Enemies
President Josiah Bartlet races to secure a landmark banking reform while his team fights a vindictive land‑use rider and a simmering media leak, forcing painful tradeoffs that threaten policy, the environment and White House credibility.
Night bleeds into banter as President Josiah Bartlet tutors a sleepy Josh on national parks; the tone is intimate, oddly buoyant, and it establishes what the administration values — knowledge, conviction, and a nose for the symbolic. The morning opens with triumph: Bartlet declares, “We beat the Banking Lobby!” but celebration shatters fast when an 11th‑hour land‑use rider, championed by Representatives Eaton and Broderick, attaches to the Banking Bill, threatening to legalize strip‑mining across Montana’s Big Sky country.
The conflict detonates across the West Wing. Cabinet protocol and private resentments flare during a charged Roosevelt Room meeting, where Bartlet publicly rebukes Vice President Hoynes over tone and priorities. Rumors of who leaked details of that heated exchange begin to circulate; Danny Concannon smells a story and presses C.J., and Hoynes angrily denies being the source. C.J. works the politics: she offers Danny a half‑hour on the record with the President to quell a press angle, even as she asks staff to contain internal chatter — a tactical trade to keep attention off the White House while the real fight unfolds.
Inside, staffers fracture into hard choices. Josh rages against capitulation; he wants a veto, a public stand that signals the White House will not be bullied. Sam argues the Banking Bill is crucial policy that saves ordinary people money and must survive; Toby tries to thread both needles; Mandy, Donna and other communicators pressure the team to present a political solution. The tug of war plays out in sharp, often comic repartee: Sam and Josh trade barbs about selling off states, Josh snarls that the administration talks about enemies more than it used to, and the personal stakes — not just policy — come into view.
The political arithmetic looks grim: Broderick and Eaton have muscle on the conference report; Crane’s office may have played a role. Staffers suspect retaliation for the campaign — an old grudge weaponized into a legislative sucker‑punch. Leo strains between fatherhood and duty as Mallory confronts him about their fractured family life; Mallory’s opera tickets create a lighter, human throughline. Leo’s small domestic crisis overlaps the Washington crisis: he gives Sam the task of writing a birthday message for an assistant secretary, a comic but telling beat that reveals how personal favors and staff loyalty thread through policy battles.
Debate culminates in a strategic pivot. The team considers vetoing the entire bill to send a message but risks losing banking reform entirely. Toby canvasses allies, Josh hunts for a legal lever. Then Josh — pressed, furious, inventive — and the team unearth the Antiquities Act. The idea crackles: use presidential authority to designate Big Sky as a national park or monument, removing the land from any congressional rider’s reach. Bartlet, who loves parks and the language of preservation, lights up at the simplicity and symbolism: the President can protect the land and still secure the banking reforms.
C.J. neutralizes the media angle — Danny takes the President’s offer but warns that anyone fired over the leak will get the story — and Hoynes and Bartlet exchange tense, raw words about ambition, respect and the cost of political expedience. Leo and Mallory make their peace enough to go to the opera together, and Sam, under pressure and mockery about writing a birthday note, finds a line that steadies him: the domestic, the political and the ceremonial converge in small acts of character.
In the Oval, President Bartlet embraces the Antiquities Act solution: protect Big Sky, preserve the environment, blunt Broderick and Eaton’s retribution, and keep the Banking Bill’s reforms intact. The victory is strategic and symbolic — a use of executive power that defends both people and place. Josh watches the President accept the pragmatic artifice of politics — the hard calculus that sometimes asks the White House to trade battlefield victories for lasting protections.
The episode closes on a domestic, wistful note. Bartlet, jacket on, steps toward the residence after signing off on the solution; he and Josh exchange a quiet observation about how often they speak of enemies now. The tone is elegiac but determined: the White House wins the bill and saves Big Sky, but not without bruises, compromises and the reminder that governing is an ugly, thrilling collision of principle, power and human frailty. The staff returns to its work, changed in small ways — loyalties tested, marriages and friendships nudged — while the President’s encyclopedic love of parks underwrites a moral choice that redefines the evening’s politics.
Events in This Episode
The narrative beats that drive the story
Act One opens with Leo McGarry navigating a strained breakfast with his daughter, Mallory, subtly revealing his personal sacrifices for the White House and the impending success of the Banking Bill. This domestic tension immediately contrasts with President Bartlet's buoyant celebration of the Banking Bill's victory over the Banking Lobby, a triumph he shares with a still-sleepy C.J., reflecting his earlier late-night tutoring session with Josh on national parks. The celebratory mood swiftly sours during a cabinet meeting where Bartlet, with a sharp, public rebuke, challenges Vice President Hoynes's priorities, creating immediate internal friction. The fallout from this confrontation quickly spills into the press, as Danny Concannon, a persistent reporter, begins sniffing out a story about the heated exchange, pressing C.J. for details. Hoynes, cornered by reporters, vehemently denies any leak. Meanwhile, Josh, Toby, and Sam sense an undercurrent of trouble, with Josh expressing unease about the Banking Bill's security. The act closes with Sam, unexpectedly, accepting Mallory's invitation to the opera, a personal interlude that hints at the intertwining of professional demands and private lives.
