Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail

"Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail"
The West Wing episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 38
Directed by	Jessica Yu
Written by	Paul Redford and Aaron Sorkin
Production code	226216
Original air date	February 28, 2001
Guest stars
Roma Maffia Jolie Jenkins Anna Deavere Smith Clark Gregg NiCole Robinson John Billingsley Jordan Baker
Season 2 episodes
October 4, 2000 – May 16, 2001 In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part I In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part II The Midterms In this White House And It's Surely to Their Credit The Lame Duck Congress The Portland Trip Shibboleth Galileo Noël The Leadership Breakfast The Drop-In Bartlet's Third State of the Union The War at Home Ellie Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail The Stackhouse Filibuster 17 People Bad Moon Rising The Fall's Gonna Kill You 18th and Potomac Two Cathedrals
List of The West Wing episodes

"Somebody's Going to Emergency, Somebody's Going to Jail" is the 38th episode of The West Wing.

The title is a lyric from the Don Henley song "New York Minute," from the album The End of the Innocence. The song is featured in the episode.

Plot

The staff again participates in "Big Block of Cheese Day." A friend of Donna's asks Sam to consider a pardon request for an alleged Cold War spy. Sam, meanwhile, comes to grips with the revelation of his father's infidelity.

Toby Ziegler meets with the group "World Policies Studies," which objects to the World Trade Organization, and C.J. Cregg meets with "The Organization of Cartographers for Social Equality," which would like legislation to support a specific map projection, namely the "Peters projection" which corrects the exaggerated representation of North America and Western Europe found in the standard Mercator projection. Believing that placing the Northern Hemisphere on top suggests dominance by the countries there, the cartographers actually advocate rotating the projection by 180 degrees to place the Southern Hemisphere on top in a reversed map.

Trivia

Opposing the WTO

While "World Policies Studies" does not exist, there are many individuals and organizations which object to the World Trade Organization (WTO), such as Pat Buchanan, Harry Browne, and the anti-globalization movement.

Lincoln Pardon

The story that Josh relates to Sam about Abraham Lincoln signing a pardon on the day he was assassinated was at the time this episode aired thought to be true. A document, dated April 14, 1865, was discovered among a collection of cases at the National Archives in 1998 by researcher Thomas Lowry. Lincoln signed the pardon of Patrick Murphy, a California soldier who deserted in 1862 and had been sentenced to death. Lincoln pardoned Murphy because he was "not perfectly sound". In 2011 it was discovered that Lowry altered the original date of 1864 to make it appear more significant.

External links

• The West Wing Episode Guide