The West Wing

[JHyde]

It's so funny that you posted Silktie, because I almost always start a West Wing re-watch a week before Christmas. I've been thinking about WW all week.

I have never dug Noel the way most ardent fans of the show do, it's good though. I love the bit with Leo telling his AA story about the guy who falls into a hole, something which is brought up in the following year's Christmas episode, which is one I truly love: Bartlett for America, in which Leo is narrowly saved from being exposed as a relapsed alcoholic just days before Bartlett was to win his election.

The episode Tea Lady is thinking of is In Excelsis Deo, an episode that caused quite the scandal for Sorkin. He and Rick Cleveland won Emmys for that episode with a joint writing credit, Sorkin later claimed he almost exclusively wrote the episode. This was later retracted. As much as I love Sorkin he was really in the wrong on this one, and Cleveland went on to other fame and fortune writing for Six Feet Under.

Speaking of Sorkin, he went to town on Sarah Palin this week in the Huffington Post. Well deserved and in it he not only reuses one of his best lines from WW, but the gist of the article is also an echo of a monlogue that Josh Malina's character in Sports Night gave more than ten years ago about hunting.