@@Ernestodonayread5053 I've always personally preferred in the Shadow of Two Gunmen but Season 2 in general is spectacular. This is my favorite scene from the show though, just a masterpiece.
I love Bradley’s acting in this, as he begins to relive the shooting. It’s amazing acting. I also love how Toby, who found him after the shooting, and picked up on Josh saying “sirens” in their earlier conversation, is still sensitive to Josh at the concert.
Toby is my idol. He's incredibly warm and caring despite the abrasiveness and bitterness he both lets on and actually feels towards the world. After everything he went through to become such a person, not only does he still care, he cares more than most others.
@@vdinh143 When he finds Josh with the bullet wound is also a great Toby moment. You can see the panic and all the breath goes out of his lungs, so much so that he struggles to call for help. It's brilliant stuff.
hands down my favourite WW episode. An eating disorder and a fear of rectangles. All performances especially Josh, Leo and Stanley are next level. I cry every single time.
Not just a great episode but the first time that it was shown that PTSD is an actual thing. It is not "Oh just man up". Now years after WW2 Vets and Viet Nam Vets were expected to just Man up, play normal and hide their damage, now we understand. They were not crazy, My Dad was just wound a little to tight.
Audie Murphy, a man considered one of the most heroic soldiers in the european theater in ww2 wrote in his war biography exactly as he felt. Fear and anger and the PTSD you live with for years afterwards but unfortunately his book release wasn't used widely by general society to change our understanding of what war or PTSD causing scenarios do.
I remember being thirteen and watching this for the first time, completely transfixed by this scene. I remember feeling an immediate and intense connection to this episode, and Josh's experience with PTSD. It took me seven years to understand why. This show was (and sometimes still is) one of my few safe places in a time when nothing made sense and everything was too much and too painful to deal with. A place where I could feel understood. It may sound dramatic but I was *very* depressed at the time and was dealing with serious gaslighting from one of my parents. Seven years later, in what is possibly one of the most ironic times to be saying this, my brain has finally deemed it safe enough to stop repressing. What can I say, some people are like Josh and it takes a few months, me? Not so much. But man if this doesn't hit me different now. But I'm still transfixed seven years later.
if you listen to the West Wing Weekly episode for Noel, you find out what an amazing, genuine individual he is. How he told Tommy Schlamme not to worry about playback, because he would - and did - play it exactly the same each time for every take. About having people touch his $5M Stradivarius cello so they wouldn't be mystified. About jamming while Dulé Hill tap danced to his music. Just amazing stories.
It was the piece in G-Major that got to Josh. In the 1940 Laurel and Hardy movie "Saps At Sea" it was working in the horn factory that made Oliver Hardy go berserk with Hornophobia. Specifically, the G-Minor horn. According to the factory boss, he was the 4th man that week to go nearly insane from working on the G-Minor horn. I wonder if the writers of TWW knew this bit of Laurel and Hardy history. They essentially gave Josh a bad case of Hornophobia
What I find really interesting is that when he was told about the bitter taste in his mouth he wasn't only able to connect how it started during the Yo Yo Ma concert but also how it started when the shooting happened. I imagine that he would have had really foggy memories of the incident until his memory could connect to that one somatic experience. He probably had no idea what that taste was and that it was significant but hearing about it from the assistant made all the pieces come together in his mind. Truly incredible stuff
I stumbled upon this episode when I was going through an extremely rough period of my life. Nothing like his situation, but long story short I had a customer threaten to kill me at my work, he tried to attack me when I stood my ground but fortunately some other customers helped out and the cops came in time to arrest him. A couple days later another customer blew up on me for ID’ing him so I blew up on him after holding in all the fear and anxiety and stress I’d been feeling since the customer prior. Then he told me to come outside and fight him which I wanted to but couldn’t because I couldn’t afford to lose my job. So I just left and went out back and knocked some shit over and lost my mind for a minute, trying not to cry. And I was worried that I would now have this customer waiting for me so he could kick my ass when I got off work or something. Which I just didn’t need. And that overwhelming fear and cumulative list of events mixed with my already shitty depression and anxiety just got me fucked up for a while. And for weeks or even months I just felt jumpy and terrified of life and work and people. I won’t say I had PTSD or anything cos I don’t think I did/do, but it definitely shook me up for a while. And less than a week after those events, I had been watching this show and came across this episode, and it hit me so much deeper than I expected, and I sympathized with Josh so much I just broke down crying and couldn’t stop. Again, I wasn’t shot, I don’t have PTSD, but that shit just hit me so hard and I could relate to that feeling of vulnerability and pain so well, that fear that you might even die, it became real with the first guy. I just really appreciated this episode. And sometimes, I watch it or this scene because I know how it feels when too many bad things boil over and you just kinda snap under the weight of it all. Anymore, this scene is surprisingly therapeutic.
