem became her own sexuality, and is that a question she is in any way ready to ask herself?

Trying to keep the last items short but: it’s fascinating to me then that this is the very first and one of the only ever stories we see her purposefully try to leak to Danny. That’s all the more interesting because in this same episode, Toby ‘jokes’ (he is joking in that moment, but given her reaction, I doubt it’s the first time she’s had this comment, and remember it was a similar problem during the India and Pakistan situation) that she better not be leaking stories to Danny. She and Danny have been kissing randomly for a while, no further dating, but they’re close and people know that, it puts her at risk. She denies it, she breaks off the kissing in response to it, and then the Lydell story and how deeply that touches her is what makes her almost make all of that come true and leak a story to Danny anyway.

That self destructive willingness to risk her damn reputation, her job here, for this specific story? For the chance to let this specific man speak the truth about this administration’s position on gay rights? After all she’s done to get here? It’s devastating, actually.

And then this is the same episode of the sex ed report, where again the main thing that report proves is that teaching abstinence only doesn’t do shit, and it’s better to teach teenagers about safe sex. Jed, Josh, and Sam, have agreed to wait with the release of that report until after the midterms to avoid making it an issue during the midterm elections, and CJ is deeply upset about that, too. No doubt more so because she was already breaking bit by bit this episode, but it is the first time in the show we see her and Jed really just disagree and get genuinely mad about it.

She’s agitated, he is tired of her, and I want to write more about that later because there’s a great scene to compare it to later this season, but he tells her to let it go and to back off and she eventually caves and says that she understands. There is a genuinely kind of warning tone in the way he tells “I was hoping you would.” And it just ends on such a Sad and kind of tense note.

This was in no way intended, obviously, but watching it back knowing they’ll make it canon she went to Berkeley in the 80s, especially through the lens of CJ being a queer woman herself. The combination of her being hit with the realisation that even this administration she’s giving her life to doesn’t care that much about gay rights, and the understanding that of all things that makes her more upset this episode is the refusal to publicly talk about safe sex practices? It’s not nothing. It’s not the point of either of these storylines, but it’s there anyway, and it adds another one of those layers to how deeply complicated it is for her to do this work, represent this President and this White House, wondering if they’d have given a fuck if she’d died as a result of being queer outside of the political (in)convenience it might have posed.

(And they would, sure they would, because she’s CJ and these people love CJ, but would they put their necks on the line for her reputation if she was outed as gay the way Leo was outed as an addict? Would they be pushing around legislation to protect her job if that’s what put it in trouble? Would they even consider any of that if she wasn’t CJ and wasn’t as genuinely beloved as she has become to these people? Are those really questions anyone wants to ask themselves?)

[bartletslesbians]

i know throughout the west wing there are plenty of traumatic events, but specifically the shooting is focused on as traumatic for staff but josh gets the most focus in that department. it’s shown that others are affected, toby trying to investigate hate groups, cj being unable to remember it, charlie and his guilt.

if each of the staff had their own noel-esque episode what do you think they would include?

(especially cj’s, the way she says “is the president dead?” chokes me up every time and i know allison janney would have killed it in a cj-centric episode about her trauma related to that)

Ohhh yes I love this ask. I read somewhere (or maybe it was the The West Wing Weekly podcast?) that the reason Josh got that episode was because at one point in season 2, Bradley Whitford went to Sorkin and asked if there shouldn’t be something about Josh still having PTSD from that given that it seemed a little easily smoothed over. And I both love him for thinking about that, and am so sad that they had that conversation and nowhere did Sorkin think that the other characters might also be pretty affected by Rosslyn beyond The Midterms.

Allison Janney WOULD have killed in an episode focused on CJ’s trauma from Rosslyn, oh she would have. And I think CJ and Charlie would be my top choices for their own complete episode about it? While maybe the others could be a little more sprinkled in through other episodes? (Like, Toby and Sam and Donna, but also oh Leo and Abbey?? But for example I think Donna could have easily had a subplot about her own experiences there IN Noel, honestly. And now I am thinking about even just a small mention of like, Andy in Ellie noticing something is off about Toby in their scenes?? Or Ellie in that episode! Having a moment with Zoey?? Or Millicent calling out that Jed’s own behaviour is affected by having been shot recently?)

