By Daniel
We come in as Isaac and Casey watch a college football game, and as some pretend play-by-play man asks his pretend colour man what he thinks the Florida State Seminoles will do in this situation, Isaac shuts off the sound and says the Seminoles will go for it. Conservative Casey of course thinks they'll take the field goal. They argue a bit, Casey all the while rudely stuffing his face with popcorn. Isaac says the kicker doesn't have the leg. Casey says he has the wind at his back, in what I hope was not a veiled reference to the umpteenth Canadian television drama set in turn-of-the-century Prince Edward Island, which was usually referred to as Wind Up My Crack when I was a kid. "I don't care if he has the wind at his back and a song in his heart, he doesn't have the leg," says Isaac. This is the second time in only three episodes this season in which a football placekicker is maligned, like what is Sorkin's problem with kickers? Did a kicker boink his girlfriend in high school or something?
Jeremy walks by, so Isaac flags him down and sets up the situation: "Florida State fourth and two on the Purdue 39 and they're down by 9. What's Bowden gonna do? Kick or play?" He doesn't even tell Jeremy how much time is left in the game. It doesn't matter, because of course Jeremy can't just get into it and take a guess, but hems and haws as if his job is at stake here. And finally Isaac drags a prediction out of him, which goes like this: "He's going to split three wide receivers and put a tight end in the backfield with the tailback in motion. A play-action fake will freeze the strong safety and Kittis will find his primary receiver over the middle. It's a play called Red Rocket Right Slant 42 Z Out. He'll get the first down, probably a lot more." Isaac laughs and asks if Jeremy's insane but Casey says, "Wait, they're not kicking." Of course they're not kicking; you guys have been blabbing for so long that the game ended three hours ago already. Isaac turns the sound back on. Try to guess which play the Seminoles ran. Yes, word for word, Jeremy's prediction. Isaac's smile fades, and Casey gets his stink-eye on. Jeremy just looks like the universe is unfolding as it should. Explain to me why, with abilities like this, Jeremy isn't a millionaire already. Commercials.
At the day's rundown meeting, Dan is outlining some story that's very technical while Dana stares at him. Since it's not crucial other than to set up some Witty Banter on yacht racing, I won't transcribe it here. "Honest to god, I have no idea what sport you're talking about," says Dana, so Casey makes a crack about the rough-and-tumble sport of off-shore yacht racing. Kim gets her line and obligatory screen shot to ask Dan if this is about the America's Cup, which Dan says is only a year and a half away. Dana says, "I don't want to get scooped, but we can postpone our coverage for, like, a year and a half, can't we?" which was pretty funny, and Danny starts going off on what a great sport yacht racing is and how it's "great for kids," and it's sad because he appears to be serious, and Natalie makes this comment: "All you need is forty million dollars and a dream." Oh yeah, and I suppose the Yankees spending two and a half times that every season to buy a championship is somehow much more pure. ["Hey, at least it works, Soury McGrape." -- Sars]
Dana tries to move on to the NHL, but then Dan quotes some verse and the entire staff argues about the author, because if there's one thing sports journalists know, it's poetry. As the meeting degenerates into Whose Poem Is It Anyway?, Dana reins everyone in by pointing out that they have ten NHL games and eight NBA games to cover. And god bless Dana (well, Sorkin, really) for allowing the sole NHL game to be mentioned involve not just two Canadian teams, but two Alberta teams, namely Edmonton at Calgary, which I'm sure was another spirited chapter in the Battle of Alberta between the heroic Oilers and the godless Flames, and I went to an Oilers game just before New Year's, and if anybody out there knows the law, please let me know if it's illegal to fill out a phony credit card application at a hockey game in order to get a free T-shirt. Dan interrupts to say some more about his boat poem, but Dana says she doesn't give a damn.
She then tells Kim and Elliott that people need to triple up on games tonight, and when Jeremy volunteers, Dana tells him he's going to be busy. "Is Jeremy getting the call?" asks Casey, and Dana says he is. And every character then has to repeat some version of "Jeremy's getting the call" while Jeremy, realizing that he is now a member of some weird agreeable good-looking cult, wants to know what "the call" is. Number of times "the call" is used in this scene: 78. Give or take. Casey and Danny smile all proudly like Jeremy is maybe their son. Dana tells Jeremy to meet her and Isaac in Isaac's office after lunch.
