The Best Of The West Wing
Looking back, the stars and creators of The West Wing single out their favourite episodes and moments from the show’s seven seasons.
Looking back, the stars and creators of The West Wing single out their favourite episodes and moments from the show’s seven seasons.
Lowe: Sam had a way of capping scenes. Like in the pilot, "This is bad on so many levels." That was my audition scene and at the end of it, after everybody laughed. Aaron turned to the executives and said "I told you that scene was funny." I love the pilot, I think the pilot is probably the best first episode in television ever.
Schiff: I went to Aaron without any idea that this MS storyline was happening and I said, "Hey, if we ever do an episode where Toby is trying to figure something out that's fairly important, I have this image of him sitting in the office bouncing a ball. I think we should do an ode to Steve McQueen in The Great Escape." He went, "That's a great idea," and the next thing I know he writes what I think is the best episode in terms of writing, which is 17 People.
Sorkin: By the middle of the second season we were running over budget. I was asked by the studio to write an episode that would be inexpensive to we could make up some ground. No locations, no new sets, no guest cast and no extras. That's how I wrote 17 People, which turned out to be one of my favourites. I liked working with those kinds of limitations. It felt like a play to me and that's where I'm most comfortable.
Janney: One of my favourite episodes was the Thanksgiving one where I had to deal with the turkeys. I was never the 'A' story line in those days, but Aaron always gave me something very funny to do, even if it was some practical joke war with Charlie. There was always something silly to balance out the seriousness in each episode. If there were any barnyard animals, they went to C.J.!
Lowe: I loved Emily [Procter] and I thought her character was one of the best characters that ever appeared on The West Wing. Her introductory episode, where she and I are on Capitol Beat together, is one of my favourite sequences of all time. I remember, she was desperate to stay on The West Wing. She very much did not want to go, but they literally made her an offer she couldn't refuse. She was amazing and I was very sad to see her go.
Schiff: In Excelsis Deo became one of the all-time favourite episodes, not just because of Toby, but the whole episode is quite stunning; it just fits together like a perfect mural. I remember the character deepening and defining himself during that episode in a way that was very memorable for me.
Malina: Occasionally, in order to save money and to come in under-budget, a particular episode is shot only in a couple of very specific locations, so you're not leaving the studio – what they call a 'bottle episode'. There was one, very cleverly done, where the White House is on lockdown; I think there's an anthrax scare. It was called No Exit. All my scenes are with Richard Schiff; we're stuck in one room and while the characters had a certain tolerance for each other they also had a desire to get the hell out of that room as quickly as they could. I particularly enjoyed shooting that episode.
Whitford: I love the spit-take that happens in the episode where I meet Joey Lucas. Wearing waders. But I think the most amazing episodes are where the stakes are high. I loved all the stuff with Mary-Louise Parker. It's like watching a rugby ball bounce – you don't know where she's going to go. But she's wonderful.
Schiff: The one where we get lost in Indiana was so much fun to do; we spent a week in Pennsylvania shooting that. The basic DC prejudice against more rural settings, Josh making cracks about the locals and Amy Adams taking offence… All of that stuff.
Lowe: In terms of just selfishly for Sam, I love the episode that got me the Emmy nomination, which is Somebody's Going To Emergency, Somebody's Going To Jail. Every once in a while, Aaron would write a free-standing episode that was hermetically sealed in terms of its narrative, with no dangling through lines that you needed to follow. He didn't do many of them, but when he did they were pretty special and that was one of them. It's just a brilliant construction and it works on ten different levels; it was a real showcase for the character. For me that was the highlight of doing the show, for sure.
Schlamme: I remember driving once at four in the morning after shooting a scene between John and Martin in the Oval Office, I think it was Take This Sabbath Day. It was two adult men and there was a moment in it where we found this little nugget that just enhanced the scene. I felt like, "God, if we hadn't found that moment, that scene would've been good, but it wouldn't have been as good." I remember driving home being so excited about my job, that I got to work with those two men doing that scene. I literally remember being on the 405 and kind of hitting my steering wheel with excitement, going, "I'm so excited!" You know, and thinking, "I'm alone in this car, this is stupid."
Hill: Well for Charlie himself, it's Shibboleth. That's where President Bartlet had me running around looking for knives. And finally when I couldn't understand what was happening and I'm kind of at my wit's end, President Bartlet gives Charlie the knife that his father gave him, which was the Paul Revere knife. I really love that episode because it really took Charlie and President Bartlet from employer-employee and translated that to being a father-son relationship. That's when Charlie really became a part of the President's family. And for Charlie, whose mother had been gone and his father wasn't in the picture, it's just he and his sister, it was really powerful.
Sheen: Aaron Sorkin had this sense of humour. There was one scene, I was frustrated to the point of literally banging my head on the desk in a scene. I remember saying, "You do not seriously... this is a metaphor? You don't really want to see me banging my head on the desk." "Oh yes," he said, "I want to see it." The courage to go there – here you have this dignified world leader banging his head on the desk in the Oval Office. He made us human – in the most stringent of protocol, he would always pull a fast one.
Schlamme: In Noël, when Brad and Janel come out at the end and the carollers with bells are playing, that was the night Aaron's daughter Roxy was born. We had those carollers do a traditional Jewish folk song with a crane shot in front of the White House and then sent it to him. That is what I remember most about that episode. Athletes have mentioned this before: it's not necessarily the game, it's the locker room. When I think about the episodes, the process is so much more a memory to me than the result.
Dee Dee Myers: We did that whole episode, where C.J. has root canal and somebody else has to brief. That was fun for me, because it was payback. Everyone always thinks they can do better than the press secretary, whoever's doing the briefing, people are sitting there in their chairs going, "Well, I would've answered it like that." So C.J. can't brief because she's got this "woot canal" and Josh briefs in her place and he makes a complete hash of it. He creates a monetary crisis, the head of the Fed is calling up. I thought, "yeah, you guys think it's so easy? Alright, Josh Lyman, take that!"
Sheen: The latin scene in Two Cathedrals would have to be the defining scene for me. That was kind of the turnaround that led to the catharsis and his wanting to run again. But it was also his Job-like experience, you know? It's a very Tevye-type moment, he's talking to God and he's raging "how could you do this to me?" And so it had that kind of flavour: a man struggling with his faith who has an image of God's responsibilities and God wasn't living up to them. That is my favourite Episode of the whole series. It was very deeply meaningful to me personally.