Orange County Hotel Courtyard (adjacent to conference room; S01E16)

Sunlit and immediately adjacent to a conference room, the courtyard opens as a compact, paved outdoor room framed by a low fence, clipped shrubbery, and the hotel’s stucco façade. Daylight softens the noise of applause drifting from the interior into a distant hum; footsteps crunch across flagstones and voices fall into confidential lows. The space functions as a pressure valve — neutral enough for casual passage, intimate enough for urgent bargaining — where staffers trade moral tension for tactical compromise, and political theater gives way to private negotiation.