But CJ and Charlie, in addition to Jed and Josh as the obvious gunshot victims here, have two very specific experiences of Rosslyn. I don’t want to say worse and make it into that kind of thing, but definitely unique, and things the others just can’t relate to.

For CJ specifically, I think an episode like this could really focus on how perhaps her relationship with the press and the rest of the staff is becoming more strained or difficult on her part following Rosslyn. Because the most striking thing about CJ during the shooting is not only the fact that “is the President dead?” Is her first question, it’s not that she walks into the hospital with blood on her hands (presumably Josh’s), but, in my opinion, that she is the only one who is immediately shoved in front of a massive crowd of anxious reporters and flashing lights and loud screams (after just splitting open her head on concrete and being ordered to lie down instead) with no one (except darling Carol) there beside her.

She’s alone. She hit her head, she’s bleeding, she’s terrified, she should be closing her eyes in a dark room, but the President was shot and Josh might die and the country is terrified so she has a job to do that NO ONE else in the White House can or wants to do right now. The others can be scared behind closed doors, can have a moment to catch their breath and be terrified and shaken; Toby and Sam have awful tasks in the communications department, to be sure, but that’s in the privacy of an office with the door closed. CJ gives several briefings the entire night, and you see how wrecked she looks the first one, how much of a struggle it is. She is scratching her neck open enough that both Carol and Toby notice how it looks when they see her!

And I think an episode focusing on CJ’s trauma could really really focus on her isolation in the administration. I think it’d have to throw in the fact that she’s the only woman on the senior staff, too, the first woman in her job. What it does to a person to be the human shield of the President and the White House and still be the easiest overlooked and shut out member of staff and do that job, on that evening, in that state, and know that absolutely no one is actually in a position to have your back in that moment. It would have to lean into her becoming more abrasive to the others, snapping more, tired of being placating and forgiving for the way they sometimes treat her. And at first she’s labelled a bitch who can’t take a joke anymore, until someone recognises that she’s really not doing okay, that she’s slipping away. She’s drafting a resignation letter by the time Leo makes her talk to someone.

And for Charlie, I honestly think it’s a crime that his guilt about the shooting, his guilt about just being in the administration and ‘having the nerve’ to be a Black man dating Zoey Bartlet, was so heavily overlooked. One short moment with a total stranger and he’s okay now? No. The trauma this would bring back from his mother being killed on a shift he asked her to take is so important and really does deserve its own episode. They make the observation that Rosslyn was a lynching, not a normal shooting, as a heavy topic for Toby and Jed, NOT for Charlie, and that’s another crime. Charlie simply existed, as a person, in this administration, and has to live with the idea that his existence in this role and his relationship, could have gotten people killed because of how much white supremacists hate him. I completely understand why not every character got the spotlight after Rosslyn, but out of all of them? Charlie needed it.

For his episode… let it be partially about his and Zoey’s breakup. We know they break up at some point, let this be a trigger point for that. There will be other reasons for the breakup too, but lets not ignore the fact that her father could have died because of the country’s reaction to their relationship, and how hard that is to live with for anyone, but especially such young people. And I want to say, bring in Bonnie to the foreground?

Bonnie and Carol, as a little sidenote, are the only assistants present at Rosslyn. I think it’s plausible to say Carol might have left with the press, and wasn’t there for the shooting itself (but you can easily say she was, too, and it can be a thing for CJ’s episode), but Bonnie was THERE.

She is never mentioned again in that context, I think they totally forgot which assistants were at the event, but this is important right now because inside the administration there is no other Black person who Charlie can talk to. (I’ve not forgotten about Nancy McNally, but as much as I think she’d be open to a conversation with Charlie, I think she’s much too high-up for Charlie to be comfortable approaching her about this. Bonnie is an assistant like Charlie, she was there during the shooting, and out of every character there, she’d know the fucking weight of that having been a lynching. Obviously it’s not that the others wouldn’t care about Charlie, or that it HAS to be a Black person supporting him in this, but in the same way that CJ’s experience as the only woman on the senior staff would necessarily color her experience of trauma surrounding her job, so would Charlie’s (and Bonnie’s) about the only Black people on site during what the show refers to as a literal lynching.

