In other news, the automatic recount
in the 27th State Senate District election
is in its third day
and is set to release its final tally results this morning.
The automatic recount was triggered
by a final vote count on Election Day
that had Senate Majority Leader Dede Standish
leading upstart environmental candidate Payton Hobart
by only 23 votes,
well within the margin
that triggers a hand count under New York State law.
Statements from both the Standish
and Hobart campaigns
insist that their candidates will emerge the victor.
We turn now to Kyle Bernier,
who is out front of Standish headquarters,
where Payton Hobart is expected to meet
with Dede Standish and election board officials any moment.
It's a tie.
- No fucking way! - You have got to be kidding!
I am not kidding.
The New York State Elections Board is not known
for its collective sense of humor.
We take our jobs very seriously.
Very seriously.
How is a tie even possible?
Well, it happens when the same number of voters
- cast a ballot for each of you. - I know! I am not a fucking imbecile.
What she means is, she was up 23 votes.
Where did those votes go?
Clearly, they never existed.
That tally was preliminary
and obviously an overcount in your favor.
It's quite common for the initial count to not be
totally accurate.
- So, count them again. - We did.
Still tied: 45,626 votes apiece.
Well, count them by hand!
It was a hand recount.
Two machine recounts and a hand recount, all with the same result.
The board of elections has officially certified this is a tie.
That decision is final.
You know what? You know who probably didn't even vote?
James. I bet he stayed home out of spite. Bet you a million bucks.
I busted my fucking ass,
and I am tied with a fucking theater major?
After six years of working together, he couldn't have shown up on the one day?
Who the fuck with half a brain in their fucking head...
So
Let's talk next steps, hmm?
Anna.
Under New York State law, we have two options,
but both campaigns have to agree.
We redo the election in ten days,
or we flip a coin.
We flip a coin?
I am going to throw myself out that window.
Strictly speaking, it does not have to be a coin flip.
We pored through the historical records,
and it's actually kind of funny
because you could decide it any way you want.
In 2006,
there was a Democratic primary for the 37th House of Representatives,
and Bryce Edgmon won that
with a coin flip.
- Heads. - Yes!
Fuck!
In 2017,
there was a tie in a race for Virginia House of Delegates,
so they put both names into film canisters,
- and then they pulled it out of a bowl. - David Yancey.
And in Indiana in 1891,
a tie for county treasurer
was decided by a footrace.
Thank Providence!
I'm going to, uh, give you a moment to discuss.
I want a revote.
I am not throwing away a 30-year political career
for some frigging coin toss.
Dede, you gotta stay calm.
Let's talk about the trend lines.
A month ago, we were up 30 points,
then ten.
Now, we're tied.
He's trending up, we're trending down.
In ten days,
he's gonna beat you.
But flipping a coin...
Let's do a revote, okay? We can win this thing.
- Well, maybe. - Maybe?
Maybe we could win a revote, but it's probably less than a 50-50 chance.
- What? - We got out every possible vote for you,
we still couldn't beat her.
And we'd struggle to repeat that turnout. I mean, most of your voters are young.
Young people don't like voting, and what they really don't like
is voting twice.
You think we have better odds if we flip a coin?
Yeah, kinda.
Maybe we could get them to use, like, a weighted coin.
One that always comes up heads.
No. I'm not cheating.
So, here's what we would like to suggest.
Let's honor this moment in political history
with a commemorative coin.
One that my campaign is happy to be responsible for fabricating.
We'll put my face on one side, Dede's on the other.
We'll use that coin, leave the rest to chance.
That's bullshit. You think we're actually gonna let you make the coin
that decides the election?
God, that is just unbelievable!
Well, let's just do a revote. We'd love to do a revote.
- Okay, that's fine. - Great.
- Fine. - Wait! That's not an official answer.
Hold it, I just have to text here.
My grandson has croup. Oh, God.
"Plenty of fluids,
steam."
And
send.
Oh, so sorry. He is the apple of my eye.
Okay.
I propose
rock paper scissors.
What?
- Really? - Really.
I mean, let's be honest. You're not gonna win a footrace
or flipping a cheater-Payton coin.
Let's do the old roshambo!
Best two out of three.
- Right now? - No, no, no, no. Friday, at noon,
so we have enough time to invite the camera crews and the press.
Make it a big event.
I mean, this is so ridiculous,
but let's make it a thing.
Come on! It'll be fun.
Yay, democracy, yay, yay, yay!
Okay. Deal.
Deal.
There's an angle.