Napalm In The Morning You don’t have to get shot to be able to feel bad. Stress and agony of waiting on the edge for possible more stress is hurtful. It is a VERY powerful episode.
I say this respectfully and with great admiration for the courage to get yourself through that awful time. But the way Josh downplayed what happened that day? This reads like the same thing. It's a natural reaction after going through a dangerous situation, especially if you think you can't talk to anyone about it. But what you went through was traumatic and it stuck with you. Just because others have gone through worse doesn't diminish your experience. Again, my deepest respect for your strength and tenacity. You deserve to feel good about that.
Really moving description of your experience, thank you. I completely get how this scene clicks perfectly with what you went through - it makes sense you *would* have PTSD after being attacked and then being under stress like that. Hope you have found some peace with it in the last year!
Initiates the first symptoms of PTSD...these staff members recognize a storm of emotions in Josh's head. Instantly there's a concern shared by the staff. Diagnosis is easily given...peeling away the layers becomes his most challenging moment.
I agree with everyone saying it's a great episose, and I agree that the honest portrayal of PTSD is refreshing, but I also agree that the way this episode plays out is entirely unrealistic. If only the world were like this when dealing with mental health issues....
@@amyk2635 Well, the west wing was always unrealistic. People were almost all too sincere and too honest and too decent. The very few villainous characters were almost cartoonish. Realism was never the point.
With all the sentimental things in this episode that could’ve made me tear up, it was that split second look that Tobey gives Josh. That worried, big brotherly “my friend is not okay” look for a guy he truly loves. That always puts a lump in my throat. That and how the president doesn’t even get mad, he just instinctively knows this guy isn’t okay and we need to rally around him and not punish him. It’s beautiful how much they all love each other.
Josh going through therapy is just damn powerful to me. This one is the center of it because it shows the peak of what Josh went through and it clearly shows he couldn't control it and it just spilled all out uncontrollably.
I like how Josh, at the beginning, seemed to try to intimidate Stanley, and Stanley stood his ground. He wouldn't be intimidated and understood what Josh was trying to do and not getting defensive about it.
Alex G A Greta choice. I really like the flashback, just a few episodes earlier, when Josh remembers working for the campaign and it ends hours before the Illinois Primary. Josh coming to in the hospital whispers to the president,”What’s next?” The president then rubs his head so happy he is alive.
The amazing part of this is the reason this episode was made. In an interview Sorkin said that him and whitford were out playing golf when whitford told Sorkin it was weird how he just got shot several months ago. Afterwards, Sorkin wrote this episode.
OMG! After nine years I finally realized where I had read about a similar occurrence: Catcher in The Rye The book opens with Holden in the hospital, the psyche ward. When his brother BD had died Holden put his hand through a glass window in the garage. Angry, distraught at his brother’s death, wondering why it had to be his brother and not him, and sadness for his parents. Josh did the same thing.
PTSD changes the physical structure of the brain - we are forever changed by what we experience. But with treatment it can change again, it’s so important that we now know that.
I still come back to this video all the time. I first watched TWW when I was a middle schooler, and I happened to rewatch it after I had experienced a car accident that I was very lucky to walk away from. It’s been 7 years now, and I still struggle with the traumatic experience. The first time I saw this, I didn’t fully comprehend the weight behind this scene, but now, I sob every time, because it has made me feel seen and understood in a way no other media has. It is clear that this episode was done with care and research on PTSD, which is why it is still so powerful so many years later.
