his senior staff to let her out of the doghouse. In "The State Dinner", when the Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to use force to take down a militia involved a hostage situation, Mandy strongly urges the President to exhaust all peaceful solutions first, despite Josh's advice to the contrary. Mandy argues "the greatest threat to democracy" is not "the nuts" but rather "the unbridled power of the state over its citizens." However, the situation ends poorly when the hostage-takers shoot and critically injure an FBI mediator and the FBI then ends the standoff by force, and Mandy is physically sickened by the events. Departure The character appeared only in the first season, and her appearances became sporadic as the episodes progressed. She departed from the show without plot explanation after the first season ended. Series creator Aaron Sorkin said that the character was not working out, and the decision for Moira Kelly's departure from the show was amicable: The ensemble nature of the cast contributed toward making it difficult to focus adequately on the character. When the first season finale, "What Kind of Day Has It Been", featured a cliffhanger ending with an unknown character getting shot, many fans speculated it would be Mandy Hampton due to the character's ongoing departure. The St. Petersburg Times quoted an unnamed West Wing writer as suggesting that actors with two-year contracts are the most likely to have been shot, which the newspaper said suggests it could be Mandy due to her pending departure. However, the newspaper also suggested that could be a red herring since it was not clear that Mandy was even present in the scene when the shots were fired. The shooting victims ultimately turned out to be Josh Lyman and President Bartlet. Owing to Mandy's unexplained departure, "going to Mandyville" became a euphemism among West Wing fans; it was used for any character being removed from a show with no justification. Sorkin originally planned to reintroduce Mandy in the second-season episode "The War at Home", as the campaign operator of junior senator and environmentalist Seth Gilette, played by Ed Begley, Jr. However, that appearance never happened. Themes Mandy Hampton has been cited in arguments that, particularly in the first season, the series placed its female characters in largely marginalized roles while the male characters occupied most of the powerful positions. They pointed out that even Mandy, who held a