How do you know?
Hadassah would never suggest something as out of the box as rock paper scissors
unless she had an angle. She is a calculating
mmm... merciless operator, and I know that
because I'm a calculating, merciless operator, and I would never suggest
a game of chance to decide an entire election
unless I knew I could game the system.
We should hire a private investigator and a team of psychiatrists
to do a psychological profile on Dede Standish to determine
which option she's most likely to play.
She strikes me as a scissors kind of gal.
Mm-mm. Mm-mm.
We don't have time for any of that, okay?
We can't analyze the player, we need to analyze the game.
How do we do that?
We need to talk to an expert.
Okay. Uh, hi, Ricardo.
You're... You're looking really good. It's good to see you.
Uh, did you lose weight?
We heard that you were doing theater in here.
That's nice.
Guys and Dolls.
But we had to cancel the show 'cause the guy playing Miss Adelaide
shanked the guy playing Nathan Detroit.
Probably not the first time something like that's happened.
How's Infinity?
She told me she was gonna come visit, but
she must be real busy.
She's... She's great.
She, um... She wrote a book.
We'd be happy to get you a copy.
On tape, if you prefer.
Now she's busy, uh, saving the planet.
Enough of the chitchat.
We need your help.
Teach us how to win at rock paper scissors.
Roshambo.
You came to the right place.
On the inside, roshambo is life.
Everything's decided
through roshambo:
Property disputes,
settling beefs.
Winner!
There's even underground games that the guards organize
for gambling purposes.
Oh!
You wanna know something?
I like being in prison.
Out in the world, I'm nobody.
Just some punk
with no job and a cool mustache.
But in here,
I'm like a duke
or a lord
or something.
You know why?
Because I figured out the secret to always win at roshambo.
There is no strategy
to rock paper scissors.
- It's a game of chance. - Tell that to the researchers
of the China State Key Laboratory for Theoretical Physics.
They wrote a paper on how humans make decisions
in non-competitive,
- noncooperative, strategic actions. - English, Hadassah.
They had a few hundred students play 60 games of rock paper scissors each
to see if any patterns emerged.
And, guess what?
They did.
I cracked the code.
When I first got here,
I played it real cool and quiet.
Roshambo!
Hands in pockets, no eye contact,
never say yes to a favor.
But what I did do is watch.
And that's when I started noticing patterns.
Men almost always start with a rock.
Of course they do.
It's their solution to everything: Just bash it into submission.
But assuming Payton starts
with rock,
that means we win round one,
but this is best two out of three.
Well, here's where it gets juicy.
Research found
that if a player wins a round
they're more likely to play the same play the next round.
So, if you win with paper,
you're feeling good about yourself, and you wanna keep feeling good,
so you unconsciously choose paper again.
Okay, so what happens to the loser's play after they lose?
If they lose two in a row, they get fixated on what's beating them,
so they switch to the thing that will beat what just beat them.
What?
Dede, this is so simple.
If you lose the first round,
you switch to the thing that will beat what just beat you.
If you win, you should switch to the thing
that would win against the thing that you played the first time.
I'm sorry, can you say that last part again, more slowly?
If you win with rock,
play scissors.
If you lose with scissors,
play paper.
Jesus!
You guys wouldn't last five minutes in prison!
This is brilliant, but there's only one thing
that could throw a wrench into this master plan.
Mmm?
What if Payton knows about this study as well?
- What is he doing here? - I called him.
This is a campaign emergency,
and I wanted everyone involved to be here to figure out what to do.
Well, I fired him. For cause.
Sorry I went behind your back and talked to the Times.
I made an executive decision, which, considering the way
the race tightened on Election Day, was probably really wise and productive.
Yes, one that you only made because I called you out
for not being aggressive enough.
I don't know if I wanna work with someone who can be baited into
an emotional action that easily.
Yes, because we are all just usually so emotionally stable.
Enough. Skye, you said it was an emergency.
If you think it's serious enough to warrant James being here,
then James should be here.
Thank you.
An hour ago, I got a visit from Infinity Jackson.
She gave me this.
Is that an official ballot box?
It's still locked.
Oh, my God. This is a stolen ballot box.
Being in possession of this is a federal crime, okay?
We have to get out of here so we can maintain plausible deniability.
Wait, wait. How did Infinity get this?
I stole it.
Well, we stole it.
We being my secret climate action group
called the Climate Underground.
I wanted to call it the Weather Underground,
but apparently, the name was taken
by some jerks who don't even care about climate change.
