Sports Night rewind: "Ten Wickets," "Napoleon's Battle Plan" & "What Kind of Day Has It Been?"

Well, somehow (mostly with a lot of help from Linda Holmes), we've managed to squeeze all 22 episodes of "Sports Night" season one into a summer's worth of reviews. Thoughts on the final three episodes coming up just as soon as I traumatize a nanny...

"This show needs a ninth inning rally." -Jeremy

Because I want to get this post done before my life gets insanely busy with fall premieres, Emmys, etc., this may be shorter than a three-episode review might deserve. But I'm okay with it, not only because I think we've all discovered in these reviews that "Sports Night" is a show best not over-analyzed, but because these are less three individual episodes than an multi-episode story arc that closed out that first season. The design isn't perfect - it's unintentionally amusing to watch the end of "Ten Wickets" (where Casey dramatically says he has to come up with a plan) immediately before the start of "Napoleon's Battle Plan" (where Dan is needling Casey for failing to come up with a plan) - but it's more or less one big story here.

Unsurprisingly, the focus is on the Dana/Casey/Sally/Gordon quadrangle(*). Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't object too much, despite my general antipathy towards this storyline. In fact, now that we're at the end of these season one reviews, and with me unlikely to revisit season two(**), I should admit that much (but not all) of my dislike for the Dana/Casey pairing came from what was done with them in season two. One of the unavoidable failings of this project is that I only had time to watch these episodes at roughly the rate I was writing about them, so some of my feelings were colored by 10-year-old memories rather than what was actually going to be in the episodes I hadn't gotten to re-watch yet.

(*) In one of my "Lost" reviews this year, I asked if there had ever been a genuinely interesting love quadrangle presented on series television. As several readers have pointed out throughout this series of reviews, "Sports Night" season one came awfully close.

(**) Why won't I be doing season two? Several reasons: 1)I only have time to do this sort of thing in the summer, when the pace of original programming is relatively slow (and, frankly, wasn't that slow this summer); 2)I learned this summer that trying to do three simultaneous rewinds (this, "Band of Brothers" and "The Wire" season 2) was at least one, if not two, too many in terms of maintaining my own sanity and schedule; 3)"The Wire" season 3 has one spot locked up for next summer, and if I do a second show, I'd like it to be something different to keep things fresh; and 4)While season two certainly had its good points, it was much more uneven than season one, and given the first two points, I don't want to spend too much time writing (nor do you want to spend too much time reading) reviews of a show where I'm more unhappy than not with the episodes.

With some exceptions (like virtually all of "Intellectual Property"), Peter Krause and Felicity Huffman were given some very good material in this season's part of the arc, either together (the flirting in "Smoky," Dana yelling at Casey in "Napoleon's Battle Plan"), or separately (Casey telling Gordon about his shirt in "Sally," or the brutal walk-and-non-talk that Dana leads Gordon on after he breaks off their engagement in the finale). When Casey tells Dana that she's funny at the end of the finale, not understanding why she's so happy to hear it, it's a terrific moment that feels earned for all we've seen the two go through over these 23 episodes. Whatever silliness comes later - and even whatever silliness may have happened earlier - doesn't matter in that moment, because the accumulated power of the storyline (and the sheer candlepower of Felicity Huffman's smile) renders the bad stuff temporarily meaningless.

Yet my favorite moment of those three episodes - and one I was kind of shocked to realize still choked me up, even though I knew it was coming - comes right before Casey's compliment, as Isaac makes a dramatic return to the show, and brings Robert Guillaume along with him.

Guillaume's stroke gave Aaron Sorkin no choice but to write Isaac out of the series temporarily and hope for the best. The intrusion of the real world onto one of his fictional worlds would cause Sorkin problems other times ("Isaac & Ishmael," anyone?), but here the circumstances worked out as well as anyone could have hoped, both in terms of Guillaume's health (he's still acting at least part-time today) and the way it played out on the show. What makes that entrance - with Isaac heard before he's seen as he bellows, "Hey, lady! Are you thinking about getting my show on the air anytime soon?" - so affecting, even 10 years after the fact, is that synthesis of the two. By now, we like and respect Isaac enough - and also understand how important his presence is to the other characters we've grown to like and respect - that we're glad to see him back, but it's also such a damn relief to see Guillaume on his feet (albeit with a cane), to hear him talk without the kind of dramatic speech issues that often accompany a stroke, and to realize that he's still funny.

Off-camera, this was a very trying debut season. Aaron Sorkin was still figuring out how (logistically and stylistically) to write for television. ABC had no idea what to do with the show, most notably with the studio audience/laugh track awkwardness. The ratings weren't great. Then Guillaume had a stroke.

But in the end, Sorkin, Tommy Schlamme and company pulled off their own ninth-inning rally. The first year came to a strong creative finish, Guillaume was able to come back to work, and there was a second season (though, again, it was much more uneven).

I remember being at ABC's upfront presentation in the spring of 1998. The "Sports Night" clip reel played to uncomfortable silence. Afterwards, I suggested to a couple of veteran critics that perhaps this was the type of show that didn't cut down well; they rolled their eyes and predicted this would be the first show canceled in the fall.

Never count out a team too early, fellas. You never know when a rally's coming.

Some other thoughts:

• While we're sort of on the subject of cricket (from "Ten Wickets"), I feel I should put in a plug for "Lagaan," which is a four-hour-plus Bollywood musical about the sport. I have watched this film at least three times, despite the fact that it is four hours, (mostly) in a language I don't speak, a musical (also in a foreign language) and about a sport I knew even less about than Jeremy and company when I went in (though I feel I have a vague command of it now, even if I couldn't tell you why throwing ten wickets is so impressive). So that either speaks to the movie's quality, or to my own pathological obsession with underdog sports movies.

• Beating up on what he perceives to be the hypocrisy of evangelical leaders for not condemning the actions of their most extreme followers is a favorite pasttime of Sorkin's. Casey rants at length about Jerry Falwell in "Ten Wickets," the "West Wing" pilot will climax with President Bartlet ripping into a fundamentalist leader under similar circumstances, and if "Studio 60" dealt with any subjects other than the tension between the liberal media and the Christian right, I've forgotten them.

• And speaking of recurring Sorkin devices, all three of his series to date ended their first season with an episode titled "What Kind of Day Has It Been?" I'll take "The West Wing" one over this, but Isaac's entrance makes it awfully close.

• Is there a more pointless and/or less funny running gag in this season than Jeremy's constant attempts to get people interested in his reasons for not donating blood? Maybe a payoff got cut for time, but as presented... why?

• It feels appropriate that the finale would feature a storyline involving Casey's son, who (while off-camera) was such an important part of the series pilot.

Well, that's it for me on this summer's round of DVD rewinds. Time to get back to screeners of fall premieres.

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Sports Night rewind: "Eli's Coming" and "Ordnance Tactics"

Okay, folks, it's "Sports Night" time again, and Linda Holmes from NPR's Monkey See blog has once again been a life-saver in helping this project get done amidst my vacations and other summer distractions. Her thoughts on "Eli's Coming" and "Ordnance Tactics" coming right up...

What I love about Dan's discussion of the title song in "Eli's Coming" is that it's so obviously a real thing – either Aaron Sorkin or someone he knew had the same misunderstanding of the song that Dan did. It's too offbeat to be made up.

What is made up is the ridiculous conclusion to the Bobbi Bernstein story. Let us indulge for a moment the fantasy that Dan could plausibly forget that he slept with her and that he was ever in the entire country of Spain. (And if his memory of it is THAT wiped out, why does he look at the picture and remember her as Roberta?) If, indeed, Bobbi went by "Roberta" and knows she looked completely different, then she never would have been so confused in the first place about why he didn't remember. As soon as Dan balked, she'd have explained it: “I went by Roberta then. I had braces and red hair [or whatever].” And who has their picture taken in a hotel room next to the towels with a one-night stand? Who took the picture, Housekeeping? It's just stupid. It's a stupid, backwards-justified story idea that's there for an admittedly interesting reason.

I think what they were trying to accomplish here was giving Dan something to think about as far as his own behavior as he considered Steve Sisko's treatment of Rebecca and Gordon's treatment of Dana. I think the idea was something like, "Even nice guys accidentally hurt women by not treating them gently enough." It's a little patronizing, but it's well-intentioned, and it would have been nice if they hadn't chosen such a numbskulled way of executing it.

The slow car accident that is Dan's relationship with Rebecca also progresses nicely here. The news that Steve is visiting her is bad news and everybody instinctively knows it. And yes, it's worse that it's on Saturday, even though nobody can exactly articulate why. And then, of course, it gets cleared up, and Dan doesn't like the answer.

As for Dana and Casey, they're still mid-ugliness from the Fedrigatti incident. I have to admit to having never quite understood why Dana handing the show off to Sally to produce so that she could go to dinner would be quite such a betrayal to Casey for a single night. They all have nights off; they all get to go on vacation. That Casey finds it quite this heart-mangling of a personal slight has always seemed off to me. I mean, he's screwed up in the head because he's upset about Sally and Gordon and all of that business, but the level of outrage toward Dana seems out of proportion, no?

