Location

Colorado

Floodwaters surge through Colorado's rivers and streets, captured on the police station TV as sirens wail and rescue boats cut churning currents. Toby points to the deluge swallowing homes and roads, a massive crisis that drowns smaller stories like the staff's arrest. Rain lashes valleys, levees strain, and emergency crews battle rising chaos, yanking national attention from the hostages and campaign woes.

3 events

3 rich involvements

Detailed Involvements

Events with rich location context

S4E12 · Guns Not Butter

Cloakroom Count: One Vote Short

Colorado functions as an offstage political map location invoked to explain why certain strategic moves (like presidential appearances) were necessary and why losing a vote there would be electorally costly.

Atmosphere

Invoked as a fragile electoral prize—tense with implied risk.

Functional Role

Political battleground referenced to justify precautionary strategy.

Symbolic Significance

Represents electoral vulnerability and the tangible stakes behind abstract legislative fights.

Mentioned rhetorically as a state to be protected Serves as shorthand for campaign geography and convention gains

S4E12 · Guns Not Butter

Walkabout Plea and the Call: Accessibility Meets Crisis

Colorado is invoked verbally by Josh as the off-site origin of the lost vote; though not physically present, it functions narratively as the trigger that transforms the local scene from optics to emergency, embodying the geographic source of political defeat.

Atmosphere

Not physically present but rhetorically charged as the site of a political betrayal and the cause of immediate alarm.

Functional Role

Off-screen catalyst: the state whose senator flipped and thereby upends the administration's legislative math.

Symbolic Significance

Represents the fragility of electoral alliances and the way single-state politics can reshape national events.

Mentioned only via phone as a political locus of consequence Evokes distance and the dispersed nature of legislative politics

S4E12 · Guns Not Butter

Driveway Crisis — Colorado Breaks the Coalition

Colorado is invoked verbally as the specific source of the defecting vote; as a referenced location it becomes the proximate cause of the emergency, collapsing geographic politics into immediate operational consequence.

Atmosphere

Not physically present but atmospherically charged — invoked with reproof and alarm.

Functional Role

Political signifier and origin of the legislative setback that drives the event's urgency.

Symbolic Significance

Represents the fragility of electoral coalitions and the unpredictability of swing-state politics.

Mentioned in terse, loaded dialogue ('Colorado happened') Transforms the mood from ceremonial to crisis with a few words

Events at This Location

Everything that happens here

S4E12 · Guns Not Butter

Cloakroom Count: One Vote Short

Josh slips into the Republican cloakroom, puncturing the room's guarded formality with historical banter to buy an informal moment with opposing staffers. The tone flips when Josh quietly probes for …

S4E12 · Guns Not Butter

Walkabout Plea and the Call: Accessibility Meets Crisis

During a public walkabout President Bartlet warmly greets and shakes hands with onlookers, embodying presidential accessibility. A Hispanic woman thrusts a blue envelope toward Charlie — a personal plea that …

S4E12 · Guns Not Butter

Driveway Crisis — Colorado Breaks the Coalition

A routine walkabout photo-op collapses into a political emergency when Josh calls C.J. to report they are "a vote down"—Colorado has defected. The President is still shaking hands as Charlie …