Documentary Special - TWW S3E19

Original airdate: April 24, 2002

Interview Material by: William Couturie and Eli Attie & Felicia Willson

Directed by: William Couturie

Synopsis

• A documentary in which former real-life West Wingers (including Presidents Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Gerald Ford) recall White House experiences, interspersed with clips from series episodes. 

"Nothing the President does is possible without the talent and the devotion and the hard work of the staff ..."

It's a clip show. You're all familiar with a clip show, right? A TV series puts together an episode with some framing device, often one involving the characters reminiscing about the past, and then uses segments from previously aired episodes to make up the bulk of the show. The purpose of such an episode is typically to flesh out a full season, giving the network an additional episode that really doesn't take all that much time to produce - oftentimes you'll see clip shows late in the run of a series, when the writers may be running out of original ideas and they're somewhat desperate about coming up with yet another full script.

(Let me also say that in my opinion, the cleverest variation of a clip show ever was Community's Paradigms Of Human Memory - it was a "clip show" in that it consisted of clips from the study group's past, but they were all filmed just for that episode - none of them had actually aired before. They were silly, cartoonish segments of the gang exploring a haunted Old West town, or going on a disastrous raft trip. Trust me, it was hilarious.)

So this is The West Wing clip show, and yes, it was mainly put together to fill out NBC's full order of 23 episodes for the 2001-02 season. Given Aaron Sorkin's almost complete control of the script writing process and his struggle to keep up with the weekly pace, this episode was a way for the show to provide one of those 23 while Sorkin and the cast and crew continued to work on the rest of the season.

And since it's The West Wing, this isn't your typical clip show. Instead of a framing concept with the cast talking about past events in the show, William Couturie (winner of an Oscar for his 1989 AIDS quilt documentary Common Threads: Stories From The Quilt) brought in former members of real White House staffs and interviewed them about their experiences in the actual West Wing. We get recollections from lower-level staff folks like President Clinton's own "Mrs. Landingham" Betty Currie, or Kris Engskov (who talks about giving President Clinton his wake-up call, just as we see Charlie doing for President Bartlet), or Michelle Crisci Meyercord (who remembers wanting to frame her first paycheck from working in the White House, but needed to cash it to pay her bills). We also get to hear from higher-up administration officials like former Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater and Reagan's famed speechwriter Peggy Noonan. But the crowning achievement of this special is the coup of getting not only former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, but also three former Presidents to take part (Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton). Not many television series about politics and the White House would have enough respect from actual political figures to get contributions from people like this. Every administration since Nixon was represented, usually by multiple figures - while President George H.W. Bush was invited to participate, he declined (Fitzwater worked under his administration) and senior adviser Karl Rove represented the current administration of President George W. Bush.

To be honest, it's not really a true West Wing episode, but since it aired in the appropriate timeslot and counted as one of NBC's contracted episodes, here we are. It's a neat little curiosity, at least, and it does serve its purpose to connect the lives of the characters we see in this fictional political world with the decisions and emotions and personal motivations of actual, real-world White House figures. It also allows Dee Dee Myers and Gene Sperling to kind of "double dip" in a way - not only were they former White House staff members interviewed for this special, but they also earned writing credits on scripts for The West Wing.

Here are all the people who were shown as interview subjects for this documentary, in order of their appearance on screen:

Story threads, callbacks, and familiar faces (Hey, it's that guy!)

• The entire special is callbacks to previously aired episodes. I'm not going to identify them all.

• BUT, hey, look there! It's Mandy! You know, the PR operative that disappeared near the end of What Kind Of Day Has It Been and was never seen or even referred to again? This is her in the background of a clip from The Crackpots And These Women. She also appears briefly in the Oval Office in the final clip of this special ... so her "last appearance" on the show is no longer the last episode of Season 1, I guess. Although she's still never mentioned again ...

End credits freeze frame: The final shot of Pilot, and one of the best shots of the entire series, looking down at President Bartlet at his desk from high above the Oval Office.