Continuity error: age of grandkids

It has been suggested that Bartlet left out a few words, and meant to say that "Annie started her last year of high school last week."

The time that elapsed between the two episodes in the TWW timeline is somewhat complicated, but clearly Annie must be older than 14 or 15 in Episode 6:2. It is reported that there was a conscious effort to avoid tying TWW to specific dates. For the first few years, however, there is a fairly close concordance.

It is generally considered that the first episode, Pilot occurred about August 1999. (Bartlet elected 1998, first State of the Union in episode 1:12, Laurie's graduation 9 months after episode 1:1.) The episode first aired September 22, 1999.

Episode 6:2, The Birnam Woods, first aired October 27, 2004. It references the beginning of the school year, placing it in about the same month as the first episode, August, or possibly September. The problem is the year. If the years in TWW were concordant, it would be 2004, and Elizabeth's daughter Anne would be 17.

However, sometime between the fourth and fifth seasons the timing shifts, skipping the sixth Christmas and the 2004 midterms (recalling that elections in TWW have a two year offset). In episode 6:5, The Hubbert Peak, it is indicated that it is the seventh year of the Bartlet administration, or 2006, so episode 6:2 must have been in 2005, and Anne is 18.