Toby's Family Secret: Murder, Incorporated
Plot Beats
The narrative micro-steps within this event
Ginger asks Toby for the date of Albert Anastasia's death, leading Toby to consult his father, Julie, who reveals precise knowledge of the criminal underworld.
Toby reveals to Will that his father worked for 'Murder Incorporated', confirming the dark family history and explaining his earlier discomfort.
Who Was There
Characters present in this moment
Neutral and professional — focused on logistics.
Responds to Toby’s request by arranging a few minutes with the President for Toby and Mr. Bailey later in the evening — a small but decisive scheduling maneuver that buys Will time.
- • Secure a presidential meeting window as requested.
- • Maintain orderly scheduling for senior staff.
- • Schedules can and should be managed to accommodate urgent staff needs.
- • Small administrative actions keep the White House functioning.
Not present; represented by campaign messaging that creates mild institutional tension.
Referenced visually via large campaign posters in Toby's old office windows — Sam is not present but his campaign imagery intrudes on the Communications Office and triggers Toby's comment about laws against campaigning in federal buildings.
- • Promote Sam's candidacy via visible campaign material (implicit).
- • Leverage White House connections to give the campaign legitimacy (implicit).
- • Campaigning benefits from proximity to institutional power (implied by posters).
- • Campaign visibility matters more than strict adherence to institutional decorum.
Composed and businesslike on the surface; quietly paternal and weary underneath — steadying a junior aide while managing personal history intruding into work.
Arrives from the Hill, redirects Will’s embarrassment into a scheduled plan, asks his father for a historical date, returns with the answer, secures an evening meeting with the President for Will, and gives him blunt, paternal advice about drinking and handling pain.
- • Ensure Will gets a proper meeting with the President later tonight.
- • Stabilize and mentor a flustered junior aide so the administration's messaging work continues.
- • Control the optics of campaigning in a federal workspace.
- • Resolve the immediate factual request (Anastasia date) quickly to keep operations flowing.
- • Staff need direct, unvarnished counsel when they are vulnerable.
- • Personal history and family cannot be entirely walled off from professional life.
- • Efficiency and blunt honesty are the best ways to support someone in crisis.
- • Institutional rules matter (no campaigning in federal buildings) and should be enforced.
Calmly sympathetic, playing the role of a steady aide smoothing a junior staffer’s mortification.
Greets Will politely as he enters the Outer Oval, tells him the President will see him shortly, informs Will that Toby is needed on the Hill, then offers measured reassurance after Will's embarrassed reaction.
- • Keep Oval Office traffic orderly and efficient.
- • Reassure and stabilize Will after his embarrassing encounter.
- • Protect President's time while facilitating staff access.
- • Maintaining calm and practicality reduces staff anxiety.
- • It's part of his duty to shield both the President and junior staff from awkward moments.
Matter-of-fact and efficient — intent on solving a factual request quickly.
Notifies Toby that Lisa Lily from the Justice Department is on the phone seeking Albert Anastasia’s death date, and later thanks him when he returns the date — functioning as the operational trigger that pulls Toby into his father’s office.
- • Obtain the requested factual information for the DOJ call.
- • Keep communication channels clear for Toby and other senior staff.
- • Accurate facts must be supplied quickly for external events.
- • Her role is to facilitate Toby’s ability to respond efficiently.
Neutral and professional — performing routine staff duties without fanfare.
Hands Toby a plain scheduling piece of paper after Ginger relays the date — a perfunctory administrative act that supplies Toby with the 7:30 time he announces to Will.
- • Provide Toby with the scheduling information he requests.
- • Keep communications errands flowing smoothly.
- • Small administrative gestures prevent larger logistical problems.
- • Being prompt with information is part of staff responsibility.
Pleasantly curious and benignly authoritative — interested in the work (the notes) and courteous to staff.
Unexpectedly encounters Will in the Outer Oval, greets him warmly, references having sent notes on the Congressional section, and graciously offers Will to come back with Toby — prompting Will’s embarrassment and enabling the rescheduling that Toby later secures.
- • Confirm and review the Congressional notes he sent.
- • Be hospitable and maintain normal White House decorum despite staff fluster.
