Fabula
Location
Location

Triborough Bridge

Bartlet pictures the Triborough Bridge closed tight, trapping diplomats who parked illegally in snarling backups that stretch from Manhattan across the East River to Queens and the Bronx. Horns blast in mounting frustration as engines idle under gray urban skies, engines revving futilely against barriers that turn a simple drive into hours of gridlocked fury. The staff chuckles at his gleeful curse, the imagined shutdown puncturing Oval Office tension with raw comic bite.
2 events
2 rich involvements

Detailed Involvements

Events with rich location context

S4E10 · Arctic Radar
Parking‑Ticket Diplomacy: Bartlet Breaks the Tension

The Triborough Bridge is named as part of Bartlet's imagined trap for towed diplomats; it's used to heighten the comedic sense of gridlocked punishment.

Atmosphere

Invoked as claustrophobic, traffic-choked punishment in service of a joke.

Functional Role

Rhetorical infrastructure conjured to make the imagined consequence feel viscerally punitive.

Symbolic Significance

Represents bureaucratic and geographic distance from elites' protected status.

Imagined traffic noise and honking Sense of bridges and choke points
S4E10 · Arctic Radar
Winners Want the Ball: Bartlet on Discipline and Double Standards

The Triborough Bridge is evoked in Bartlet's rant as closed to compound the diplomats' punishment; the image heightens the minor grievance into city-wide chaos used for comic effect.

Atmosphere

Absurdly punitive and humorous; hyperbolic civic fury.

Functional Role

Rhetorical escalation — a vivid urban punishment to shame privilege.

Symbolic Significance

An infrastructural obstacle turned into symbolic retribution.

Bridge closure imagery Horns, jams, and idling engines implied

Events at This Location

Everything that happens here

2
S4E10 · Arctic Radar
Winners Want the Ball: Bartlet on Discipline and Double Standards

President Bartlet explodes at what he perceives as a gendered double standard in the Navy's handling of the Vicky Hilton case, storms into Leo's meeting to hurl historical examples (Eisenhower, …

S4E10 · Arctic Radar
Parking‑Ticket Diplomacy: Bartlet Breaks the Tension

During a fraught Oval Office exchange about whether the White House should intervene in a Navy disciplinary case, a UN call interrupts. Bartlet deliberately takes the line and launches into …