Written by Aaron Sorkin
Directed by Christopher Misiano

The episode opens with a series recap. Is it really necessary? Probably not. For the most part, these episodes stand on their own, but there are some ongoing storylines throughout the series. Chief of Staff Leo McGarry (John Spencer) hasn’t told anyone except the Vice President about his wife leaving him, and there are some ongoing relationship issues, but at this point, it’s possible to pick up the series anywhere and still be able to comprehend the stories.

Mr. Willis of Ohio opens with President Bartlet (Martin Sheen) playing poker with his staff. As they go around the table, he regales them with various trivia questions. Leo gets ready to leave, and the President tells him to give Jenny (his wife) his best wishes. Instead of taking the moment to open up, Leo just states that he will. The Secret Service comes in and says the building isn’t secure and everyone has to stay where they are. It’s only a few minutes until they are clear. Media Director Mandy Hampton (Moira Kelly) leaves, stating that this is the kind of thing that didn’t used to happen at her old job.

Press Secretary CJ Cregg (Allison Janney) goes to Deputy Communications Director Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) with questions about the census. She needs a tutorial since she doesn’t understand the census and why it’s so important. Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) is confronted by his aide, Donna Moss (Janel Moloney), about the budget surplus and why they don’t give the money back to the people.

Ron Butterfield (Michael O’Neill), who is the head of the Secret Service at the White House, appears for the first time. He tells the President the security breach was a mentally unbalanced woman who was after the President’s daughter, Zoey (Elisabeth Moss), not him. Leo starts to tell the President about his separation, but they are interrupted, and Leo says they will talk later.

Communications Director Toby Ziegler (Richard Schiff), Josh, and Mandy are meeting with members of Congress, including Mr. Willis (Al Fann). He is the husband of a long-time congresswoman who passed away, and he was appointed to her seat. He’s not quite up on the inner workings of Congress and negotiation. They are discussing using sampling data as opposed to an actual head count in the census. Mr. Willis is persuaded by Toby’s argument.

Josh is pulled out of the meeting to meet with the President, who asks him to take his personal aide, Charlie (Dule Hill), out for a beer. Zoey and Mallory (Allison Smith) want to go with him and Charlie, and ask him to bring Sam as well. CJ hears about it and plans to tag along.

At the end of the day, Leo finally finds the time to tell President Bartlet that he and Jenny are getting a divorce. The President is angry and tells Leo to fix it. Later on, he apologizes. Apparently, the President is pretty good friends with Jenny.

When they go out to the bar, Charlie keeps his eyes on Zoey. When Zoey goes to the bar to get a drink for CJ, she’s surrounded by frat boys. Charlie tries to get her away from them, and they go full racist on him. Sam spots what’s happening and goes over, followed by the rest. Josh taps Zoey’s panic button, and soon the Secret Service comes in and arrests the Frat Boys.

President Josiah Bartlet: My getting killed would be bad enough, but that is not the nightmare scenario. The nightmare scenario, sweetheart, is *you* getting kidnapped. You go out to a bar or a party in some club and you get up to go to the restroom and somebody comes from behind and puts their hand across your mouth and whisks you out the back door. You’re so petrified you don’t even notice the bodies of a few Secret Service agents lying on the ground with bullet holes in their heads. Then you’re whisked away in a car. It’s a big party with lots of noise and lots of people coming and going, and it’s a half hour before someone says, “Hey, where’s Zoey?” Another fifteen minutes before the first phone call. It’s another hour and a half before anyone even *thinks* to shut down all the airports. Now we’re off to the races. You’re tied to a chair in a cargo shack somewhere in the middle of Uganda and I am told that I have 72 hours to get Israel to free 460 terrorist prisoners. So I’m on the phone pleading with Be Yabin and he’s saying: “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but Israel simply does not negotiate with terrorists, period. It’s the only way we can survive.” So now we got a new problem because this country no longer has a Commander-in-chief, it has a father who’s out of his mind because his little girl is in a shack somewhere in Uganda with a gun to her head. Do you get it?

Josh is then called in by the President. The President thanks him, and Josh tells him that Charlie was the one who didn’t hesitate to put himself between Zoey and possible trouble. The President now invites Charlie to the poker game. Toby wants to make sure he sees Mr. Willis vote for the appropriations bill.

I like how Sam explains why the Census is done every year and why it’s important to keep doing it. It’s an education for us viewers as well as CJ without being condescending. That’s an issue for characters like Josh, who always seems to think he’s the smartest person in the room. The fact that he often is the smartest person in the room is beside the point. Josh’s arrogance is his Achilles’ heel, so it’s completely understandable why CJ would ask Sam over him.

The incident with Zoey sets up a scenario later in the series. Zoey doesn’t take Secret Service protection seriously. This was prior to George W. Bush’s presidency, when that was a problem with his own daughters for a time. It’s probably one of the harder aspects of being a child of the President. It’s also about growing the relationship between Zoey and Charlie. Zoey lies to Josh to get him to bring her and Mallory along. It’s only when he’s getting dressed down by the President after the fact that Josh realizes this. To his credit, Josh doesn’t tell the President that Zoey manipulated the situation. It’s typical for someone her age to do this, and she’s likely chafing under the restrictions that her father being the President of the United States puts on her. This is humanizing for both of them. We see the President as an overprotective father and his daughter chafing under his very necessary restrictions.

The heart of this episode, though, is the story of Mr. Willis. He’s a middle school history teacher whose wife was the Congressional Representative until she passed away. He was appointed to her office until the next election, and he doesn’t intend to try to keep the office. This is the only bill he will be voting on, but his honesty and humility touch Toby. He’s not going to play the political games. Toby made a convincing argument, and he will vote based on that, not on the “what’s in it for me if I do?” that seems to be pervasive in Washington, D.C.

The character of Mr. Willis is a great one, and it’s a shame he doesn’t stick around. That’s the entire point, though. He’s a fish out of water in Washington DC. He sees himself as a simple man who had an extraordinary wife. More people with that sort of humility in Washington would do this country good. I also enjoyed the interplay between Donna and Josh about the budget surplus. This is one of the cases where he’s taken down a notch in his superiority by her, and it’s a good one.

Mr. Willis of Ohio is one of the stronger episodes of the first season. It develops the show’s ensemble a bit more. We learn a bit about how the government works, and how it *should* work. There’s some foreshadowing of the future here as well, which, if you’ve viewed the entire series, you already know. However, keep in mind that wasn’t planned at the time. It was only looking back that Sorkin thought to go down that rabbit hole. His writing is so terrific, and the actors all play their parts superbly.

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