Today in TV History: ‘The West Wing’ Delivered an Emmy-Winning Christmas Episode

Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone. 

IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: December 15, 1999

PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: The West Wing, “In Excelsis Deo” (season 1, episode 10). [Stream on Netflix.]

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: The Legend of Aaron Sorkin has many chapters to it. There’s the playwright era, the Academy Award for The Social Network, the having to leave The West Wing after four seasons, the drug problems. The part of the Legend of Sorkin that has to do with “In Excelsis Deo” concerns all of the truly important things in the world: collaboration; television; award ceremonies.

“In Excelsis Deo” was the Christmas episode of the breakout first season of The West Wing, and as much as any other, it was the episode that revealed what a special show The West Wing could be. In the episode, Toby gets a call from the D.C. police (Lance Reddick!) saying that a homeless man died with Toby’s business card in his pocket (from an old coat that Toby had donated). It doesn’t take long for Toby to figure out that the man was a veteran who’d fallen on hard times, and the rest of the episode has to do with Toby’s efforts to get the man a military funeral. This is also the first episode to give Mrs. Landingham (Kathryn Joosten) a spotlight, as both the Christmas holiday and Toby’s efforts remind her of her boys.

It’s perhaps the best scene in an episode full of them.

After the season ended and the Emmy-season kudos started rolling in, “In Excelsis Deo” emerged as one of the standout episodes. It was the one that Richard Schiff submitted to voters, which ultimately led to him winning the show’s first Outstanding Supporting Actor trophy. And it was the episode that ended up winning the show’s first (and, it turned out, only) Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing. The award was shared between the episode’s two credited writers, Aaron Sorkin and Rick Cleveland. Only Sorkin spoke. The following year, Sorkin and Cleveland got into an argument on the message boards of the TV recap site MightyBigTV, a very public tiff that in part led to the season 3 episode where Josh runs afoul of the members of an online fan group. Sorkin’s writing practices were put under a microscope for a while and later reflected in Matthew Perry’s character on Studio 60: Sorkin’s writers room, the story went, as a top-down operation where he had the final say and he got the final credit.

This is a lot to lay on one episode of television, of course, but “In Excelsis Deo” is the rare episode that can be the subject of controversy and still demand to be appreciated on its own merits anyway. It’s that good.

[You can stream The West Wing‘s “In Excelsis Deo” on Netflix.]