But the meat of "Eli's Coming," of course, is that this is how the show dealt – admirably, I think – with Robert Guillaume's stroke. Even with the writing clearly on the wall that he'd be gone a while and might be different upon his return, they kept Isaac on the show and created a story of his absence and recovery that capitalized perfectly on where they were trying to go with the delicate maneuvering between Isaac and the network.

It is always such a sad punch in the gut to me when Jeremy tells Dana, in that way that people do when they are working to believe their own optimism, that it could conceivably take four hours to get into the city from JFK. I think that's even worse than seeing Casey break the news to Dan.

One sports-related nitpick for which I must credit Alan: You would never be covering the Sweet 16 on a Saturday. Sweet 16 is Thursday. Elite Eight is Saturday. OOPS.

The bomb scare in "Ordnance Tactics," I admit, has never held my interest. Yes, it is a stand-in for the larger story of being under siege, of being threatened, of the possibility that the building – that the show – will fall down. But Dan and Casey's overreaction seems out of character.

What I like better is the political mess Dana is in. J.J. shows up to make his usual vague threats and promises about what he will do for her if she takes him into her confidence. It's exactly what he did with Isaac when he (presumably) planted the quote – he's trying to create trouble, or threatening to create trouble, so that he can be the guy who solves it. He's just odious, but again, he sees himself as a guy who's doing his job and looking out for himself.

But as little as I care for the bomb scare, I care about this Jeremy/Natalie dance even less. All he's suggesting is that they "temporarily" (a word he stresses over and over) stop seeing each other. If it's temporary, then they're not breaking up. That's the difference between temporary and permanent. One is breaking up, and one is, presumably, just not spending so much time together. And if it's temporary, then WHO CARES?

We do return here, though relatively briefly, to the Gordon/Dana/Casey/Sally business that's been on a simmer. After Casey half-accuses Sally of having Natalie passed over, Sally says, "You know, for someone I'm sleeping with, you don't say the nicest things to me." I really do wish that she'd been allowed to not be quite so wounded. It irks me that Casey and Dan have both, over two episodes, played out the "don't forget that it hurts women if you sleep with them and aren't nice enough afterwards" routine. It feels a little retro, the idea that women always need to be sent flowers and so forth. Sometimes, women don't care about you, either.

Also, this is what makes me like Casey less. When he says, "How many people know about us?" the implication is clear. And the implication is, "You'd better not be telling people." As I said last time, it is a basic violation of the respect you owe the people you're sleeping with to communicate to them that you wouldn't want anyone to know on account of how other people would react. It's degrading, for lack of a fancier word, and it's a little sad when, right after that, she asks if they're sleeping together tonight as usual. It makes Sally seem desperate and grasping, which she didn't need to be. And then, of course, she freakishly overreacts to Dan's entrance, and all of a sudden, the last remaining professionally competent woman on the show is acting like a complete psycho. Fan-TAS-tic.

I can't bring myself to get all upset about the “We're women” speech Dana gives at the end, which sounds like nothing no woman would ever say. Women pretend everything is fine, while men air all their fears? What planet are they producing this sports show on, anyway?

At any rate, this is all setup for the final three episodes of the season: “Ten Wickets,” “Napoleon's Battle Plan,” and the season closer, “What Kind Of Day Has It Been?” Look for things to get a lot trickier over the course of those three episodes.

Thanks again, Linda. Again, my hope is to find some time to watch and write about all three remaining episodes in one post sometime before the end of the month. You won't know when (because I don't), but keep watching the skies.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night Rewind: "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?" & "The Sword of Orion"

As mentioned on Monday, when Linda Holmes kindly filled in again on a "Sports Night" review, we're doing four episodes this week (two by her, two by me) in an attempt to get this season done with before the fall season begins. And at the end of this review, I'll have an explanation of how/if we're going to pull that off.

Thoughts on "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?" and "The Sword of Orion" coming up just as soon as I build myself a wall of pain...

"This is where I like to be. This is what I want to do. This is what I care about." -Dana

"So the great pink star in the sword of Orion turns out to be... something far more complicated and interesting." -Jeremy

Just my luck: with the way the schedule has worked out and how Linda has generously pitched in (more on that below), she gets two of the season's high points in "Sally" and "Eli's Coming," and I get the two uneven episodes in between.

"Glocca Morra" (which is, oddly, not the episode of the series that actually references the song of the same name) is definitely the stronger of the two, as it deals with what we know - and, more importantly, what Dana doesn't know - from "Sally." Casey knows, Gordon knows, and Dan eventually finds out, but Dana is tragically ignorant of what's going on between the two most important men in her life. She has no idea Gordon cheated on her with Sally - and Casey doesn't want to tell her, for reasons so eloquently stated by Linda earlier in the week, and so she spends the entire episode feeling guilty over how she's treating a boyfriend who doesn't remotely deserve her.

There's a lot of good material for all four key actors(*), and particularly for Felicity Huffman and Josh Charles. Dan definitely plays second fiddle to Casey a lot in this first season, but the character really starts coming into his own in these later episodes, between the relationship with Rebecca (more on that below) and here with his complicated reaction to Casey's secret. Dan would never, under any circumstances, keep this secret from Dana if his and Casey's roles were reversed - but then, he wouldn't have slept with Sally in the first place, and either way, it's not his secret to tell. So he's mad at Casey for what he did and what he won't say, and he's mad at Gordon, and he's mad at himself for valuing his friendship with Casey over his friendship with Dana, and the best he can do is to vent to Rebecca, who has no idea what he's talking about but likes him enough at this point not to care.

(*) That includes Ted McGinley as Gordon. McGinley's an easy target due to the Jump the Shark thing, but he fits in really well here. And, to be fair, both "Happy Days" and "Married... With Children" ran for a long time after he showed up.

Where "Glocca Morra" bugs me, though, is in the return of the voiceover narration device from "Dear Louise." It worked much better there, where it was tying together a bunch of small and unrelated stories, and where it was telling us things about the characters we still didn't know at that early stage of the series. Here, we know the characters, know the relationships, and know how they're going to react to situations, and so Jeremy spends a lot of time underlining emotions that the audience should be able to recognize by now. (The whole thing, frankly, feels like it was the result of a note from ABC: "Hey, do that thing you did in that other episode that testing said made the show more accessible.")

Jeremy's also involved in some unsubtle storytelling in "Sword of Orion," where you don't need to have ever seen the show before to understand, well before Jeremy tells Natalie about his dad, that the wreck of the ship is supposed to be a metaphor for the wreck of his parents' marriage. In general, subtlety isn't Sorkin's thing (sneaky moments like "You're wearing my shirt, Gordon" excepted), but usually he hits you over the head with so much flair that you don't mind the headache. Not so much here.

On the plus side, I find I'm feeling much more warmly about Dan and Rebecca's storyline than I did a decade ago. Maybe it was the haircut, or my memories of the final season of "Northern Exposure," but I wasn't much of a Teri Polo fan back then, and that may have colored how I felt about her presence on this show. But she and Josh Charles have obvious chemistry, and it's fun to watch him draw her out of her shell, little by little, and particularly fun to see Dan irritate the hell out of her with the Orlando Rojas obsession. As people talked about when Linda reviewed "Rebecca," Dan's stalking of Rebecca was far more effective than the similar Danny/Jordan storyline from "Studio 60" because here it's played entirely (and successfully) for laughs. "Alright, everybody, please stop being friendly to Dan!" is a really funny, disarming moment.

Danny's Rojas fixation and Jeremy's thoughts on Alberto Fedrigatti in "Glocca Morra" are also examples of Sorkin's love of stories about nobility in defeat. Nobody thinks Fedrigatti is going to beat Sampras (or that he's going to advance any further if, by some fluke, he does win), and even Dan admits that he's just rooting for Rojas to get cut later than people expect him to. But it's that kind of focus on the emotional minutiae of athletics - those stories that no one but a devout sports romantic would know or care about - that make it feel like "Sports Night" really is about sports, even when it isn't. Sorkin may not always get the practical details right (see the baseball trade deadline story from "Small Town," which was set in February), but when Dan goes to all that trouble to experience Orlando Rojas' exhibition innings with Rebecca, or when Jeremy recognizes the look in Fedrigatti's eyes, I believe that reporting on sports is where these characters like to be, what they want to do, and what they care about.

Coming up next: "Eli's Coming" and "Ordnance Tactics," in which the real world intrudes on the show Sorkin and company are making. And, as alluded to above, that'll be brought to you once again by Linda, theoretically sometime next week. (I'm taking several days off next week, but not every day, so I'll post it whenever I'm in office.)

So that leaves three episodes, including the first Sorkin season finale to be titled "What Kind of a Day Has It Been?" As I mentioned in the "Sally" review, not only am I on vacation part of next week, but for all of the following week, and I'm going to return to work with a mountain of new shows to watch and write about. My hope is that I can sneak away some time for the last three "Sports Night"s of season one and dash off a triple-header review sometime before September 21, which is the official start of the TV season. Can't promise an exact date - and there remains a chance that the post-vacation workload's just gonna be too much - but like the man says, stick around.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night Rewind: "Dana and the Deep Blue Sea" & "Sally"

Okay, folks, as my way of thanking Linda Holmes (of NPR's Monkey See blog) for reviewing two "Sports Night" episodes last week that she didn't like much, I'm letting her(*) review the next two episodes, the latter of which is her favorite episode of the series.

