Review of In This White House
Written by Rachel
This episode introduces a new and very interesting character in Ainsley Hayes. She's smart, beautiful…and conservative. The show opens with Sam appearing on Capital Beat. Ainsley is a fill-in commentator. Both Sam and the host underestimate Ainsley and she quickly wipes the floor up with Sam.
Portrayed by Emily Procter, Ainsley is immediately very intriguing. She has a lot of nervous ticks, but it's clear that her conservatism is every bit as important to her as the Bartlet staff's bleeding hearts. It's an interesting moment when the President tells Leo to hire her. He sees her as a smart person who might have something interesting to add to the voices in the White House. Leo is a true partisan and points out that the Democrats won…they don't have to listen to the Republicans for four years. Bartlet's follow-up that half the people in the country happen to be Republicans seems to finally have an effect on Leo. By the time he hires Ainsley, I don't think it's just because the President told him to do so.
While Ainsley's character is very good and well-drawn, her friends show up as charicatures. The scene at Ainsley's apartment played like a retread of the phone scene from "The American President" and the final scene was just plain cheesy. The first time I saw this scene I was really bothered by Ainsley's "patriot" speech. I have to admit that upon additionally viewing it has grown on me, but the friends are just plain annoying.
The second plot line with President Nimbala really worked for me. I liked how the president did not always speak English. He used an interpreter and he asked what things meant. That was very well done. One of them strengths of this show is to take real situations and play them out on the screen. This episode aired just a few months before Laurent Kabila from the Congo was killed by military forces in his country. We often take for granted, even this year, the stability of our government. In most nations the election controversy between Bush and Gore would have brought a nation to its knees.
The plight of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is almost inconceivable. Millions and millions will die and for reasons that showed up tonight. First of all, they live in bone-crushing poverty. Secondly, there are difficulties getting the drugs into these nations, but most importantly, the lifestyle of the people doesn't lend itself to the kinds of drug therapies that are able to hold off the scourge of AIDS. It's a one of the greatest tragedies of our lifetime.
The final scenes of the episode caught me by surprise. After Tobey talking about what it took for Nimbala to leave his country and come I was stunned by the coup. I didn't feel like I had been taken advantage of, it wasn't a "Law and Order" twist…it was just an example of how fragile so many of those nations are and why we should never forget that. It also provided a very good way to create a sensible way for Ainsley to feel the call to join the White House staff.
In an overall strong episode, there were a couple of scenes that really stood out. I liked how Ainsley used her legal knowledge to assist CJ. It wasn't necessary…she could have certainly used it against CJ, but instead she reached out to her enemy and assisted her.
I also thought the conversation about gun control with Ainsley, Josh and Sam was one of the best exchanges I've ever seen. I've thought about it, and I think I might agree with Ainsley…so many of us who support gun control are uncomfortable with the people who like guns. I think it goes a bit further than that, but she definitely was headed in the right direction with her comments.
Finally, I have to give a shout out to Norman Borlaug. My grandfather grew up with him in a small town in Iowa and in early 1930s, Borlaug won the Iowa state wrestling championship in my grandpa's shoes. By the way, Borlaug was the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize winner for inventing a variation of wheat that could grown in many Third World nations that formerly had not been able to grow enough food to feed their people.
Copyright ©2000 by Rachel Vagts. All rights reserved.
Back to episode info