Commercials. We return to the giant igloo in the icy wastes of [North] Dakota, where men and women -- wrapped in furs and seal skins -- argue about the name change in order to keep warm. The chairman, tired of all the nonsense, politely calls the meeting to a close for the evening. Those tribesmen who survive the frigid night will return in the morning to continue the discussion. As folks are leaving, the chairman turns to Donna and tells her she did a good job, handling questions with poise. I don't think revealing to the crowd that she's just an underling there to read a prepared statement was a particularly smart thing to do, but she was polite. The chairman asks him how "his old friend" Sam is doing. Donna says he's fine. The chairman clarifies that he's referring to Sam's screw-up last week with the attack ad. Donna repeats that he's fine. The chairman says he just wanted to make sure that there's no deeper meaning to the fact that they didn't send Sam to this meeting. Donna shows great poise in not laughing in the guy's frostbitten face. She tries to find a diplomatic way of explaining that this little discussion is so very, very unimportant to the senior staff, but the chairman already understands that. Donna tosses out a load of baseball metaphors indicating that Sam's still a starting player; he just "took one in the teeth." The chairman tells Donna to tell Sam he said to "get up off the dirt."









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