Then Natalie hands out some sort of memo about a black-tie affair Thursday. So then we get this dialogue about whether the correct phrase should be "this Thursday" or "Thursday," which was pretty funny when I saw it on Seinfeld thirty years ago already. Cars will pick them up after the show. Make a note of that, it's important. Mr. Team Spirit Casey asks if it's absolutely necessary that they participate in this, and Natalie says yes. All we are told is that it's some reception for Luther Sachs. Natalie leans over and whispers to Dana, "What are you wearing?" and Dana furtively glances around before saying, "The black Richard Tyler," and I hope that means something to somebody, and Natalie says "wonderful" or "you go, girl" or something. Casey, reading from the invitation, says, "October eighth, 1998 A.D." Then he repeats, "A.D. They're worried I might accidentally show up two thousand years before the birth of Christ," which was pretty funny, so they set the Laugh Track 2000 to the "extra-loud and lingering" setting. "What shoes are you wearing?" asks Danny, and Casey starts to respond, but Danny says, "I was asking Dana." Again, Dana does the furtive glance around the newsroom, as though some might think they should actually do some work instead of comparing notes about their prom outfits. "Manolo Blahniks," says Dana, which oddly enough was a topic of discussion on one of the MBTV exec boards, which is where I like to post when I'm not avoiding Sars, and up till then, what Dana just said was absolute gibberish to me. I mean, I know you'd think a straight white Canadian boy in Saskatchewan would be up on the latest fashion trends, but the only rule I know is that you're not supposed to wear flannel plaid before Labour Day. Danny says, "Black silk slingbacks?" They can make shoes out of silk? Everybody giggles at Danny's surprising familiarity with women's footwear, and it was pretty funny, but Casey goes and spoils it by saying, "Thank you, Coco Chanel," because of course Casey is All Man.
In the hallway, Jeremy chases down Dana and Isaac, not to fret about what "the call" is, but to nail down exactly when "after lunch" is. So rather than putting up with Jeremy's skittishness, Isaac decides to "do this now. You worked for Mark Sabith over at USA Today?" Jeremy says "yes," but the mention of Sabith's name appears to worry Jeremy a bit. "He's a friend of mine," says Isaac, and Jeremy says Sabith mentioned that. Dana says Jeremy's doing really well and they want him to get some producing experience. She gets on the phone and tells Natalie to bring in "the material" for Jeremy, like this is some sort of James Bond briefing. "It's not a prestige assignment, it just lets us take a look at what you can do," says Isaac. Dana tells him he's going to be putting together a couple of segments for The CSC Outdoorsman. "The hunting show?" says Jeremy, a little disbelievingly. "Camping, fishing, hiking," says Dana. "And hunting," says Jeremy. "Is that a problem?" asks Isaac. "No," says Jeremy, although it clearly is.
Jeremy puts on a glad face and explains that he doesn't know anything about hunting, that he's never hunted. "I have a deli on the corner and they deliver 24 hours, so..." but Natalie walks in with this week's array of high-tech gadgets to help Jeremy on his mission: briefing material. She tells him tomorrow he'll take a van up to the Adirondacks with his crew. They'll be meeting a professional guide and a Cincinnati Red celebrity guest star. Wednesday they're going after New England blue mallard, Thursday they're going after deer. Natalie says, "Deer get very big in the Adirondacks, so please be careful." Aw! She's so sweet! Friday he comes back and puts his segments together. Jeremy asks Isaac if he's being punished for guessing the play correctly during the football game. Isaac says he'll do fine, and leaves. Dana says, "Knock our socks off," and leaves. Natalie says, "I can't wait to see how good you are in the bush," and leaves. Nah, she doesn't. Jeremy seems a little concerned that Isaac talked to his old boss, but Natalie doesn't ask him why or anything. Then she hands him a bag and says she brought him some snacks for the ride up -- Twinkies and candy and sundry. Okay, dammit, I really wish Natalie would quit endearing herself to me and go back to pissing me off. Jeremy thanks her and doesn't hear me yelling, "Dude, you are so in there!" She tells him not to be so nervous. "You're getting the call!" she squeals, and skips out. "I still don't know what that means," he calls after her.
