Source
r/thewestwing•
ChipCoach

Assistants

I'm doing a rewatch of the series and what's really standing out to me this time is how awesome the assistants are. They have fantastic moments of humor, like the muffins in the commissary. They also care so very much about the staffers. Obviously the main example is Donna and Josh, but there are tons of little moments too, like Mrs. Landingham running out of the room when the news announces the Roslyn shooting. I just got to Enemies Foreign and Domestic, and the cold open is so great with Carol reading the news report on the Saudi Arabian girls who died in the fire. She knows CJ and knows how CJ will react so she brings her the report immediately and stands there completely focused on CJ despite Toby and Sam bantering. It's such a great moment with Carol focused on CJ. I love these characters.

Posted Jan 8, 2019, 3:27 PM UTC

6250
kcat1971•

I agree! The assistants are a large part of what made this show great. Small parts with really well developed characters. (So much so that 20 years later and we all wonder about Margaret's baby.)

Mrs. Landingham putting the pen in the President's pocket so subtly every morning that he didn't even know.

Charlie is actually also in the great assistant category, in my opinion. His devotion is incredible. President's not wearing a coat in a tropical storm, well then neither shall I.

And Margaret to CJ- you know I am going to quit right? Because eventually, Leo's going to need me. (Also prior to that, to Leo- I leave when you leave.)

47
ChipCoachOP•

I maybe love Margaret most of all. I feel like they really did her dirty at Leo's funeral by only showing her once and briefly. At that point they were all about Annabeth and Leo, but Margaret's relationship with him was my favorite.

35
kcat1971•

I agree. Margaret should have gotten a little more love in that episode. She's one of my favorite characters too. She can sign the President's name! And she can tell dumb French jokes to lighten the mood. And she knows the calorie count in the Bran muffin and she isn't afraid to share it!

In my head canon, Josh begs Margaret to stay on as his assistant when he becomes COS in the Santos Administration because he needs her and her institutional knowledge, and I think she can handle him as well as Donna did.

26
SpartanLB50•

You can sign the President's name... on a document removing him from power and handing it to someone else?

11
kcat1971•

Yes! . . . Or would the White House Counsel say that's a bad idea?

7
ThisDerpForSale•

And Margaret to CJ- you know I am going to quit right? Because eventually, Leo's going to need me.

​

To which CJ later awesomely responds:

You're an odd woman and I've never quite understood you. But you are extremely capable and you run this office like a Swiss watch, and you're tall, which is reassuring. Leo may need you and if he does, that's okay. But if he's willing to part with you, I hope you'll stay.

​

24
eleanorbartlet•

God, Ginger coming in after Roslyn with that thousand yard stare of hopelessness and Toby hugging her messes me up every time.

33
bilweav•

Yes! Also Ginger weighing in on feminism with Ainsley. West Wing gave us so much but it didn’t give us enough Ginger.

20
ChipCoachOP•

Or when the Ritchie campaign sends Sam their negative ad in an unmarked envelope and he's going on about it possibly being porn. He apologizes and Ginger says, "No, I hope it's porn too." So deadpan.

12
UncleOok•

It really was an embarrassment of riches, and the assistants are often lost in the shuffle of too many great characters. I love Donna and Mrs. Landingham and Margaret and I wouldn't trade the time we got with them for anything. But I loved Carol too. And Ginger and Bonnie. And Cathy intrigued the heck out of me with her eating Sam's donut and him being afraid of her. I almost wish we could have gotten a C- or D-plot with them every other episode. At the very least, we could have had a sort of "Lower Decks" episode where they had a night out drinking and use that to develop them more and have a framing device for the issues the main characters were facing.

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bak3n3ko•

Don't forget Fiderer!

16
Plagman39339•

How could we forget about Fiderer? She taught me a very valuable life lesson. Even if you don't like the person in it, you should always respect their posistion.

That was a very useful lesson during my days in homeless shelters. Lots of asshole with lots of power over people.

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hypo11•

And how are you doing with "respecting their position" when it comes to Trump?

3
Plagman39339•

Well if I ever met him, I'd still call him Mr. President.

6
ThisDerpForSale•

Fiddler?

5
Duggy1138•

A lower decks episode would have been great. A crisis. The assistants doing their job. Getting everything done so the main cast can get congratulated for solving it.

2
jurornumbereight•

Margaret is the best.

Sam: Do we have some sort of condensed... Reader's Digest index... of, well... all human knowledge?

Ginger: We usually just use Margaret.

19
JMCrown•

Uhhhh, no one mentioned the greatest of them all: Marla Worisky! "You're done." I would have loved to have seen more of her and Toby. She seemed to be the only one, including the President, who Toby was scared of!

