Sleepless in the White House

---

---

"I don't remember having to explain to Italians that our problem wasn't with them but with Mussolini. Why does the U.S. have to take every Arab country out for an ice cream cone? They'll like us when we win."

Toby (Richard Schiff)

---

Regular viewers of the West Wing must have recognized Adam Arkin's character when he appeared in the opening scene of the episode that first aired on this night in 2002, "Night Five." He was the psychiatrist who treated Josh (Bradley Whitford) for his post–traumatic stress disorder brought about by the assassination attempt that was the cliffhanger conclusion of Season 1.

Arkin (and the audience) assumed he had been summoned to the White House to help Josh through a personal crisis. But, as he was led around the White House, it dawned on him that there was more to it than that. A lot more.

He wasn't there to see Josh. He was there to see the president (Martin Sheen).

The president was having trouble sleeping. He hadn't slept in four nights. Arkin's character wasn't a specialist in sleep disorders, but the president knew he had helped Josh, and the president was dealing with some ticklish matters at the time — the recent disclosure of his multiple sclerosis and his re–election campaign were foremost among them — so he had decided to consult the psychiatrist. He believed Arkin's character could be counted upon to be discreet.

They went through potential factors — physical, environment, lifestyle — and eliminated everything but psychological factors.

While they were zeroing in on the source of the problem, there were other issues going on. C.J. (Allison Janney) was trying to find a reporter who had gone missing and was feared dead in the Congo. Toby the speech writer (Richard Schiff) was facing brushback over a speech he had written that the president was to deliver at the U.N. One of Toby's harshest critics was his ex–wife, a liberal congresswoman, over the phrase "Islamic fanaticism."

In other words, an average chaos–filled week at the West Wing.

In their conversation, the president and Arkin got closer to identifying the root of the president's sleeping issues. Turned out that he had unresolved issues with his father. It had been a tumultuous relationship and some issues had been stirred up by the president's conversation with Toby on the night of the Iowa caucuses.

Toby had told him that he was still seeking the approval of his father, who was long dead and had been abusive to his son in life.

---

---

Arkin wrapped up the session and assured the president that he was ready to help in any way he could — but it was clear that more sessions would be needed.

In the seasons ahead, there would be other occasions to explore the president's relationship with his father — which I always felt produced some of the series' most impressive and insightful exchanges — but that was due to existing conditions with which viewers were aware. There were some times, though, when the West Wing seemed to be prescient, exploring issues that weren't issues when the episodes were filmed. The West Wing has been off the air for more than a decade, and some of those issues have emerged.

It is time to give credit where credit is due.

This episode, for example, mentioned Islamic fanaticism, which is a red–flag phrase for some folks today, but 15 years ago, with the 9–11 attacks still fresh in everyone's minds, I don't think it received nearly the same response.

Perhaps the story of Sam (Rob Lowe), White House counsel Ainsley Hayes (Emily Procter) and a temp in the West Wing would have. When Ainsley came in one night in a gown she had worn to a Washington party, Sam remarked that she could "make a good dog break his leash." The temp took offense and told Sam so. Sam spent the rest of the episode trying to prove that he was not a sexist; I don't recall a reaction to the dialogue, but it was designed to make people think. I know it made me think.

Sexism, though, has been an issue in this country for decades while Islamic fanaticism is something of a newcomer to the debate.

Love Is a Journey

---

---

"I have a feeling that God is going to give you a free pass on this one. Go for it."

Father Brendan (William H. Macy)

---

"The Sessions," which made its debut at the Sundance Film Festival on this day in 2012, was a thought–provoking movie for me.

And, no, I am not talking about thoughts provoked by the sight of Helen Hunt in the nude, but I will make this observation on that subject — for a woman approaching her 50th birthday, Hunt was astonishingly beautiful when she made the movie. In fact, I think she would be considered astonishing for a woman of any age.

But even though "The Sessions" was about sex, that wasn't exclusively what it was about. The sexual part was more clinical than erotic.

John Hawkes played Mark O'Brien, a poet who had been handicapped since having polio as a child. The audience learned early that he wasn't paralyzed. His muscles simply didn't function as they normally would, and he had to rely on an iron lung to survive. He sought the help of a sexual surrogate (played by Hunt) in losing his virginity.

---

---

I guess the first thought I had about this movie when I first heard about it — and hadn't yet seen it — was that, while I was sorry about his condition, his desire to lose his virginity was nothing new. Boys have been looking for ways to lose their virginity — and agonizing over the pursuit of their first time — since time began.

Consequently, I regarded it as an outgrowth of the belief that somehow every person on this planet is entitled to have every possible experience that there is — and that one has been cheated somehow if denied that. But a realistic appraisal of the world and life in it has to be that those who do get to experience everything that life has to offer are few and far between.

A very small percentage get to be rich and/or famous. Most people don't get to play professional sports or perform in a rock band. Many people don't even get to live long compared to what most people would consider normal life spans. That's the way it is. Life isn't fair. All the people I have known who have died had things they wanted to do but never did. Yet I frequently hear it said when someone dies that it is lamentable that the person never did X or Y or Z — as if that were an exception to the rule.

But when I saw "The Sessions," I realized that Hawkes' character wasn't worried about losing his virginity the way adolescent boys do. It was his way of reclaiming part of his life that was taken by polio. He also sensed that he would not live much longer (in fact, he lived more than a decade after the events of "The Sessions," but still died at the young age of 49). That lent a sense of urgency to his quest.

