The Fall's Gonna Kill You

"The Fall's Gonna Kill You" is the 42nd episode of The West Wing.

Plot

The episode begins with CJ being summoned to the office of the White House Counsel Oliver Babish, who menacingly questions CJ about the President's MS cover-up, despite the fact she had only been informed the night before. The First Lady is also grilled by Oliver, namely about her signing one of Zoey's college admissions forms in which it was indicated that Bartlet had no major health problems.

Josh gets Leo's OK for a plan to enlist Joey Lucas to take a secret poll that will hypothetically address a political cover-up of a leader's illness without specifically mentioning what is really happening. He meets Joey at the airport and reveals the President's illness to her, making her the 20th person to learn of the illness and cover-up.

A Chinese satellite has fallen out of its orbit and is hurtling to earth at 2000 mph, and no one's concerned but Donna. Josh finds her concern amusing – she doesn't know that space junk falls out of orbit and gets burned up in the atmosphere all the time – and it's an oasis of joy in his day, which is otherwise preoccupied with both the MS crisis and a visit from a Democratic House staffer whose committee is badly underfunded in its lawsuit against Big Tobacco. The staffer makes a comment that resonates with Josh when he says that the tobacco companies "perpetrated a fraud against the public".

Meanwhile, new estimates project a smaller-than-expected budget surplus – and that cheers staffers because it will allow the administration to make its case for opposing a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. But Sam is not happy at all with the language that the staffers and tax-justice groups want to use, which condescendingly talks about the luxuries that rich people purchase. Sam firmly says that when he was in a prestigious law firm, he paid taxes for a lot of people and that's the only way the system works and can be supported, but he doesn't like the idea of insulting rich people for being rich and has the language excised. At day's end, Leo invites Sam to come with him to the Oval Office so that Sam can be told about the President's MS and the subsequent cover-up.

Title

The title, as referenced by CJ in the episode, is from the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. She tells Josh at the end "You guys are like Butch and Sundance peering over the edge of a cliff to the boulder-filled rapids 300 feet below, thinking you better not jump 'cause there's a chance you might drown. The President has this disease and has been lying about it, and you guys are worried that the polling might make us look bad? It's the fall that's gonna kill ya."

External links

• The West Wing Episode Guide