Jed seems to recognise how different that is from a normal shooting, Toby seems to, too. No one seems to want to say what that would do to Charlie himself. I think Bonnie both deserves her own moment there (she’s the only assistant beside Charlie to be there, and the only one not on the senior staff beside Charlie to be there, it’s an isolating position even if you don’t think about race at all. I think they could be valuable to each other), and Charlie needs someone who understands better than the others, or is more willing to explicitly say it than the others are, what this was and what that means.

I think it could even be a kind of parallel to an episode in season one where Charlie is rightfully upset that he can’t go to a club with Zoey without risking their lives, and he’s told by Gina and by Danny to kinda suck it up and recognise Zoey’s position there. (And Zoey is in a very tough place, too, there’s no denying it! But no one actually wants to hear that Charlie has every reason to be upset, too, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that both those characters are white and not quite understanding what he’s actually upset about.) Charlie and Zoey’s relationship is on the rocks, and it’s so clearly related to Rosslyn but they don’t want to say it. And Charlie can be told, again, to keep Zoey’s feelings in mind and find a way to be an easier part of her life. Maybe he can lash out over that, finally, or maybe he can quietly break it off, or maybe he can ignore those words until Zoey breaks it off on purpose.

And I think Bonnie could be a good person to actually see where Charlie is coming from, what Charlie’s working through, what Rosslyn did to Charlie and what no one wants to say out loud that it did to Charlie. Sure, she sympathises a lot with Zoey (and again rightfully so!) but she sees Charlie’s specific layers of trauma in a way the others can’t or won’t. And they could have such a necessary conversation about that.

[bartletslesbians]

One thing that really just pleases me so much about the lesbian!CJ headcanon is just that while it obviously could just be a beautiful AU concept that’s fun and angsty and wonderful to entertain, it can ALSO fit right into canon without actual major adjustments of any kind and it changes nothing about the actual canon events but everything about her experience of them and that is just such an incredibly interesting thing to explore to me.

(Disclaimer I am in no way saying that she IS a lesbian or that her canon relationships with men ARE the result of comp-het. I’m not saying it’s impossible she really fell in love with them, or even that it’s more likely that she didn’t than that she did. I’m just saying it’s ALSO possible that a lesbian!CJ headcanon fits right into canon within her canon relationships and that is fun for me to think about.)

But CJ is a fascinating character in that so much of what we see her do in the show when it comes to her job and her personal life is prioritise that job over relationships, while insisting that what she’s after is normalcy, that what she already is is normal. Flip-flopping a little in specific relationships (notably Ben, going from ignoring all his calls to ‘you know what this is fine actually, I’m all in’ and scaring him off anyway, but also Danny) and dedicating so much of her life to a job that’s all about appearances and expectations and the anticipation and management of them. Her job is to know what the press and the public will and will not accept, and to make the President, the administration, and absolutely also herself, presented as something that they will.

Add to this that this woman is canonically Catholic from a relatively small town, and attended Berkeley during the mid 80s (which is right across the bay from San Francisco, one of the major cities when we talk about the AIDS epidemic).

She is an absolutely perfect character when it comes to a solid comp-het experience. There are women today who will not realise they are lesbians until the day they turn sixty and something finally falls into place, there are women today who are married to men and have 2.5 kids and have yet to come to terms with being lesbians. CJ and the way she’s shown in most of her on-screen relationships and flirtations with men could seriously be such a good example case of a woman who’s not gonna realise she’s gay until she’s got the wedding ring on. And that’s heartbreaking. And that’s so much fun from a character and fic perspective.

Because there’s Danny, who’s charming and sweet and sexist in the way all her guy friends are and who gives her a fish and is so damn genuine about it. And he’s a perfect, just perfect man, for a lesbian who’s not ready to know she’s a lesbian. Just perfect. One of the things he tells her is him literally pointing out that he might not look that conventionally attractive at first glance, but she should keep in mind that he’s very good looking. He could not make it easier for her to justify being confused about the way she is or isn’t into him because he says it himself, he’s attractive in a way people don’t always notice.

Everyone around her keeps warning her that obviously Danny’s into her and obviously she’s into him and obviously she shouldn’t get too close and what easier way is there to believe she’s really into this man than for everyone she knows to tell her that she is and shouldn’t be? He’s practically assigned to her as the perfect boyfriend she can’t have and that is just Perfection for a comp-het scenario. She wants him, surely, and she doesn’t have to think about that too much and she doesn’t have to ask herself if she really does or if she really wants to date him or if she just enjoys being chased and she doesn’t have to overcomplicate it because it can’t happen anyway and she knows that. It’s just so perfect.

