Havana, Cuba
Detailed Involvements
Events with rich location context
Havana is the geopolitical anchor for the crisis — the staff invokes it to frame Castro and international context, reminding the room that humanitarian response carries diplomatic risk.
A distant, charged presence that sharpens caution about escalation.
Geopolitical reference point and rhetorical threat.
Represents the source of exile and Cold War‑tinged political friction.
Havana is the origin point of the refugees; mentioned to frame culpability, desperation, and the geopolitical context that makes this more than a local event.
Implied desperation and political oppression as cause of exodus.
Point of origin that supplies moral and geopolitical context
Represents the external regime (Castro) whose policies produce human displacement.
Havana is the source location for the Naval Intelligence numbers Bartlet reads aloud; though offstage, it supplies the humanitarian crisis that reframes Oval conversation from internal politics to life-and-death policy.
Implied urgency and tragedy — storms, overcrowded rafts, and loss are evoked by the numbers read in the Oval.
Origin of the humanitarian emergency that catalyzes executive action.
Represents human desperation and the geopolitical reality that punctures Washington's insularity.
Havana functions here as an offstage policy locus: Sam's notes about Cuba are invoked by Leo to create urgency and tether the lighthearted Oval exchange to a real, distant geopolitical concern that demands presidential attention.
Absent physically but carries an implied weight of geopolitical urgency—distant, consequential.
Policy referent; an external pressure imposing a timeline and seriousness on the Oval's domestic moment.
Embodies the way faraway crises intrude on intimate presidential choices.
Events at This Location
Everything that happens here
C.J. opens by hunting for a line to deflect media mockery about the President literally riding his bicycle into a tree; Leo answers with sarcastic, deflective humor, exposing the senior …
Senior staff assemble as word comes in that 1,200–2,000 Cubans are sailing toward Miami. What begins as flippant banter about the President's bicycle turns urgent: Sam shocks the room by …
After a tense, private reckoning among staff, President Bartlet storms back into the Oval and snatches the room's moral center. He tells a wry, pointed anecdote about a rosary-shaped tomato …
Late in the Outer Oval, Bartlet deliberately shrugs off the White House timetable — leaning into a small, domestic pleasure (a women's softball game) as Leo and Mrs. Landingham try …