You're listening to The West Wing Weekly. I'm Rishi Kei Shereway.

And I'm Joshua Molina.

Today we're talking about episode 6 of Season 5 of The West Wing. It's called Disaster Relief.

The Teleplay is by Alexa Young, Story by Alexa and Lauren Schmidt. Now Lauren Schmidt is historic.

And today we're joined by two special guests.

That's right. Alexa Young and Lauren Schmidt is historic.

Yes, this episode was directed by Leslie Linkaglotter and it first aired on November 5th in the year 2003.

Thank you so much for joining us, both of you.

Thanks for having us.

This is the time when I usually do a synopsis of the episode, but for the synopsis, I'm going to turn to Leo because he sums it up pretty well.

I've got a Cap Game's tax cut.

Attacked onto an appropriations bill.

Two Bronze Age civilizations threatening to blow each other up over some goats.

And a major ally that's going to be in the lobby, leaping through dog ear copies of Congressional quarterly while the president is singing Combaya.

Ha. The president is singing Combaya because he's in Oklahoma,

tending to people who have been struck by a tornado.

At least 17 people have died already.

Let's start away from the episode actually. Alexa, can you tell us how you got the job as a writer on The West Wing?

Origin Story.

I think that initially that John reached out to me actually and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to put me on West Wing or ER.

And so I think that's the initial way that it happened, but actually Aaron had reached out to me at the earliest stages of the show when it first happened.

I didn't end up going on, but then when John reached out to me later, I went to Aaron and said, are you cool if I do this?

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