Original airdate: May 14, 2006
Written by: John Wells (10)
Directed by: Christopher Misiano (35)
Synopsis
- Farewells and new beginnings abound as Inauguration Day arrives, with the Bartlet administration coming to an end and the Santos administration getting started.
The final episode of The West Wing starts calmly and quietly, with dawn breaking over a cold Washington, DC, and the President-elect sipping coffee as he looks out over the capital. It's Inauguration Day, and it marks not only the beginning of a new administration, but a fond farewell to the past seven TV seasons of President Jed Bartlet.
As the day rolls on, there are more little moments about remembering the past as the future takes over. The President takes some time to say farewell to all the background staffers who did the work in the West Wing, giving us all a chance to do the same ourselves. This scene was actually the very last scene filmed for the show, so Martin Sheen was also saying goodbye to all these actors as well, which makes it even more moving to see them all standing there, watching and saying goodbye themselves.
The actual scenes of the transfer of the Oval Office are bittersweet: it's the end of an era we've watched for seven years now, but it's also a reassurance that the government and the presidency will continue to move on. Not to mention the impressive scene of fast-moving workers swapping out the furniture and decorations of one President to instantly replace them with another in the matter of minutes, including their official portraits. They roll in and roll out like a well-oiled machine, switching everything over in the Presidential office as the inaugural events take place at the Capitol.
Helen (helping Matt get his tie on): "'Come on, it'll be an adventure.' That's what you told me when you wanted to run for city council and I didn't want you to. 'Come on. It'll be an adventure.'"
Helen: "You okay?"
Matt: "Sure."
Helen: "We could make a run for it, you know. Catch the first plane out of Dulles, head down to Panama."
Matt: "Maybe Uruguay is nice."
Helen: "Southern hemisphere, it's summer down there."
Matt: "Cheaper housing."
Helen: "You speak the language."
Matt: "Ha! What about the kids?"
Helen: "We'll send 'em a postcard."
Helen joshes Matt about wearing long underwear instead of a coat for the outdoor ceremonies, and just before they step onto the platform, with the emotions and the stress about as high as anybody is ever going to face in their lifetimes, there's this little exchange:Matt (smiling): "They'll be pissed."
Helen: "Man, I hope Janet Spragins has her TV on."
Matt: "Who?"
Helen: "Senior year, she beat me out for the last varsity spot on the swim team."
Matt: "Guess what."
Helen: "What?"
Matt: "You win."
Helen: "Though she did get Don Vogel to take her to the prom instead of me."
Matt: "We'll call it even, then."
Helen: "Naw, pretty sure Janet had to put out so Don would take her."
(they both smile as Matt chuckles)
There's just something about the Matt and Helen dynamic that I really love.A fitting act of mercy for an old friend who has done so much together with Jed. And it's also comforting for us to see CJ's reaction when she hears the news, as the shadow of a smile crosses her face.
CJ, of course, as well as the President, had been furious with Toby over his leaking of the classified military space shuttle to the press (CJ, particularly, because they had been so very close for so many years and then not only did he betray his responsibility to national security, he also let CJ twist in the wind as the prime suspect for weeks). But Toby did have his reasons (to rescue astronauts stranded and in danger on the International Space Station), and the final meeting we saw between CJ and Toby in Institutional Memory seemed to mend some of the rifts between them. It would be hard to imagine a final episode of the series without Toby getting a bit of forgiveness (not to mention we saw in the flash-forward of The Ticket that future Toby is apparently teaching at Columbia University and most definitely not in prison, at least three years in the future).
It's the napkin Leo slapped on that easel back in the Governor's office some ten years earlier, the first step in the process that led to Jed Bartlet's campaign for President, his election, and his two terms in office. A memory of Leo, Jed's dear friend and confidant, who passed away on election night just ten weeks earlier.
Let Me Take A Moment
Let me just say, thank you to everyone who's stopped by this blog, whether I directed you here from Reddit or Bluesky for a specific topic, or whether you've been following along for some time. Tracking the path of every episode in this series, one of the best-written television series ever, with some of TV's best performances to boot, was a joy for me and, I hope, worthwhile for you.
