Josh leaves Donna looking dismayed as he walks into his office and finds Swimtern sitting at his desk, reading a memo. Swimtern comments, "Drag about the unemployment numbers, huh?" Josh: "You're going to be added to them if you don't get out from behind my desk." Swimtern gets out of the chair, and Josh reminds Swimtern that he has an office, and orders him not to read Josh's memo. I have a nice shiny Canadian quarter for anyone who can give me a good reason why Jesse Bradford's on this show, or this role exists at all. No, "eye candy" doesn't count -- not with that hairdo and the horrible prep-school style of dressing. ["Plus, interns get their own offices?" -- Wing Chun] Swimtern complains that he can't learn anything from Josh if he's across the street. Josh tells him: "Here's a lesson: ask permission before you do stuff." Ah, the mordant dialogue, it's a thing of beauty, is it not? Josh takes off again, prompting Swimtern to ask where he's going and whether he may come along. Josh is going to the meeting with the economic advisors, and the answer is no. But he commends Swimtern on his asking skills. Somebody please hook Swimtern up with Elsie Snuffin and let them go off and breed useless little bores somewhere. And we don't need to see any of this onscreen, either, lest anyone mistake my request. Just send them off to Mandyville and be done with it.

Will knocks on the door to the Oval Office and Jed, in the middle of a phone conversation, waves him in. Jed hangs up and says, "Parlous. It's like I was talking to John C. Calhoun." Jed cuts to the chase and tells Will that the speech announcing Russell as VPOTUS needs more "altitude." He wants it to be "loftier." He asks, "If I don't sound enthused, how do we expect the country to get excited about this guy?" Jed asserts that Will's not very excited about him. Will: "Oh, no...I mean, sure...I mean, I'm not not excited about him." Jed says that the speech reads the way Will just sounded: "Let's take the equivocation out of it."