Cut to Dan, sitting and reading something in the studio. Natalie walks by. "What are you doing?" says Natalie, perturbed. She wants to know why he isn't getting changed into his tuxedo. "Today is Thursday!" realizes Dan, standing up. He's about to change when Natalie explains there are two cars downstairs and she wants him to ride with Isaac. Any guesses why? "I ride with Isaac, and Casey and Dana fall in love," says Danny. "Right!" says Natalie. "Wow, is that a stupid plan," says Danny.
"Ow!" says Casey, as Kim dresses him. "Well, hold still!" says Kim. "You're stabbing me in the chest," says Casey. Dan, doing up his cufflinks himself, strolls in and says he's been thinking about soccer a lot lately. "And?" says Casey. "Pretty much through with that," says Danny. This whole bit is apropos of nothing, but at least I get to use the word "apropos." Danny says he can't name five teams in the MLS other than Luxembourg. "The MLS is an American soccer league," says Casey. "Luxembourg doesn't play in this league?" says Danny. Then Casey says "ow" again and Kim says, "This is what you get for being a grown man who can't dress himself." Memo to Kim: we can dress ourselves. We just like it better when women do it -- and don't pretend you don't get any satisfaction out of thinking we'd be completely lost if you weren't there to pass a lint brush over us, either. Anyway, Casey says, "I used to have a wife for that." And how sad is it that even the laugh track was silent on that one. Danny is still harping on soccer, calling it a "mind-numbing bore" and saying that "any reasonable person would rather be playing it than watching it." Isn't that true of any sport? Casey sarcastically says it can't match the "pulse-pounding excitement" of a good sailboat race, which is a good point.
Natalie scurries up and says, "Wait 'til you see Dana! She looks amazing!" But before we do, Danny challenges the newsroom to name five MLS teams. And the gang rattles them all off, and I knew a few of them, but every single one of them are those annoying collective names that are so popular these days, like the "Liberty" and the "Mutiny," et cetera, a trend which has I hope reached its apex with the XFL's ridiculously named L.A. Extreme, like now we have teams choosing names that are adjectives, for crying out loud, and cheesy meaningless marketing adjectives at that. Anyway, this roll call of soccer teams draws applause from the laugh track for some reason, like it always bugs me when sitcom audiences (and don't anybody e-mail to bitch me out for calling Sports Night a sitcom, I'm just saying for the purposes of argument here) applaud some scripted bit on a television show as if the actor is the character. And let's take this further and pretend Sports Night is a documentary, not a television show -- what we have here is six people WHO WORK IN SPORTS who between them were able to name eleven professional sporting teams, so if someone would explain to me why this is applause-worthy, I'd be most appreciative.
Anyway, after this filler dialogue ends, Natalie says, "The cars are waiting downstairs," and I guess the cars waiting upstairs would have been a neat trick, and then Natalie pointedly says to Dan, "Right? Dan? The cars?" like please be a little more obvious, please, Natalie. Dan goes into his and Casey's office and tries to be as subtle as he can about it and says, "I can ride with Isaac if you like," and Casey is a little taken aback and wants to know what difference it makes and Dan says, "So you can ride with Dana," and then we get this lengthy exchange along the lines of "Why would I want to ride with Dana?" and "Why wouldn't you want to ride with Dana?" and stuff until finally Dan, channeling me, says, "I gotta tell you, at this point the length of this conversation is way out of proportion to my interest in it." So they leave it at that. Or try to, anyway, except Casey has to start bitching about what a long day he's had, and he's not in the mood to go to a party or notice Dana's dress and all that. "I'm not in the mood to notice anything tonight," he says, and stomps out into the newsroom, where he passes an hourglass in a black Richard Tyler dress shimmying beside him. The hourglass smiles and says, "Forgot my purse," and Casey falls down all Jack Tripper. Danny, coming up behind, calmly says, "On your feet, partner. Let's go."