(*) Yes, your definition of "letting her" may vary, to include concepts like "begging her to," "imposing upon her to," etc.

Linda's thoughts on "Dana and the Deep Blue Sea" and "Sally" coming right up...

The worst thing about "Dana And The Deep Blue Sea," for my money, is Dana and the deep blue sea – in other words, her paralyzing fear of fish. This theme was done a lot; this business where Dana goes down the rabbit hole of obsessing over some weird side issue. And the fear of fish is the dumbest example. Every time I watch this episode, I think, "If I have to hear the word 'snorkeling' one more time, I am going to just drown myself and get it over with."

What I do like about the episode is that if you MUST have these stories where men prove their love by ignoring the requests of women to be left alone, it's much more palatable to have it played for comedy, as it is here, than for drama, as it mostly was on "Studio 60." The way Casey disbelievingly and mercilessly mocks Dan throughout the episode ("Have you tried telling her at least…twenty times?") and the way Jeremy's attempt to persuade Rebecca goes (mostly) horribly wrong make the story easier for me to take.

Side note: I've never bought the "all covered with cheese" blunder, because that line doesn't sound like anything anyone would remotely say with "trees" in it either.

I really like the fact that there are things in this episode that are funny here that will take on a really different tone later in the series as Dan considers, for instance, the fact that when he wants people to like him, he wants them to watch the show. I admire the character consistency where that's always true of Dan, and sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it's kind of sad. That makes it an organic fact of his character and not something invented to serve a particular plot point on a one-time basis.

Final note: Natalie goes so far as to give Casey a talking-to in this episode about how foolish it is of him to stop pursuing Dana just because she asked him to. Aaron Sorkin is REALLY committed to this idea, no fooling.

Okay, let's talk about "Sally." Like most Sorkin episodes where nothing is happening, there is an air of something big about to break. And the pieces of this story click into place one by one.

We first learn that Casey's shirt is missing, which Dan deduces is a sign that he has had sex with someone. This is a significant and somewhat surprising complication, because according to normal television rules, we are supposed to be following a love story (kinda) between Casey and Dana, and his sleeping with someone else, especially someone he tells Isaac he doesn't much know, is a swerve from the usual.

We also learn that Gordon stood Dana up last night. File that away.

Dana, while talking to Natalie, is the one who introduces the possibility that Casey slept with Sally. Sally hasn't appeared for several episodes, so you wouldn't necessarily assume he left his shirt with her; this plants the seed. Natalie's response that Casey would never do that, in part because he's close to Dana and knows it would hurt her – accompanied by Dana's warm, grateful smile – underscores just how vulnerable Dana is on this point.

So now, naturally, Sally drops by Dan and Casey's office and discloses – through a series of comments I can buy as an attempt to speak in code, except for the "someone else's laundry" line, which should have been left out – that indeed, she slept with Casey.

Side point: The likelihood that professional writer Dan Rydell would not know the word "diminutive" is, I think it's safe to say, nonexistent.

Casey's sleeping with Sally is a very big deal. Gordon and Sally have both been set up as jealousy obstacles. The normal trajectory of a love story like this would be that Dana would feel threatened, but just as we believe Dana will not marry Gordon, we expect that Casey will not sleep with Sally – something he clearly did out of physical attraction and loneliness. Another common light-romance notion upended, by the way: Even nice people sometimes have sex for reasons that have little to do with, and that perhaps even fly in the face of, their feelings.

Side note: At this point in the story, it's hard to interpret Sally's behavior; normally, I would consider Casey's "I will sleep with you in private but pretend I barely know you in public" attitude to be a classic violation of Sexual Ethics 101, but since she and Casey may well be in this for the same reasons and he hasn't apparently made any pretense of caring about her, this may just be mutual itch-scratching, in which case Sally is fine.

Anyway, knowing about Casey and Sally bothers Dan for two reasons: (1) He doesn't like Sally; and (2) he immediately recognizes the implications for Casey's relationship with Dana.

That brings us to the totally surprising final shoe-drop. After watching him canoodle with Dana, Casey asks Gordon whether he's met Sally. And there is hemming and hawing and a bit of dancing around, and then Gordon figures out that something is very much up.

"What's on your mind, Casey?"

"You're wearing my shirt, Gordon."

I can't speak for anyone else, but when I first saw this scene, my mouth literally dropped open. There is actually a long pause in the show where they wait for you to figure out what just happened.

This episode already had a shock, right? Casey slept with Sally. That alone set up a perfectly respectable set of complications. The discovery that Gordon also slept with Sally multiplies the complexity by a factor of ten.

From here on out, Casey cannot distinguish selfishness from unselfishness. He has both selfish and unselfish reasons to both come clean and stay quiet. He can save Dana from a faithless boyfriend (unselfish friend motive) and potentially clear the way for himself (selfish motive), but only by demolishing his own relationship with Dana (selfish problem) and causing her a lot of pain (unselfish friend problem).

BUT WAIT! There's more. In calling Gordon out, Casey reveals that he has also slept with Sally. Gordon and Casey both leave this story in very complex positions, because they both understand that they are stalemated. Gordon understands as well as Casey does why Casey doesn't want to rat him out.

The escalating nature of the episode, in which there is a cascade of "oof" moments – Casey slept with someone; oof, Casey slept with Sally ; OOF, SO DID GORDON – is a real feat of character-driven writing. We've talked before about how carefully these people are written so that you know them and you know what they'd do. Casey doesn't like to get involved in drama, doesn't believe in grand gestures, doesn't like to talk about his personal life – Casey might genuinely decide in this situation to say nothing, for both selfish and unselfish reasons, but he'd suffer.

So here is Casey in anguish and frustration, gritting his teeth through a conversation with Dana about how happy she is with Gordon. And then in comes Elliott: "The games have started." A typically unsubtle but effective Sorkin flourish.

And Dana leaves, and the show's single best music idea ever kicks in, with the opening of "Crimson and Clover." What on earth, other than that, would have been as good? We are right on Casey's face as the music dramatically sighs: "Ahhh…" The mood of this closing is so important, because rather than focusing on the intrigue – what Casey will or will not do, the way it would have ended if we'd closed on Casey watching Dana and Gordon and pacing over tense music – it focuses on Casey's confused sadness.

That, my friends, is a pickle. Not a pickle that requires anybody to be stupid or a bad person. That is just a pickle that was set up over quite a long period of time, in terms of setting up all the pieces that make it feel important and agonizing.

Coming up: "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?" (which is not the episode involving "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?", but the episode involving Alberto Fedrigati) and "The Sword Of Orion."

Thanks again, Linda. And, indeed, my hope is to get my review of both of those episodes done by the end of this week, since I'll be on vacation for much of the next two weeks. And after that? I dunno. We'll have five episodes left post-"Sword of Orion," and once I'm back from vacation, I'm going to be caught up in reviewing the start of the fall season. So there's a chance we may not get to finish season one until later this year (possibly doing them as holiday specials?), or even next summer. Ah, well. Next time I tackle a show with 22 (or, in this case, 23) episodes in a season, I'm going to double up from the start.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night Rewind: "Small Town" & "Rebecca"

I had hoped to get more than one "Sports Night" review done during my time in California, but... I didn't. And with some vacation time coming up in a few weeks, in the interest of getting as far into the first season as possible, I called on my friend Linda Holmes (who runs NPR's Monkey See blog), a die-hard "Sports Night" fan, to do a pinch-hit review of "Small Town" and "Rebecca."

I do feel a bit guilty that Linda got stuck with two episodes that she's not crazy about (as she notes down below; we'd all be much happier if the request had come for the next two episodes, particularly "Sally"), but in fairness, she says mostly what I would have said about these two, and in fact is more kindly disposed towards the Dana/Casey stuff in "Small Town" than I would have been.

One editor's note: I gave Linda permission to discuss how the Bobbi Bernstein subplot in "Small Town" will play out a few episodes down the line, because there's really no way to discuss what happens here without factoring in how it paid off. So if you're one of those people coming to the series for the first time and aren't much ahead of these reviews, you may want to avert your eyes when you get to the paragraph that Linda will warn you about. (And the comments, too, for that matter.)

Anyway, spoilers for these two episodes coming up just as soon as I thank Linda for filling in...

This is the lowdown on me and Sports Night.

(1) In terms of sheer affection and rewatchability, it might be my favorite show ever, and I've watched a lot of television. (2) Before this, I also loved A Few Good Men and The American President. (3) After this, I hated Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip with a resentment roughly proportional to its having viciously beaten me in a bar fight, and the way I kept being told I was watching it wrong because I failed to understand its genius caused me to develop a condition, bordering on a nervous disorder, in which I prohibitively punched in the face anyone who asked me about it. I apologize if I ran into you during this time. I hope you have healed. (I have.)

