Sunday, March 15, 2009
Everybody Yells at Toby Redux
Back in December, I presented the findings of my scientific study of The West Wing. Specifically, I explained how I had watched every episode of the series with the intent to calculate how often the character Toby Ziegler was yelled at. Sadly, though, the data I had collected for the first season were lost, and I was only able to present data for Seasons Two through Seven.Well, I have good news for all of you who, since that time, have been wondering if the first season was any different. During a routine cleanup of our filing cabinet, Shelly discovered the Season One data. I can now present a complete picture of how often Toby gets yelled at. (Unfortunately, I simply didn't collect data on how often Toby yells at others until Season Six, so I leave the completion of that project to someone else.)
Originally, I presented a number I called the Toby Ratio, which was the number of instances of someone yelling at Toby divided by the number of scenes Toby appeared in. Essentially, it was the percentage of Toby's interactions that resulted in someone yelling at him. For Seasons Two through Seven, the Toby Ratio was almost 17%. I surmised that "If anything, more people yelled at Toby in Season One than later on."
I was wrong.
The Toby Ratio for Season One was only 10.3% - the second-lowest of all the seven seasons (Season Six was 9.9%). That brought the total Toby Ratio from nearly 17% to 15.88%. Here is an updated graph showing the season-by-season Toby Ratio.
Toby Ratio By Season
In my original report, I presented an episode-by-episode graph showing the number of scenes in which Toby appeared graphed against the number of times he was yelled at (and for Seasons Six and Seven, the number of times he yelled). Here's an updated version of that graph, showing the percentages (as well as noting episodes in which Toby didn't appear at all - you see how they started shoving him out at the end). Apologies for the bad picture quality.
Total Toby Yelling By Episode
As for the people who yelled at Toby, Season One didn't stray too far from the patterns of other seasons. C.J. is still Toby's top yeller; the only significant change to my chart of yellers is that Mandy Hampton, a regular character in Season One who mysteriously disappeared without explanation in Season Two, did get in one yell, keeping her off the list of main characters who never yelled at Toby. Toby's ex-wife Andy only appeared in one episode in Season One, and she yelled at him. That means she yells at him in a total of 8 of the 16 episodes she appears in throughout the series, meaning that fully 50% of the time she's in the show, she yells at Toby. (Also remember that she's in one episode that Toby is not in.)
Who Yells at Toby
Now the data are complete, we can all rest easy. Hopefully someday someone will do a complete study of when Toby yells at others, because my hunch is that that is where the really interesting facts lie.
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