Anyway, I came up with the ballot-stealing idea all on my own.
I called it "Operation Steal our Planet
from the Boomers Who are Trying to Kill It."
Mmm, aren't code names supposed to be, like, shorter than that?
- Yeah, like, an acronym or something? - Or be clever?
Can we get back to the crime that could put us in jail for a decade?
Payton,
Dede Standish cannot win this election.
We are in a climate emergency,
and you are the only candidate that can stop it, so...
I thought to myself, "Infinity",
how can you stop her from winning this election?
I mean, you could assassinate her,
"but that feels extreme even under these circumstances."
Yeah, I agree with that. Assassination is never the answer.
Huh.
Then I realized,
this is a local election.
It'll be decided by just a handful of votes.
What if we made sure
that a bunch of Standish votes were never counted?
It could throw the election
to you.
How do you know that is full of Standish votes?
I found the polling place with the highest percentage of old voters.
I know that place.
We canvased it. When we asked what they thought of the environment,
their response was, because their grandchildren never visit,
they hope to leave behind a hellhole for them to live in.
I read this study by these Canadian scientists
that said old people are more easily distracted
because a part of their brain called the locus coeruleus is deteriorated,
so I knew it wouldn't take much to draw their attention.
Also, if there's one thing
that old people cannot resist,
it's mimes.
There are probably 300 ballots in this box.
That's more than enough to give the election to Dede.
This is bad.
Oh, God, this is really bad.
Worse than when you didn't have cancer,
- and I didn't tell anyone. - Th... That bad?
It's that bad, Infinity. We are all going to jail.
I'm not.
I'd turn on all of you in a heartbeat.
You saw that election board.
They told us they don't have a sense of humor, right?
Don't think you're gonna find stealing their ballot box funny.
In fact, I think they'd probably find it definitively unfunny.
Payton, we are at war.
The biggest, most important war of all time.
Every single day counts.
Two years with you with the power to do something
could be the difference between life and death.
Our planet is being murdered by people like Dede Standish.
Okay? This is
not a crime.
It's self-defense.
Okay, so? What are we gonna do?
Like it or not, we're in it now.
We could crack it open and count the votes,
and if it helps us, we turn it in anonymously,
and if not, we burn them.
Okay. Now that we've considered
the most dishonest version of what we should do,
what are some other options?
We could just
leave it on the doorstep of a police station,
like an unwanted baby.
And risk them using DNA and fingerprints to find out who did it? Mm-mm.
Or we could do a full Frank Capra integrity play
and hold a press conference and tell the truth.
Yeah, and then I go to jail, so...
Oh, God, I need time to think.
There is no time. We're in possession of stolen ballots.
Don't you think I know? Do I look like an idiot?
I'll look after it.
I'd like to regain your trust.
If you'll let me.
I don't wanna know where you're keeping them.
Nobody talks to each other or about this until we can fix it.
Astrid, I never...
I never thanked you for not causing any trouble for Payton
before the election.
It's probably just pregnancy hormones.
That's not true.
Our reaction to your baby news was cruel.
- I'm sorry. - That's fine.
- It happens to me all the time. - It's not because I'm pregnant.
Well, it is, but.
It's because...
I don't like the parents that this baby is gonna have.
No, you and Payton will be great parents.
Pretty good ones, at least.
You'll definitely be better than mine.
I don't like who we've become.
What politics has turned us into.
Payton is exactly the same as he's always been.
What it's turned me into.
I'm selfish,
I'm unkind,
I'm willing to cheat,
to... wreck lives, if necessary.
How do you know that's not just who you are?
Politics hasn't changed you.
It just so happens to be the perfect job
for your particular moral and ethical skill set.
I got into Harvard.
Payton didn't.
I was the one who told him to run on the climate.
I was the one encouraging him to play fair.
I've deferred my entire life to him.
Taken on his worst qualities to serve
his dreams,
and ego.
I can't argue with you there. You've been his bitch since I met you.
Thank you for always speaking straight to me.
My father always said my coldness was my greatest asset.
Screw Payton.
Screw everyone.
We should just get out of this town and never look back.
Running away isn't gonna help anything.
Running away was the best thing I did with my life.
When I got far enough, I realized I wasn't running from anything important,
I was running to the life I actually wanted.
Is the fetus going with him?
I don't think so.
You know
uh, this may sound strange, Hadassah,
but even though Marcus lied to me, I still feel terrible for him.
He's losing his wife, his home,
and his young, gay lover, all in the span of a few days.
