Diesel's Out — Logistics, Politics, and a Rough Ride Home
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Donna devises a plan to call a volunteer to pick them up at a nearby gas station while Cathy and Cap arrange to hitch back to the farm for diesel.
Sy arrives and offers Cathy and Cap a ride back to the farm, but bluntly states he didn't vote for Bartlet, underscoring political disconnection.
Donna calls for a volunteer while Josh attempts to maintain morale, but Toby's expression reveals his annoyance at their predicament.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Masked worry — using levity as a defensive mechanism while feeling pressure about timing and optics.
Josh sits on the tailgate, trying to keep morale light with banter; he issues blunt logistical orders to Donna and attempts forced cheer to counter rising tension while watching Toby's sour reaction.
- • Keep the team's morale steady so panic doesn't spread
- • Ensure a practical solution is found quickly so they can make the plane
- • A confident front helps a team manage crises
- • Logistical problems can be overcome with quick, decisive action
Practical indifference—willing to help but politically disengaged from the candidate.
Sy drives up, offers a pragmatic lift back to the farm, then undercuts any political pleasantries by admitting he won't vote for Bartlet—courteous in action, blunt in politics.
- • Provide neighborly assistance to those stranded
- • Maintain personal political independence and honesty
- • Helping someone doesn't require political support
- • Bartlet is not someone he'll vote for
Not present—serves as off-screen pressure and locus of staff responsibility rather than an emotional participant.
President Bartlet is referenced by the staff as the candidate they serve; he is not on-scene but his campaign's schedule and reputation frame the urgency of the actions taken.
- • (Implied) Maintain campaign momentum and public image
- • (Implied) Keep scheduled appearances to support re-election effort
- • The campaign's schedule is sacrosanct and must be defended
- • Staff should resolve on-the-ground problems to protect him
Professional urgency—calm on the surface but clearly anxious about the ticking clock and the need to protect the campaign's schedule.
Donna immediately takes control of logistics: on her cellphone she calls the State Office to dispatch a local volunteer, translates the diesel problem into a contingency plan, and directs others calmly but urgently.
- • Arrange pickup by a local volunteer so staff can reach the plane on time
- • Mitigate further schedule slippage and avoid political fallout from a missed stop
- • The State Office can and should dispatch local resources quickly
- • Clear, fast logistics can prevent small problems from becoming campaign disasters
Slightly embarrassed and concerned—wants to be helpful and minimize the staff's inconvenience.
Cathy, the local, calmly reports the truck's problem, points out a nearby gas station, and proposes hitching back to her farm to fetch diesel—apologetic but pragmatic as she arranges her own solution for the group's problem.
- • Get the truck refueled quickly by returning to the farm
- • Help the staff continue their schedule without prolonged delay
- • Local knowledge and resources (the farm) are reliable solutions
- • Campaign staff are unfamiliar with rural logistics and will need help
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Cap's red pickup is the primary physical cause of the event: its soy-diesel engine sputters and fails on the rural road, stranding the staff and locals in its bed and cab and forcing immediate improvisation.
Donna's campaign site phone functions as the staff's lifeline: she uses it to contact the State Office and initiate a volunteer pickup, turning local goodwill into organized campaign movement and attempting to bridge the rural problem to campaign resources.
Sy's black pickup arrives as an ad-hoc rescue vehicle: it offers and provides a lift back to the farm for Cathy and Cap, removing two local actors from the stranded group and accelerating the group's fragmentation.
Soy diesel is the unseen antagonist: its absence in the red pickup's tank creates the mechanical failure that catalyzes the scene, demonstrating how a small material scarcity escalates into a political and temporal problem.
A local tow truck is mentioned as a potential fix but is deliberately ruled out by Cathy; its invocation underscores the range of rural remedies and the group's selective, time-sensitive choices.
The Bartlet campaign plane exists as an off-screen temporal object: its scheduled departure creates the ticking clock that frames Donna's urgency and the staff's improvisation—an absent but decisive presence in the scene.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Unionville is an absent but operative location in this event: the campaign's missed stop, referenced to justify urgency and measure the cost of delay; it functions as the political waypoint whose loss would carry consequences.
The straight rural road is the literal stage of the breakdown: open, isolated, and far from immediate help, it forces the characters into improvisation and exposes the logistical fragility of campaign movement through agrarian spaces.
Cathy and Cap's farm functions as the local solution: the source of diesel and the social anchor to which locals will return, it represents practical, on-the-ground resources outside institutional campaign control.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
The State Office appears as the campaign's local logistical arm: Donna calls it to dispatch a volunteer to pick up the stranded staff at a nearby gas station, turning individual neighborliness into an organized response and illustrating the campaign's reliance on dispersed, local networks.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
No narrative connections mapped yet
This event is currently isolated in the narrative graph
Key Dialogue
"DONNA: All right, can I suggest this: we've missed Unionville. We've got a little over an hour till the plane leaves and we can make it if we call a volunteer and have them pick us up at the gas station. You guys can have the tow truck meet you there."
"SY: Didn't vote for him the first time. Don't plan to the second time."
"CATHY: We're out of gas."