The Crackpots and These Women

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“The Crackpots and These Women”
The West Wing episode
Episode no.	Season 1 Episode 5
Guest stars	Guy Boyd Janel Moloney Elisabeth Moss Suzy Nakamura Renee Estevez Sam Lloyd Nick Offerman Nicholas Cascone Rachel Singer David Fabrizio
Written by	Aaron Sorkin
Directed by	Anthony Drazan
Production no.	225903
Original airdate
Season 1 episodes
Pilot Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc A Proportional Response Five Votes Down The Crackpots and These Women Mr. Willis of Ohio The State Dinner Enemies The Short List In Excelsis Deo Lord John Marbury He Shall, From Time To Time... Take Out The Trash Day Take This Sabbath Day Celestial Navigation 20 Hours In L.A. The White House Pro-Am Six Meetings Before Lunch Let Bartlet Be Bartlet Mandatory Minimums Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics What Kind of Day Has It Been
List of The West Wing episodes

"The Crackpots and These Women" is the 5th episode of The West Wing.

1 Plot
- 1.1 Animals on highways
2 Trivia
3 Quotes
4 References
5 External link

[edit] Plot

The staff participates in "Big Block of Cheese Day", inspired in part by the Cheshire Mammoth Cheese imitation given to President Andrew Jackson, when they allow meetings with fringe special interest groups that normally cannot get attention from the White House. Josh is troubled by a special "nuclear attack" card he receives, the West Wing staff prepare for an important press conference, and President Bartlet tries to make chili for his youngest daughter Zoey.

White House Press Secretary C.J. Cregg meets with a group that would like to build a highway for wolves and Sam Seaborn meets with a citizen concerned about UFOs, played by Sam Lloyd.

[edit] Animals on highways

According to the Continuity Guide fansite^[1], while no one proposes building an actual highway for wild animals, there have been efforts to construct wildlife crossings and wildlife corridors to allow animals to cross highways without becoming roadkill.

[edit] Trivia

Josh receives his security card almost a year after being in government.

NBA basketball player Juwan Howard appears as "Mr. Grant". In the opening scene, a 3-on-3 basketball game is being played in which the team of Toby, Josh, and Charlie are throughly dominating a team with Bartlet and two others. At game point, Bartlet announces that Grant will be a substitution on his team. This leads to Toby and Josh calling Bartlet a terrible cheater, referring to when he enlisted the services of tennis star Steffi Graf to win a mixed doubles match against Toby and C.J., with Graf supposedly a member of a German delegation. In this scenario, Grant is a newly hired member of the president's counsel on physical fitness, but we learn after Grant mentions that he played some basketball with, "some friends of mine at Duke," that Toby shouts, "this guy was in the Final Four!" It is later revealed that Bartlet's team rallies to win the game because of Grant. Howard was a member of the famed "Fab Five" team at the University of Michigan with Chris Webber, and the team appeared in two Final Fours

The reference to 'better angels' in the teaser scene and later in this episode is a reference to Abraham Lincoln's First Inaugural address in 1861: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

[edit] Quotes

Josh: Can we clear up a few things about my level of interest in the revolving door of local gomers that you see, in the free time you create by not working very hard at your job?
Josh: I want to be a comfort to my friends in tragedy. I want to be able to celebrate with them in triumph. And, for all the times in between, I just want to be able to look them in the eye.

Toby: In a battle between a president's demons and his better angels, for the first time in a long while, I think we might have ourselves a fair fight.