- • Keep the Oval’s business moving on schedule.
- • Junior staff should be treated with decency and given direction.
- • Work should be the primary focus of such visits (the notes are the point of the meeting).
Matter-of-fact and neutral — participates calmly in an awkward family/work intersection.
Sits in Toby's office waiting; when asked the date of Anastasia's death, she supplies 'October of 1957' without fanfare, enabling Toby to answer Ginger and close the factual loop.
- • Be helpful and provide the factual date when asked.
- • Maintain a low-profile presence while waiting in the office.
- • Sharing factual information is a small, necessary service.
- • Being present for family overtures has value despite estrangement.
Urgent and practical — needs exact historical detail for a same-evening DOJ production.
Referenced by Ginger as the off-screen caller seeking the Anastasia death date for a Justice Department event; her request is the external prompt that forces Toby to consult his father and produce the date.
- • Obtain an exact historical date for her event's skit accuracy.
- • Ensure DOJ’s program proceeds without factual error.
- • Accuracy matters for public-facing events.
- • White House contacts are reliable sources for precise historical details.
Objects Involved
Significant items in this scene
The 'notes on the Congressional section' are the ostensible reason Will is at the White House and are referenced directly by Bartlet; the notes function narratively as the professional purpose over which the personal exchange (Will’s embarrassment, Toby’s mentoring) unfolds.
A plain scheduling piece of paper is handed to Toby by a staffer and used to confirm the 7:30 meeting time Toby announces to Will; the paper concretizes the promise Toby makes and advances the logistical resolution of the awkward encounter.
Toby half-jokes that if campaign material must cover Will’s office windows, staff should use plain oak tag — the object functions as a rhetorical device to enforce rules and to mock the visual intrusion of campaign posters into a federal workspace.
Toby quips that shaving cream could be used to cover windows instead of campaign posters — the shaving cream functions as comic relief and a cautionary image of the messy consequences of flouting federal rules.
Location Details
Places and their significance in this event
The Communications Office is the scene of the main action: Will and Toby's exchange, campaign posters on windows, staff hustle, Ginger relaying the DOJ call, and Toby's return from his private office with the Anastasia date. It is where institutional work and messy personal history collide.
Sam's old West Wing office functions here as Will's assigned workspace and the private room Toby briefly enters; it is the intimate site where Toby talks directly to Will and where scheduling details are finalized.
Capitol Hill is the off-screen location whose demands pull Toby away (Leo 'needs him on the Hill'), creating the scheduling conflict that precipitates Will's mistaken Oval visit and underscores competing institutional priorities.
Organizations Involved
Institutional presence and influence
Sam's Congressional Campaign is present visually through large posters in the communications workspace, creating a friction between official space and partisan activity and provoking Toby's admonition about laws forbidding campaigning in federal buildings.
Congress figures as the institutional backdrop to the meeting: Bartlet's notes on the 'Congressional section' are the professional pretext for Will's visit, and the administration's legislative priorities implicitly frame the urgency and stakes of the staff's work.
Narrative Connections
How this event relates to others in the story
"Julie's precise knowledge of Anastasia's death foreshadows his later attempt to explain his criminal past to Toby, deepening their familial tension."
"Julie's precise knowledge of Anastasia's death foreshadows his later attempt to explain his criminal past to Toby, deepening their familial tension."
"Will's awkward first meeting with Bartlet sets up his later passionate defense of campaign finance reform, showing his growth under pressure."
"Will's awkward first meeting with Bartlet sets up his later passionate defense of campaign finance reform, showing his growth under pressure."
"Will's awkward first meeting with Bartlet sets up his later passionate defense of campaign finance reform, showing his growth under pressure."
"Will's awkward first meeting with Bartlet sets up his later passionate defense of campaign finance reform, showing his growth under pressure."
Key Dialogue
"TOBY: When was Albert Anastasia killed?"
"JULIE: October of 1957."
"TOBY: When you get home tonight you're going to be confronted by the instinct to drink alone. Trust that instinct. Manage the pain. Don't try to be a hero."
"TOBY: He made ladies' raincoats and before that, he worked for Murder Incorporated."