They pass Elliott, who goes running to the control room, looking for Isaac. "Bob Schumaker's calling from the Adirondacks," he says. "Something happened with Jeremy." Isaac picks up the phone.
The night, they're five minutes to air when there's an audio problem. Dana sends Natalie to find out why Dan isn't in the studio, instead of just summoning him over the intercom like she usually does. When Natalie finds Dan, he tells her Casey is making him crazy. "It doesn't work for me," he says. "I'm more comfortable when I'm making him crazy." Dan reveals that Casey is now enamoured of Dana. "It was the dress!" says Natalie, excitedly. Oh, and also the "musical cars," says Dan. Then he reveals that she was spending time with another guy at the party. Natalie's eyes widen. "Lord, I would love to be out of the loop for the little piece of drama that's going to happen around here," he says, channeling me again. Then, since the scene's done, Dana is now free to use her Voice of God intercom to summon Danny to the studio, and does so.
The TCs fix one audio problem and have another! My god! It's like The Perfect Storm for TV production geeks!
As Dan arrives at the desk, Casey is being serviced by the fluffers, including the perpetually bored Allison. Hi, Allison! Casey wants to ask Danny a question, and Danny tries to dodge it, but can't. "How many people can you think of named Gordon?" Ah, the quintessential Canadian name. Dan can only come up with two: Gordon Lightfoot (see?) and Gordon Liddy. Okay, so Liddy's not Canadian. Anyway, those are the same two that Casey came up with. I can forgive these boobs for missing Gord Downie, Canadian singer, and Gordon Pinsent, Canadian actor, but there's not much excuse for these supposed sports geniuses to miss Gordie Howe. I guess maybe listing a bunch of Gordons would have required more applause from the laugh track and the producers didn't have the budget for two instances of spontaneous clapping. Anyway, the point of all this is to tell us that Dana's date was a guy named Gordon. I find it inconceivable that Natalie didn't know about this.
The show goes live (the TCs have fixed the sound just in time -- I thought my heart was going to stop!) and Casey does his ultra-cheesy stupid point thing when he says, "So stick around." Commercial break, and Dana asks Dave, Chris, and Will what they're doing tomorrow morning at ten. They start to tell her about a three-on-three basketball game, but Dana interrupts to ask them again what they're doing tomorrow morning at ten. "Fixing the sound system?" says Chris. "There you go," says Dana. Frigging Chris. What a suck-up.
After the show, Elliott is walking around saying a bunch of industry stuff, and then, because this episode is possibly sponsored by MLS or something, he says, "Let's not get into golden time," whatever that means, like what's with the soccer theme? Casey wants to know how Dan knew the guy's name was Gordon. Dan tells him they were introduced by Dana. Dan says they were on a date, but Casey disagrees. He says it's not like Dana said to Dan, "'Dan, this is my date, Gordon.'" Then, getting way-out-of-proportion agitated, Casey demands to know what Dana said. Somehow without punching Casey, Dan says, "She said, 'Dan, this is my date, Gordon.'" Then Casey says, "All right, we're cranking this whole thing up a notch," and I don't know what that means either.
Now we see Jeremy returning to the newsroom. Everybody gathers around him, cheering as he tells them things went well. Natalie continues to be way too charming, telling him that when they get a final cut, they'll put it in a nice package and send it to his parents, and I hope that's the last time Natalie says "nice package" when Jeremy's around. Jeremy seems a little embarrassed at the attention. Isaac says, "Jeremy, can we [he and Dana] see you in my office for a moment?" "Yeah, sure, what's up?" says Jeremy. "My office," says Isaac. He doesn't look mad, but as anyone who has ever been in the workforce knows, when your boss won't tell you what is up and just says "my office" again, you know you got some 'splainin' to do.
