The Project

For nearly two years, Shelly and I have invested a portion of our lives to a very serious project that we recently completed. We decided that we would watch every episode of The West Wing on DVD. I think it was Shelly's idea to choose that particular TV series (which is why I have taken the prerogative to choose that we next tackle Northern Exposure), but I had seen enough episodes to know one important thing about The West Wing.

Everybody yells at Toby.

Toby Ziegler is the White House Communications Director in the show, played by Richard Schiff. Toby is somewhat morose, a little combative, and often prickly. He's not your ideal co-worker. Which is why, when we started the endeavor of watching the entire series from front to back, I decided to make a scientific study out of it. I wanted to see if my theory that everybody yells at Toby is true. This is my scientific report.

The Procedure

First, I counted every scene in which Toby appeared. I did not count scenes where he did not have a line (for example, a big meeting or event where he sat in the audience and listened to someone else talking). Sometimes, due to cross-cut editing, I counted two shots of Toby separated by a shot of someone else somewhere else as a single scene. Frankly, it wasn't as cut-and-dry as you'd think it would be to determine the number of scenes Toby appeared in.

Second, I counted every instance in which someone yelled at Toby. Again, this was a somewhat subjective measure. There were scenes where people raised their voice to Toby but were not truly angry at him. There were times when people were very angry at him, but did not raise their voice (like his final encounter with the President). I did not count instances where voices were not raised, but may have counted some instances where true anger was not the emotion of the yeller. I also made note of who the yeller was in each instance.

Third, starting at the beginning of Season Six, I counted every instance in which Toby yelled at someone else. I really should have thought of doing this from the beginning, because, as the data from Seasons Six and Seven show, Toby yells more often than he is yelled at (he yells 28 times in those two seasons, and is yelled at 22 times). Indeed, most people who yell at Toby are really yelling back when Toby yells at them.

Sadly, although I collected them, the data for Season One were lost. I rejoiced when the very first scene in which Toby appears in the pilot episode shows him on a plane, and the stewardess yells at him because he won't shut off his cell phone. If anything, more people yelled at Toby in Season One than later on.

The Data

From Seasons Two through Seven (a total of 130 episodes), Toby appeared in 680 scenes. In those scenes, Toby was yelled at 115 times, for a Toby Ratio of nearly 17%. Yes, Toby gets yelled at in 17% of his encounters with his fellow beings. Who do you know in real life that can match that percentage? There are two episodes, both in Season Seven, where the Toby Ratio reaches 100%. There are ten additional episodes where it is 50% or higher. Here is a graph of the breakdown of the Toby Ratio, season by season.

Toby Ratio By Season


For a little bit more detail, here is another graph that shows, episode by episode, the number of Toby scenes, the times people yell at Toby, and the time Toby yells.

You can see how Toby was kind of left by the wayside starting toward the end of Season Six and into Season Seven, when he got in trouble with the law. But you can also see how the yelling per scene increased.

Toby didn't get along equally with everyone he encountered. Here's the breakdown of the 115 yells according to yeller.

Who Yells At Toby

That line labeled "Guest" is a conglomerate of all the guest stars and miscellaneous characters who yell at Toby. They include various Republican aides and elected officials, the White House press corps, and various lawyers, among others. In one episode in Season Two, Toby was yelled at by a crowd of several thousand WTO protesters, but I only counted it as one yelling. No individual guest yelled at Toby more than twice.

So it turns out C.J. is the top Toby-yeller, which makes sense since they work so closely together and have a longstanding friendship. In fact, Toby's last scene in the series is an encounter at his home between him and C.J., where they both end up yelling at each other. In one episode, C.J. pinches Toby in anger, but she doesn't yell. I didn't count that.

Josh is the second-biggest yeller, but he should get special recognition here as the only person to throw a punch at Toby. There's a scene during Season Six where they get into an argument about Josh's leaving the White House to run a presidential campaign, and the yelling escalates to violence. So while that only counted as one instance in my data, it should be noted that it was the zenith of anti-Toby sentiment in the series.

Honorable mention goes to the Secret Service agent in Season Five who yelled at Toby and then had to tackle him when Toby tried to get out of a locked-down room with Will Bailey (who yelled at him three times in that episode alone).

An interesting character is Andy, Toby's ex-wife. According to IMDB, she only appears in 15 episodes in Seasons Two through Seven (and one in Season One), but she yells at Toby seven times. That's an average of one yell per 2.1 episodes (and it should be noted that she appears in one episode - the second-to-last one - that Toby does not appear in. Compare that to CJ's average of one yell per 5.7 episodes. Clearly Andy is the character with whom Toby has the rockiest relationship.

A few notable characters are not on this list. Of the show's regulars, Charlie Young, Kate Harper, and Annabeth Schott never yelled at Toby (though, as shown below, Toby yelled at Kate and Annabeth, making Charlie the character with whom Toby has the best relationship).

The next graph shows the people Toby yells at in Seasons Six and Seven.

Toby's Yellees, Seasons Six and Seven

The Conclusion

So while it may not be literally true that everybody yells at Toby, he certainly does get himself into a lot of yelling situations. Yet I must admit that after spending two years of my life carefully watching his every move, Toby is one of my favorite characters. He is very complex and interesting, and I really missed him when he stopped appearing in every episode. He may be, in Andy's words, "too sad," but he's one of the reasons it was so enjoyable watching seven seasons of The West Wing.