Plot
When it emerges that Santos is ahead in the California polls and tied nationally, Donna rushes to Josh's hotel room to share the news. In his excitement, Josh impulsively kisses Donna and they end up kissing until Santos bursts in on them. Everyone is on a high. The Democrats gleefully learn that Vinick has a cold; however, this is being kept quiet by Vinick's aides. He's under a lot of pressure now to lean further to the right. The religious conservatives are ready to take the reins, especially as the campaign is now falling behind in the polls. Vinick is reluctant to lose his trusted advisors, Bruno Gianelli and Sheila Brooks. Sheila later shocks Vinick by resigning, telling him to work with Bruno and the GOP team to get to the White House.
C.J. finds out that romance could be blossoming between Donna and Josh, but has no idea that Will and Kate have embarked on a relationship, despite their lamentations that they are "really bad" at hiding it.
The President summons Santos, Leo, and Vinick to the White House, to brief them on the Kazakhstan situation. Before meeting with the candidates, the President has a private meeting with Leo to discuss the situation, after which Josh asks Leo whether everything is okay. Leo replies: 'yeah,' the character's final line.
Bartlet meets with the candidates and informs them that they cannot wait until after the election to send in troops, and that whoever wins the election will inherit the situation. Vinick muses aloud that he will lose his tax cuts, and Santos' education plan is off the table. Vinick also makes good points about how it's one thing to send Russia and China "back to their corners", but the idea of having a stable democratic government in Kazakhstan will take at least a generation.
Donna and other staffers have drinks at the hotel, which Josh joins in on. Donna says she's turning in but subtly slides her room key across the table towards Josh. She departs, and Cindy notices the key before Josh can take it. The key is returned to Donna and she makes meaningful eye contact with Josh.
Read more about this topic: The Cold
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“There comes a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)