Watch The West Wing on Bravo tomorrow morning
A heads-up for West Wing fans who haven’t yet started keeping up with Bravo’s resumed schedule of re-runs: Tomorrow morning, the two parts of “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen” are scheduled for 8 and 9 a.m.
Those episodes really marked the beginning of my own West Wing fandom. I skipped most of the first season, resentful mostly that West Wing was taking creative energy away from Sports Night. I finally tuned in for the final episode of Season 1, thinking that the attempted assassination storyline sounded interesting, and that was enough to get me tuning in for Season 2 (that, and Sports Night’s untimely demise.)
Those two opening episodes of the second season then hooked me but good. I’ve since gone back and seen the first season’s episodes, and I’m fond of a lot of them, but as introductions to the show and the characters, it’s hard to do better than “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen.” This is one case of backstory where you don’t need to know the people first for it to work.
Here are a few good scenes from YouTube, though not nearly all of them:
The discovery of shot Josh. It’s hard to see on YouTube my favorite part, which is Richard Schiff’s facial expressions and hesitation in depicting Toby’s shock and fear. Not often this guy’s speechless.
And the president, shot and wisecracking. “Do you have any medical problems?” “Well, I’ve been shot …”
Bartlet pissing off the dairy farmers …
… and Leo telling him he’s going to lift houses off of the ground:
Toby offering a pool-drenched CJ a job, because Bartlet was allegedly impressed with her work “with that girl’s group with the stupid name” …
and CJ showing why she was a good hire:
Josh meets Donna …
… and shows Sam his bad poker face.
That should hold us ’til tomorrow … though maybe just a little peek at the DVDs before then.
Leave a Reply