Honestly, if you're binge-watching The West Wing for the first time on a streaming service, Isaac and Ishmael probably feels like a fever dream. You’ve just finished the soaring, rain-soaked Season 2 finale, "Two Cathedrals." You're hyped for the fallout of President Bartlet’s MS announcement. Then, suddenly, the actors appear on screen—out of character, in suits and sweaters—telling you that what you're about to see isn't actually "happening" in the show's timeline.
It’s weird.
Actually, it’s more than weird. It’s a "storytelling aberration," as Bradley Whitford put it in that very intro. But to understand why Isaac and Ishmael exists, you have to remember the sheer, vibrating trauma of October 2001.
A Play Written in Ten Days
Three weeks. That’s all the time Aaron Sorkin and the crew had between the September 11 attacks and the air date of this episode. Usually, a network drama takes months to move from a script to a finished broadcast. Sorkin threw out his planned season premiere, "Manchester," and wrote this "play" in a frantic, ten-day sprint.
The goal wasn't to move the plot forward. It was to process the fact that the world had just changed.
The episode is basically a "bottle episode." Because of the rush, they couldn't build new sets or do complicated "walk and talks" through the halls. Instead, they crashed the White House. A security alert puts the building on lockdown, trapping a group of high school students in the cafeteria with the senior staff.
What follows is basically a 42-minute civics lecture.
The Problems with Leo McGarry
If you ask a die-hard fan what they think of this episode, they’ll probably mention Leo. In any other episode, Leo McGarry is the wise, steady hand. He's the guy who tells the story about the man in the hole. But in Isaac and Ishmael, Leo is… well, he’s a jerk.
He spends the episode interrogating a White House staffer named Rakim Ali, played by Ajay Naidu. The "evidence" against Ali is flimsy—a name match on a watch list—but Leo treats him with a cold, borderline racist suspicion. It’s hard to watch.
- Leo’s behavior is intentionally out of character.
- The script uses him to mirror the country's collective paranoia.
- He eventually apologizes, but it’s a clumsy, "heat of the moment" excuse.
Sorkin was trying to show how fear makes even the smartest people "turn" on their neighbors. Some people think it worked. Others think it butchered one of the show's best characters for the sake of a PSA.
"Islamic Extremism is to Islam as the KKK is to Christianity"
This is the line everyone remembers. It’s the "Sorkin-ism" that defines the episode’s educational mission. In the cafeteria, Josh, Toby, Sam, and C.J. take turns explaining the Middle East to a group of teenagers who—to be honest—don't sound like any teenagers I’ve ever met. They ask perfectly phrased, leading questions that allow the staffers to deliver sweeping monologues about history and religion.
It’s didactic. It’s preachy. It’s very "The West Wing."
But in 2001, this was actually somewhat radical. Most of the media was just screaming about revenge. Sorkin was trying to draw a line between a religion and the people who hijacked it. He used the story of Isaac and Ishmael—the two sons of Abraham who eventually came together to bury their father—as a metaphor for the shared roots of Jews and Arabs.
Does it actually hold up?
Kinda. Sorta. Not really.
Watching it in 2026, the episode feels incredibly dated. The "they hate us for our freedom" rhetoric feels simplistic now. The way the show handles the intelligence community—C.J. Cregg basically arguing that the CIA should be allowed to be "sneaky"—is jarring compared to her usual stance as the administration's moral conscience.
Still, you’ve got to respect the guts it took to make it.
Most shows were running away from 9/11. Sitcoms were digitally scrubbing the Twin Towers from their intro credits. Sorkin decided to lean in. He didn't mention the attacks by name (it’s an "unspecified" threat in the episode), but everyone watching knew exactly what he was talking about.
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It remains the most-watched episode in the show’s history. Over 25 million people tuned in.
How to watch it today
If you’re doing a rewatch, here is the best way to handle Isaac and Ishmael:
- Watch it as a time capsule. Don't try to fit it into the Season 3 arc. It doesn't belong there.
- Focus on the kids. The episode is at its best when it acknowledges that the next generation is the one that has to live with the consequences of adult fear.
- Appreciate the "Acting." Even if the dialogue is preachy, Janel Moloney and Bradley Whitford have a great dynamic in the cafeteria scenes.
- Skip the Leo scenes if you want to keep liking him. Seriously, it’s rough.
Ultimately, Isaac and Ishmael is a reminder that art doesn't always have to be perfect to be important. It was a raw, messy response to a raw, messy moment in history. It’s the "very special episode" that actually earned the title, even if it makes us cringe a little bit today.
Your next move: If you're looking for the real start of Season 3, skip to "Manchester Part 1." That’s where the actual story resumes, picking up right where the Season 2 finale left off. Use Isaac and Ishmael as a standalone "one-act play" for a rainy afternoon when you want to see what the world felt like for an hour in October 2001.