‘The West Wing’s 25th Anniversary: 10 Best Episodes, Ranked
The West Wing cast reunion at the 76th Emmy Awards on Sunday, September 15, highlighted a momentous anniversary for the political drama. Sunday, September 22, marks 25 years since The West Wing premiered on NBC.
Created by Aaron Sorkin, who scripted almost every episode before leaving the production at the end of Season 5, The West Wing showcased American politics at its most idealistic, with White House staffers collaborating, scheming, and frequently quibbling in their pursuit of a more prosperous tomorrow.
In fact, the show was so focused on the behind-the-scenes work of a fictional presidential administration that Martin Sheen’s President Jed Bartlet didn’t even appear until the end of the pilot, one of the episodes we’re commending below.
Choosing the 10 best episodes is no easy task, but to paraphrase Bartlet, we will do what is hard, and we will honor what is great.
10. Season 7, Episode 7: “The Debate”
Martin Sheen is a hard act to follow, but we would have watched a West Wing sequel with either Jimmy Smits or Alan Alda as the commander-in-chief after watching the two TV MVPs duke it out in a faux presidential debate between then-candidates Matt Santos and Arnold Vinick. And in a master stroke by the show’s writers, producers, and crew, the episode was filmed and broadcast live — twice, once for the East Coast and again for the West Coast.
9. Season 1, Episode 5: “The Crackpots and These Women”
Introducing the Big Block of Cheese Day, a Bartlet administration tradition, this outrageous episode had the president’s people meeting with special interest groups — one wanting to build a “wolves-only roadway,” another wanting more resources devoted to UFOs. But Bartlet focuses on more pragmatic concerns, tasking his team to find the next project that “makes us work harder and go farther” in the kind of aspirational politics that hooked us on the show.
8. Season 1, Episode 10: “In Excelsis Deo”
The death of a homeless Vietnam vet hits home for communications director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff) after he realizes that the man was wearing a coat Toby donated to Goodwill. Meanwhile, deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) contemplates extreme measures to cover up chief of staff Leo McGarry’s (John Spencer) substance abuse struggles, and press secretary C.J. Cregg (Allison Janney) gets invested in an anti-gay hate crime, as this episode proves Bartlet is a decent man surrounded by decent people.
7. Season 5, Episode 17: “The Supremes”
When a Supreme Court justice dies, the Bartlet administration has the dream task of nominating someone to the highest court in the land. The staffers like Evelyn Baker Lang (guest star Glenn Close) for the position, but they know she’s too liberal for the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the end, a cookie tin from senior assistant Donna Moss (Janel Maloney), of all things, gives Josh a flash of inspiration in this clever post-Sorkin episode.
6. Season 1, Episode 22: “What Kind of Day Has It Been”
The West Wing’s first season ends on a cliffhanger, with the president and his staff under a hail of gunfire at a town hall event. But the stakes are raised in this gripping episode even before that calamity: C.J. must mislead the press about a military rescue operation in Iraq, much to the frustration of reporter and friend Danny Concannon (Timothy Busfield), and Toby realizes his brother is aboard a Space Shuttle mission in jeopardy.
5. Season 2, Episode 18: “17 People”
We “wouldn’t stop for red lights” in praising this episode, one of the best Josh–Donna romance installments. Also, the senior staffers show their goofier side as they punch up the president’s White House Correspondent Dinner speech. But the highlight of the episode is the argument between Toby, who figures out Bartlet’s plans not to run for reelection, and the president, who makes Toby the 17th person to know about his multiple sclerosis diagnosis.
4. Season 2, Episode 10: “Noël”
As Josh’s behavior becomes erratic in this striking episode — a blow-up in the Oval Office, a panic attack at a Yo-Yo Ma concert — Leo has him speak to a psychotherapist, who diagnoses him with post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from his near-death experience at the town hall shooting. And in a subplot, C.J. realizes that a piece of White House decor has heartbreaking significance for a tour guest.
3. Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2: “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen”
A two-parter season opener reveals the outcome of the assassination attempt: Both Bartlet and Josh were shot, Josh critically so, and aide Charlie Young (Dulé Hill), the target of the white-nationalist gunmen, escaped injury. As Josh is rushed to the hospital, flashbacks reveal what got the gang together in the first place. (Let’s just say that before C.J. met the White House reporter pool, she met a Los Angeles swimming pool.)
2. Season 1, Episode 1: “Pilot”
Aaron Sorkin TV shows typically kick off with someone’s mouth getting them into trouble, and in The West Wing, it’s Josh who’s in hot water, after insulting the religious right in a television appearance. A theological debate ensues and is only shut down at the end of the episode, when Bartlet finally appears and shows the formidable intellect and presence we’d come to expect from him. “I am the Lord your God. Thou shalt worship no other god before me,” he proclaims. “Boy, those were the days, huh?”
1. Season 2, Episode 22: “Two Cathedrals”
It’s difficult to narrow down which scene in this Season 2 finale is better: the monologue in which Bartlet gives God a tongue-lashing (in both English and Latin) as he reels from the death of devoted secretary Mrs. Landingham (Kathryn Joosten) or the final shot of him deciding under the strobes of reporters’ flash bulbs to run for reelection. Both scenes give us chills every time we watch, especially as a Dire Straits song makes for one of television’s most memorable needle drops.
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