“The Wrath From On High Atop The Thing”: The 10 Best Toby Ziegler Episodes of ‘The West Wing’

Toby ends up in hot water with the White House ethics office over a a stock suddenly going through the roof after a friend of his gave sworn government testimony. It’s classic Toby in a very early West Wing episode. The idea that Toby might have cheated the stock market is ludicrous to both him and the viewer, since we already know Toby to be not concerned so much with money than with his various political crusades. But watching him have to squirm his way out of this one is a good, fun time.

Stream "Five Votes Down" on Netflix.

Richard Schiff won the Best Supporting Actor Emmy for The West Wing‘s first season on the back of this episode. Toby gets called by the cops because a homeless man died with Toby’s business card in his coat pocket (Toby had donated the coat), and it sends him down a path, learning about this man’s history (he was a veteran) and arranging for a funeral service and burial. Toby’s a curmudgeon, yes, but he also might have the biggest heart on the Bartlet staff.

Stream "In Excelsis Deo" on Netflix.

It took almost all of the first season before The West Wing introduced the character of Toby’s ex-wife, Congresswoman Andrea Wyatt. Toby and Andie start out sparring over drug policy, but before long you realize they’re mostly just sparring because that’s what they do. Throughout the series, the pair had phenomenal chemistry, and this episode is a great introduction to it.

Stream "Mandatory Minimums" on Netflix.

Toby was always a great character to pair up with a one-off guest star. Another such episode shows up later on this list, but there’s also episodes like the one where he chats up the police officer at the G8 protest and even in “Dead Irish Writers” when he goes back and forth with Lord John Marbury (who isn’t a one-off character, but their interaction plays out similarly to these). Initially, it seemed like Ann Stark (Felicity Huffman) was being set up as a long-term antagonist on the other side of the aisle, but she never returned again. Which is too bad, because she and Toby really had some great adversarial chemistry (and maybe more) going on.

Stream "The Leadership Breakfast" on Netflix.

This crucial episode kicked off the stretch run of season 2 and broke the whole MS storyline wide open, with Toby as the fulcrum. Brilliant (and distrustful) political mind that he is, Toby manages to figure out that the President isn’t planning on running for re-election. The fiery scene between Toby and Bartlet at the episode’s end is one of the show’s most tense moments, but also one of its most spectacular.

Stream "17 People" on Netflix.

The bulk of this episode doesn’t have anything to do with Toby — the episode title refers to debate over an international criminal court and Leo learning some disturbing information about his history in Vietnam — but after learning that one of his comments in a private meeting leaked to the press, Toby delivers a killer monologue to his gathered staff. It bypasses any easy histrionics by showing Toby’s soft side, and it’s a disarming window into the way Toby truly sees his West Wing family.

Stream "War Crimes" on Netflix.

Any episode with Laura Dern as the special guest star is bound to be an excellent one. Toby gets to be the one to share screen time with her in the role of Tabitha Fortis, the titular poet laureate who is planning to protest the U.S.’s use of land mines. As with his Ann Stark scenes in season 2, Toby is both flirty (more overtly so this time) and adversarial. One gets the sense that any relationship Toby ever had would include some degree of ideological combat. Dern and Schiff are delightful together, and Tabitha brings out some interesting aspects to Toby.

Stream "The U.S. Poet Laureate" on Netflix.

The two-part kickoff to season 4 sees Toby, Josh, and Donna stranded in Indiana after the presidential motorcade leaves without them. And while it’s flat-out wonderful to watch Toby and Josh freak out and needle each other and fret ceaselessly about being out of the political loop for a day, it’s even better near the end of the episode when Toby has a heart-to-heart chat with a bar patron who tells him about his difficulties paying for his daughter to go to college. It’s classic Aaron Sorkin middle-class mythologizing, but boy does it ever work.

Stream "20 Hours in America" on Netflix.

This is the big Bartlet-Ritchie debate episode, and it kicks off with one of the all-time great scenes, as Leo, Jed, and the fest of the senior staff pranks Toby into thinking the President has lost all his debate mojo. It’s a brief scene, but it’s sufficient enough all on its own to secure this episode a place on this list.

Stream "Game On" on Netflix.

The episode following Zoey Bartlet’s kidnapping is a huge one for the President — not to mention the Constitution — but it’s also the episode where Andie Wyatt gives birth to her twins. Toby’s first scenes with his baby children are some of the sweetest the show ever presented. And they end up playing a perfect counterpoint to the main drama of the episode. “They come with hats,” though.

Where to stream "Twenty Five."

What happened to Toby in season 7 is truly unfortunate. With the final season of the show upon us, Toby was sidelined for the whole year for having leaked classified government secrets. Fans didn’t like it, neither, reportedly, did Richard Schiff. But there’s no denying that this episode, where Toby confesses to the leak and he then has to get fired for cause by the President is traumatic get massively compelling.

Stream "Here Today" on Netflix.