I just listened to him on Desert Island Discs, a program in the UK where people choose what music they would like to be stuck on a desert island with, and are interviewed about it. Such quiet, measured intelligence. Strangely, a man of incredible practicality.
It’s so realistic. I was in a school shooting. Didn’t have any problems. Barely had a raised heart rate after. Never lost any sleep. A month later I’m having a panic attack in bed and I can’t breathe because what I went through hit me.
@@crazehcakes well I'm English and I guess it's a cultural thing. I understand why people want guns , I don't agree with the view that a good guy with a gun ...... Etc. I guess it's more a political thing these days rather than people actually caring about what muzzle they have on their gun.
You are going to be ok. It will get better, in some ways it won't get better. I have PTSD from a shooting and the stranger next to me died horribly. I am here if you ever want to talk about it.
I love and hate that The West Wing and Ted Lasso are the only two shows in recent memory to address men's mental health, both doing so in honest, hard, and poignant ways.
This is very personal to me. I did this very thing. The funny part was if you can call it funny is that I was having a great time last night and then I suddenly put my hand through glass. Everybody thinks you have to be so low to take your life you don’t.❤
Obviously, the acting and writing is brilliant. But let's also give it up for the editor(s) and sound mixer(s). The glass breaking in his hand is almost shouting "liar!" It's so well put together.
This is terrifying but so goddamn real. I don't have PTSD...I don't think. My childhood was...not fun (understatement but im not going into all that right now), but I don't think that amounts to PTSD But I was unpacking a box once, my wife was in the room and I was in an incredibly tense, foul mood. I blacked out for maybe, 5 seconds and looked over to see my wife staring at me in horror. I looked at my hands and I was holding a box in one hand, a broom handle in the other and I had run the broom through the box 3 or 4 times. I had no knowledge of doing it, my hands were shaking and I was suddenly scared witless for my wife. I picked up my shoes, literally ran out if the house before I could put them on, got in my car and just started driving. I had a location in mind which was about 45 minutes away, but I just went. Don't worry, I made to make sure my focus was 100% on the road as to not harm anyone
On a serious note, it really disturbed me cause ptsd is stereotyped along with other things and this changed our perspective. Hard to see how it works. On a fun note i think josh was bored and decided to kill the window. 😂
Something I want to understand is what really made Josh react when he did. Could he have been anywhere doing anything and still have reacted in the same way or was it the particular venue or the piece being played that triggered something?
He had a flashback listening to Yo Yo Ma. His brain conflated the sound of the cello with the noise of the sirens at the shooting scene. By the way, although it's great drama and beautifully written and acted, a real trauma-informed therapy session would not resemble at all the interchanges between the psychiatrist and Josh.
Probably the best episode from the best TV show of all time.
i still believe that "two cathedrals" is not only the best episode of the show, but also the best episode pf any show ive seen
@@Ernestodonayread5053 I've always personally preferred in the Shadow of Two Gunmen but Season 2 in general is spectacular. This is my favorite scene from the show though, just a masterpiece.
I probably think about this episode once a week.
I love Bradley’s acting in this, as he begins to relive the shooting. It’s amazing acting. I also love how Toby, who found him after the shooting, and picked up on Josh saying “sirens” in their earlier conversation, is still sensitive to Josh at the concert.
Toby is my idol. He's incredibly warm and caring despite the abrasiveness and bitterness he both lets on and actually feels towards the world. After everything he went through to become such a person, not only does he still care, he cares more than most others.
V D I agree completely.
@@vdinh143 When he finds Josh with the bullet wound is also a great Toby moment. You can see the panic and all the breath goes out of his lungs, so much so that he struggles to call for help. It's brilliant stuff.
hands down my favourite WW episode. An eating disorder and a fear of rectangles. All performances especially Josh, Leo and Stanley are next level. I cry every single time.
Not just a great episode but the first time that it was shown that PTSD is an actual thing. It is not "Oh just man up". Now years after WW2 Vets and Viet Nam Vets were expected to just Man up, play normal and hide their damage, now we understand. They were not crazy, My Dad was just wound a little to tight.
Audie Murphy, a man considered one of the most heroic soldiers in the european theater in ww2 wrote in his war biography exactly as he felt. Fear and anger and the PTSD you live with for years afterwards but unfortunately his book release wasn't used widely by general society to change our understanding of what war or PTSD causing scenarios do.