There’s Ben, who she didn’t date for long but apparently did live with for a while. She describes their relationship pattern as the kind of thing where they’ll meet and flirt and like it and think that means they can have something real just to get really frustrated with each other in a few months, break it off, and maybe start it over again a few years later. Knowing that CJ can have that kind of pattern with men where she can enjoy the early stages and that chase and the rush of it (which can so very easily be attributed to her desire to be seen as a normal person; I can’t stress enough how much of being normal can be wrapped up in “this man wants me, that’s a good sign, look at me accepting that”), but finds a way to ruin it just a few months later cause actually a long-term thing is not something she can manage.

When he shows back up, she likes talking about him with Carol more than she does talking to him. She only calls him back when she’s confronted John fucking Hoynes of all people and, again, needs that sense of normalcy and comfort that a good guy wanting her does bring. When she decides this is something she should try, it’s after so much talk with Carol and she goes from not being very interested to dousing herself in perfume and kissing him and saying she’s all in when he actually gave no real indication that that’s what was happening cause she’s not really thinking about this in any logical way beyond her own experience in this dynamic.

Simon… oh Simon. Always doomed to be CJ’s ‘what if’ and really, that’s no different for a lesbian!CJ. It’s not. She liked that kiss. She liked the safety he provided. She liked that he made her feel feminine. (Again, something that is so easily and readily tied to her desire to be Normal. So easily tied to her insecurities about her height and her position as a woman in a man’s world and a man’s job and the way that makes her stand out when she’s scared to stand out in the wrong (queer) way. It fits so very easily into the intensely complicated experience of lesbianism and gender. It’s beautiful.) it was a good kiss. And he may always be the man who makes her wonder if she has the right to call herself a lesbian after all if she’s never gonna know if maybe, just maybe, he could have been the One guy for her.

CJ ends the show so tired and so Done with the work she’s given eight years of her life for. She ends it by going back to California with a man that is simply presented as The Choice for her with no real explanation as to why besides the fact that he wants her and he’s comfortable. It’s a safe choice when she hasn’t felt safe in years. When she suggests they’ve only been together a month that’s brushed off by Danny and Toby alike and she doesn’t really fight it because why would she. Sure, a month, but he’s apparently wanted her for eight years and people have been telling her he’s so good for her for eight years so, surely. Why not.

It’s a safe choice and it’s a stable choice and it’s impulsive and if this wasn’t a lesbian!CJ headcanon it’d still be a serious toss-up on whether or not it becomes the happily ever after it has every possibility of being or whether it ends in a divorce. But if she’s a lesbian, the fact that she moves with him after a month and gets married and gets pregnant with his child like a year at most after. It’s… it’s safety. It’s the expected choice. She’s done with work and she has no excuses left and this is What You Do as a woman who knows how to be a woman.

And she’s a lesbian and it doesn’t change anything about the canonical timeline of events except it changes everything about her actual experience of them because now there’s gonna be a point in time where she is going to have to start wondering why it is that she has the Perfect and the Stable and the Comfortable choices and the comfortable man and the comfortable life and has done everything Right and is so goddamn unsatisfied and lonely and confused all the same. And it’s simply going to hit so much harder when she does come to that realisation as it would have in any kind of lesbian AU for CJ.

And I just simply love it. Lesbian!CJ works so well in any kind of AU or canon divergent concept, of course it does, but it works just as well right inside the entire canon timeline she already has and that is just a heartbreaking story in really the simplest of ways. And I love it.

[bartletslesbians]

I watched Tomorrow again and aside from always getting emotional over Jed’s “it’s been a pleasure, Claudia Jean” this time one line that really stood out to me is when CJ tells Margaret she walked to work that morning, and that she sometimes walks. Because when Margaret doesn’t quite buy that, CJ says “I’ll walk more when I get back to California”.

And the use of back to California there is so interesting to me. Not just to California. Back to California. Obviously she has lived there before, but if she worked for EMILY’s List and she worked on races with Toby before the Bartlet campaign, she’s lived elsewhere too, and I don’t imagine she’d say she’d be moving back to New York or anything of the sorts. It simply comes with the connotation that California is a place like home; a place to return now after she spent some time living in DC. And it just really makes me wonder where that stems from.

