The Great West Wing Rewatch: 4.20 "Evidence of Things Not Seen"
Joel: There was a whole episode worth of story all set up here. The President is going to have to negotiate to try and get the remains of a downed spy plane back. Josh is going to have an interview with someone for a position at the White House. Plus the staff is going to have a poker game going on throughout the night to blow off some steam. That’s your A, B and C story right there with the egg trick being the recurring lighthearted conversation that’s going to recur throughout the show. Pretty much everything you need for your standard West Wing episode. Then, pretty much out of nowhere there is gunfire. The shots take place about a third of the way through the episode. Not at the beginning to let us know that this is going to be a shooting episode, no we’ve got the episode all ready to go, and the gunfire interrupts that. It’s actually a really clever little piece of storytelling, because when the shots go off in the show, it’s so unexpected that your first reaction ends...