A Looooong Sports Night Thing
Apr. 28th, 2018 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
earlgreytea68And then the other day I got a notification that a writer I subscribe to had posted “Sports Night” fic and it was like this whole piece of my past just suddenly came back to life, like, “REMEMBER THAT SHOW????” I never forget “The West Wing,” I quote it *all the time,* but I had forgotten all about that brief “Sports Night” fling, so I’ve spent the weekend watching SO MUCH “Sports Night” (and marveling at how much easier everything is to track down these days) and I now feel really bad I forgot about it because it’s so good and CASEY/DAN IS SUCH A GREAT SHIP. I feel like, my first time around, Idk, I didn’t notice *how much* Casey/Dan are a ship? Like, the show has all these heterosexual pairings all over the place but by the end of the second season it’s like no one’s even trying anymore and Dan’s ripping up numbers girls give him and angsting over having to leave Casey’s side hahaha. It’s SO GREAT. They’re SO GREAT.
So. What is “Sports Night,” you might be asking? Or maybe not. Maybe you are nodding along and you’re like, “YES. TELL EVERYONE HOW GREAT SPORTS NIGHT WAS.” “Sports Night” was Sorkin’s first television show. Its first season is a little weird and awkward because it was kind of ahead of its time and the network literally did not know what to do with it. Like, they insisted on sticking a really, really terrible laugh track over the show which is like the worst thing but at the time the idea that a sitcom wouldn’t have a laugh track was unheard of and impossible and Not Allowed. And the first season generally spends a lot of time kind of flailing against sitcom conventions and not really getting to break out of them, and all the while that laugh track keeps getting randomly flung in there getting more and more confused.
But then! In the second season! It’s like ABC shrugged its shoulders and was like, “We don’t know what you’re doing with this show and nobody’s watching it anyway, so, like, whatever,” and the show lost the laugh track and suddenly stopped being so sitcommy and the characters really blossomed. That second season is lovely. Too bad it’s also the last, but, you know, sometimes good things are like shooting stars. And the show is very Sorkiny but it’s Sorkiny before Sorkin had become a *thing,* and so even though it’s every Sorkin hallmark, it’s like ORIGINAL RECIPE SORKIN and there’s something weirdly charming about that?????
The plot of the show, in case you don’t know, is about the production of a fictional show called “Sports Night,” which is co-anchored by Dan Rydell and Casey McCall.
Here is Dan:
Here is Casey:
Let me tell you some of the things I believe I have gleaned about Dan and Casey from the show:
(1) Multiple times they say they’ve known each for ten years. Casey is roughly four years older?? Five? Six? I’m fuzzy on the math. They met when Dan was 19 and Casey was…four or five or six years older. It feels like maybe Dan was an intern at a station Casey worked at???? But I can’t remember if that’s true or if I made it up. WHATEVER. What we know is that basically it seems from whenever that first meeting was, Dan and Casey have been inseparable. Professionally, sure, but pretty much personally as well.
(2) When Dan was 24 and Casey was 28 or 29 or 30 (so five years after their meeting), they started co-hosting a small-market sports show called “Lone Star Sports.” Casey was offered a job to host “Late Night” (yeah, the show Conan O’Brien went on to host at the time “Sports Night” was airing) but TURNED IT DOWN BECAUSE HE DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE DAN. Not that he told Dan that. It comes out later. And, actually, IT CAUSED A HUGE FIGHT BETWEEN CASEY AND HIS WIFE THAT EVENTUALLY LED TO THEIR DIVORCE.
(3) Oh, yeah, Casey was married. Dan haaaaaates Casey’s ex-wife and it’s great. Every time she comes up, Dan has to deliver a speech about how she didn’t love Casey enough.
(4) The second season is a rough and complex season for Dan, and Casey and Dan realistically snipe some, but also Casey is the sweetest to Dan (when he remembers not to be his usual self-centered Casey self; really Dan is the only one who can pull Casey out of his self-centeredness and my first time through this show I loved Casey and now I’m alarmed at myself because Dan is clearly the best and the heart of this show and the one who’s always pulling Casey in a bit when he goes off the rails and I kind of feel like “Sports Night” is about Casey’s journey to self-awareness and at the end of Self-Awareness Road Dan is standing there with a bouquet of flowers). Anyway, it’s also so great.
(5) Dan says things like this:
(6) They totally ask each other out on dates:
(7) They take a really ridiculous amount of interest in each other’s love lives. Dan is especially all over the place with this when it comes to Casey. No woman is ever good enough for Casey in Dan’s opinion.
(8) Dan once sang “Happy Birthday” on air to Casey, which is super-cute.
(9) Casey throws in a line at the end of a show to make Dan feel better about his relationship with his father and it’s great and Dan is so happy. :-)
(10) Once Casey makes some kind of comment about liking French kissing and Dan is like, “You can’t give me that image right before the show starts,” and then the show starts and Casey says, “Bonsoir, New York City,” and Dan giggles in delight and IT’S SO GREAT hahaha.
Because it’s a Sorkin show, Dan and Casey have that great, close, loyal, through-thick-and-thin, those-two-against-the-world friendship that really, Sorkin writes so well for guys. The women are all Sorkin Women and that can be frustrating. But if you know what Sorkin’s like, then you know to expect that stuff, and it’s great to watch how, in the course of the two seasons, the show slowly shifts its focus from this broad ensemble sitcom to Dan and Casey and this complex, devoted, loving partnership they’ve been in for their entire adulthoods. Ugh. They’re just SO GREAT. You have to get past their horrible clothing, Idk what we were doing in the late 90s, it’s all bad.
When I was in college, I watched a lot of “SportsCenter” and “Baseball Tonight,” and “Sports Night” was inspired by the “SportsCenter” rhythm, and it’s really a great idea for a show: What’s it like to be those two guys who have to write a sports show together, day in, day out, and then present it together, and be charming and have chemistry and never get tired of each other? Sorkin likes to write about smart people doing things well, and he looooves to write about smart writers writing well, and Dan and Casey are the first televised incarnation of that, and I still wish they’d let Sorkin do this show again, only without trying to turn it into something it was not for half of its lifetime. Well, wait, they could also put some female writers in the room, that would also be helpful.
But anyway “Sports Night” is great and totally ahead of its time and here, you can have an article about it lol.
Also, here is a clip from an early episode wherein Dan delivers a speech revealing a huge thing about his past and Casey very carefully gives him a second and then banters him out of it and Dan is so relieved and in love
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Date: 2018-04-29 01:57 am (UTC)But yeah - you forgot to mention how Dan's dad is so homophobic that it just lends itself to Dan likely being closeted and that's why he doesn't do anything about it. ;-)
Oh - and I have been toying with posting those two SN stories on AO3, but decided against it.
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Date: 2018-04-30 03:32 am (UTC)I also feel like I really didn't get slash shipping when I first watched Sports Night, and now that I am more fluent I'm just like, !!!!
Sorkin-canon fic is always tricky, and I am impressed how many writers do a good job with it.
I understand - posting on AO3 can be fraught.
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Date: 2018-04-29 05:54 pm (UTC)I enjoyed this post so much. And I had totally forgotten that Casey's divorce was because of that.
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Date: 2018-04-30 03:27 am (UTC)love this
Date: 2018-04-29 08:51 pm (UTC)Re: love this
Date: 2018-04-30 03:27 am (UTC)sports night fic
Date: 2018-04-29 08:55 pm (UTC)Re: sports night fic
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