We know she lived there at two different points in her life. College, when she attended Berkeley (right across the bay from San Francisco), and right before she joined the Bartlet for America campaign, when she was living in or very close to Beverley Hills. We obviously don’t know for how long after college she stayed living there, and we don’t know for how long she had been living there by the time Toby came by.

We do know that when Toby comes by to offer her the job on the Bartlet campaign, it’s very clear the job she just lost is kind of the only thing tying her to this place. There’s no second guessing, there’s no hesitation outside of wondering if Jed Bartlet’s a good man, and she joins them on the road for a year before moving to DC for the next eight years. There’s no particular sentimentality about LA or California when the Bartlet administration goes there, you’d never know she’d lived there. Still, when she's planning to get out of DC and take a 'break' (if working for the Hollis foundation and becoming a mom in your mid forties can be considered a break), California is where she goes.

And there's just something about CJ 'escaping' to California three times.

The first time when she's leaving Dayton and her grieving dad or her new stepmom and this relatively small town for San Francisco. Studying at Berkeley and living by herself in California and being Free. Especially in the context of CJ being a queer woman, that particular city and time has so many different layers of genuine freedom and such deep fear and horror to it that's just. It shouldn't be a surprise she keeps coming back to it. It really shouldn't be.

(In the context of Andy/CJ having been together at Berkeley, living in San Francisco together, being a couple and going to blood drives and protests and planning futures where none of that should be mentioned? No kidding California is a special place for CJ.)

And then it's my personal headcanon that the second time she moved to California, when she took the Hollywood PR job after already having worked statewide campaigns and for EMILY's List, was very very soon after her experience with Hoynes. Being sexually assaulted by a highly popular Democrat, the presumptive future nominee for President? She's out of there. She goes back to where it felt safe despite everything from the 80s. She does PR for Hollywood because it pays and she doesn't care about and because it's not politics. And she leaves it behind again in a heartbeat when Toby offers her a job and assures her (because she asked twice) that Jed Bartlet, running against John Hoynes, is a good man.

And when that journey's over and she's given it everything she had and then a hell of a bit more? Back to California. Back. Because now she's broken down and in need for that feeling of escaping for a whole different reason than the second time she went, and maybe, secretly, not that different a reason from the first time she went. Back to California but never back to San Francisco cause San Francisco can't fully be that place for her, not after everything. (Not after AIDS, not after never quite getting over her first real queer relationship, not when it could never live up to her nostalgia and her dreams). But back to California.

And I do personally imagine she's not gonna stay there. She didn't the first two times. I think either after she's recharged or after she gets bored or after something big happens (the baby she has in canon could be a good reason; it's isolating, having a baby when all her friends and family are a country away. Could be a new job offer closer to politics. Could be a divorce. Could be something happening with Toby or Josh or Donna.) She will move back, and it won't have been that long honestly.

But still. 'Back to California' is such an important little thing for her. That's not quite home but it's Something. Always gonna be Something.

[bartletslesbians]

Season 6 would have been so much better if Donna went to work on Andy’s campaign efforts instead of VPs.

Oh I love this concept for an AU. And I think it would have worked so well. It’s good for a more complete arc around the Gaza situation and their respective traumatic experiences there, it means Andy’s not completely written off between Gaza and Welcome to Wherever You Are, but also it gives Donna an arc into building her own career and gaining more independence in DC that’s way less attached to Josh than the VP’s campaign is. (Added later: it’s also so interesting for the leak!)

A lot of the VP’s campaign stuff for Donna, while obviously also being a really great arc for her in terms of becoming more sure of herself in her professionalism and her career, is still also about ‘poor Josh, look at Donna stabbing him in the back, what is it doing to him?’ While also still kind of making sure that Josh still sees her in that light, if that makes sense. He regards this as a much more personal betrayal than it should be, and it kind of means that even by the end of the show, he’s struggling to see Donna out of the light of being His assistant and being part of His staff, even though she spent time doing something completely different. Because the different thing she did was still tied to him, in both their eyes kinda (though importantly, not when she made the decision? Sure she knew Josh’s opinion on Russell, but she didn’t know he was gonna find Santos to run yet, she didn’t know Josh would be on the Presidential campaign road too.)

