Queries About the White House Staff

© NBC

1. If Toby is divorced, why does he wear a wedding ring?
   • Most likely explanation is that he gained some weight during his marriage and couldn't get the ring off and hasn't had the time or the inclination to get to a jeweler to have it cut off. It seems likely that if he had remarried, some mention would have been made to his current wife.
   • Several fans have also suggested that he still has feelings for his ex-wife and wearing the ring, is his sign of that. One person suggested that he hates failure and divorce is a failure and he ignores his failure by continuing to wear the ring.
2. Don't police officers who die in the line of duty, get death benefits for their children?
   • The reason Charlie gives for not being in college is that he has to raise his little sister [#3]. But his mother died when he was 19 or 20 and he doesn't seem to have been in college up to then.
   • Possible explanation is that he was taking a year out before going to college. But he should have been able to go to college after his mother died. As a police office killed in the line of duty, the children should have had all kinds of death benefits, insurance and funds that make sure these children can go to college. And he would have had more time to raise his sister if he was in college than if he had a 17 hour a day job 7 days a week being a gofer for this President! (However, Matt Tucker reminds us that Charlie wasn't applying for a 17 hour a day job, but for the messenger job. But it was August when he applied and what he wasn't was enrolled in college. There are all kinds of funds for making sure the children of police officers killed in the line of duty can go to college. He should have been able to raise his sister and go to college. Instead, he now has no time to do either.
3. Is smoking allowed in the White House?
   • Leo tells Lord Marbury that "...we don't allow smoking in this part of the world." [#11], but he does allow both Toby and Sam to smoke cigars in his office during late night poker games. [#6]
   • Of course, at the point Leo made the remark to Lord Marbury, it was plain that his Lordship irritated Leo. In fact the Englishman had just said that he had thought Leo was the butler.
   • And in times of stress (deciding how to punish a state for killing Americans) [#3], the President has been known to have a cigarette in the Situation Room.
4. If C.J. used to work in movie and television public relations [#23-24], why doesn't she know what a three picture deal is and what it means to develop a movie project? [#16].
   • In "20 Hours in L.A." someone tries to hire C.J. to "develop" projects and she says she doesn't know what that is. When she refers to "a three picture deal", she says, "what ever that is". Yet in "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen" in the flashback, we learn she worked in movie and television public relations (at a salary of $550,000 per year) so she should have known the industry fairly well. This discrepency was pointed out to us by Harvey Lang & Michael Moldofsky.
   • To this Stephen Coleman replies: "The answer is actually there in [#23-24]. C.J. actually says that she doesn't know anything about movies and television, and that she wants to work on something else. The fact that she didn't know when the Golden Globe nominations come out would tend to support the idea that she doesn't know anything about the industry, and thus might not know what a three picture deal is, or what it means to develop a movie project."
5. Who actually pushed C.J. to the ground during the shooting?
   • No matter what C.J. remembers and Sam claims, it is clear that someone else pushed C.J. to the ground while Sam stood along side and reached out to her and then jumped in. There is a screen caption on "The West Wing Online" on a page of pictures from the episode. The relevant picture is in the fourth row from the bottom next to the one where the Secret Service agents push the President into the car! This screen capture (which proved us right on what happened to C.J. during the shooting) was pointed out to us by Lindsay Alberts. Also others reported seeing C.J. pushed down by someone else. However, the next screen shot shows Sam seeming to tackle her before the other person gets her to the ground.
   • Alison Cherry has come up with this possible explanation for the two different actions: ". . .after obsessing --- we had family debates over what happened --- here's what I saw. The Secret Service guy actually doesn't shove her down, he pushes past her to get to the President and Zoey. I think, if you don't pause it, you hear him say 'move'.
6. What happened to Mandy?
   • So far no one has said (the actress left the series).