A friend of mine was in a Vietnam firefight and finally admitted he was not hurt but very afraid.
Totally agree
I remember being thirteen and watching this for the first time, completely transfixed by this scene. I remember feeling an immediate and intense connection to this episode, and Josh's experience with PTSD.
It took me seven years to understand why.
This show was (and sometimes still is) one of my few safe places in a time when nothing made sense and everything was too much and too painful to deal with. A place where I could feel understood. It may sound dramatic but I was *very* depressed at the time and was dealing with serious gaslighting from one of my parents.
Seven years later, in what is possibly one of the most ironic times to be saying this, my brain has finally deemed it safe enough to stop repressing. What can I say, some people are like Josh and it takes a few months, me? Not so much.
But man if this doesn't hit me different now. But I'm still transfixed seven years later.
One impressive thing here is that this was the real Yo-Yo Ma, a genuinely renowned musician.
if you listen to the West Wing Weekly episode for Noel, you find out what an amazing, genuine individual he is. How he told Tommy Schlamme not to worry about playback, because he would - and did - play it exactly the same each time for every take. About having people touch his $5M Stradivarius cello so they wouldn't be mystified. About jamming while Dulé Hill tap danced to his music. Just amazing stories.
A while back I had the chance to meet Yo-yo Ma at a wedding. He is a genuinely nice person!
When he got his COVID vaccine he stayed on at the clinic and played for everyone there. ❤️
Yeah. ❤
Plus whenever i get bored i always think of this. 😂😂
It was the piece in G-Major that got to Josh.
In the 1940 Laurel and Hardy movie "Saps At Sea" it was working in the horn factory that made Oliver Hardy go berserk with Hornophobia. Specifically, the G-Minor horn. According to the factory boss, he was the 4th man that week to go nearly insane from working on the G-Minor horn.
I wonder if the writers of TWW knew this bit of Laurel and Hardy history. They essentially gave Josh a bad case of Hornophobia
"Others heard Yo Yo Ma.....you heard bullets." It gets me every time because I can relate so well to it.
"The bitter taste was the adrenaline." That quote makes me cry so hard :(
What I find really interesting is that when he was told about the bitter taste in his mouth he wasn't only able to connect how it started during the Yo Yo Ma concert but also how it started when the shooting happened. I imagine that he would have had really foggy memories of the incident until his memory could connect to that one somatic experience. He probably had no idea what that taste was and that it was significant but hearing about it from the assistant made all the pieces come together in his mind.
Truly incredible stuff
💯@@roguecarrot7582
I'm so sorry
I stumbled upon this episode when I was going through an extremely rough period of my life. Nothing like his situation, but long story short I had a customer threaten to kill me at my work, he tried to attack me when I stood my ground but fortunately some other customers helped out and the cops came in time to arrest him. A couple days later another customer blew up on me for ID’ing him so I blew up on him after holding in all the fear and anxiety and stress I’d been feeling since the customer prior. Then he told me to come outside and fight him which I wanted to but couldn’t because I couldn’t afford to lose my job. So I just left and went out back and knocked some shit over and lost my mind for a minute, trying not to cry. And I was worried that I would now have this customer waiting for me so he could kick my ass when I got off work or something. Which I just didn’t need. And that overwhelming fear and cumulative list of events mixed with my already shitty depression and anxiety just got me fucked up for a while. And for weeks or even months I just felt jumpy and terrified of life and work and people. I won’t say I had PTSD or anything cos I don’t think I did/do, but it definitely shook me up for a while. And less than a week after those events, I had been watching this show and came across this episode, and it hit me so much deeper than I expected, and I sympathized with Josh so much I just broke down crying and couldn’t stop. Again, I wasn’t shot, I don’t have PTSD, but that shit just hit me so hard and I could relate to that feeling of vulnerability and pain so well, that fear that you might even die, it became real with the first guy. I just really appreciated this episode. And sometimes, I watch it or this scene because I know how it feels when too many bad things boil over and you just kinda snap under the weight of it all. Anymore, this scene is surprisingly therapeutic.