Some of the criticism about it I’ve seen, too, is that it’s too big a step for Donna to be realistic? How quickly she moves up? And while I think Will’s reasoning in hiring her makes total sense, so I don’t really agree with that, I do think it could make more sense, in a way, for her to gain independence and experience first in Congressional races. So that’s a bonus?

How I see this play out right now is that maybe Andy asked Donna to consider working for her while they were travelling in the Middle East. Important to note that Gaza was not their first stop, they’d have probably had at least a week of travelling together, and it looks like they were the only women on the CODEL. I’m sure Andy was pretty relieved that the White House sent Donna. (Keep in mind, as a side note, that during this trip, Huck and Molly are only eleven months! Andy is still recovering being postpartum, it’s not unlikely she’s still nursing, it’s likely this is the first time she’s been away from them for more than a day. That’s not the kind of thing she can ‘complain’ or be upset about or struggle with in front of the men, it’s just not. I think Donna is a very sympathetic ear.)

Okay this became way longer than I meant it to, so the rest (from Gaza until Election Night in season 7) is under the cut.

I’ve said it before, but with Donna’s spirit and optimism and that fierce belief in the good in people and her emotional attachment to the work she does, I think Andy could easily see quite a bit of herself in her, just younger, with less experience, and less certainty of what to do next with everything she thinks she’s capable of. She could be someone Donna really looks up to and can ask for advice, career wise, Josh wise, even the not yet relevant but maybe some day important questions on just how Andy’s surviving with infant twins and a 40-70 hour job while still being a pretty damn popular Congresswoman.

So I’m thinking Andy offers Donna a job while they’re in the Middle East. Maybe Donna tells her that CJ brought up that she should consider getting out of Josh’s office, and that it’s festering in her mind but she’s not sure, and Andy tells her CJ’s right, and then says that if she wants to, she’s looking at hiring staff for her re-election campaign soon, Donna could even start working in her office before the campaign actually kicks off, get hands on experience on the hill. And Donna’s considering this very seriously, and it makes her feel guilty when she writes Josh her detailed emails and doesn’t bring this up.

And then the explosion happens. Donna goes through hell, she almost dies on one of her first real Big independent career moves, she has a tough recovery ahead of her; Andy is grappling with the guilt having organised a trip that killed four people and almost killed Donna. I think it’s more than possible that Donna still waits until mid season 6 before actually going to work for Andy, because neither of them is sure if it’s appropriate to bring that job offer up, and they also just have to seriously consider if they can work together this soon after it happened; if that’s helpful in their recovery from Gaza or if it will just trigger them continuously.

But Donna takes the job. And I think maybe she starts as a deputy for Andy’s Chief of Staff or Legislative Director? And then she has an important role in Andy’s re-election campaign. I think it’s the right balance between a challenge and a positive experience? Because, at this point in time, Andy’s winning, they all know it. She won with 85% in season 4, she won her midterms (the timeline’s wonky cause of the skipped year but hey), she’s had this seat for probably about 14 years at this point, no one thinks she can lose. And while that still means they work hard, and it’s especially challenging after Gaza because she’s facing a whole lot of criticism for that, and it’s challenging because the twins are involved and Donna can see firsthand how exactly Andy’s managing now young toddlers and her work. (Spoiler: sometimes it means the most adorable photo op with Molly and Andy at a rally, sometimes it means nursing Huck in the car on the way to a town hall and a last minute change cause he spit up all over her.)

But then we get to season 7, and the leak, and Andy almost losing her seat. And we see some beautiful moments of Toby and Donna’s friendship in the show so I always say I would have wanted much more reactions from other characters towards the leak, but I honestly would LOVE to see Donna’s reaction to that in this context specifically.

For the sake of timeline, it’s important to keep in mind that there are roughly three months between the night Toby confesses and Election Night. By the very end of those three months, Andy has managed to get her numbers up to a roughly 50/50. In my head, this means that in the week following the confession, her numbers would have dropped Dramatically, especially given that the only other number we’ve gotten from her is 85% (and while I think her numbers would have been lower than that in this race, I also don’t think they’d have dropped below like 70/75, maybe? And she drops from 73 to 35 in between polls taken because her EX husband committed a crime.)

Donna gets to witness firsthand how devastated and angry Andy is, but also learns some impeccable lessons in resilience and handling a challenge without yelling or being too hard on the staff, I feel. Andy doesn’t hide how upsetting this is, but she’s not taking it out on her staff, and she’s not giving up without one hell of a fight.

