When Bad Shows Go Good: Sports Night

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By Peter Dawson Mar 9, 2015 - 8:10 AM

Something I've found kind of odd is that a fair number of people I've talked to about Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom don't even remember Sports Night. It's odd because I expected anyone who would perhaps be more analytically critical of the first show would be using the second as a comparison, as the two have a fair bit in common. If you weren't aware that this show existed then don't feel alone, is my point. It was tricky to classify this one since it's technically a two-season wonder and usually considered cancelled too soon by media outlets, but there's one thing in particular I've decide is the reason I went with 'When Bad Shows Go Good.' Strap in now as Sorkin Month kicks off.

The History:

After hitting it big with the film version of A Few Good Men in 1992 Aaron Sorkin was tapped for a few films, The American President in 1995 being one that will be of importance next week as well as now. While writing the film Sorkin revealed he tended to turn on ESPN SportsCenter at points, with hosts Keith Olbermann, Dan Patrick and Craig Kilborn being used as inspiration for what became Sports Night. Disney wound up producing the problem and as a result ABC ended up airing it, beginning in September of 1998 and ending in May of 2000. During the show's run it received critical acclaim but poor viewership, thus resulting in its cancellation. This has remained a point of infamy since the show pulled in an average of just over ten million its first season and over eleven million on average its second season, something half-hour programs didn't always pull even back then and certainly not today. Additionally Sports Night won three Emmy Awards for its first season and was nominated for several more, including Best Comedy. HBO did offer to pick up the program but Sorkin elected to instead focus on The West Wing, though Sports Night continues to be one of his more influential works, at least on Sorkin himself.

The Show:

In 1996 the Continental Sports Channel launched Sports Night, a key program airing from eleven to midnight with rebroadcasts the next morning. Both CSC and the program itself are constantly finding itself in ratings slumps, and thus at the centre of it all anchors Dan Rydell (Josh Charles) and Casey McCall (Peter Krause) try to put on the best show they can. Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman) is the show's executive producer while Jeremy Goodwin (Joshua Molina) and Natalie Hurley (Sabrina Lloyd) are associate producers and Isaac Jaffe (Robert Guillaume) is managing editor. While comedic in nature, the show about the show does also feature many dramatic elements as one might expect from a Sorkin piece, with a major ongoing plot the possible sale of CSC.

The Breakdown:

I'm just going to get the bad out of the way by opening with the humour. In the early to mid-90s sitcoms started getting really surreal and goofy, which was fine (I mean I quite enjoyed it when NewsRadio got weird). Sorkin's carefully crafted dialog leaned towards a naturalistic dry humour, frequently in the form of banter with the occasional slapstick gag that was never too over the top. The main exception was probably the episode called Thepsis where they spend a lot of time talking about ghosts. The word naturalistic may be overplayed but it was important as it helped make the world of Sports Night one of the most grounded in sitcom memory. This wasn't in of itself a problem since naturalism is something that several other programs got praised for, including MASH. The problem is that Sports Night used a laugh-track, one that really didn't fit with the tone. To give a more modern equivalent it would be like if the American version of The Office employed it, especially since the pacing didn't feel like that of a show that would employ a laugh-track. Thankfully over time the laugh-track died down to the point that Season 2 doesn't even use it (and as stated that season managed to get better ratings).

Okay so with that out of the way, lets talk about the show. The characters aren't too remarkable, but they feel human. Dan is very much an idealist who early on tended to run into most of the problems with the network, leading to some rants and soapbox moments. Casey has a bit more of a humour background and is somewhat freshly divorced, also having a romantic subplot with Dana. Jeremy's the fresh young idealist while Natalie and especially Isaac are more experienced. The relationships work well, especially Dan and Casey as they do feel like the old friends they're supposed to be, and Casey's plot with Dana does feel like the kind of situation that might pop up between two people who've known each other for years. Of course it also helps that instead of just dealing with major topics like marijuana and intellectual property the analysis of confusion social gestures and such also pop up as topics of the week. Speaking of that...

Okay so the show does have a fairly typical formula, which I'll outline here. The opening tends to introduce a major topic or theme of the week, usually while people are shooting the breeze (and thus getting some welcome opening laughs). Things then gradually get more serious with the humour usually vanishing for ten minutes or so, Dana then often flying off the handle (I don't think she ever went to anger management but she could have used a visit), and while the main plot would usually end respectfully any subplots would usually result in either a laugh or a feeling of heartwarming so the show doesn't become too much of a bummer. After all, the show was a comedy, so while bomb threats and stokes could happen there could also be episodes where they want to talk about cricket but unsurprisingly don't understand the game.

Sports Night is notable for introducing a few gimmicks Sorkin would use a lot more as his television show continued to spawn. Dana and Natalie were early examples of how Sorkin would write his female characters, tending to make them strong, if not stronger than several of their male cohorts, though also having a tendency to make them really sloppy at points and hyper-emotional. As stated Dana also tended to cover the shout requirements, which was probably for the best since if everyone was so extreme with it the show might have lost that sort of realistic air to it. We got our young idealist in Jeremy, who would contrast with the veteran idealist in Isaac. Probably most notably was the the Walk and Talk, the first major time Sorkin had employed it. Walk and Talks happened once an episode and remain the definition of the Sorkin Walk, the main exception being one episode where there was a walking scene and no one talked (thus increasing tension in a nice subversion). Given the show was set in a sports program setting helped make the program feel less relaxed, managing to convey a bit more of the strain our characters endured. Of course the trade-off was your mind tended to notice the talks were always the perfect length for the walks, but with any luck you're caught up in it enough to not pick apart the program to that degree.

The Blame:

Like I said the show's main problem besides a couple of really weird one-off episodes (I really didn't like Thepsis) could really be attributed to the network and their insistence on using the damn laugh-track. How else would they know it was funny, after all? ABC didn't seem to know what to do with the show and it was back when ABC was doing relatively well, and when dumping a show with eleven million viewers made sense I guess. Really Sports Night could be seen as a bit ahead of its time since it came out as laugh-track sitcoms were just slightly starting to fade, the reality TV boom on the horizon.

So can I recommend it? Yes. I don't know if I'd call it Sorkin's best but if you enjoyed The Newsroom you'll probably enjoy it, possibly more since more of the characters are likeable. Heck the second episode, The Apology, was a damn good episode and I really think it was a borderline crime to not give it the Emmy. Of course the thing with Sorkin it's a lot easier to pick out a bad episode than a good one as the good ones are usually prevalent, and it's just general directions and such the series takes that could be more likely to turn people off.

Next week we continue Sorkin Month with the work most people usually think about when they hear his name and television.
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