And if you forced me to name one thing that drives me crazier than anything else about the way Sorkin writes (otherwise often brilliantly, in an addictively quotable style I draw upon at least weekly, to the moaning of my close associates who are tired of hearing me say "that's what makes it vicious – and a circle"), I would say, "He writes women in a way that makes him sound like he has issues with us." And I've said that a lot, and I apologize in advance for the degree to which I am... about to say it again, though it's in the context of lots of other stuff.

So, "Small Town"! "Small Town" has never been one of my favorite episodes, probably because it tells us so much that we already know: Natalie is good at her job, Dana and Casey are work-obsessed wackadoodles who can't manage their personal lives together or apart, and Dan is eternally baffled by women. He can't live with 'em, live without 'em, or convince 'em that he didn't sleep with 'em in European countries he is quite sure he never visited.

The story of the trade that is, or isn't, or is, makes an interesting data point in the discussion that took place after "Shoe Money Tonight," about the show's tendency to have Jeremy and Natalie fight and Jeremy always win. Certainly, in this episode, Natalie gets to be right, in that her scheme wherein she uses her connections with the Mata Hari of hotel housekeeping to confirm a story winds up being effective.

Two caveats: First, this is a dispute about work. Natalie is frequently right about work, just as Dana is. When there is an issue with work, Natalie is right a lot. To the degree I think there's a legitimate beef, it's parallel to what we talked about in the comments when Jeremy described Dana in "Dear Louise": the sense that when women are competent at work but turn out to be irrational nutbars, it is the cutest and most appealing thing ever, like nothing is as sexy as discovering bats in what appears to be an architectural masterpiece of a belfry.

>Second, there is an odd little dance that takes place at the end of the episode that steals some of the satisfaction of seeing Jeremy actually be wrong for once. Because in the end, Jeremy still gets to be right. It was Jeremy, after all, who said from the beginning that the trade would happen. So in the end, Natalie the dogged investigator merely proves that her own instincts were inferior to Jeremy's.

And in that last scene, after he apologizes for underestimating her professionally, she softens, pulls out five dollars and tucks it into his pocket to pay off their bet, which restores order and allows them to make up. It would mean nothing on its own, and perhaps it does mean nothing, but if you're already bugged by this dynamic in their relationship where he corrects her all the time, then the way she winds up happily reclaiming a "Hey, you still know more than I do, after all" position so that they can go back to normal is a little bit of an eye-roller.

As for Casey and Dana, "Small Town" is actually one of the episodes I like better for them, because it points out the ways in which they are legitimately alike, totally obsessed with their show to the point where they'd both rather be in the studio than out socializing.

All the "Holly Dixon Dance Company" repetition makes my head long for the peaceful respite of being beaten with a rubber mallet, but that's a relatively small complaint. It's a much better character and relationship moment than much of their pointless bickering. And I always love the scenes in which Isaac is wildly exasperated with hearing about everyone's personal lives, too, so I never get tired of Isaac saying, "I can't believe I've been standing here talking to you this long." Because you always knew that as much as he loved them, he meant it. He really, truly wanted everybody to shut up and buzz off in those moments, and Robert Guillaume never got them wrong.

The weirdest thing in "Small Town," of course, is the Bobbi Bernstein story. Now... there's just no way to talk about this without spoiling the future of Bobbi Bernstein. There's not. Fortunately, it's only a few episodes away. So skip the next paragraph if you don't want to hear about it.

Sorkin creates yet another woman who can be trusted in her job but then presents as insane on a personal level, of course, with Bobbi Bernstein. Poor Lisa Edelstein, who's a really good and really versatile actress, is saddled with a woman who appears at this point to be utterly delusional – and who I think was meant to be delusional here. The fact that in six episodes, a wildly implausible retcon – that it slipped Dan's mind that he'd been to Spain – will be used to rescue her doesn't make this any less silly. (How dumb is that, anyway? Dan is the sentimental one who remembers anniversaries, but he forgets what countries he's been to.) Furthermore, the way everyone assumes Dan is lying about not sleeping with her makes no sense either. Dan is... Dan. Dan is maybe the most stand-up guy on Earth. Why would all these people assume he's not telling the truth instead of assuming, as he does, that Bobbi Bernstein is an unbalanced kook who can barely be trusted not to chew on the wires in the studio?

Final "Small Town" thought: Is it realistic that Natalie would completely B.S. the guy about how she supposedly has two sources in his organization telling her about the trade? I'm really asking: even assuming her bluff is successful – as it is – is that in her long-term interests with somebody Sports Night has to deal with that regularly? Isn't he going to eventually maybe figure out she had no such sources, and then what happens to her credibility next time? And does Natalie actually have someone in housekeeping in any given major hotel in the country who can be counted on to be on duty at 11:30 at night (8:30 in Los Angeles, I guess) who will serve as a mole for her at her command? That seems... like a stretch.

Unfortunately, "Rebecca" introduces another annoying Sorkinese habit, which is his firm conviction that it's adorable when suitors ignore polite and firm requests to buzz off. He did this in Studio 60, when Jordan (Amanda Peet) firmly told Danny (Bradley Whitford) to get lost because his behavior was unprofessional and made her uncomfortable. Of course, what that secretly meant was, "Ignore what I'm telling you I want, focus on what YOU want, try harder, and get more aggressive. You might win me over! " Refusal to take no for an answer is not romantic, and it's aggravating when it's presented as such.

Aside from that, though, I do like Teri Polo as Rebecca (though not her hair), once she finally shows up, and I think her scenes with Dan are charming, here and in the future. (Can we discuss the agonizing amount of time it takes for Dan to successfully set up the elevator story with Casey to begin with, with the spreading it out in a nutshell or whatever? Seriously, just wake me up after that part.) The story of Rebecca is a very good one with regard to Dan's need for everyone to like him, and without spoiling anything, it pretty successfully sets up some of what he deals with in Season 2.

And finally, we begin to see, in "Rebecca," the fallout from Isaac's editorial in "Six Southern Gentlemen." The story about the Wall Street Journal quote interests me mostly because I'm such a fan of the way Robert Mailhouse played J.J. He's a bad guy, unquestionably, but in some sense, I always understood that he thought he was doing what his job demanded. Here, I think he didn't plant the quote to harm Isaac or to harm the show; he's just an utterly self-centered guy looking to beef up his own role as a middle manager by making it harder for Isaac and Luther Sachs to talk directly. It's the sort of vacant, amorally pragmatic thing that guys like that sometimes do, and if you've ever dealt with a guy like that, well…then you know.

I love the way this show had such long, lazy arcs with the network-show relationships, how they would deteriorate and then possibly improve, and then maybe not, and then maybe so. It's brilliantly written to capture how capricious an organization like that can seem to be in dealing with creative people. And with that, I will only say I regret that I missed my favorite episode of the series by only two episodes. Next up, if it's a pair: "Dana And The Deep Blue Sea" and (my favorite) "Sally."

Oh... "Sally."

Coming up next: As Linda says, we're gonna do "Dana And The Deep Blue Sea" and "Sally" in roughly a week's time.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind: "The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee" & "Smokey"

Okay, trying to slip in a "Sports Night" post while I have a few minutes of downtime here at press tour. Some thoughts on "The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee" and "Smokey" coming up just as soon as I make a little list...

"You've got to stop thinking of me as the champion of all things black." -Isaac

"Natalie's my second-in-command, she's the only one I told." -Dana
"Jeremy's my boyfriend. He's the only one I told." -Natalie
"I told many, many people." -Jeremy

When a black actor reaches a certain age, and a certain stature within the entertainment industry, there can be the danger of what I consider The Morgan Freeman Problem, where they're expected to play dignified, wise characters who represent all that is good and decent in this world, and who are primarily there to help set the white characters straight.

Robert Guillaume, like Freeman, has played plenty of those roles, and there are definitely times on "Sports Night" where Isaac veers dangerously close to that stereotype. On the surface, a lot of "Six Southern Gentlemen" is about the staff's expectation that Isaac will always be available to play that role for them.

But what makes "Six Southern Gentlemen," and the Isaac scenes in "Smokey," so interesting, is Isaac's own awareness of that role, and of the staff's expectation that he play it, and his own reluctance to do it because he's grown too comfortable -- and too old -- to risk losing his job so he can show the young'uns how to do the right thing. And that aspect of the storyline isn't diminished just because Isaac does, in the end, publicly shame Luther Sachs into saving Roland Shepard and his six teammates.

Now it would be nice to have a transition scene between Isaac dismissing Dan and Isaac telling Dana to clear some time in the show. I can see how Isaac might have wrestled with the decision after Dan left, but it would have been nice to see, even if it was just 15 seconds of Isaac at his desk, growing increasingly antsy. It feels like the "to hell with it" moment is missing, but Guillaume is a good enough actor to cover that gap.

And the thing that spares Guillaume from falling into the stereotype -- and that elevates the better-written Freeman roles in this category, like Red in "Shawshank" -- is that his writer understands that before Guillaume was respectable, he was simply funny. So even as Isaac is being noble and a martyr and all the rest, he still gets to ever-so-subtly make fun of Sally, or to banter with Dana about the concept of grooming. And because he's a person and not just an ideal, the moments when Isaac is heroic feel richer and more earned.