What we get, then, is Donna handling some Awful press. Both right outside Andy’s house (and oh the effect on the twins), at every event they organise, the articles written about Andy in relation to Toby and in relation to her choice to have his kids. It’s Donna being one of the key people figuring out how to turn this campaign around and it HELPS that she’s way less familiar with how Andy normally runs a campaign. There is a huge difference between running a campaign you know you won’t lose, and running a campaign when no one thinks you have a chance anymore. Donna’s experience on Jed Bartlet’s re-election campaign and everything she picked up watching Josh, Toby, CJ, and Sam figure that out? Genuinely heaven-sent right now.

This would mean much more coverage on the leak and the trial itself, too. More screen-time for Toby, more about his involvement or lack thereof with the twins and how that changes after the leak, more about his and Andy’s relationship. It also just instantly makes Donna more of a character in her own right outside of Josh, in different platonic relationship and in a career move and making decisions that have nothing to do with what Josh might think of it.

(And you could still have some moments for joshdonna, sure! I like to imagine Andy and Matt are good friends, and it could be so interesting seeing Josh and Donna meet again after a couple of months because Andy’s joining the Presidential campaign on the road for a day or two?)

We would see Donna and Andy on Election Night waiting to see the results because they won’t know until the last damn vote are counted this time around. Donna gets to make the call to Toby when the race is finally called in Andy’s favor, because while Toby can’t really be there in the building, he’s waiting for this race more nervous than he was on Election Night in season 4. Donna sees Andy and her twins and her mom celebrate and then she gets SUCH a tight hug herself and Andy’s kissing her cheeks and oh for Donna Moss to hear someone say “this is entirely because of you” and know full well it’s not said just to be nice? Terrific actually.

I can see Donna working in Andy’s office for a little bit longer, but honestly not too long? I think Andy’s better at moving her staff around and, knowing how much Donna wants to advance her career, looks for opportunities for her too.

I kinda wanna keep Leo alive just to avoid this pain, but if he does die.. it also means Donna leaves the victory party to get on a plane to Josh, I think. Before that, it means another hug from Andy and the absolute assurance that Donna doesn’t have to feel so guilty about not having been there already. And it’s heartbreaking and I don’t want to think about that part of it too much.

But this would be such a great AU actually? I love this concept. It could work so well for the timeline and the existing arcs happening in the show, while giving Donna so much more to do even if it’s politics at a way less national stage. I want to see this so badly now.

[bartletslesbians]

Started typing in the tags of something @drelizabethgreene posted and it just got way too long. But the fact that really the only thing Jed thought about to say tonCJ in the cold open is "nice tan, do you have a picture of the baby?" Is. Such a disappointment.

This really is the thing. Like, I keep saying it but while a gut reaction to this is often that there's nothing wrong with women having kids, that's just not the problem most have with the flash forward. There IS nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all, with the concept of CJ getting married and having kids. With anyone. That's fine. That could be great. That's not the problem.

But the fact that it's the only thing. The only noteworthy thing Jed Bartlet has to say about her, and the only noteworthy thing CJ herself can say. She had a baby and she got a tan. That's it.

Jed Bartlet! To his former White House Chief of Staff, who loves to work and loves this country and this world and loves to work her ass off to improve it. Who could do fucking anything after the administration. The ONLY thing anyone could think of to say about her is that she got a nice tan and a baby with a man she, at the time the cold open aired, has gone on one date with and kissed a few times YEARS ago.

(Yes, obviously the relationship is more developed at the end of season seven. But at the start of the season when he's suddenly reappearing to be her husband and give her a baby and Literally Nothing Else about her beside a tan from California? That's the extent of their romantic involvement. Years ago.)

It's just disheartening. It's insulting. And that doesn't make it wrong, again, in any sense, for her to end up with a husband, no matter who, and a baby. But Will can talk about Congress and Charlie can ask about the work in Jakarta and Kate wrote a book and Josh is with the President and Jed and Toby are tense for Reasons but still briefly talk about his work at Columbia.

And the only thing anyone could think of that CJ might do or might want as anything of note, anything worth mentioning to her, by Jed Bartlet himself after everything she did for him and everything they accomplished together. Is that she got a nice tan and had a baby. Who gives a fuck about anything else. She had a baby and she's hot, end of story.