7x19 Transition - The West Wing Episode Guide

The West Wing

- Episode 07x19

Episode: 07x19
Title: Transition
Type: Regular Episode
Production Code: 2T6219
First Aired: Apr. 23, 2006

Season 7 » Episode #19 - Transition

Summary: The White House is shocked when the President-Elect calls the President of China, taking a different position on foreign policy than that of President Bartlet. Meanwhile, Josh debates who to choose as deputy Chief of Staff.

Who appeared in this episode?

Guest Stars:

Senator Arnold Vinick	played by Alan Alda
Annabeth Schott	played by Kristin Chenoweth
Kate Harper	played by Mary McCormack
President Elect Matthew Santos	played by Jimmy Smits
President Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet	played by Martin Sheen
Louise Thornton	played by Janeane Garofalo
Helen Santos	played by Teri Polo
Deborah Fiderer	played by Lily Tomlin
Secretary of Defense Miles Hutchinson	played by Steve Ryan

Season 7 / Episode 19: - Transition

Helen Santos: Time for a little incursion?
President Elect Matthew Santos: [looks at his watch] Not even for a surgical strike.
Helen Santos: I had in mind more of shock and awe.
President Elect Matthew Santos: Oh, yeah? After 15 years of marriage I'd be shocked if you were awed.

Season 7 / Episode 19: - Transition

Donna Moss: Be still and listen to me. I don't know what this is. And you don't either, which is perfectly fine and understandable. Whatever the build up, it's all happened amid absurdly heightened emotional circumstances. The election. Leo's death. There's been no moment to so much as take a breath, much less figure any of this out. And now this roller coaster's plunging into the transition, with its time-pressure demands and then the inauguration and it's hit the ground running and the first hundred days, and before you know it, the midterms and the new Congress and then we're running again and four years becomes eight, and we've never had the talk. And you can lose that look of panic in your eyes, we're not going to have it now; we don't ever have to have it. But there's a window. I'd say four weeks. If we can't get it together in that time to figure out what we want from each other, then clearly, it's not worth the trouble.

[More Quotes]

MISTAKES/GOOFS

FACT: When Josh asks Sam to quit private practice and serve as deputy chief of staff, among the reasons Sam cites for his reluctance to return to the White House is that his fiancée, also an attorney, would have to retake the bar exam to practice law in D.C. The D.C. Bar admits already-practicing attorneys from other states without requiring them to take a new bar exam, provided that they graduated from a law school accredited by the American Bar Association and that when they took their original bar exam, they received a high enough score on the Multistate Bar Examination and multi-state legal ethics exam (multiple-choice tests used by many states as part of their bar exams). DC's admission requirements are common knowledge among lawyers on the East Coast, and both Sam and Josh should have known better.
CONT: When the President meets the President-Elect, the President's lap-top computer appears, then suddenly disappears.
CONT: Otto has a full donut in his hand while talking to Josh. Then, before Josh takes a bite, the donut is only partial.

TRIVIA

Josh interrupts Sam in a meeting at a law firm, asking him to leave his job and come to work for the President. This is a direct reference to when we see in flashback Josh interrupting Sam at a similar meeting to leave a law firm and join the first Bartlet campaign in second season episode In the Shadow of Two Gunmen: Part 1.
This episode marks Rob Lowe (I)'s first appearance on the show since the seventeenth episode of Season Four.
An aide tells President-elect Santos (Jimmy Smits), overwhelmed with the calls he needs to make to foreign heads of state, that the "Surinames of the world" can be handled by his chief foreign policy adviser. In real life, Smits' father was from Suriname.

Episode Screenshots (From Season 7)

Season 7, Episode 07

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