He may well have been driven as well by the desire to experience all the things that able–bodied people do, but one did not get that sense from the movie. It was simply an experience he wanted to have — even though one of his assistants told him that sex was "overrated but necessary" — and, in keeping with his Catholic upbringing, at first tried to have it the conventional way with a marriage partner. When that didn't work out, he pursued the sex therapist route.

An intriguing side character was Hunt's husband, played by Adam Arkin, whose love for his wife was evident and his jealousy over his accurate perception that she was developing an emotional attachment to her client could be painful to watch. He knew what his wife did for a living, that it involved sexual contact with other men, and the sensation the audience got was that he usually was not threatened by her business relationships.

But her relationship with Hawkes was, for whatever reason, different.

---

---

What can I say about William H. Macy's performance? I've always liked his off–the–wall work. I saw him being interviewed on one of the late–night shows once, and he observed that, in his movie roles, "I never get the girl — but I am the most likely one to stuff her in a trash bag." You've gotta like a guy with that kind of sense of humor.

His character had a nice sense of humor in this movie as well, but he wasn't a homicidal maniac. He was Hawkes' spiritual adviser and friend.

---

---

In fact, it was his character who inspired the headline I have given this post. Near the end of the movie, he told Hawkes that he had prepared a short speech "for the forlorn" that he had planned to deliver to revive Hawkes' spirits but decided he would not when he found that Hawkes was faring better than he had expected. Hawkes encouraged him to go ahead, and Macy said, "Love is a journey."

When Hawkes asked him to continue, Macy confessed, "That's it. I told you it was short."

I liked the review Roger Ebert wrote in October 2012 when the movie had its limited theatrical release: It "isn't really about sex at all," Ebert wrote. "It is about two people who can be of comfort to each other and about the kindness that forms between them. This film rebukes and corrects countless brainless and cheap sex scenes in other movies. It's a reminder that we must be kind to one another."

Frasier's Obsession

---

---

Frasier (Kelsey Grammer): That's it. I'm quirky. I'm delightfully quirky.

Niles (David Hyde Pierce): Do you realize that your delightful quirk has brought your life to a standstill?

---

Warning for those of you who are mathematically challenged (or "innumerate" as one of my graduate school professors liked to say in an effort to make that condition equivalent to illiteracy): I'm about to throw some numbers at you.

The episode of Frasier that first aired on this night in 2001 was called "The Two Hundredth." It was actually about the 2,000th episode of Frasier's radio show. It was also the 200th episode of the Frasier TV series.

None of that had much to do with the story.

The story was on a suitably psychiatric theme — obsession. The number of episodes was merely used as the base for the story. It was also, I suppose, a rather creative way of observing the milestone for the TV series.

The episode began with about three minutes' worth of Frasier doing his radio program. In syndication, this part was cut out to make room for more commercials. That was a shame because it featured a very special guest, Microsoft co–founder Bill Gates.

There really wasn't anything particularly special — or, for that matter, particularly relevant to the rest of the episode — about Gates' appearance. It was an opportunity to kind of poke some fun at Frasier and his well–known quirks.

In syndication, the episode begins with the part that came next. Frasier, Martin (John Mahoney), Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and Daphne (Jane Leeves) were going out to dinner to celebrate Frasier's 2,000th radio episode.

As he was preparing in his room for the evening, Frasier opened the doors of what appeared to be a sweater cubby — but was actually where he kept cassette recordings of his shows. He had tapes of every show he had ever done, and he deposited the recording of that day's show in its slot in the cubby. He glanced at the shelves filled with cassettes, smiled his satisfied smile, then closed the doors and started to walk out of his bedroom.

Then he stopped with a quizzical look on his face, went back to the cubby, opened the door and gasped. Then he summoned the other members of the household to his room where he interrogated them. Apparently, one of the tapes was stored upside down — and, upon closer inspection, the tape was not one of his shows but a collection of the greatest hits of Hall & Oates.

Turned out that Daphne was the culprit. She had been having trouble with her boombox and wanted to experiment with it to determine whether the problem was the tape or the boombox, but she only had the one cassette so she borrowed one of Frasier's to test the boombox — and discovered that the boombox, not the tape, was the problem. Frasier's tape got caught in the heads of the boombox and was ultimately ruined.

Frasier tried everything he could to replace it. He first tried the station's archives, but he soon learned that tapes were recycled at the space–strapped station. Only tapes of recent programs were in the archives, and no tape of the show, which would have been about 5½ years old at that time, could be found.

His next step was to seek the help of his listeners — so, using one of his favorite words, Frasier told his listeners he had a "boon" to ask of them. He explained that his collection was missing a tape, and, although he realized it was a long shot, he wanted to see if any of his listeners happened to have a tape of the show.

At first, no one did, but then the station called Frasier at home, where he had been in a kind of funk, to tell him a caller had called in saying that he had a tape of the show.

---

---

The caller (played by Adam Arkin) turned out to be an obsessed fan who had a wall filled with Frasier's photos and an answering machine recording that played Frasier's catchphrase — "I'm listening."

After spending some time with the fan, Frasier decided that he wouldn't take the tape after all, that he would leave his collection incomplete. He also worried about the influence he had had on the fan. The purpose of the show, he told the fan, was to help people lead better lives, "and I'm afraid I've hurt yours."

When he returned to his apartment, he told Daphne and Martin that he had not brought the tape home with him after all.

"Tonight," Frasier said, "I saw an example of how an obsession can take over a man's life. I don't want to be that man."

Good advice. Of course, Frasier proved incapable of following it.

Arkin was nominated for a 2002 Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series.