Casey gets the other story in both episodes, first learning a valuable Christmastime lesson about acknowledging your co-workers in "Six Southern Gentlemen," then practicing his flirting with Dana in "Smokey." The "Southern Gentlemen" subplot is fairly straightforward and sweet, so let's focus on "Smokey."

Though I have before and will in the future decry a lot of what Sorkin does with the Dana/Casey relationship, Peter Krause and Felicity Huffman had undeniable chemistry. What makes their "Smokey" story work is that it's really just an excuse to watch the two actors work together. There are no real stakes, no plot convolutions, just the two of them pretending to flirt, and then discovering that they're actually flirting. More of this, and less of some of what's coming (including in the next episode, "Small Town"), and I might think very differently about this whole storyline.

Some other thoughts:

• Janel Moloney, who played assistant wardrobe supervisor Monica, would of course go on to play Donnatella Moss on "West Wing."

• So bizarre to see Casey on old-school "The View," with Meredith, Debbie and a still-plus-sized Star -- and to watch it in the middle of a week where we had press tour sessions with Joy and then with Whoopi Goldberg.

• For the most part, I try to let the show slide on its level of verisimilitude, but when you have a subplot about characters debating the Play of the Year, shouldn't they be discussing, you know, plays? Almost everything that Jeremy, Kim and company were arguing about were potential Moments of the Year, but not individual plays.

• Much as I enjoy this show, I rarely it found it to be a laugh-out-loud, ha=ha kind of comedy, but the Dana/Natalie/Jeremy three-hander from "Smokey" that I quoted at the top may be the single funniest moment of the series. Perfectly set up by the first two lines, and delivered in perfect matter-of-fact fashion by Joshua Malina on the punchline. Had Jeremy not immediately fessed up, it's not remotely as funny.

• Sorkin's addiction to repeating a phrase simply for the sake of it would abate as his TV career went along, but it's still alive and well in "Smokey," where Dan and Casey repeat variations of "It's time" approximately 8,739 times in the episode's first five minutes.

• Speaking of Sorkin recurring devices, in "Smokey," Sally becomes the latest character to recite the details of her resume. Because she's Sally, and we're supposed to dislike her, her CV isn't nearly as impressive as Dana's.

Coming up next: "Small Town," in which Dana and Casey try to double date, while Natalie takes the wheel; and "Rebecca," in which Dan is intrigued by a CSC marketing analyst.

Don't count on seeing those for a bit, possibly not even next week (when I'm back from press tour), depending on how much catch-up I have to do.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind: "The Quality of Mercy at 29K" & "Shoe Money Tonight"

Okay, in between the end of my vacation and the start of my Comic-Con/press tour wanderings, I'm going to crank out one more "Sports Night" rewind, this time looking back on "The Quality of Mercy at 29K" (heretofore referred to as "29K") and "Shoe Money Tonight" (heretofore referred to as "Shoe"). Spoilers for both coming up just as soon as I go to Dickensian London...

"I didn't know we could do that. Did you know we could do that?" -Dana

"But mostly, I want you to trust me -- just once -- when I tell you that you have three sevens, and I have a straight." -Jeremy

Unlike some of the past episodes I've doubled up on, "29K" and "Shoe" don't have an awful lot in common, either thematically or in terms of continuing plotlines. The former is Aaron Sorkin, cockeyed optimist that he so often is, musing on how much human beings can accomplish with the right amount of imagination and hard work, the latter a comic romp in which jealousy rears its ugly head for both our actual couple (Jeremy/Natalie) and our inevitable couple (Dana/Casey).

The one clear thing they have in common (other than featuring the Sports Night staff stuck at the office to do a telecast in the middle of the night) is that they're each illustrative of one of Sorkin's recurring flaws: for "29K," his tendency to sometimes overargue a point; for "Shoe," his tendency to get a little patronizing when it comes to the opposite sex.

Now, these are both very good episodes, and they're maybe the first two where I feel my retroactive opinion is being significantly colored by my viewing of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Because I've seen how awkward those tendencies can feel on a Sorkin show that isn't working, I get uncomfortable noticing them even in the midst of a good Sorkin show.

"Shoe" is more problematic in this respect. Yes, Sorkin lays on the "Look at what we can do" stuff a little too thick in "29K," just to make sure we get the point, but it's still a sunny episode, and features one of my favorite Felicity Huffman performances in depicting Dana's over-the-moon reaction to seeing "The Lion King" on Broadway.

"Shoe," on the other hand, very much fits into the Sorkin pattern of creating female characters who are mostly very strong and great at their chosen professions, but who, from time to time, need the men in their lives to tell them what to do and explain how the world really works. This pattern was most evident in Harriet Hayes on "Studio 60," but even vintage Sorkin-era "West Wing" had stray moments like this.

Now, as to the Jeremy/Natalie poker confrontation at the end of this episode, it's hard to look at it without thinking of what commenter Hal Incandenza wrote in our discussion of "The Apology":

A friend of mine can't stand the Jeremy-Natalie dynamic (though, I believe, he likes both the characters) for the simple reason that Jeremy wins every single argument the two ever have. I re-watched the eps, and it's kind of true. See if that influences your viewing experience.

Natalie is smart, and she's tough, and she's likable, but of course Jeremy knows what the cards are and she doesn't, and the only real trump she has over the guy is her sex appeal. In this relationship, Jeremy's smart and kind and thoughtful, and she... looks really hot in one of his white shirts. In my review of "Thespis," I wrote that Natalie is like every nerd's dream girl, and the way the card game only enhances that idea. What geek wouldn't want a hot woman who gets turned on by his command of trivia, and who also acknowledges that, in the end, she's clearly his intellectual inferior?

And the thing is, I think Sorkin could have told the exact same Jeremy/Natalie story and accomplished the same character arcs for both, even if he had flipped things at the end and shown that Jeremy's count of the cards wasn't as good as he thought. If Jeremy gives the speech about how Natalie needs to recognize that he's not some d-bag like every other guy she's dated, I think she still forgives him for the Judy-Rootie-Tootie thing even if it turns out that she had four 7's instead of three to beat his straight. I think it's a little more unexpected(*), and it makes Natalie seem stronger and more interesting for recognizing that Jeremy is right about the larger point even though he was mistaken on the specific point.

(*) Admittedly, it's more unexpected in hindsight, when we're aware of the pattern of this relationship, and of Sorkin's handling of female characters in general.

And I don't want to bag too much on Sorkin's feminist credentials given the conflict between Dana and West Coast Update producer Sally Sasser (played by Brenda Strong, who would get more work, I believe, if she wasn't taller than most of her insecure potential male co-stars). Yes, there's some amount of jealousy in how Dana reacts to Sally -- not about Sally's looks, but about how Casey drools over them -- but mostly, it's clear that what bothers Dana is that Sally is the kind of professional that Dana never wanted to be. Dana is beautiful, and she's feminine in a job where it would be very easy for her to play the tomboy, but she has never traded on her sexuality in the way that Sally does. She got to where she is because she's talented and driven, and it's those qualities that Casey is drawn to as much as he is to her appearance. And it's that, I think, that really bugs Dana about Sally: if Dana defines herself largely by how good she is at her job, and if Casey can leer over someone who isn't 1/10th as good at it as Dana, just because Sally has long legs and a big chest, does that mean Casey really doesn't care all that much about Dana the professional? And does that, in turn, mean that Dana herself has spent all these years mooning over the wrong guy?

Of course, in the end, Dana realizes that the way into Casey's heart is through his favorite camera angles and a lack of puns (it's an argument where she's right about everything and he's wrong) and everything works out in the end.

Some other thoughts on both episodes:

• At the time "29K" aired, the episode caught some grief from critics who thought Sorkin was being forced to plug another Disney product (or that he was choosing to do it to suck up to his new corporate overlords). He would later say that he just really enjoyed seeing "The Lion King" and wanted to try to convey that experience to the audience, and didn't even think about the synergy thing. As this was 10 years before product integration became the be-all, end-all of network TV, I'm inclined to believe him.

• West Coast Update is kind of a lame name for the 2 a.m. show, unless its full title was supposed to be Sports Night: West Coast Update. Also, the idea that Dan and Casey would be the only anchors available to fill in for the guys stuck in Pittsburgh doesn't track with later episodes, which will reveal a relatively deep bench at CSC.

• And speaking of that, without getting too spoiler-y for the newbies watching these episodes only as I write about them, Dan's on-air plea for food during "29K" seems like a big no-no, given the trouble a fill-in anchor named Steve Sarris will get into for a similar stunt in a season two episode. (Try to be vague if you want to compare the two situations, please.)

• In what circumstance is "The Weight" by The Band not the perfect song to end any episode of anything, as it does "29K"?

• "Shoe Money Tonight" was the first episode of the series not directed by Tommy Schlamme, and it shows, particularly in the climactic poker scene, where director Dennie Gordon eschews Schlamme's trademark fluid camerawork for a lot of quick cuts and extreme close-ups. Very jarring compared to the way the show usually looks.

