Learning to live with my inner nerd
Creating a register of actors that have worked on The West Wing and E.R.
The medical drama E.R. saw in its 25th anniversary in 1999, so we decided to watch it from Episode 1 through to its finale. Also, this was clearly our best way to qualify as fully trained doctors short of actually seeing patients. Or studying medicine.
Along the way I noticed that I was starting to see actors in E.R. that I’d also seen in The West Wing. Something I could drag my poor daughter into a conversation about…
And so it continued…..
And became more frequent. What was going on here?
Soon I began to wonder: just how many actors had appeared in both series?
Dipping in to The West Wing Weekly (a must for all West Wing obsessives) I heard an interview with John Wells, the producer for both series, talking about some of the challenges of making E.R. It wasn’t an easy sell convincing the networks that a show that had a rapid turnover of characters you didn’t spend long enough with to get to know would be something people would watch. Quite the contrast to The West Wing, with Aaron Sorkin’s lovingly crafted character studies and rapidfire dialogue.
So a thought formed about pulling together a proper register of the two series’ crossovers. But that would be too difficult, surely? Until one rainy Sunday afternoon….
Assembling the data
For some reason I got it into my head that it wasn’t possible to grab data on a whole series cast list from IMDB (you totally can — I just checked) so I ended up using Rotten Tomatoes as my source, copying from the screen and pasting into Excel.
Then, a bit of conditional formatting found the matches between the two lists and I could assemble a single list of crossovers
So now we were cooking on gas! A quick visit to Wikipedia to get a complete list of episodes for both series to act as a lookup for episode titles/series references and the spreadsheet began to take shape.
Adding the context
So having the list is one thing. But the initial joy of discovery was the wierd juxtoposition of characters from one show being something else in another. I wanted to give everyone a clear idea of who they were in each to trigger memories.
I’d started using the fan Wiki’s at Fandom.com as source material for this, but there was a huge disparity between the loving detail of the West Wing Wiki and its less comprehensive E.R. cousin. Short of watching all the episodes of both how was I going to fill in the gaps?
Plus at some point I decided photos of every character was needed to help everyone.
Unexpected reactions
So obviously this started as a rainy day distraction, and I didn’t really think anyone else would be interested. I was soon proved wrong.
Also, as a strong believer in the digital-sector maxim of ‘work in the open, it makes things better’ I was over the moon to start getting corrections
Raising my stupid game to maximum
So then I received a tweet that I didn’t quite read properly at first
Yes, fellow nerds, it’s Ed (of Ed and Larry, a West Wing legend) tweeting to show himself appearing in E.R.
So what did I say?
Just go sit in the corner, stupid! Followers of the story up to this point were quick to highlight my mistake
Favourite crossovers
So, to date I’m only halfway through filling out the register. But I’ve alreay found a few that I love
Bruce Weitz
Senate Majority Leader who gets told to “shove his legislative agenda up his ass” by Josh after announcing nominees for the Federal Elections Committee (WW S1 E20)
Sleazy politician who is found to have an STD but Carrie helps cover over this fact to get more funding for the ER (ER S9 E17)
Jacqueline Kim
Comes to the White House to tell Sam why a ship is drifting, and has to tell him all naval officers come in dress uniform when they visit (WW S2 E19)
One of the adoptive parents of Jing-Mei’s daughter (ER S7 E9)
J.P. Stevenson
Plays Jonathon, and Air Force One reporter that pushed Josh to answer Katie’s question about Bartlett’s secret smoking (WW S1,2&3)
Plays ‘Miss Understood’ Of “Miss Understood and the Mighty Morphin Gender Changers” at Club Cabaret every Friday and Saturday. Got into a heated aargument with her boyfriend and ended up with chest pain (ER S3 E10)
Where next?
People have been amazingly supportive, but also quick to point out similar crossovers with other shows, namely:
- The West Wing and Scandal
- The West Wing and The Good Wife/The Good Fight
- The West Wing and Grey’s Anatomy
There’s even been a suggestion of hooking up for an episode-by-episode podcast for E.R.
Just goes to show, when you get the urge just let your freak flag fly