Napalm In The Morning You don’t have to get shot to be able to feel bad. Stress and agony of waiting on the edge for possible more stress is hurtful. It is a VERY powerful episode.
Very well said. I can completely relate. Hope you're good.
I say this respectfully and with great admiration for the courage to get yourself through that awful time. But the way Josh downplayed what happened that day? This reads like the same thing. It's a natural reaction after going through a dangerous situation, especially if you think you can't talk to anyone about it. But what you went through was traumatic and it stuck with you. Just because others have gone through worse doesn't diminish your experience.
Again, my deepest respect for your strength and tenacity. You deserve to feel good about that.
Really moving description of your experience, thank you. I completely get how this scene clicks perfectly with what you went through - it makes sense you *would* have PTSD after being attacked and then being under stress like that. Hope you have found some peace with it in the last year!
Initiates the first symptoms of PTSD...these staff members recognize a storm of emotions in Josh's head.
Instantly there's a concern shared by the staff.
Diagnosis is easily given...peeling away the layers becomes his most challenging moment.
I agree with everyone saying it's a great episose, and I agree that the honest portrayal of PTSD is refreshing, but I also agree that the way this episode plays out is entirely unrealistic. If only the world were like this when dealing with mental health issues....
@@amyk2635 Well, the west wing was always unrealistic. People were almost all too sincere and too honest and too decent. The very few villainous characters were almost cartoonish. Realism was never the point.
"Josh! I am the guy you tell." Those words have always stuck with me.
With all the sentimental things in this episode that could’ve made me tear up, it was that split second look that Tobey gives Josh. That worried, big brotherly “my friend is not okay” look for a guy he truly loves. That always puts a lump in my throat. That and how the president doesn’t even get mad, he just instinctively knows this guy isn’t okay and we need to rally around him and not punish him. It’s beautiful how much they all love each other.
Josh going through therapy is just damn powerful to me. This one is the center of it because it shows the peak of what Josh went through and it clearly shows he couldn't control it and it just spilled all out uncontrollably.
I like how Josh, at the beginning, seemed to try to intimidate Stanley, and Stanley stood his ground. He wouldn't be intimidated and understood what Josh was trying to do and not getting defensive about it.
Also, Stanley did not care that Jed Bartlet was president.
For a cat who doesn't care, he sure cares a lot.
Love Adam Arkin!
I have PTSD. Smells do it for me. I'll live in dread of some all my life. This episode, when originally aired, had me in tears. Still does it now....
My favorite sequence from my favorite show.
Alex G A Greta choice. I really like the flashback, just a few episodes earlier, when Josh remembers working for the campaign and it ends hours before the Illinois Primary. Josh coming to in the hospital whispers to the president,”What’s next?”
The president then rubs his head so happy he is alive.
The amazing part of this is the reason this episode was made. In an interview Sorkin said that him and whitford were out playing golf when whitford told Sorkin it was weird how he just got shot several months ago. Afterwards, Sorkin wrote this episode.
"Hey boss, so...remember 'continuity'?" :) Awesome to hear that Whitford had a direct hand in creating his most legendary episode.
Brilliant work from Bradley Whitford there. I wonder if Martin Sheen gave him a few pointers on breaking glass in a PTSD-fueled panic?
OMG! After nine years I finally realized where I had read about a similar occurrence: Catcher in The Rye
The book opens with Holden in the hospital, the psyche ward. When his brother BD had died Holden put his hand through a glass window in the garage. Angry, distraught at his brother’s death, wondering why it had to be his brother and not him, and sadness for his parents.
Josh did the same thing.
Holden’s brother Addy was the one that died, his brother DB was alive and worked as a screen writer.
An extraordinary piece of television.
PTSD changes the physical structure of the brain - we are forever changed by what we experience. But with treatment it can change again, it’s so important that we now know that.
I love how you see the audience breath, their bodies gently sway...
bradley actually won an emmy for this episode
Good, it's the best episode of the show
This was a great episode to watch Adam arkin was great as the doctor taking to Josh also the script was brilliant written by Aaron Sorkin
I still come back to this video all the time. I first watched TWW when I was a middle schooler, and I happened to rewatch it after I had experienced a car accident that I was very lucky to walk away from. It’s been 7 years now, and I still struggle with the traumatic experience. The first time I saw this, I didn’t fully comprehend the weight behind this scene, but now, I sob every time, because it has made me feel seen and understood in a way no other media has. It is clear that this episode was done with care and research on PTSD, which is why it is still so powerful so many years later.