Coming up next: Another two-parter of sorts with "The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee" and "Smoky," both of which feature Isaac going up against CSC chairman Luther Sachs.

Don't know when that will be written, given my Comic-Con/press tour commitments. I could slip it in at some point during those two weeks, or I may not get to it until mid-August. But I promise I've got at least a few more of these reviews in me before Labor Day.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind: "Thespis"

I continued my streak of never making it even as far as voir dire in the jury selection process, and while I sat in the jury room, I got to do my latest "Sports Night" review, which I'm posting a day early for reasons that I'll explain at the end.

Spoilers for "Thespis" coming up just as soon as I rehearse the route...

"Ladies and gentlemen, Thespis has left the building!" -Dana

There are deeper episodes of "Sports Night," and probaby even funnier ones (I laughed more at the running gag with the water glasses in "Dear Louise" than I did at anything here), but "Thespis" is probably my favorite episode of the series. Just pure fun, a supremely confident farce that still finds time for a few heavy moments without ruining the tone.

Sorkin's fond of this Murphy's Law structure (he did a similar storyline on the "Studio 60" episode with Allison Janney, which was one of the less-bad episodes of that series), and where I think he finds the alchemy here is the decision to so quickly set up the idea of Thespis and have everyone buy into it. I think if everyone were in denial about it for more than the few minutes it takes Dana to slip and fall, it might have felt labored, but because we and the character understand by now that Jeremy knows of which he speaks, we and they just go with it. Whether there really is a Greek ghost in the studio or not doesn't matter, because it's in everybody's heads. And once the premise is accepted, Sorkin and Schlamme can quickly accelerate the level of disaster, from Dana's slip, to the falling turkey, to the entire signal dropping out for several minutes(*).

(*) Time to call on the expertise of the commenters who say they worked on cable sports shows during this period: is that really plausible? What combination of factors would have to happen for a national cable sports network to just drop off the face of the earth in the middle of a show?

What also makes it work, I think, are those serious moments I mentioned earlier -- the idea that the bad luck afflicting Sports Night doesn't just involve defrosting turkeys, but could lead to a tragic event for Isaac's daughter. (That, I think, is the most significant difference between "Thespis" and the "Studio 60" episode, which was played entirely for laughs, when the genius of Sorkin is the mix of jokes and pathos.) That storyline, or Dan's lecture to Casey about his decision not to take the job that went to Conan O'Brien, don't get in the way of the laughs; if anything, they make the laughs bigger, because they're a respite from thoughts about what might be happening in that labor and delivery room 3000 miles away.

And once again, how great is Robert Guillaume? The scene where Isaac is refusing to let Dana comfort him was expertly set up with the earlier scene about his son-in-law not rehearsing the route. Because Isaac is, like most Sorkin characters, smarter than the average bear, we know that he's already thought of all of the myriad things that could go wrong for his daughter, and the way Guillaume plays that moment of mental torture is a reminder of the bliss that ignorance can provide.

But really, I just feel happy when Dana says the line I quoted at the top. As I've said before, what makes "Sports Night" cool is that it creates this vision of a fantasy workplace where everyone is like family to one another. And more than most episodes of the series, "Thespis" creates the illusion that we're part of the family, sucked into the wacky hijinks and possible darkness, so the feeling of relief when Thespis allegedly attacks Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford across town is palpable.

Some other thoughts on "Thespis" (and say that five times fast, why don't you?):

• We get a bit of background continuity, as the telecast mentions Jason Grissom's no contest plea; Grissom was the guy whose arrest was a hot topic in the pilot.

• Note how turned on Natalie gets when Jeremy is answering all the questions about the Greco-Roman pantheon of deities. She's kind of the ultimate geek fantasy: a pretty girl who's attracted to men for their command of trivia.

• Sorkin's repetitive dialogue can get irritating at times, but I always laugh at Casey's run of Alberto Salazar/New York Marathon guesses to Dan's question about the anniversary.

• "Sports Night" takes place in a parallel universe for a number of reasons, not least of which is the idea that Lorne Michaels, given the power to pick Letterman's replacement, would have thought to hire a sportscaster with no national profile. (Conan had no profile of any kind, of course, but he had worked on "SNL" for years.)

Coming up next: As I mentioned last week, the summer is about to derail any hope of keeping on a strict schedule. I'm taking my first real vacation in what seems like forever next week. Then late in the week after that, I'll be in California, first for Comic-Con, then for the Television Critics Association summer press tour. And I'll likely be taking some more days off in late August. (Between unused vacation days and mandatory furloughs, I'm required to take a lot of time off in the second half of this year.)

So we're going to have to play things by ear for the rest of the summer, with me doing the reviews whenever I'm able, and just posting them when they're done (as I did here). If it makes you feel better, this is how I did the "Freaks and Geeks" reviews two summers ago (several of which were written at press tour), so I imagine I'll still get a fair number done between now and Labor Day (or between now and Premiere Week of the new TV season, depending on how productive I am with these and how many other things wind up on my plate).

Short version: bear with me. They'll come when they come. But to make up for these disruptions, I'm going to try to double up the rest of the way, whether the episodes are thematically linked or not. So at the very least be up on "The Quality of Mercy at 29K" and "Shoe Money Tonight" before the next review goes up, whenever that is. Heck, thanks to the short/productive jury duty stint, I might (repeat: might) be able to do another before the end of this week.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind: "Dear Louise"

Okay, for this week and next week, we're back to one "Sports Night" review at a time, as I enjoyed both "Dear Louise" and "Thespis" too much -- and couldn't manufacture enough of a connection between the two -- to try to mash them together in a single review. Looking down the line, I suspect there will be more two-fers to come, but not at the moment.

Spoilers for "Dear Louise" coming up just as soon as some stamps materialize...

While the forced marriage of Aaron Sorkin to a live studio audience was a bad idea on ABC's part, "Dear Louise" is one of the few episodes where the laugh track doesn't feel out of place. That's because, for one week, at least, Sorkin, Tommy Schlamme and the entire cast seem to be making an effort to play to the audience in the studio at least as much as the viewers at home.

When I talked about how uncomfortably broad Joshua Malina's performance was during the Spike Lee scene in the pilot, several people pointed out that it's the only part of that episode that the studio audience responds to enthusiastically. It was aimed at them, and the rhythms of it were more familiar than most of Sorkin's repetitive, deadpan banter.

But it's jarring there because Malina's the only one in the cast who's playing to the cheap seats, where in "Dear Louise" everybody seems to be on the same page. Early in watching the episode, I would make notes about how Josh Charles was playing Dan's writer's block very big, or how Robert Guillaume was doing the same with Isaac's angst about his daughter's Republican boyfriend. After a while, though, it became clear that everyone was doing it -- that, in addition to being a series of mood-setting vignettes, "Dear Louise" was pitched at a different comic speed than most "Sports Night" episodes -- and it worked for me. And it clearly worked for the audience, since the laughter throughout the episode sounds heartier and more genuine than in nearly any other episode of the series. For one week, at least, the laugh track isn't an awkward intruder, but a willing collaborator.

And yet even in an episode that has Natalie throwing water in Dan's face not once, not twice, but thrice, and that climaxes with Dana drunkenly blasting "Boogie Shoes" through the newsroom, Sorkin and company find a way to make it still be "Sports Night." Even in the midst of the wacky hijinx, they slip in the A.K. Russell carjacking tragedy, and a sweet moment for Jeremy and Natalie, and even the way the gang assimilates the news that Louise is deaf and quickly moves on. It doesn't feel like pandering, even though there's more slapstick, and the performances are bigger than usual.

I really wish this was one of the episodes featuring a commentary track, because I'd love to hear the backstory. Was this Sorkin and Schlamme trying to make nice with the network? Were they ordered to do this? Or was it just something they tried, seeing as this was only Sorkin's seventh episode ever of writing for television, and he was learning as he went?

Whatever the reason, "Dear Louise" doesn't feel quite like the other episodes so far, but it works.

Some other thoughts:

• Sorkin will recycle both the letter-writing device and the writer's block gag on "The West Wing," the former in "The Stackhouse Filibuster" (which features three different characters e-mailing loved ones), the latter in "Enemies," where both Sam and Toby are afflicted. ("Somewhere in this building is our talent.")

• Was the third water splash improvised by Sabrina Lloyd? Or, at the very least, a surprise to Josh Charles and Peter Krause? Their reactions, particularly Krause's (see the photo), seem too genuine to be faked, even by good actors.

• Though Sorkin is often dinged for stacking the deck against conservative characters on his shows, I like that Isaac's fear and loathing about the Republican boyfriend is supposed to be completely ridiculous, as Dana tries to point out after Isaac lists the kid's impressive resume.

• For that matter, the letter-writing format allows Sorkin to drop in two more resumes, for both Dana and Isaac. I thought it was a nice touch that Isaac is said to have won a Pulitzer for his coverage of the Gemini missions -- the unglamorous but essential intermediate step between the trailblazing Mercury missions and the climactic Apollo lunar missions -- as it not only shows that Isaac could make any subject sound exciting, but that he, like Sorkin, has a fondness for history's leftovers.

