The West Wing: Season 4 [2002] (6 discs)

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• Guns Not Butter - The episode title refers to a common economic model that gives an example of how a country can apportion limited resources on either defence (guns) or production of domestic goods (butter) or a combination of both but to increase one you need to reduce the other
• The Long Goodbye - Both Allison Janney and Martin Sheen were born and raised in Dayton, OH. Rob Lowe was raised there as well having moved to the city as a small child.
• Arctic Radar - President Bartlett asks Leo if adultery is illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Leo answers that it is not. In reality adultery does in fact violate Article 134 of the UCMJ.
• Twenty Five - While Toby is in the hospital room with his babies, the television is playing what is supposed to be home movie footage of Zoey as a child with her father. Even though the younger Jed Bartlet in the home movie is only seen very briefly, he is played by one of Martin Sheen's real-life sons, actor and director Emilio Estevez. This is the second time in their careers that Estevez has played a younger version of the same character that Martin Sheen was playing; the first time was in Nightbreaker.
• Commencement - In this episode Zoey was kidnapped whilst going to the restroom in a club party. This scenario was depicted by President Bartlet when he was angry at Zoey in Season 1's The West Wing: [Mr. Willis of Ohio].
• Inauguration: Part 1 - When Donna is describing the uniform Jack will be wearing she refers to the pants having 13 buttons. Dress Blue pants do have 13 buttons, but only for enlisted personnel, not Officer's uniforms.
• Commencement - In the DVD commentary for this episode, Aaron Sorkin says that during shooting, he found out that Elisabeth Moss (who plays Zoey Bartlet) had never been high on illicit drugs, so Sorkin counseled her on how to play the scene in which Zoey has been drugged by Jean-Paul.
• Twenty Five - Series creator Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme final episode.
• Martin Sheen's somewhat unusual way of putting his jacket on is caused by an injury to his arm sustained at his birth.
• Evidence of Things Not Seen - In The West Wing: [20 Hours in L.A.] at the LA party, Donna walks away from Josh to go stalk Matthew Perry. Matthew Perry appears as Joe Quincy and Donna comments on him being considered cute by most staff. He will also appear in Sorkin's next TV show [Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip].
• The character of Amy Gardner was temporarily written off the show, because Mary-Louise Parker was visibly pregnant, and the producers couldn't hide it anymore.
• 20 Hours in America: Part I - When Toby and Josh are headed to the airport, they are pushed an hour back because Dearborn County, Indiana does not observe daylight saving time. As of 2006, every County in Indiana observes daylight saving time. Only Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands do not.
• College Kids - The "Rock The Vote" event shown at Cambridge, MA is aimed at encouraging young people to vote in the US general election. The band playing at the event, Barenaked Ladies, are all born and raised in Canada.
• 20 Hours in America: Part II - When Toby and Josh are discussing governor Ritchie's intelligence on the train, Toby laments that Ritchie thinks ^[?] Neville Chamberlain led Britain during WW2. Chamberlain did in fact lead Britain in WW2, but only for the first 8 months before giving way to Winston Churchill. However, the reference Toby makes is to Richard Chamberlain.
• Swiss Diplomacy - This was the second of only three episodes to not have a writing credit for Aaron Sorkin during the first four seasons, the others being season one's The West Wing: [Enemies] and this season's The West Wing: [The Long Goodbye].
• Swiss Diplomacy - When Will Bailey (Joshua Malina ) is asked about who is helping Sam (Rob Lowe ) he mentions that his Political Director is Tom Baker, ^[?] Tom Baker was actually the name of the the Fourth Doctor in the original 1960's version of [Doctor Who].
• In the DVD extras for season four, John Spencer and Stockard Channing both say that in the Abbey-Jed-Leo relationship dynamic, Abbey is (of course) Jed's wife, and Leo is Jed's mistress. Spencer hastened to add that he meant "political mistress", but Channing did not qualify the assessment.
• 20 Hours in America: Part I - A line from President Bartlet's speech memorializing the bombing victims, "the streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight," was taken from Tom Hanks's 1993 acceptance speech for his Best Actor Oscar for Philadelphia. Ironically, this happens in the same episode in which Sam says, "Good writers borrow from other writers. Great writers steal outright". This is a variation on a quotation by ^[?] Pablo Picasso: "Good artists copy. Great artists steal." (Ironically, one of Sorkin's lines from this episode--"Every time we think we've measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we are reminded that that capacity may well be limitless"--was plagiarized during an NBC sports feature airing directly before the 2006 Kentucky Derby. The freelance writer who wrote the line was fired.