Will's Wake-Up Call: Tax Lesson and Intern Rebuke
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Cassie greets Will, revealing her exhaustion and establishing her status as the longest-serving intern.
Will challenges Cassie and the interns' work ethic, accusing them of not doing their best.
Will starts a detailed lecture on the progressive tax system, contrasting the administration's plan with Republican proposals.
Romano challenges Will's perspective by defending the doctor and CEO, sparking a brief ideological clash.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Not present; functions rhetorically to provide historical continuity and moral weight to the policy.
Invoked by Will as the historical anchor for progressive taxation; Lincoln's name is a rhetorical authority used to legitimate the policy.
- • Legitimize progressive taxes by tying them to national tradition
- • Deflect moralist critiques by invoking venerable precedent
- • Policy arguments are strengthened by historical precedent
- • Lincoln's legacy provides moral credibility to the administration's plan
Not physically present; politically active and adversarial in the rhetorical field.
Referenced as the originators of an alternative plan announced on Friday; their plan serves as the contrast Will must rebut in communications.
- • Frame the tax debate to favor less progressivity
- • Force the administration to defend its plan publicly
- • Different tax structure better serves economic growth and rewards merit
- • Messaging is crucial to claim political advantage
Composed and quietly proud; stressed by circumstance but outwardly steady and protective of the interns.
Enters with the interns, offers a cordial greeting, stands near the group, functions as a calm intermediary and logistical anchor while Will lectures and nods toward the board and team.
- • Shield interns from unnecessary escalation
- • Keep the meeting functional so work can be produced
- • Provide continuity between Will's expectations and interns' output
- • The team can deliver useful material under pressure
- • Clear logistics and calm leadership are necessary during stress
- • Will's criticism should be mediated, not amplified
Tired and defensive on the surface, trying to translate exhaustion into credibility; quietly flustered but determined to protect the team.
Enters early, answers Will's questions about sleep, declares she has been there the longest, defends the group's effort and absorbs Will's rebuke while visibly exhausted but steadying the interns' case.
- • Reassure Will that the interns are working hard
- • Maintain team cohesion and deflect blame away from the group
- • Signal competence despite fatigue
- • The interns are doing their best under constraints
- • Practical effort and institutional memory (her tenure) count for something
- • Will's rebuke, while harsh, is to be managed rather than confronted
Fatigued but alert; anxious to demonstrate competence and to avoid public chastisement.
A group presence: the three interns enter, take seats, and listen attentively as Will lectures, representing the junior staff who will execute the hour deadline under fatigue.
- • Absorb Will's instructions and produce usable drafts quickly
- • Avoid criticism by delivering fast, clean work
- • Understand the political framing well enough to speak about it
- • Direct, usable guidance from senior staff will allow them to deliver
- • Their late-night effort should be respected
- • Policy must be translated into succinct communicable points
Not present; functionally used as an empathetic cipher to demonstrate policy effects.
Referenced on the markerboard and in Will's spoken example as the low-wage box unloader whose combined work and tax burden illustrate the impact of competing tax plans.
- • Serve as a humanized example to make the tax math relatable
- • Highlight the need for redistributive policy to aid working families
- • Tax policy should be evaluated by its impact on ordinary workers
- • Economic reality requires multiple jobs to survive at low wages
Not present; invoked to complete the grounded, realistic economic portrait Will uses.
Referenced as the box unloader's second-job persona (night watchman) to explain combined income and the tax percentage that results, used to make the arithmetic visceral.
- • Clarify the stacked hours and low pay of working-class Americans
- • Help justify the administration's refund numbers
- • Working-class people patch together livelihoods with multiple jobs
- • Tax policy must account for total household income, not just hourly pay
Not physically present; functions as a policy touchstone to demonstrate benefits for middle-income voters.
Cited by Will as the middle-income benchmark (public school teacher) on the board, used to show comparative tax burdens between plans.
- • Serve as an example to show the administration's claimed gains for middle-income families
- • Anchor the math in a familiar public-service profession
- • Teachers represent the middle class whose tax burdens matter politically
- • Policy communication must make these numbers resonate
Not present; the doctor's imagined journey is invoked to complicate the moral clarity of redistribution.
Used as the high-income example in Will's taxonomy; Romano defends the doctor's merit, prompting a brief ideological spar over reward and effort.
- • Provide a counterpoint to pure redistributional arguments
- • Act as foil to the administration's narrative on fairness
- • High income can reflect personal sacrifice and skill
- • Policy must reckon with questions of merit and reward
Not present; invoked as a fiscal resource to be tapped, representing concentrated wealth in the political argument.
Referred to by Will as the 'uberwealthy' CEO whose marginal extra percentage would finance tuition deductibility; functions in the lecture as the payer in the policy equation.
- • Serve as a narrative device to show how policy is financed
- • Personify the political target of higher marginal rates
- • Wealth concentration enables redistribution
- • Asking the wealthy to contribute is politically defensible
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
Will uses the markerboard as the central visual aid: a hand-scrawled tax chart anchors the lecture, providing concrete numbers and categories that turn abstract policy into sharable talking points for the interns.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
Kentucky is referenced rhetorically to provide a geographically specific example (right-to-work state) that grounds Will's tax illustration in a real-world labor market context.
The OEOB basement meeting room is where the confrontation and the subsequent concise policy lecture occur — a cramped, workmanlike space that channels late-night urgency into focused, tactical work suitable for rapid message development.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
The Republican Party's recently announced tax plan is the rhetorical antagonist in Will's lecture: their policy choices define the contrast the White House must explain and politically rebut to protect its narrative about fairness and redistribution.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Will's lecture on tax policy transitions to his briefing on the bombing, showing his adaptability under pressure."
Key Dialogue
"WILL: Are you the group leader?"
"CASSIE: I've been here the longest."
"WILL: Minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Times 40, times 52, that's $10,712 a year, which is what you make unloading boxes in a right-to-work state, say Kentucky. He can't live on that, so he puts in another 30 hours as a night watchman, bringing his total to $18,746 a year. He pays 15% in federal income tax or $2,811.90. Public school teacher. $41,724 is the national average. He's paying 28% or $11,682. And, finally, a doctor making 150,000 is paying 36% or $54,000 in taxes. 15%, 28%, 36%. It's called a progressice tax, it's been around since Lincoln. Under the plan the Republicans announced on Friday, the box unloader stays the same, the schoolteacher stays the same, the doctor gets $4,500 back. Under our plan, which has sort of been announced already, the box unloader gets $321 back, the schoolteacher gets $1,251, the doctor stays the same and to finance the tax deductability of college tuition for the chidren of the box unloader and the schoolteacher, we go to a fourth group, the uberwealthy, and ask a CEO making $16,400,000 a year to give us another one percent, taking him up to 41. Bring me whatever you have done in an hour. That's what I'm going to work with. Thanks."
"ROMANO: The doctor got into medical school."
"WILL: Hmm?"