• Ted McGinley also often makes an easy punching bag -- he is, after all, the patron saint of Jump the Shark -- but he's very good as Gordon, and Sorkin makes an effort here to turn Gordon into a tough adversary for Casey when it would be very easy to make him this loathsome empty suit.

Coming up next: "Thespis," in which the studio comes under siege from a frozen turkey and a Greek ghost. This may be a day or so late, as I have jury duty early next week. And the week after that I'm probably on vacation, and the week after that I'm heading to California for Comic-Con and then press tour, and then there may be more vacation, and then... sigh... maybe I should've tried to find some way to combine this with "Thespis." I'll figure this out. That, or the summer 2010 lineup is already locked up (Wire season 3 and more of Sports Night).

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind: "Mary Pat Shelby" & "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail"

Okay, I'm going to give this another try and review two "Sports Night" episodes in one go. Spoilers for "Mary Pat Shelby" and "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail" coming up just as soon as I take a vacation from my values...

"I sent her there on purpose." -Dana

I don't know that I want to keep reviewing these episodes two at a time -- particularly since the next two, "Dear Louise" and "Thespis," are both unrelated and good enough to deserve their own reviews -- but as these particular episodes are more or less a two-parter (no "to be continued..." at the end of the first, but a "previously on..." at the start of the second), I'm okay with it here.

More than sports, or politics, or wacky romantic misunderstandings, "Sports Night" is first and foremost about work -- about the kind of workplace many of us would like to have, and about the challenges of keeping it as idealized as we want. Frequently, the threats to the sanctity of Sports Night(*) come from above, in the form of Luther Sachs's minions, but here the problems come from within, which makes the conflict feel that much more potent. Most of the time, the people at Sports Night are as much friends as colleagues, and these episodes -- "Mary Pat Shelby" in particular -- show how tricky things can get when you need a colleague to do something you would never ask a friend to do.

(*) For the sake of my sanity -- and/or to avoid using the phrase show-within-the-show 8 million times this summer -- I think I'm henceforth going to use italics to refer to the CSC version of it, and quotes to refer to the ABC version.

While Sports Night is supposed to be this wonderful place to work, filled with eccentric but supportive people, they're not saints. They make mistakes, or they make bad choices for ostensibly noble reasons, or they put their faith where they shouldn't. And when that happens, we get a fiasco like Dana sending Natalie to interview Christian Patrick in the hopes of sparking a controversy which will be good for the show -- and we have Natalie going along with it because she trusts Dana a little too implicitly.

While Natalie is Patrick's victim in "Mary Pat Shelby," and continues to suffer the emotional fallout of the incident in "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail," these episodes feel like more of a showcase for Dana than for her. It's Dana who makes the choice to do the Patrick interview even with the restrictions from his lawyers, it's Dana who sends Natalie instead of Jeremy, it's Dana who kicks Patrick and his crew out of the studio, and it's Dana who tells Natalie that -- unofficial family or no -- she needs to get her act together, or else. And Felicity Huffman is wonderful throughout.

"Mary Pat Shelby" is the stronger of the two, and not just because it's the first episode of the series to ditch the laugh track.(As I recall, Sorkin and Schlamme got ABC to relent as a one-time experiment to see how viewers responded; obviously, response wasn't good enough, and it was back the next week.) The conflict is greater in "MPS," but it's also a better illustration of what "Sports Night" could be at its best. Like "The Apology," it contrasts a fairly dark main storyline (Christian Patrick assaults Natalie) with a subplot that seems fairly goofy (Dan wants to grow a goatee), then finds a way to combine the two at the end to create a moment that's simultaneously funny and moving, as Dan and Casey have Dana's back by standing up to Patrick's lawyer in this exchange:

"This is a third-place show on a fourth-rate network." -Evans
"Yeah, but that's all about to change once I grow a goatee." -Dan
"He's just crazy enough to do it." -Casey

It's not quite "Can I just say one more thing about the Starland Vocal Band?," but it's awfully close.

"Morning Mail" is, by design, a less intense episode. We're now a little removed from the Patrick incident, and everyone but a distracted Natalie and a sleep-deprived Jeremy has more or less moved on from it. Dan is trying to get Casey to stop talking about Rostenkowski, and Casey in turn is obsessed with Gordon -- until, in a nice moment, Gordon tries to bond with Casey over their shared hatred of Rostenkowski, and inadvertently makes Casey realize he's being too hard on the coach -- and so things are a bit lighter throughout.

But Sabrina Lloyd and, especially, Joshua Malina (who by this point has left the over-the-top mannerisms of his pilot performance long behind) both do fine jobs of playing their characters at the end of their respective ropes. And while Sorkin will drag out the Dana/Casey stuff past all reason, I like that he more or less puts Jeremy and Natalie together by the end of the sixth episode, and does it in an unusual way. These are two people getting together at their worst, not their best, and yet being together (even if, right now, Jeremy's just napping at their newsroom picnic) seems to make the bad stuff feel okay.

A lot of good stuff to discuss here. And speaking of which, some other thoughts:

• In my quest to keep track of recurring Sorkin-isms that will continue to pop up in his other series (and/or ones that had already appeared in the likes of "A Few Good Men" and "The American President"), I couldn't help but notice the use in "Mary Pat Shelby" of the gag where a character gives a long speech and the intended audience retorts with, "I wasn't really listening." It's Sorkin's way, I suppose, of trying to self-regulate his tendency to write these long-winded, preachy monologues in the first place.

• More recurring Sorkin devices: Natalie rattles off her resume near the end of "MPS." And Jeremy runs down some of his credentials -- including a degree in Applied Mathematics -- in "Morning Mail."

• While you would assume Ray Wise is great enough that he would have become a Sorkin repertory player, he didn't turn up on the "West Wing" until years after Sorkin had left.

• The Boston reporter Natalie is referring to in "Mary Pat Shelby" is Lisa Olson, who was more or less driven out of town after she accused several players on the Patriots of sexually harassing her. She wound up moving to Australia to work for a sister newspaper, though by the time this episode aired (or maybe a little bit afterwards), she returned to the States as a columnist for the New York Daily News. (She left that job last year after allegedly getting sick of dealing with Mike Lupica.)

• The other ripped-from-the-headlines aspect of the story is that Christian Patrick is undoubtedly named after Christian Peter, who, during his time as a defensive tackle at Nebraska, was arrested and/or convicted of multiple crimes, and most infamously was accused of raping a freshman girl twice in two days. The Patriots drafted Peter, then freaked out after he was convicted for trying to choke a woman in a bar, and refused to sign him. At the time of this episode, Peter was a backup for the Giants, who signed him on the condition that he attend counseling for alcohol abuse, anger management, etc.

• Patrick is played by Brad Henke, who was causing trouble on "Lost" towards the end of this season.

• I love the "MPS" scene where Dana tries to convince Dan and Casey that she's right to trade Natalie's story for Mary Pat Shelby's, and Dan hits her with "You had me until the last part." It's so rare to see characters on television having an ethical debate like this where no one's getting too upset or arguing the point too much -- these are just adults trying to convince each other of their position.

• Dan has some fine moments in both episodes, but I particularly like the scene in "Morning Mail" where he talks to Jeremy about the majesty of New York, which perfectly sets up the use of "Someone to Watch Over Me" -- written, of course, by the Gershwins -- at the episode's end.

• The running gag in "Morning Mail" about Casey's conversational anal-retentiveness is very funny.

Coming up next: Definitely "Dear Louise," and maybe "Thespis" as well. Gonna play that by ear.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind: "The Hungry and the Hunted" & "Intellectual Property"

As mentioned over the weekend, I'm going to double up on the "Sports Night" reviews this week, tackling both "The Hungry and the Hunted" and "Intellectual Property." This may turn out to be a one-time thing, as I'm primarily doing it because I didn't want to waste a whole post/week on "Intellectual Property," but we'll see how my workload is going forward. But if you're trying to watch these episodes at the rate I'm writing them, maybe take in both "Mary Pat Shelby" and "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail" before next Wednesday, just in case.

Twice the spoilers coming up just as soon as I sing you a song from the public domain...

"If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you." -Isaac

"Sonvagun..." -Dana

As I mentioned last week, the Dana/Casey romance was the part of the series I was least looking forward to revisiting, and neither of these episodes did much to change my mind on that score.

There are certain kinds of stories I'm congenitally predisposed to mistrust. One is Unresolved Sexual Tension, which only in rare cases is anything more than a desperate attempt to create some buzz while delaying the inevitable. Another is a story that has characters otherwise known for their intelligence acting like complete idiots. The Dana/Casey story arc is a combination of both of those, and I spend the majority of those scenes rolling my eyes, gritting my teeth and otherwise conveying my dismay. It's often been said of "Sports Night" -- including in some of the comments for previous reviews -- that it's hard to tell sometimes whether you're watching one of the best shows ever, or one of the worst. For me, Dana/Casey is pretty much non-stop "worst."

