Pilot - TWW S1E1

Pilot

Original airdate: September 22, 1999

Written by: Aaron Sorkin (1)

Directed by: Thomas Schlamme (1)

Synopsis (from NBC)

• The entire White House staff bustles with activity when it's learned that the President injured himself during a bicycle accident, and his absence becomes a factor as chief of staff Leo McGarry must juggle a host of impending crises, including a mass boat lift of Cuban refugees approaching the Florida coast and the reaction of conservative Christians to a controversial televised comment by deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman. Meanwhile, Sam Seaborn, the trouble-prone deputy communications director, unknowingly spends the night with a call girl and then makes another critical error during a children's White House tour.

And now, the adventure begins. Looking back at Pilot from nearly two decades in the future, you can see some of the stuff told as legend about The West Wing. The idea that the show was conceived as a show focusing on the staffers working in the West Wing, with only an occasional appearance from the President, really comes through here. For one, the President's name isn't mentioned one time in this episode. For another, he only appears late in the fourth act (although with one of the great entrances in TV history, bursting through the door leaning on his cane, quoting the First Commandment as "I am the Lord your God, thou shalt worship no other god before me.").

A couple of other things really date the episode, the most obvious one being the use of pagers. I think even by late 1999 pagers were losing out to cell phones as "keep in contact" devices, but you see pagers with CJ, Josh, and of course Sam and Laurie mix up their pagers, which becomes a big plot point. Perhaps the fact that Aaron Sorkin actually came up with this script a couple of years prior to it getting on air helps explain the whole pager thing. Also, a lot of the intended tension built up in the opening scenes (with pagers going off everywhere and calls coming about "POTUS") is dependent on the fact that the non-staffer characters (and the audience) aren't supposed to know what POTUS means. Sam's line "He's not my friend, he's my boss. And it's not his name, it's his title. President of the United States" doesn't have quite the oomph these days when pretty much anybody who has an interest in politics already knows what POTUS stands for.

Anyway, digging in. I think this is a tremendous pilot, well-written and well-crafted in the way it introduces the characters. And our first meeting with each character is so, well, educational, I guess. We first see Sam at a bar talking with a reporter while eyeing a woman across the room. Leo is at home complaining about a mistake in the New York Times crossword. CJ is on the treadmill (the one hour that's hers, 5 to 6 am) chatting up a handsome fellow on the next treadmill over, until she falls off the machine while reading her pager. Josh is asleep in his office after dealing with fallout over his TV gaffe. Toby is on an airplane, feuding with the flight attendants over whether or not his laptop and cell phone (see, he's got a cell phone!) will actually affect the electronics of an L-1011 airliner. We are dropped right in the middle of a bustling White House, dealing with events on multiple fronts (the President's accident, the Cuban refugees, the fallout from Josh's comment to Mary Marsh on Capitol Beat). Sorkin trusts us to catch up on our own, without having to explain everything from the beginning, and things are crafted well enough that it's pretty easy to do so. It feels like a living, breathing White House staff that's been in action for a while.

Now, in The West Wing universe, President Josiah Bartlet was actually elected in November of 1998 (in reality, that was a midterm election between the Presidential elections of 1996 and 2000, so this universe is offset two years from real life. That continues up to Seasons 6 and 7, when the timeline compresses somewhat). So in the fall of 1999, we're seeing an administration that's been in office about nine months, and from the discussion of things, is seen as a bit floundering and unfocused (a New York Times poll is mentioned that says the public increasingly believes the White House has lost energy and focus, with the administration's unfavorables rising to 48 percent). This idea of the Bartlet administration struggling for direction right out of the gate actually continues for a few episodes of the first season, with Let Bartlet Be Bartlet kind of a "reset" for getting things back on track and trying to do the right thing instead of cautiously doing things that look favorable.

Let's go to plotlines. The staff is on edge about dealing with news of the President riding his bike into a tree, mainly because this plays into the current media story of the administration being directionless and unfocused. Josh is in danger of being fired because on the TV show Capitol Beat he told conservative Christian spokesperson Mary Marsh "Lady, the God you pray to is too busy being indicted for tax fraud," and conservative Christians are calling for his head. These two stories come together at the end, when the President barges into a meeting where the conservatives (led by Reverend Al Caldwell and Marsh) are demanding concessions on pornography or school prayer in response to Josh's remark. The President relates a story about why he had his bike accident - he was upset because he had just learned a somewhat radical Christian group (the Lambs of God) had sent his 12-year-old granddaughter a doll with a knife through its throat, because she had been quoted in a magazine interview about her feelings on a woman's right to choose. He then sternly tells Rev. Caldwell to denounce this group and basically throws them out of the White House.