In Isaac's office, Isaac asks Jeremy why he was lying just now. Dana asks if he thought they wouldn't find out. "What the hell happened out there?" says Isaac. Jeremy tries to pretend it was nothing, but Dana says he was taken to the hospital, he passed out, he was sweating and hyperventilating. Jeremy finally starts to tell them what happened, starting with the first day, when they were going after the New England blue mallard. He lists every single technical specification of the rifles they were using and sums it up with, "So I figured we must be going after a pretty dangerous duck." Because this is exactly the right time to make smart-ass comments, when your superiors are breathing fire at you. Isaac says as much. So Jeremy starts telling the story of shooting the deer the day. I'm not going to transcribe the whole speech here, because it's about three whole minutes, but it was really well done. He explained that almost the whole day had gone by and they hadn't found anything. During a break in the shooting, Jeremy sat down by a stream with the care package Natalie gave him. Then he saw three deer, "small, bigger, biggest; recognizable to any species on the face of the planet as a child, a mother and a father." He explained that he held up a Twinkie and the mother "clopped up to [him] like [they] were at a party." By then the other guys had noticed the deer, and Bob told him to move away. "So I backed away a couple of steps at a time, and I closed my eyes when I heard the shot." Then, my favourite line of the speech: "Look, I know these are dumb animals and they don't play bridge or go to the prom but you can't tell me the little one didn't know who his mother was!" Of course, then I started flashing back to Bambi's-mother-dying nightmares.
, Jeremy says that, at the hospital, Bob was going on about the tradition and nobility of hunting (he doesn't say anything about Bob frequently referring to him as a "pussy"), which Jeremy denounces as a load of crap and talks about the Indian respect for the land and its animals and the necessity of hunting for survival. Okay, wait, here is my favourite line: "What we did wasn't food and it wasn't shelter and it sure as hell wasn't sports." Amen. In a recent discussion in Sports Illustrated about whether or not hunting is a sport, I think a reader summed it up best when he said, and I'm paraphrasing, "How can it be a sport when one of the competitors doesn't know it's a competition?" Isaac wants to know why Jeremy didn't mention how he felt about hunting, and Jeremy says it was because Isaac told him he'd spoken to his old boss. Isaac says he spoke to all his old bosses, and Jeremy figures they all said pretty much the same thing. Isaac says yes: "They all said that Jeremy Goodwin is a bright guy with a world-class understanding of popular sports, but that he didn't quite fit in and there was little chance that he'd advance in their organization." Jeremy points out he has $80,000 in student loans to pay back. Good god, is he a heart surgeon? "My instincts told me to shut the hell up and do what I was told," says Jeremy. Isaac: "Your instincts were wrong." Jeremy: "Not fitting in is how qualified people lose jobs." Isaac: "Yeah, but a lot of the time it's how they end up working here." Okay, I snorted a little bit at this image of Sports Night as some sort of last-chance group home for wayward sports journalists. I wouldn't say they're the strangest collection of oddballs ever assembled.
Isaac says Jeremy had an obligation to tell them how he felt: "Partly because I don't like getting a phone call saying I've put one of my people in the hospital. But mostly because if you feel that strongly about something, you have a responsibility to try to change my mind. Did you think I would fire you simply because you made a convincing argument?" Isaac is yelling at Jeremy, but he practically has me in tears. Robert Guillaume is so good. He calls Jeremy's old boss an idiot for letting Jeremy go. He says Jeremy will do great but he has to trust them. Isaac's about to go home, but before he does, he says, "You don't know us very well yet, so if it's hard trusting us at the beginning, maybe it'll help to know...that we trust you." Isaac smiles. Jeremy doesn't say anything, just looks touched. Isaac says "good night" and leaves. Dana gets up, touches Jeremy's cheek in a gesture that was more mother hen than managing editor, says "good night," and leaves as well.
Then some Sheryl-Crow-esque ballad starts playing as Jeremy ponders. He ponder-wanders over to the phone and calls his dad. "Just wanted to tell you something nice happened at work today," he says. What, that your soon-to-be girlfriend gave you a deer-killing Twinkie of Death that put you in the hospital, and now you're sneaking long-distance calls on the boss's phone to tell your dad about it?