He'll probably lose his job, too.
Writing those papers for those students.
Please. He has tenure.
He could be murdering cats on the Internet
and he'd still keep his teaching job.
- Oh, God. - Look, it's the right thing, Dede.
Politically, Marcus was gonna drag you down
like a tweed-blazered anchor.
But, personally,
he's a liar!
And he clearly leans very heavily
towards the gay end of the Kinsey spectrum.
Clearly.
I am,
so tired, Hadassah, of the game.
You can't be tired of the game.
That's like saying you're tired of breathing.
Or you're tired of the chicken parm at Elio's.
You are the game. You've been defined by the game
for four decades.
- What are you gonna do? Take up golf? - No.
Or play Rummikub at... at the nursing home?
You gonna join the board of a bullshit start-up?
Oh, God, just saying those words gives me the creeps.
Oh, so does staying the course.
You know I love governing.
It's the campaigning part of the job that I never liked.
And one of the only things that kept me going
was that I didn't have to worry about running again. God.
Oh, my God.
Ugh.
It's a new world, Hadassah.
Since AOC,
no incumbent is safe.
We may win this,
but we've shown weakness.
No one is ever going to let us run unopposed again.
You were excited.
You were excited about running
- for vice president. - Yes, of course I was!
But you and I know what makes that different.
We would be busting our asses,
flying around the globe on Air Force Two.
We would be negotiating giant deals with major leaders.
I would be the first woman
to be this close to the presidency.
I just... It's a little different
than busting our asses
up in Albany
to try to pass some fucking bill
to get some light bulbs
- in some fucking street lamps. - No.
You're not giving up yet. You'll miss it too much.
The... The... The fame, the respect, the driver.
The luggage tags
that say "Senate Leader Standish" on them?
And, woman to woman, I won't let you.
Look at those old farts in Congress.
Nothing but big, swollen prostates and Brooks Brothers suits.
You don't see them walking away because they're tired.
No! They hang on to power,
even if it means wetting themselves at the State of the Union.
- Take a lesson. - You...
Hadassah
this is gonna be good for you.
Yeah.
Just think
how a new candidate could recharge you.
You...
You've been with me for so long.
A fresh start will be good for you.
But I don't wanna work for anybody but you.
I wanna keep going until we go over the cliff.
Like Thelma and Louise.
I wanna win this,
you know I do,
but no matter what,
I'm sorry.
It's the last race I'm gonna run.
Made any progress?
I'm just playing out every possible scenario in my mind.
Like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, but every ending sucks.
To be, or not to be.
Exactly.
Oh, and the worst part of this is, we didn't even make this mess.
It was thrust upon us.
Maybe.
Nobody asked Infinity to steal that ballot box.
But
maybe we created an environment of moral ambiguity
that made her think that doing that for us was okay.
Alice, this is hard enough without you blaming us for it.
I'm leaving...
Manhattan, this campaign
you.
I think that maybe
we are bad people.
No, that's not right.
I think that I've
become a bad person.
Because you're with me?
Yes.
I don't think that you're a bad person.
I think that you're indifferent
to morality and ethics.
I think that you struggle with these kinds of ethical conundrums
because you think that you're supposed to,
but you only choose the side of light when it means
that you'll still probably get what you want.
That's not true.
Do you want examples?
When we go to the movies, you put your jacket on the chair next to you
- to make sure no one else takes it. - Uh, excuse me. Is someone sitting there?
Oh, yeah, I think so. He just dropped his coat and ran out.
I think he's at concession stand.
Seriously?
That's the evidence that I'm morally bankrupt?
That I don't want to share an armrest?
It's the principle.
We are members of a community in a theater.
You are putting your comfort
over the comfort of every other member.
You also lie.
A lot.
You're always telling people you can be somewhere, even if you can't.
And then you lie about why you can't make it.
Yes. Yes, no, Rabbi, I know I promised to attend Sukkoth services
in exchange for your endorsement. Here's the thing.
Some shiksa waitress served me real bread instead of gluten-free bread
at breakfast today, and I'm in the worst gastrointestinal distress,
and... yeah. Uh-huh. Yes, exactly.
Serves me right for being born Ashkenazi.
Okeydokey, thank you for understanding.
That's not lying, that's politics.
You promise everything,
and then you embellish when you can't follow through.
For God's sakes, Alice, people expect me to lie to them about that stuff.
How about the fact that this office has been stealing Wi-Fi
from the Indian restaurant downstairs since we moved in?
We're running on a shoestring budget here. Okay?
