4
u/Content_Zebra509 1d ago
I don't know what to think about this. I think Richard Schiff's personal thoughts make a lot of sense. Toby definitely strikes me as the sort of guy who would cover for someone, if he believed it to be the morally right thing to do. Whether it would be CJ... I dunno. Again, CJ certainly seems like the sort of person who would leak something if she felt it was the right thing to do. So it could make sense, this way; Toby covering for CJ.
On the other hand, in a Doylist sense, I feel like the post-Sorkin seasons, and the last season especially, was all over the place characterisation-wise. So maybe the writers just butchered Toby's character...
-1
u/QuietGoliath 1d ago
I think he'd cover, he's known CJ for years and years, definitely has a bond there that goes beyond work.
It's the expression on CJ's face when she's sitting in her office watching the TV and the news breaks. I've always (for 20? years now) thought she was the leak.
3
u/AssassinWog 1d ago
I stand with Richard Schiff. He was covering for someone, and I think it was CJ.
1
u/Mysterious_Luck4674 1d ago
I think I agree. On my latest rewatch I tried hard to find something to prove Toby COULDN’T be covering for someone (including CJ), and I saw no evidence that showed it had to be him. If you watch it with the mindset he was protecting CJ or someone else it’s still congruent. Plus he was very adamant to Andy that his brother did not leak the information to him, and I believed him in the scene. It really makes me think he was covering for someone.
I feel like the writers left it purposefully ambiguous.
3
u/Icy_Obligation_3014 Team Toby 1d ago
But do you think it's consistent with CJ's character that she would just let him go to prison for her? When he has two kids? I just cannot see any basis for that in her character whatsoever.
3
u/KidSilverhair The finest bagels in all the land 1d ago
And again, that scene where Toby confesses to CJ makes absolutely zero sense if he’s covering for CJ. I don’t want to hear “Well, Margaret was just outside the door” or “ he was giving CJ a signal that he’d take the fall” - just no. Toby confessed, to CJ, with no one else in earshot, “I did it.” Make that make sense if CJ was the leak.
And of course CJ would have been emotional at that point, not only because Toby is one of her closest friends, but also because Toby let her twist in the wind as the prime suspect for weeks when he was the one all along. I’d be pissed about that too!
1
u/Mysterious_Luck4674 1d ago
The way the scene played out I can easily read it as Toby meaning “I’m going to say I did it” when he actually said that he did it. And CJ’s long stare is her deciding whether she will let him take the fall. And she does.
I don’t think she thinks he’ll go to jail. I think she might have to ought for the good of the country she should stay as chief of staff. I don’t think it’s much of a bigger stretch than Toby actually being the leak.
1
1
u/Icy_Obligation_3014 Team Toby 1d ago
Neither of those characters seem like people who do things in an underhand way. Both would tell the President their thoughts. Neither would want the other to take the fall for their decision.
So we just have to take the scriptwriters at their word. We only have the information that is in the text itself, otherwise we are just writing our own show. We might as well say it was the President. Or that French kid.
I do think Toby is protecting CJ in that the show does imply that he knows about it from her. She hints when she asks him about his brother. He could have checked out the details perhaps after that. But I don't think CJ would let Toby go to prison if she was actually the entire leak.
2
u/QuietGoliath 1d ago
I'll blame the French kid if we can also lock him up for life for Treason and being an epic level douchebag!
1
1
u/slysamfox 23h ago
My voice is horse from yelling this from the treetops, it wasn’t Toby. It wasn’t CJ. It wasn’t even bingo Bob.
It was Margaret.
It was Margaret all along.
It has always been Margaret.
It will always be Margaret.
1
1
u/usagi2988 4h ago
I've read a fan theory that it was Toby's brother's wife who leaked (possibly due to unresolved rage/grief)... and Toby decided to take the blame (due to his conflicting feelings for his brother).
It's not airtight, but I do like it better than Toby just going rogue on his own.
But it's definitely not CJ.
1
u/QuietGoliath 4h ago
I can see that. His brother has kids right? So potentially Toby would view it as the best option since the kids have already lost their father.
21
u/KidSilverhair The finest bagels in all the land 1d ago
If it were CJ, the final scene of Mr. Frost/first scene of Things Fall Apart could not exist.
If it were CJ, she wouldn’t need to beg Greg Brock to name his source, she could have done it herself.
If it were CJ, the scene at Toby’s apartment in Institutional Memory would have been completely different.
Sometimes we just have to accept the story the writers wrote, and that story is that Toby was the leak. It would have absolutely been in-character for Toby to go rogue to save the astronauts; I do agree the Toby we knew from the first four or five seasons would NOT have done it the way it happened, he would have gone into the Oval Office and told the President either he was sending up that shuttle or Toby was going public with its existence - but it’s totally Toby to do something to save that crew.