When I did the weekend post about disliking "Intellectual Property," a couple of readers wrote that, while they also weren't crazy about the relationship overall, the fight at the end of that episode is a very good scene, and one that does an important job of framing the relationship as something more than the traditional Will They Or Won't They? nonsense. Certainly, there are good moments in that scene (I like the way that Felicity Huffman's voice breaks as Dana asks Casey to knock it off already), and the idea that Casey has been playing this game with Dana for the last 15 years does theoretically add an edge to the relationship that you don't get in a comparable storyline from, say, "Ed." But that edge, even when it's there -- and my (admittedly shaky) memory is that it wasn't there often -- isn't enough to compensate for how often I want to slap the both of them and yell, "Quit acting like 14-year-olds! The writer says you're meant for each other, so get to it, already!"

"The Hungry and the Hunted" at least has the Jeremy storyline to compensate for the Dana/Casey idiocy. I don't know that it works 100% -- Jeremy's speech about hunting feels more out of left field than Dan's monologue in "The Apology," even though we'd been given more hints about Jeremy not fitting in than we had about Dan's brother -- but Isaac's speech, quoted above, is the kind of wish fulfillment Sorkin does so well. Where "Sports Night" and "West Wing" excelled -- and where "Studio 60" ultimately failed -- was in creating these fantasy workplaces that we all wish we could join. You don't have to care as much about the infield fly rule as Jeremy, or share Josh Lyman's views on the GAO, to admire not only the passion of these people, but their high standards for their own work, and their support for each other. I don't have the temperament to ever be a manager of people, but if I did, I would put Isaac's quote on a plaque above my desk, and check it whenever I was faltering on a decision about whom to hire (or what to have for lunch, for that matter).

Dan's subplot in "Intellectual Property," on the other hand, isn't really notable for anything other than a chance to hear Yeardley Smith (aka the voice of Lisa Simpson) speak Sorkin-ese. And it's not very good Sorkin-ese, at that -- the stuff about her predecessor in the job is among the more arch, awkward-sounding dialogue he wrote for the show. Like Casey's concern about being cool in "The Apology," the whole subplot feels like Sorkin trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to prove he can write more traditional comedy, but where the Starland Vocal Band had a beautiful payoff by tying it into Dan's storyline at the end, this one goes nowhere.

Ah, well. We get to the good stuff next week with "Mary Pat Shelby" (and, possibly, its sequel).

Some other thoughts on both episodes:

• The scene where the crew debated about poetry brought back painful memories of the "Studio 60" episode where the writers all argued about Samuel Taylor Coleridge trivia.

• Where "West Wing" more or less took place in a parallel universe with its own politicians, "Sports Night" was always a mix of fictional athletes and real-world ones, as Bobby Bowden and Pete Sampras both get name-checked in "The Hungry and the Hunted," and there's a season two episode built around the show's attempt to get a Michael Jordan interview. In retrospect, would you rather they have stuck entirely to inventing their own athletes, or did the show need to invoke real names from time to time to seem vaguely realistic?

• And speaking of realism, or the lack thereof, I go back and forth on the "Hungry and the Hunted" scene where Kim and the gang school Dan on the names of all the MLS teams. On the one hand, it's kind of funny. On the other, it sacrifices credibility -- even if Dan doesn't like soccer, you would think the show-within-the-show has done enough soccer highlights that he would remember some of the names.

• Nice use of The Pretenders' "Hymn to Her" as Jeremy calls his dad to tell him about getting The Call.

• We know "Sports Night" is a third-place show on a third-place network, but I'm still not clear whom they're behind. ESPN is one, obviously, but when I made a reference to Fox Sports as the second-place network a couple of weeks ago, some readers e-mailed me to say that, back in '98, Fox's cable operations were still too regionalized, and it would have been CNN/SI ahead of CSC. But when Isaac talks ratings in "Intellectual Property," he says they took ratings equally from ESPN and Fox.

• Getting back to the fake name thing, it's amusing to see which last names Sorkin liked to recycle from project to project. In "Intellectual Property," there's a reference to a soon-to-be-fired coach named Landingham -- which, of course, will be the name of President Bartlet's trusty executive secretary.

One final thing: I've had a few complaints from readers who are watching the show for the first time, and even trying to follow along at the pace of the reviews, so let's try to be reasonably vague about what happens in upcoming episodes. (The Michael Jordan thing I consider fair game, as it's a standalone premise, and really only a jumping-off point, at that.) We can allude to things, but let's not blatantly spell out that X is going to happen to Y in episode Z.

Keeping that in mind, what did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Sports Night: A programming note

For this coming week, and possibly the week after, I'm going to review two episodes of "Sports Night" on Wednesday instead of one.

People have been requesting that I go at a faster pace so we get through more of the series before the summer is out. But the actual driving factor behind this (possibly temporary) shift is that I was so unhappy with "Intellectual Property," which would be the episode I'd review next week, and didn't want to waste a whole week of this project on it. I thought I'd double it up with whatever the episode after that is, but that one is "Mary Pat Shelby," which is itself the first half of a two-parter, so that made no sense. So instead, I'm going to double up "The Hungry and the Hunted" and "Intellectual Property," which are both fairly heavy on the Dana/Casey stuff, and if the two-in-one format seems workable, I'll try it again the following Wednesday with "Mary Pat Shelby" and "The Head Coach, Dinner and the Morning Mail." After that, we'll see if I can keep working at that rate.

It seems like most of you are way ahead of my one-a-week pace, anyway, so hopefully nobody will be too out of sorts by the shift. Click here to read the full post

Sports Night rewind, episode 2: "The Apology"

Okay, let's continue with our look back at the early episodes of "Sports Night." Spoilers for episode two, "The Apology," coming up just as soon as I jinx a no-hitter...

"That was 11 years ago tonight, and I just wanted to say I'm sorry, Sam. You deserved better in my hands. And I apologize. That's all." -Dan

Whenever I think back on "Sports Night," Dan's apology to his brother is almost always the first scene that comes to mind. It's such a terrific synthesis of all the things the show did well:

• It doesn't go where you expect it to. After the earlier scene with the suits from Continental Corp., you assume it's going to be a preachy monologue about the damage being done by the War on Drugs, but instead Dan tells the story of his brother Sam and reminds us that the political and the personal can have a complicated relationship.

• It's a nice piece of writing from Aaron Sorkin, and an even better piece of acting by Josh Charles. Because Sam's story is coming to us with no introduction, it could feel like a shameless tug at our heartstrings, but it doesn't. It amplifies and alters how we viewed Dan in the earlier scenes, and Charles plays the hell out of it. Sorkin can over-write at times, but this is nice and spare.

• It ties in perfectly with the comic relief subplot about Casey's fear of not being cool. The subplot on its own still feels a little flimsy, like Sorkin was trying to do a more traditional comedy bit to please the network, but when Casey slides his chair over to Dan and starts talking about The Starland Vocal Band -- effectively telling him, "I'm here for you, man, but I know you didn't want to talk about that, so have a laugh at my expense instead" -- it's a thing of beauty. (And it's made that much funnier/sweeter because they went to the trouble of getting the rights to play "Afternoon Delight" under the scene.)

In addition to giving Dan a spotlight after the pilot's Casey-centric-ness, "The Apology" is also a very good Isaac episode. As with Leo on "The West Wing," Isaac's role here is to be the grown-up in a world of overgrown children, and Robert Guillaume, as you would expect, does a terrific job at playing both the comic and serious side of that role. It's funny when Isaac has no patience for Casey's existential dilemma about being cool, and his presence in the meeting with the network lawyers lends gravity to Dan's side of things. (And the best moment of all is after the suits leave and Isaac deservedly gives Dan grief for his most pretentious comment, telling him, "And because I love you, I can say this: No rich young white guy has ever gotten anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks.") I grew up on Guillaume in "Benson," but it wasn't until "Sports Night" that I had a real appreciation for the man's range and depth.

Some other thoughts on "The Apology":

• On the negative side, this episode introduces the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Dana and Casey, and while the actors have good chemistry and the storyline occasionally yielded good moments (notably "You're wearing my shirt"), for the most part it featured the two of them acting like idiots, and I cringe during most of those scenes. (The Dana/Casey stuff from next week's "The Hungry and the Hunted" is all but unwatchable.)

• The Jeremy/Natalie relationship, on the other hand, is often very funny, and here leads into more Casey comedy goodness as he lets Natalie talk him into helping Jeremy edit down his first, monstrously-long highlight package.

• Unless I missed one in the pilot, this episode gives us our first mention of Luther Sachs, the mysterious owner of Continental Corp. (and, therefore, CSC). Many bad things will be done (or attempted) in Sachs's name over the course of the series.

• I had forgotten how much I liked Kayla Blake as Kim. Wish she worked more after the series ended.

• Sorkin has a unique authorial voice, and he often struggles when trying to write as anyone else. The alleged Howard Stern joke -- "Dan Rydell lends a whole new meaning to the word 'highlight.'" -- doesn't sound remotely like something Stern would say.

Coming up next Wednesday: "The Hungry and the Hunted," in which Jeremy gets The Call, Dana wears a swank dress, and Dan professes his ignorance of soccer.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post