In a cramped hotel restaurant, Leo and his daughter Mallory sit across from one another and trade the small talk that shoulders a lifetime of omissions. A waiter and an …
Leo and Mallory's tense hotel breakfast—an attempt at a brittle, private reckoning about Mallory's mother— is punctured when Congressman Skinner breezes in to publicly congratulate Leo on the Banking Bill. …
Vice President Hoynes begins the Roosevelt Room cabinet meeting by laying down a procedural, Congress‑centric tone—urging collaboration and discipline. When President Bartlet arrives he gently, then pointedly, exposes Hoynes' wording …
President Bartlet bursts into the Roosevelt Room, puncturing the meeting's stiff formality with sardonic humor before zeroing in on Mildred, the minute‑taker. Using her verbatim notes as physical evidence, he …
Toby and Sam sit amid drafts and quietly eviscerate their own prose, sliding between deadpan line‑editing and brittle humor. The banter — who’s flat, who’s peaked — exposes mutual insecurity …
What begins as a self‑critical, comic beat about Toby and Sam's writer's block suddenly snaps into political urgency when Josh barges in asking about the Banking Bill. His alarm punctures …
In a crowded hallway Hoynes turns a potential journalistic ambush into a public shrug. He opens with a jokey, dismissive anecdote about an Internet hoax — a speech that trivializes …
Surrounded by reporters, Vice President Hoynes parries a probing question about the cabinet meeting with flippant anecdote and a sudden, menacing joke, then flatly denies any wrongdoing and abruptly walks …
Act Two plunges the White House into crisis as the initial triumph of the Banking Bill shatters. C.J. and Sam separately approach Leo, C.J. concerned about the leak and Sam about Mallory's opera invitation. Leo, while dismissing the leak, is visibly unsettled by his daughter's new connection. Hoynes, confronted by C.J., maintains his innocence regarding the leak, asserting the dignity of his office. The true threat emerges when Josh, Toby, and Sam discover an eleventh-hour land-use rider, championed by Representatives Broderick and Eaton, attached to the Banking Bill. This rider threatens to legalize strip-mining across Montana's Big Sky country, revealing itself as a clear act of political retribution for the President's campaign victory. C.J., caught off guard during a press briefing, struggles to contain the news, confirming the rider's impact. The team descends into a heated debate: Josh furiously advocates for a veto, seeing it as a stand against bullying, while Sam argues for swallowing the rider to secure the crucial banking reforms. Toby attempts to find a middle ground, but Bartlet, expressing his disdain for these new 'enemies,' demands a solution. The act concludes with a poignant exchange between Bartlet and Leo, as the President offers counsel on Leo's fractured family life, drawing a parallel between the personal and political battles they both wage.
Sam and C.J. sit awkwardly in Leo's office waiting for his arrival; Margaret's brief reassurance only heightens the tension. C.J. presses about a Danny Concannon leak hinting at tension between …
Leo bursts into his office, cutting through the polite silence with a blunt demand that exposes the administration's priorities: containment over candor. C.J. raises Danny Concannon’s probing question about a …
In a quiet, intimate beat inside Leo's office, Sam awkwardly tells Leo that Mallory invited him to the opera using tickets that once belonged to Leo and Mallory's mother. The …
At a routine press briefing C.J. is visibly on the defensive as reporters probe an unexpected land‑use rider attached to the banking bill. She uses practiced evasions—“that’s being worked out,” …
At a tense post‑briefing exchange C.J. deflects reporters about a surprise land‑use rider, then retreats into the hallway where Danny follows and presses her about her stunned on‑camera reaction. Their …
A sudden crisis: Leo informs President Bartlet that Representatives Eaton and Broderick have tucked a punitive land‑use rider into the banking conference report to punish him for beating them in …
Bartlet, Leo and the senior staff rush into the Oval after learning Representatives Eaton and Broderick have slipped a punitive land‑use rider onto a landmark banking reform conference report to …
Bartlet slips into Leo's office unannounced and deliberately tries to manufacture companionable ease — asking Leo to stay seated, admitting he hates being alone in the Oval. The small talk …
In a quiet, intimate beat in Leo's office, President Bartlet drops the day's policy urgency and aims a scalpel at Leo's private life. After a brief attempt at casual companionability, …
Act Three intensifies the internal and external pressures on the White House staff. Mandy confronts Josh, urging him to accept the land-use rider for the sake of the beneficial Banking Bill, but Josh vehemently refuses, viewing capitulation as a sign of weakness and a victory for their political adversaries. His competitive nature fuels the conflict, as Mandy points out his tendency to escalate situations. Meanwhile, Leo, still smarting from Mallory's involvement with Sam, subtly retaliates by assigning Sam the seemingly trivial task of writing a birthday message for an assistant secretary, a clear underutilization of his talents. Toby, exasperated by the ongoing debate, expresses his personal animosity towards Broderick and Eaton, while C.J. works to contain the media fallout. She strategically offers Danny Concannon a half-hour interview with the President to quash the leak story, but Danny warns of consequences if anyone is fired, leading C.J. to realize Mildred, the minute-taker, was the source. Sam, now burdened with the birthday message and under pressure from Bartlet to make it exceptional, finds himself late for his opera date with Mallory, who confronts him about his priorities, highlighting the personal sacrifices demanded by their demanding jobs. The act ends with Mallory's frustration, leaving Sam to grapple with both his professional and personal obligations.
