You're listening to The West Wing Weekly. I'm Rishikesh Hereway. And I'm Joshua Molina.

Today we're talking about Episode 8, Season 1 of The West Wing. It was written by Ron Osborne

and Jeff Reno. With story by Rick Cleveland, Lawrence O'Donnell and Patrick Cadill, it first

aired on November 17th 1999. And it was directed by Alan Taylor.

So this is the first episode that we've encountered that Aaron Sorkin didn't write. And really

one of the very, very few in his whole four-season tenure on The West Wing that he didn't write.

He is not credited other than, I guess, as the creator of the show on the episode. Bear in mind,

he was also writing another entire series as this was going on, Sports Night. So give him a break.

Yeah, I took one off. So can I blame you partly for the fact that he didn't write this episode?

You're partly to blame, right? Sure, certainly. I'm comfortable with that.

Do you feel like you could tell that he didn't write this one?

Yeah, I do think so. That being said, I enjoyed it very much. It's totally a little bit different

from what preceded it and from what I recall what came after it. But not jarringly so. To me,

this almost played, and this is going to sound like a criticism, but I don't mean it as one.

It played almost like the sitcom version, not in a horrible jarring way. The focus felt on sort of

light, comic, romantic interplay among the characters, which of course was part of the show prior to

this, but not the focus, perhaps. Right, especially the Sam Mallory part. And I found myself laughing

out loud at parts. They were just, it was kind of delightfully humorous. I thought Rob Lowe is very

funny in this episode. He wants me. Yeah. He wants me to write a birthday message for the present.

Nancy Beckon needs it tonight. Are you sure he doesn't want someone who, you know, isn't

staggeringly qualified for the job? He specifically asked for you. We really got to learn more about

and a focus on Sam apart from the Laurie story that finally that we've been

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