​

​

10
bilweav•

That arc was great. Toby defiant, Toby hostage, Toby compliant.

4
esk_209•

Cleo King. If you haven't watched Deadwood, you should, and she's fabulous in it.

3
esk_209•

I was watching Star Trek: Discovery and was completely enamored by one actor. I *knew* I'd seen him somewhere; his voice and his mannerisms were just that familiar, but I couldn't figure it out and I didn't want to cheat by going to IMDB. It took me about three or four episodes to realize he was an assistant on TWW. Wilson Cruz was one of CJ's people, and we only saw him a couple of times, but even then he made an impact (he was the staff who Donna bumped from the trip to the middle east. We saw him when he dumped the materials on her during the lock down and during the "behind the scenes" episode (Full Access).

​

Even the VERY minor assistants were wonderfully cast and perfectly directed!

9
SilentMovieSusie•

Even the VERY minor assistants were wonderfully cast and perfectly directed!

The temp who was helping Josh out immediately after Donna left!

9
esk_209•

Cleo King! She was amazing in Deadwood. She was another of those actresses who I knew I knew, (we just finished watching Deadwood last week), but it took me ages to figure it out.

4
Pearberr•

I watched all of 2 minutes of the Golden Globes and noticed the Poet Laureate was nominated for something.

I was sad she didn't win.

3
hypo11•

Laura Dern played the poet laureate. She is an extremely accomplished actor with many famous roles including the original Jurassic Park and The Last Jedi. She is also Bruce Dern's daughter (another actor with an extremely successful career). https://m.imdb.com/name/nm0000368/

6
kpsi355•

I remember him from My So-Called Life.

5
ThisDerpForSale•

Wilson Cruz was only on two episodes, but he just seemed to fit in so seamlessly. He was on a recent episode of The West Wing Weekly, talking about how he got cast. It's a pretty interesting little story, you should check it out if you're at all interested in his backstory.

3
Duggy1138•

I thought he was familiar. Good catch.

2
mentally_ill_defined•

I noticed something recently, which is that the second tier assistants are almost all women, save for Larry and Ed, and the senior assistants are almost all men, except for CJ. I wonder if that played any part in the decision making process when it came time for CJ to make the move to CoS, or if it's more geared toward developing her character as an individual regardless of gender politics.

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bilweav•

Larry and Ed were not assistants, so you’re even more correct.

11
Pearberr•

Ya, the show hasn't aged well in all regards.

The all white-male staff with their entirely female secretaries stands out bigtime on each rewatch.

A lot has changed for the better in 20 years.

10
UncleOok•

I agree. They did have women ("not enough!" points out Amy Gardner) and people of color in positions of power, Admiral Fitzwallace, Nancy McNally, Deborah O'Leady (the HUD secretary played by CCH Pounder, who was also up for the role of CJ)... and it was good to see more diversity in the Santos team, but they definitely could do better and should do better if there is a reboot. The only male assistants I remember were Ned and Otto, and Otto was supposed to be a speechwriter.

3
Pearberr•

Ned wasn't even an assistant, he was Senior Staff to Santos.

He just sucked ass (So that they could show Santos fire a close colleague).

3
UncleOok•

and even then, it was Josh who did it. although that set up the parallel when Santos was going to fire Josh, and Leo said he'd do what had to be done (which was to not fire Josh and tell Santos the rest was up to him)

Ned was completely out of his league though.

3
ChipCoachOP•

They also brought in Angela Blake for a while until they stopped writing stories for her and she faded out Mandy/Ainsley style.

3
Duggy1138•

Angela and Ryan weren't good additions.

1
ChipCoachOP•

I think a lot of this is Aaron Sorkin being Aaron Sorkin. The characters he writes for most often tend to be images of his own self-identity, therefore they are liberal white men.

2
Duggy1138•

The show or politics?

1
Duggy1138•

I don't think Ed and Larry were assistants, but rather communications staffer. They had seats in meetings.

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PanAmFlight01•

All I have to say is Margaret and the muffin calorie count.

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soupafi•

If they do a reboot, maybe they should focus on the assistants. If they really do it, we better have Margaret.

7
MoistPockets•

I want to see a Bonnie and Ginger buddy cop police procedural

9
soupafi•

Toby can play “The Chief”

3
bilweav•

Swiss watch.

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MickiTakesAWalk•

Agreed! They are as much a part of the show as the leads.

4
tranam•

The "walking lawsuit" assistant who somehow has a job during the shutdown and goes to work for Toby and then disappears.

Also, Josh's intern... Pearce or whatever... funny character.

1