"The West Wing" The Wake Up Call (2005)

Director:

Laura Innes

Writers:

Aaron Sorkin (creator) and
Lauren Schmidt (staff writer)

TV Series:

"The West Wing" (1999)

Original Air Date:

9 February 2005 (Season 6, Episode 14)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

A rapidly-escalating international crisis involving Iran and the UK requires C.J. to wake the President...

Plot Keywords:

President | Political | Secretary | White House | First Lady

Cast

Alan Alda	...	Senator Arnold Vinick
Stockard Channing	...	Abbey Bartlet
Dulé Hill	...	Charlie Young
Allison Janney	...	Claudia Jean 'C.J.' Cregg
Mary McCormack	...	Kate Harper
Richard Schiff	...	Toby Ziegler
John Spencer	...	Leo McGarry
Martin Sheen	...	President Josiah 'Jed' Bartlet
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Anthony Azizi	...	Asefi Hossein Kamal Bin Hamid / 'Chet'
Elya Baskin	...	Mr. Zubatov
Kristin Chenoweth	...	Annabeth Schott
Tom Chick	...	Reporter Gordon
Derek Coleman	...	Secret Service Agent
William Duffy	...	Larry
Renée Estevez	...	Nancy
Penny Griego	...	Newscaster
Christopher Lloyd	...	Lawrence Lessig
Claudia Lynx	...	Miss World
Ben Murray	...	Curtis Carruthers
Ron Ostrow	...	Reporter John
Roger Rees	...	Brit. Ambassador Lord John Marbury
NiCole Robinson	...	Margaret Hooper
Steve Ryan	...	Secretary of Defense Miles Hutchinson
Pamela Salem	...	British Prime Minister Maureen Graty
Edward Shkolnikov	...	Vlad Helakal
Peter James Smith	...	Ed
Oleg Vidov	...	Judge Igor Lipecki
Ken Weiler	...	Officer

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Trivia:

Lawrence Lessig is a real-life constitutional scholar who was involved in drafting an early version of the Georgian constitution. Episode writer Josh Singer took Lessig's Constitutional Law course at Harvard, and remembered an anecdote told during class. Lessig approved the script, which he felt captured 90% of what was important about "constitutionalism": building a society that respects the rule of law.

Goofs:

Factual errors: In this episode CJ is woken up at 03:45 am EST being told that a British airliner has been shot down over Iran one hour earlier (02:45 am EST). Later in the SIT room Kate Harper explains, that the shot down 737 has the same signature as US spy plane RC-135, and at visual the radar on the back of the RC-135 might not be visible at night. However, when the plane was shot down the local time in Iran was 11:15 am, which means that it was broad daylight over Iran.

Movie Connections:

References "Maude" (1972)

Soundtrack:

My Funny Valentine