Television: 'The West Wing: Take This Sabbath Day' (2000) (Episode 1x14)

It's a classic, and an hour of television that works for all of its comedic, dramatic and tragedic elements. It's hard to even talk about, because it's all tied so neatly together. This will probably be superficial in the extreme.

'Take This Sabbath Day' is about the dilemma that emerges within President Bartlet - a continuation of his fallibility introduced in the previous episode - when an appeal is rejected by the Supreme Court and the responsibility for commuting a federal execution falls at his door. It's also about Josh being trapped in some bright yellow waders when unexpectedly dealing with a campaign manager, and Toby's adventures at temple, as well as one of the most potent parables ever to be handed down via television. None of this might have happened had Martin Sheen's excellence not caused the president to be a regular character in the show, forcing some retroactive character flaws later in the season to lessen his burgeoningly impractical perfection. This is one of the examples of those that works best.

It's fascinating that a television episode would go into the essential dilemma of a Catholic president of the United States in a death penalty quandary, run a comedic counterpoint involving a hungover Josh and a deaf campaign manager, and then pull it off. If you then throw in interviews with a priest, a rabbi and an incidental Quaker, you would think that you would end up with an unwieldy mess, but instead we have a touching and tragic moment in the life of the West Wing. As an individual episode, it excels on all levels, and in the season as a whole it builds to the grand transition of the year, the moment when push comes to shove and Mandy is pushed ever closer to her bus ride to Mandyville.

'The West Wing' was an amazing series, and the sheer number of episodes that fulfilled the series' potential was astounding, especially in the first two years. This is just one of them. If you ever doubt the ability of Aaron Sorkin, showrunner and virtuoso screenwriter, then take those doubts back immediately. There was a man in bright yellow waders in a show about the death penalty, and it works. Meanwhile, the story of Jed Bartlet's fallibility continues...

O.