Jed is standing in front of a stained-glass window. All the scenes in this room in this episode have lighting done in extremes of electric blue and orangey-red. It's a little bit overdone. Abby wanders in to talk to Jed, who's staring out the window. Man, that's a beautiful window. He thought she was sleeping. She asks if there's any word. There isn't. He tells her it's almost 6:30 AM. She says the doctor gave her something. Jed: "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry." Jed says that their girls will be there in a few hours, and offers to call for coffee. Abby doesn't respond to that, but says she had a dream about being in Zoey's bedroom at home; Zoey was little, and Abby was holding her. Tears stream down her face. It's kind of maudlin and sadly pointless since it's not really moving at all, being totally devoid of plot- or character-advancing content. Bet Sorkin's shaking his head at that wasted opportunity. If you're going to make up a dream for someone and have them tell it, it should be worth hearing. Jed takes her hand and they stare out the window together. You feel bad for them, but it's not excruciating, and it should be.

C.J. bursts through a door -- not that no one's ever done that on this show before, but even though we're only a few minutes into this, I'm already surprised when it's not a crash cart we see next. She's hustling her way to a press briefing attended by Carol. When C.J. asks how she looks, Carol says, "Like you slept in your clothes." This doesn't usually happen to me -- I'm not Ms. Snappy Comeback -- but I instantly heard C.J.'s voice in my head say, "I look like I've slept?" I couldn't believe they just left that line sitting there. But they did. Not to belabour the point too much, but there was an opportunity to inject a tiny bit of levity into an otherwise very heavy episode without trivializing anything. Instead, we get a yappy, unfunny dog. But I'm getting ahead of myself. C.J. just goes into the press briefing -- where the reporters are naturally wound way, way up -- and announces that she's got FBI guys with her. Man, the guest star list for this show just goes on and on. Everybody who's ever appeared on a television drama seems to be in this episode. C.J. says that the FBI's opened a missing-persons file for Zoey Patricia Bartlet and assigned it the control number 7A WF 83429. Hence the awkward title. At least they made it the season opener, so we can refer to it that way. Would they make this file number public? Why? Why would anyone need to know that? Who cares? She explains that the "WF" stands for Washington Field Office. Whatever. A reporter asks how long Walken will be President. C.J. says he'll serve until Bartlet sends the second letter to Congress indicating that he's ready to come back. Another reporter (Chris? Steve? I really can't remember anymore. Four years, people -- and it's not like Sorkin didn't overuse the names) asks about a CNN report claiming that the Fifth Fleet has been ordered into the Persian Gulf; the reporter wants to know whether this is believed to be the work of a foreign government. C.J. says it's too early to speculate about that. Shot of Danny looking annoyed. Another reporter -- whose name I'm almost sure is Chris (only this one is female...yeah, that other guy is Steve) -- wants to know whether Zoey Bartlet has a drug problem. C.J.: "There's a Secret Service agent with a bullet in her head. I think the FBI feels pretty comfortable calling it a kidnapping." C.J. insists that Zoey Bartlet does not have a drug problem. She adds, "However, her judgment about boyfriends is pretty damn suspect." No, she just turns the podium over to Casper.