Joshua Lyman's attempt to seize narrative control (lecture → press briefing) collapses into public humiliation: press corps vs. the White House and Josh's crumbling credibility.
Joshua Lyman's attempt to seize narrative control (lecture → press briefing) collapses into public humiliation: press corps vs. the White House and Josh's crumbling credibility.
Events in This Arc
Josh takes the stage in a university lecture hall and reframes the episode as a cautionary, self‑deprecating lecture: there is no "typical" White House day. In rapid, wry beats he …
In a single, cutting exchange in the briefing room Josh attempts to paper over chaos by asserting, with confident bluster, that the President "quit smoking years ago." Katie immediately punctures …
President Bartlet, exhausted and terse, assembles his senior staff to confront a spiraling news cycle. Josh admits, sheepish and culpable, that he provoked a story about a nonexistent "secret plan" …