While I watched (most of) the entire series when it aired between 1999 and 2006, and had owned the complete DVD set for quite a few years, I'd never actually gone through the entire series until the slow-developing car wreck of the electoral campaigns starting in late 2015 that culminated in the election of Donald Trump in 2016. I went through the entire series on Netflix starting in late 2015, I think, finishing up sometime around the 2016 election - and as I've said before, that rewatch was actually the first time I'd ever seen Season 5 between 7A WF 83429 and Gaza.
When I started this project way too long ago (I first thought about starting a blog-along rewatch in February 2017, mostly inspired by Joshua Malina and Hrishikesh Hirway and their podcast The West Wing Weekly that had debuted the previous March), I never actually dreamed it would take me this long to finish. The podcast put out an episode nearly every week, with a few breaks in there, running through the entire seven seasons of the series by January, 2020 (so a couple of months short of four years). I knew I'd never be able to put out a blog every week - I was still working my job as an air traffic controller until 2018, I did some theatre gigs, I became a grandparent, there was a global pandemic, we experienced an unprecedented weather disaster in eastern Iowa, life was, you know, life - but I did have a goal to at least cover the entire series in less time than it actually aired.
Of course, I missed that goal, lol. My report on the first episode, Pilot, was posted in late April of 2017 (and then I immediately had to post a second entry to catch up on things I'd forgotten to include). And now I'm completing the series with its finale in early April of 2025 - nearly eight years exactly to cover the seven seasons of The West Wing. My technique has grown a lot over those years, my design of the blog finally took solid shape eventually, and my system of watching/taking notes/finding screenshots/researching took a while to come together. But I'm pretty proud of how things developed in the end.
Thank you again, reader. I mainly did this for me, but I always had you in mind, too. I hope you found something interesting or thought-provoking or new over the course of this blog.
Tales Of Interest!
- The opening title card is black text on a white background, significant for the final episode. Nearly every other West Wing episode opens with the title in white text on a black background. The only exceptions are:
Abbey: "Who in his right mind decided that January would be the best time of year to hold an outdoor ceremony north of the equator?"
Jed: "Jefferson. Adams. Franklin."
Abbey: "They should have lined them up and shot 'em."
Jed: "That's what King George had in mind."
Abbey: "January 20?"
Jed: "They got a few things right."
President: "Nancy, how's your mother doing?"
Nancy: "She's fine now, Mr. President."
President: "Tell her I'm looking forward to seeing her again soon, would you please?"
Nancy: "Absolutely, sir."
As a forward-thinking series should, the final scene has Abbey and Jed on the Presidential aircraft, flying back to New Hampshire after his job as President has been handed off to Matt Santos. Abbey asks, "What are you thinking about?" and Jed replies, "Tomorrow."
(In the current era of streaming and binge-watching, it could be fitting to have Jed reply, "Two Absolut martinis up, another Dewars rocks" in order to fade right into the beginning of Pilot, to start the whole story over again.)
Quotes
Margaret: "We're supposed to leave our credentials at the front desk when we exit the building, and they've asked that we vacate our parking spaces by 2 pm."
CJ: "Not a problem, I walked today."
Margaret: "Really?"
CJ: "Yes, I often walk."
Margaret: "You do?"
CJ: "Sometimes I walk. I'm gonna walk a lot more when I get back to California."
Margaret: "Los Angeles being a pedestrian nirvana."
-----
President (to Will and Kate, as he's choosing which governor to talk to first): "Pick a number, two or four."
Will: "Two."
Kate (simultaneously): "Four."
I love the President's quick glare here |
-----
Helen: "Didn't a two-hour inaugural address kill a President once?"
Matt: "William Henry Harrison, but, uh, you know, he was 68 and, uh, he refused to wear a coat."
Helen: "You refuse to wear a coat."
Matt: "But I'm wearing long underwear."
Helen: "Oh."
-----
Steve: "President Bartlet pardoned Toby Ziegler today. Any comment?"
CJ: "Nope."
