Digital Joe #21

Sports Night

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FIRST ONLINE Jul 30, 2006

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Every once in a while, I come across a television show or movie that is so spectacular that I feel the need to share it with everyone within the sound of my voice. The show that I am pimping this week is the Aaron Sorkin comedy "Sports Night".

Criminally under seen in its original network run (1998-2000), "Sports Night" tells the story of a nightly cable sports news show much like ESPN´s "SportsCenter". But don´t let that dissuade the non-sports lovers out there. "Sports Night" isn´t about sports, per se; it´s about the people behind the scenes of this show and the way they interact with each other.

Dana Whitaker ("Desperate Housewives" star Felicity Huffman) is the executive producer of the flagship show on the Continental Sports Channel. She has a long time relationship with one of her show´s anchors, Casey McCall (Peter Krause, "Six Feet Under"); they have been friends since college. Casey´s co-anchor and best friend Dan Rydell (Josh Charles from "Dead Poet´s Society") is not only the everyman on the show, but also the moral conscience of the program. Then there´s associate producer Natalie Hurley (Sabrina Lloyd) and her dorky boyfriend Jeremy Goodwin ("The West Wing"s Josh Malina). Finally, television legend Robert Guillaume plays managing editor of "Sports Night" (the fictional show, not the real show) Isaac Jaffe.

With that out of the way, all you really need to know is that this is an Aaron Sorkin show. It includes all the hallmarks of his more popular NBC hit "The West Wing", including the rapid fire pace of dialogue and a much drier sense of humor than any other comedy on television. It´s truer to life than the criminally overseen "Friends" and wittier than the universally praised "Everybody Loves Raymond".

From the top down (with the possible exception of Sabrina Lloyd), the main cast are actors that have excelled in other projects before "Sports Night" and since the show was axed by ABC. Uniformly, the acting is excellent because the actors inhabit the characters unlike any comedy cast in recent history. Even the lavishly praised Jerry Seinfeld seems to be on the verge of laughter ever-single time his mouth opens.

Part of the acting on "Sports Night" involves the actors being able to spout long monologues without the benefit of camera coverage or cuts in the filming. Take, for instance, an exchange between Jeremy and Natalie at the end of the season one episode "Shoe Money Tonight".

Jeremy: Natalie, listen to me. You've lost a lot of money to me tonight. You're basically going to be living the rest of your life on a charitable grant from the Jeremy Goodwin Foundation. Take the hundred bucks back and fold.
Natalie: Scared?
Jeremy: I've got a straight. You've got three sevens.
Natalie: You don't have a straight.
Jeremy: Look at me. I'm not lying to you. I have a straight.
Natalie: How do you know I don't have a big house?
Jeremy: A full house. Dan already folded the six you needed and I have the other one. You don't have a house of any sort. You don't have a pup tent. You've got trip sevens and I have a straight. I want you to trust me right now. I want you to say to yourself, "Yeah, I've dated a string of jerks in my life. They were stupid, they were mean to me, but maybe this one's different. Maybe I should take a chance and not adopt the 'break up with him before he breaks my heart' strategy." I want you to remember that when I started liking you, I didn't stop liking tennis. And I want you to know that I don't think there's a woman in the world that you need to be threatened by, no matter how glamorous you think she is. But mostly, I want you to trust me, just once, when I tell you that you have three sevens... and I have a straight.

If you can read that and not alternately laugh and be touched by what Jeremy is telling Natalie, this show isn´t for you. There are dozens of pieces of dialogue like this throughout the series.

Not all of the credit can go to the actors, though. A lot of it also goes to the writers. All but four of the forty-five episodes in the two produced seasons have Sorkin´s name plastered on the writing credits. Which, when you think about it, is a good thing. One guiding voice throughout the series is the thing that is missing from far too many programs. And, let´s be honest: writing the overlapping dialogue doesn´t come naturally to everyone, nor can it be taught. You either have it or you don´t. And, clearly, Sorkin has it.

There are times through the series that will make you want to strangle characters (namely west coast update´s producer Sally Sasser) and times when clapping just seems like the right thing to do (the end of the first season finale). From the beginning, we get wrapped up in the relationships, emotions and lives of these fictional people.

Despite this all-star cast and Sorkin's name, "Sports Night" got cancelled after two seasons and a total of 45 episodes. I never caught the show in first run. I didn´t even catch most of it in reruns on Comedy Central. I did pick it up on a whim at a used DVD store a couple months ago and I can´t put this series down. Packed on six discs (housed in a cardboard case), the treatment given to "Sports Night" on DVD is just as criminal as the way it was treated at the network level.

We have the original full frame video presentations. I doubt the original ever looked as bad as these transfers do. For starters, the image is incredibly soft and lacks any detail or clarity you would expect from a recent television program. There are even occasional and glaring specs and lines throughout all six discs. I can´t quite be as hard on the audio as I am on the video. Sure, it´s pedestrian, but that´s alright for a show like this. There are no explosions or deep bass to pump through the speakers; it´s nearly all dialogue. I didn´t find anything terribly wrong with the sound portion of the specs…then again, there isn´t anything terribly spectacular about them, either.

And the extras portion of the set…zippo. No interviews, no filmographies, no trailers, no commentaries, nothing. There aren´t even inserts inside each of the amaray cases. This is simply pathetic. (I find it funny that Buena Vista determined they could call this "The Complete Series" and trumpet the fact they included the "Series Pilot" too. Shameless.)

So here we are. My first official recommendation. "Sports Night". Buy it. Watch it. Savor it. Worlds better than the overrated and over hyped comedy that has been shoved down our throats for too many years. The acting and writing is uniformly excellent and, truth be told, I can only find one real mediocre episode in the entire first season (I´ll leave it to you to tell me what you think it is). Otherwise, revel in the joy that is "Sports Night".

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