Mandy confronts Josh in his office, pressing the concrete policy gains of the landmark Banking Bill while Josh refuses to accept a vindictive land‑use rider that would gut Big Sky. …
Late-night in Josh's office, Mandy sells the merits of a landmark Banking Bill but then pivots into a direct personal accusation: Josh is letting his dislike of Broderick and Eaton—and …
In a tense hallway exchange, Charlie tells Sam that Leo personally asked him to write a birthday message for the Assistant Transportation Secretary. Sam’s surprised, almost wounded reaction — followed …
Charlie delivers a small, humiliating request from Leo — Sam is to write a birthday message for the Assistant Transportation Secretary, needed that night — and Sam's reaction is a …
Late in Toby's office a brittle standoff crystallizes the team's fracture. Mandy urges a political trade — sign the banking reform but publicly excoriate the strip‑mining rider and bury a …
In Toby's office at night Mandy pushes pragmatic damage control while Toby stews in principled fury. C.J. arrives and tries to broker calm; Mandy proposes trading a sit-down presidential interview …
In the Oval at night, Bartlet reads Sam's draft and, while polite, refuses to leave it as a routine task—he reframes the assignment as an opportunity to ‘really do a …
In the Oval at night Bartlet reads Sam's throwaway birthday note and instantly reframes it as something worth Sam's best — turning a small task into a test of craft. …
Mallory confronts Sam with a razor-sharp, quietly furious litany: the same man who wrote campaign stump speeches, the convention acceptance, the inaugural, the State of the Union is balking at …
Sam scrambles to justify cancelling a planned evening with Mallory to finish a supposedly small White House task: a birthday message for an Assistant Secretary. Mallory methodically enumerates Sam's high‑profile …
Act Four brings the central conflicts to a head, driving towards a strategic resolution. Josh, refusing to concede the fight, suspects Crane's involvement in the land-use rider, pushing past Toby's readiness to give up. C.J. confirms Mildred as the leak source to Bartlet, who, surprisingly, dismisses the issue, prioritizing the deal C.J. secured with Danny. A powerful domestic scene unfolds as Mallory confronts Leo about his manipulative assignment for Sam. Bartlet intervenes, delivering a poignant defense of Leo's demanding role, leading to a reconciliation between father and daughter, who decide on coffee and dessert instead of the opera. Sam, inspired by this interaction, finds renewed determination to 'nail' the birthday message. A raw, tense encounter between Bartlet and Hoynes reveals deep-seated resentments and the cost of political ambition, with Bartlet asserting his authority. The breakthrough arrives when Josh, in a moment of furious invention, unearths the Antiquities Act, realizing the President can designate Big Sky a national park, circumventing the rider. Bartlet, a national park enthusiast, embraces this elegant solution, seeing it as a victory for both policy and principle. The episode concludes with Bartlet and Josh sharing a quiet, reflective moment, acknowledging the increasing presence of 'enemies' and the complex, bruising nature of governing, as the White House secures a strategic win that redefines the political landscape.
In Leo's office at night, Leo dictates memos to Margaret—coldly deflecting a question about the Big Sky decision—and the mechanical pace of White House work is foregrounded. Mallory barges in …
Mallory storms into her father's office accusing him of intentionally saddling Sam with a pointless assignment as punishment. Leo brusquely defends the choices his job demands and bristles at being …
Mallory and Leo interrupt Sam's frustrated rewriting to tell him he’s been taken off the opera assignment and to offer a conciliatory coffee. Leo awkwardly apologizes for dumping the job …
Frustrated and perfectionistic, Sam rips up drafts and pounds his desk until Mallory and Leo arrive to tell him he's off the hook for the opera and offer an apology. …
Late at night in Josh's office, Mandy presses him to accept a politically expedient land‑use rider as the price of beating the banking lobby. Josh refuses—not out of obstinacy but …
After Mandy storms out of Josh's office—accusing him of choosing the wrong fights—Donna checks on him. Josh deflects, frantic and stubborn, searching for a solution he doesn't have. Donna's offhand …
Josh bursts into Sam's office with a sudden legal workaround: invoke the Antiquities Act to allow the President to designate Big Sky as protected federal land. The idea immediately reframes …
Late at night in Sam's office a petty domestic argument becomes a revealing power skirmish. Sam, desperate to 'nail' a birthday message, types while Toby hovers, nitpicks tone and offers …
President Bartlet's warm, erudite digression about grizzly bears and Glacier National Park humanizes the Oval late at night, until Josh's clipped '45' punctures the moment and snaps the room back …
After a light, humanizing exchange about Glacier Park and singing to grizzly bears, Josh delivers a pragmatic, late-night solution: use the Antiquities Act to declare Big Sky a national park. …