Steve: "You have an opinion?"
CJ: "Sure, I do." (she exits)
Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)
- The Chief Usher, Curtis Schaefer (played by Van Epperson) is seen again, preparing the White House staff for their move out of the building. We saw him previously meeting with Helen and CJ in Transition.
- Leo's daughter Mallory (Allison Smith) returns, with a farewell gift for the President from Leo's things.
- Good old Ron Butterfield (Michael O'Neill), head of the White House Secret Service detail, is seen. It's kind of weird, though ... oddly in his recent appearances he's been on Santos' detail, not President Bartlet's, so who knows what his actual assignment is at the moment.
- Here's the flat-top gray-haired actor who can be seen in the background of literally dozens of West Wing episodes, here referred to as "Ray" as the President makes his farewells.
- Ed and Larry get their personal goodbyes from the President.
- As does Nancy, who is played by Martin Sheen's daughter, Renée Estevez.
- It's Ginger (Kim Webster)! She nearly disappeared from the show after early Season 5 (since Han she had only been seen in Impact Winter), but she's here for the finale.
- A glimpse of Republican candidate (and future Secretary of State) Arnold Vinick on the inaugural podium.
- Another little Easter egg sees series creator (and writer of nearly every episode over the first four seasons) Aaron Sorkin as one of the attendees on the inaugural platform.
- We saw some conflict over who would take over as the Democratic Speaker of the House in Requiem. Now we discover it was indeed Rep. Mark Sellner (John Getz) who won the speakership, the one who vowed to stand in the way of Matt's lobbyist and funding reforms.
- Sam returns to the White House ("Home sweet home," he says). You may note while we see Donna, Ronna, Bram, and Annabeth in the group, there's no sign of Louise or Otto.
- There's reporter Steve (Charles Noland), trying to get one last answer out of CJ before she leaves the press room for the final time.
- Toby's old Spaldeen shows up, one of the last items left in Will's office. Toby bounced it off the wall to help him think (most famously in 17 People), and he left one behind for Will when he took over as Communications Director.
- The Josh and Donna storyline, stretching all the way back to the beginning (Janel Moloney has said she played Donna as being secretly in love with Josh from the start), looks to wrap up with them as a couple. Also CJ and Danny as a couple, which we already saw will happen in the future in The Ticket, as CJ tells Josh she has a flight to California the next morning to meet him.
- Will keeps getting asked about leaving a note in the flak jacket for the incoming press secretary. As we saw in Access, there is a real-life tradition of White House press secretaries leaving notes in a "flak jacket" (actually a men's vest with a bulletproof lining) for their successors. The tradition started in 1977 when Ron Nessen, President Ford's press secretary, left a note for the incoming Carter staff.
- We see President Bartlet using a cane, which reminds us, of course, of his multiple sclerosis. That was first revealed in He Shall, From Time To Time ..., was the subject of a congressional investigation and eventual censure in Seasons 2 and 3, but only popped up at dramatically important times (Election Night, for one, but then disappeared again until A Change Is Gonna Come and the trip to China). After Impact Winter, President Bartlet used a cane intermittently, but hadn't been seen with it much prior to this episode. And, naturally, Abbey's emotional "Jed ... you made it. You're still here" in the car after the inauguration reflected her concern about his condition perhaps making it impossible for him to carry out that second term, or (as she feared), perhaps ending his life before then.
- The President is also wearing a Notre Dame fleece jacket. Martin Sheen asked that Jed Bartlet be a graduate of Notre Dame before agreeing to take the role.
- CJ mentioning Sam's return to the White House when she's talking with Mallory reminds us that Sam and Mallory were kind of a thing in the early seasons. By Galileo Mallory had moved on to a professional hockey player but Sam was still a bit smitten with her.
- The move to name Eric Baker as Vice President/Arnie Vinick as Secretary of State (finalized in The Last Hurrah) comes up in the discussion between CJ and Josh.
- Charlie going to law school has been a priority of President Bartlet's pretty much ever since Charlie came to work for him in A Proportional Response. Also, the gift of the Constitution and the emotion between the two emphasizes how Charlie was the son Jed never had.