I just listened to him on Desert Island Discs, a program in the UK where people choose what music they would like to be stuck on a desert island with, and are interviewed about it. Such quiet, measured intelligence. Strangely, a man of incredible practicality.
They really made Yo-Yo Ma work in this episode with all the multi angle angles and the hands closeups.
It’s so realistic. I was in a school shooting. Didn’t have any problems. Barely had a raised heart rate after. Never lost any sleep. A month later I’m having a panic attack in bed and I can’t breathe because what I went through hit me.
No one should ever have to experience that , fuck guns.
I hope you are doing ok.
@@jamesturner2914 I mean I wouldn't say that...I do have a rifle...
@@crazehcakes well I'm English and I guess it's a cultural thing. I understand why people want guns , I don't agree with the view that a good guy with a gun ...... Etc. I guess it's more a political thing these days rather than people actually caring about what muzzle they have on their gun.
You are going to be ok. It will get better, in some ways it won't get better. I have PTSD from a shooting and the stranger next to me died horribly. I am here if you ever want to talk about it.
Did he play it well?
It's Yo-Yo Ma
I've always loved the way Josh delivered that line.
There are so many great episodes in The West Wing but this has to be one of Brad's best.
You have the whole clip. Wow, so many clips don’t have the great reveal.
Stunningly written and performed.
Best Episode.
I tear up just thinking about this scene.
Every time i see this or hear this song im in tears.
Spectacular and chilling.
Without a doubt one of TVs finest programmes.
My personal favorite episode of TWW. And that's saying something
JOSH!!!.........How did you cut your hand?
We drastically underestimate ptsd
So powerful and so amazing
Big ups to the sound mixers.
Adam Arkin rules
Stanley's "Okay"
Stanley was about two seconds away from slapping Josh is he didn’t cut the BS
That’s the kinda psychiatrist we should all have.
I love and hate that The West Wing and Ted Lasso are the only two shows in recent memory to address men's mental health, both doing so in honest, hard, and poignant ways.
This is very personal to me. I did this very thing. The funny part was if you can call it funny is that I was having a great time last night and then I suddenly put my hand through glass. Everybody thinks you have to be so low to take your life you don’t.❤
Obviously, the acting and writing is brilliant. But let's also give it up for the editor(s) and sound mixer(s). The glass breaking in his hand is almost shouting "liar!" It's so well put together.
This is terrifying but so goddamn real.
I don't have PTSD...I don't think. My childhood was...not fun (understatement but im not going into all that right now), but I don't think that amounts to PTSD
But
I was unpacking a box once, my wife was in the room and I was in an incredibly tense, foul mood. I blacked out for maybe, 5 seconds and looked over to see my wife staring at me in horror. I looked at my hands and I was holding a box in one hand, a broom handle in the other and I had run the broom through the box 3 or 4 times. I had no knowledge of doing it, my hands were shaking and I was suddenly scared witless for my wife. I picked up my shoes, literally ran out if the house before I could put them on, got in my car and just started driving. I had a location in mind which was about 45 minutes away, but I just went.
Don't worry, I made to make sure my focus was 100% on the road as to not harm anyone
On a serious note, it really disturbed me cause ptsd is stereotyped along with other things and this changed our perspective. Hard to see how it works.
On a fun note i think josh was bored and decided to kill the window. 😂
Something I want to understand is what really made Josh react when he did. Could he have been anywhere doing anything and still have reacted in the same way or was it the particular venue or the piece being played that triggered something?
It was the music in general. The music for him was sirens. Notice how at the end of the episode the bell ringers had the same effect.
He had a flashback listening to Yo Yo Ma. His brain conflated the sound of the cello with the noise of the sirens at the shooting scene. By the way, although it's great drama and beautifully written and acted, a real trauma-informed therapy session would not resemble at all the interchanges between the psychiatrist and Josh.
They only knock one time if at all.