the designer's public relations firm; the Universal Press Syndicate referred to it as "fall's No. I fashion statement". C.J. is frequently portrayed as clumsy or even dyspraxic. In her very first scene on the show, she falls off a treadmill while attempting to answer her pager. Over the course of the show, C.J. falls into her own swimming pool, hurls a basketball through a window, falls over from recoil at a target range, and clumsily fails to cast a fishing line, while her father (who has Alzheimer's disease) encounters no such difficulties. Character role and development In the first six seasons of The West Wing, C.J. works as the White House Press Secretary under President Josiah Bartlet. In the sixth season episode "Liftoff", she was promoted to succeed Leo McGarry as White House Chief of Staff, following Leo's resignation after a major heart attack. She remains chief of staff until the final episode, leaving the White House after the inauguration of President Matt Santos. She had joined Bartlet's first presidential campaign after being fired from her job at an entertainment industry public relations firm in Beverly Hills. Initially, C.J.'s character was poorly developed; Aaron Sorkin admitted in a companion book that C.J. was "the most underwritten role of the pilot". Sorkin commented that after several episodes, it became clear to the crew that Allison Janney and her character were going to be a key part of the show. Janney appears in all 154 episodes of The West Wing. She reprised her role in a 2020 reunion special with nearly all of the original cast, termed "A West Wing Special to Benefit When We All Vote". Personality According to Aaron Sorkin, C.J. was designed to stand out from other female characters of the era; he writes in the pilot of the West Wing Script Book that C.J.'s role is not about "when is Mr. Right going to come along and save me from this?" C.J.'s character was shown to be an adept, empathetic, confident, witty, and independent one with considerable depth, and the only female character portrayed as intellectually on par with the male senior staff. Patrick Webster, in his book Windows into The West Wing, attributed this partially to the acting ability of Allison Janney. C.J. also suffers from anxiety and self-doubt, as well as what Elle referred to as the "standard office-gal trope" of "bitchiness and hysteria". A flashback