If we win, I'll report the Wi-Fi to the FEC as an in-kind contribution.
There's always a rationalization for everything.
Don't you see that that's why Infinity thought
it was okay to steal the election for you?
That she was just following your lead and rationalizing away any guilt?
Just like you did when you put her life in danger in high school.
Just like you did
when you didn't turn around to look at me when we passed each other in the hall.
Is that what this is all about?
Have you really not forgiven me for that yet?
You know that's the biggest regret of my life.
It's that.
It's also the fact that I have been there
for every one of those things.
I'm an even worse rationalizer than you are.
I... I have turned to the dark side
and lost any concept of a moral code for anything.
I mean, at least you can tell yourself you're doing it for your dream.
Our dream. Our dream.
No, your dream.
I don't even know what mine is.
Okay.
So then, let's figure out what that is.
Right? And then... And then, I promise you,
I will do everything in my power to make that come true. Okay?
I owe you that.
After the election.
Yeah, of course.
And what if
my dream interferes with yours?
Are you willing to put yours on hold to make mine come true?
But why would we have to do that?
I'm asking if you would.
Yeah, yes, yeah. Absolutely, yes.
Okay?
I'm not some rabbi looking for you to come to temple
in exchange for an endorsement.
Okay. Yeah, just go. Just walk out.
You got practice leaving men as things are about to get serious.
I left Thad for you!
You're the one who wanted to bring Astrid into our bed
so that you could shut her up, okay? You're no better than I am!
You're right.
But leaving you is the only way I can be certain.
Goodbye, Payton.
I didn't come all the way across the country
to watch you starve yourself.
I'm in a constant state of nausea.
I've never experienced this complicated a moral dilemma.
Or is it an ethical dilemma? I can never remember the difference.
Ethics are the rules that social systems provide us,
and morals are the principles which we govern ourselves by.
That's why I'm struggling.
Am I confused about what I'm supposed to do
because the culture says that it matters that I do the right thing,
or does doing the right thing
actually matter to me?
Who cares?
I care, Mom.
This is a defining moment in my life and career.
Every politician has his or her crossroads
when they finally have to choose one path or the other.
So do I tell myself that, no matter what I have to do,
what rules I break,
or people I have to kill,
backroom deals I have to cut,
I'm still a white knight because I'm fighting for what's right?
Or am I a man of core values?
Am I a champion of truth and integrity
who's willing to sacrifice what's good for what's right?
Am I ethical or moral?
Or neither?
You know, am I Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton?
Or Lyndon Johnson?
Clinton was reelected.
Ethics says you should turn this ballot box over
and explain what happened.
There will be an investigation,
Infinity will probably get arrested, and they will count the votes.
I'd lose and be tainted, and I'd send my friend to jail.
- What's the moral thing? - I told you.
Morality is how we govern ourselves.
You can throw that ballot box in the East River,
but can you live with the consequences to your conscience?
What if I hear the ballots from down there constantly?
Like that guy from The Tell-Tale Heart?
You once said that my ambition frightened you.
Is that what you're talking about? Did you always know that I...
Had the capacity to live
outside the normal boundaries of ethics and morals?
When you were a little boy,
you used to love to steal cookies and candy from the pantry.
Your father never really noticed any of you,
but he was a true prude about sweets.
I'm not sure if it was
that he was worried about obesity or he was shorting sugar stocks
or maybe it was that Katie Couric documentary,
but he was adamant.
I outwardly agreed, but then looked the other way
when you did your pilfering.
Are you saying that you think it's okay to steal under certain circumstances?
I would watch you
after you took a sleeve of Oreos or a bag of Swedish Fish,
and for the first hour or so,
you would be paranoid and agitated and upset.
At first, I thought that you felt guilty over being dishonest,
but after a while,
when you realized that you hadn't been caught,
you would start to relax.
Not only relax, you would get a skip in your step.
- Sugar high? - No.
Because I think, for you,
the best part was realizing that you had gotten away with it.
You are who you are, Payton.
I think you've known exactly what you're going to do
with that ballot box from the moment you saw it.
Your struggle isn't deciding what you're going to do.
It's accepting who you are.
Congratulations on winning your election, Mom.
I'm very proud of you.
Are you gonna eat anything?
I'm gonna get stoned and have a bath.
- We're gonna do nothing about the box. - Are you sure?
Alice left me.
All I have left is my career
and my dream,
so I will make it to the White House.
Even if I have to lie and cheat
and... burn the world down to get there.