Meanwhile, the episode began with Sam hooking up with a woman (Laurie) he meets at a bar. After their pagers get accidentally switched, he discovers that in addition to being a law student Laurie is also a high-priced call girl. This of course would be a serious complication for a high-level White House staffer, so it kind of appears he drops things with her by the end of the episode (spoiler alert: this plotline continues for a while yet). Also, Sam gets into a little hot water when he's told to take over a White House tour for Leo's daughter's fourth-grade class (because he had earlier tried to hit on Leo's wife at a party, not knowing it was Leo's wife). Not only does he not know much about White House history, he also doesn't realize Leo's daughter (Mallory) is the teacher and not one of the kids until after he spills his guts about the rough day he's had, including how he "accidentally slept with a prostitute." Not exactly a meet-cute.

Then there's the Cuban refugees, trying to reach Florida in a flotilla of rafts and "fruit baskets," as Josh describes them. While this is a background plotline, it emphasizes the real-world power and responsibility the administration holds. The President keys on this with his staff in the final scene, describing how many of the Cubans turned back, more than 300 were missing and presumed dead, and just over a hundred made it to Florida and were requesting asylum. By contrasting the sacrifice and struggle of those trying to make it to the dream of America with the rather petty personal distractions we saw during the episode, the President makes it clear to the staff that "break's over" and the real work of governing and making this nation better must continue (although again, we don't see a real turn towards progress until later in Season 1).

It's a real gem of a pilot. We get to meet and really "get" these West Wing staffers, get a real feel for the moral strength of the President, see the press as a somewhat antagonistic force holding them all accountable, and understand how the flow of events really can't be contained or controlled, but how finding the path to deal with them is going to be the crux of the series going forward.

And then there's Mandy. Yeah, Mandy ... first seen driving recklessly through DC while yakking on her phone, then having a somewhat pointless conversation with Josh in a diner. Pointless conversations are going to kind of be her forte in the rest of Season 1. After that ...

A few other observations:

• We don't get the drum riff over the opening visual of the flag and the White House. Instead, the sound is piano bar music, which rolls right into the first scene of Sam in the bar discussing Josh's fate with a reporter while Laurie eyes him from across the room. Some of those drums are heard over the closing scene, however, as the President goes over his schedule with Mrs. Landingham.
• Also, there is no traditional West Wing theme opening. The bright, sprightly music we are used to hearing over the closing credits actually gets things rolling here, as it plays under the early scene of Leo coming into the White House, greeting folks left and right, talking with Donna and Josh, and going through the Oval Office on the way to his office.The opening credits also appear over this scene.
• There's a lot less clutter around than we see later in the series. Mrs. Landingham's office is wide open (of course, Charlie's desk will go in there once he is hired). And Josh's office is almost neat and tidy compared to how it looks most of the time. Maybe this is an indication of only being in their offices nine months?
• Background TVs are an important part of the series, both for atmosphere and for exposition. While later on a fictional news network is created (for when the story needs information from a news broadcast), here you can see C-SPAN 2 and CNN on the screens (the CNN broadcast appears to be about Bosnia peace talks).

Let's go over the characters here, since we're just meeting them all.

In Order Of Appearance   

• Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), Deputy Communications Director
• Leo McGarry (John Spencer), Chief of Staff
• C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney), Press Secretary
• Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford), Deputy Chief of Staff
• Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), Communications Director
• Donnatella Moss (Janel Maloney), Assistant to Deputy Chief of Staff
• Mrs. Landingham (Kathryn Joosten), President's secretary
• Mandy Hampton (Moira Kelly), currently media advisor for Sen. Lloyd Russell
• Mallory O'Brian (Allison Smith), Leo's daughter and fourth-grade teacher
• President Josiah Bartlet (Martin Sheen), not addressed by name in this episode

Quotes    

• Sam (after explaining his bad day, including sleeping with a prostitute, and then finding out he just said all this to Leo's daughter): "Well, this is bad on so many levels."
• Leo, to CJ: "He rode his bicycle into a tree, C.J., what do you want me - the President, while riding his bicycle, came to a sudden arboreal stop."
• President Bartlet: "With the clothes on their backs, they came through a storm. And those that didn't die want a better life. And they want it here. Talk about impressive. My point is this: break's over."
• President Bartlet: "Mrs. Landingham, what's next?" (The first appearance of "What's next?" which becomes a hallmark of the series)

Bread crumbs and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)

• Laurie is played by Lisa Edelstein (House, Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce). This is the beginning of a multi-episode arc.
• First appearance of Carol (credited as White House Staffer), played by Melissa Fitzgerald
• First appearance of Ed and Larry (credited as Congressional Liason #1 and #2), played by Peter James Smith and Bill Duffy
• First appearance of reporter Chris, played by Mindy Seeger (she shows up a lot in the future)
• Obviously this is just the pilot, and the upcoming plot line of the President's health is far in the future: but in retrospect could his MS have been a factor in his bike accident?
• Rev. Caldwell will appear again, when a conservative Christian leader is required for a story
• Senator Lloyd Russell is talked about (as a possible challenger for the Presidency in 2002), but does not actually appear. Yet.