- The ongoing military operation in Kazakhstan is mentioned, not only by the Cardinal at the mass Matt and Helen attend, but also as a topic of the Joint Chiefs discussion Matt brings up with Josh and Sam. That storyline stretches all the way back to the mysterious Mr. Frost bringing up Kazakhstan with Vinick in Message Of The Week.
- The issue of Toby's pardon stretches back to his leaking of classified information about a secret military space shuttle in order to save astronauts trapped on the International Space Station. The ISS emergency started in Things Fall Apart; Toby admitted to the leak in Mr. Frost; he was fired and walked out of the White House in Here Today; and we've seen him dealing with plea bargaining/trial dates throughout the latter part of Season 7. The notion of a pardon was brought up by Andy, his ex-wife, in Institutional Memory, and we see the final decision in this episode.
- There's photographs of Zoey and Ellie on the Oval Office desk as the movers pack up.
- Chief Justice Evelyn Baker Lang is announced as administering the oath of office to Matt to swear him in as President. Lang, of course, was played by Glenn Close in The Supremes, the episode where President Bartlet made a historic move to put both a liberal and a staunch conservative on the Supreme Court at the same time. Close was either unavailable or too expensive for the scene, leading to actress Ann Ryerson standing in.
Not Glenn Close |
- Colonel Gantry remains the pilot of Air Force One (not technically Air Force One in this episode, as Bartlet is no longer President; it'd have a "Special Air Mission" callsign). I believe we first heard the name as Lieutenant Col. Gantry in Manchester Part I and The Two Bartlets; there was a Col. Weiskopf flying the plane in Angel Maintenance; and then Gantry returned as pilot and a full Colonel in Disaster Relief.
- Of course the napkin Mallory returns to Jed from Leo's things dates back to Bartlet For America, the napkin Leo slaps on the easel in Governor Bartlet's office to inspire him to run, and was given back to Leo by the President on the Christmas Eve Leo was testifying before Congress about Bartlet's MS coverup ("That was awfully nice of you").
- WHAT'S NEXT moment: As Matt settles into the Oval Office, he asks, "What's next?" leading into a discussion with Josh about his upcoming priorities. It's a very nice callback to President Bartlet's continued use of "What's next?" throughout the series, first seen in Pilot.
DC location shots
- Blair House, the residence just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House and where the Santos' were staying before the inauguration, is seen in a couple of shots.
Blair House during a state visit from Queen Elizabeth II in 2007 |
Matt and Helen on Pennsylvania Avenue outside Blair House |
- The archway where the motorcades arrive at "the Capitol" is actually at the EPA Building along Constitution Avenue. This location has been used several times before in the series.
(That's the Smithsonian Museum of American History across the street) |
View of the entrance to the archway from Constitution Avenue |
- CJ walks out of the northwest gate of the White House along Pennsylvania Avenue.
They Do Exist! It's The Real Person, or Thing
- The founding fathers Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin are brought up by Jed in a conversation with Abbey - even if his beliefs on what they did were faulty.
- We hear references to C-SPAN and CNN, and see the MSNBC logo once again.
- We hear that Helen and Matt are going to attend services at "Holy Trinity" before visiting the Bartlets in the White House prior to the inauguration. There is a Holy Trinity Catholic church in Georgetown, less than three miles from the White House.
- Not only do we hear that singer Gloria Estefan and poet Jimmy Santiago Baca are going to perform at the inauguration, we actually get to see Keb' Mo' sing America The Beautiful during the event.
- Helen tells Matt she's not dancing to You Can Leave Your Hat On at the inaugural balls (a song written by Randy Newman and made famous by Joe Cocker).
- John F. Kennedy and his famous inaugural address ("Ask not what your country can do for you") comes up a couple of times. William Henry Harrison and his death in office only a month after being inaugurated also is brought up, in connection with Matt not wearing a coat for the inaugural address.
- We see the book Society Must Be Defended by Michel Foucault on the bookshelf as the movers are packing up the Oval Office.