Smoky

They start heading toward the set. We learn that Dan has decided it's time for Casey to start meeting women, but Casey disagrees, saying he's met many women. "You haven't met many women, that's why I'm here," says Danny, as we all start to wonder just how close these two are. "You got married at 23 to a girl you met when you were 19," backstories Danny. "I know, I was there," says Casey, by way of apologizing for backstory dialogue. Now there's some confusion whether it's time or past time. If it's past time, Casey is "screwed," but Dan says he's there to help. "Well, thank god for that, Danny, thank god for you!" says Casey. "Do you know why I can help you out? 'Cause there's still time," says Danny. Ugh. Yeah, still about another 21 minutes of this nonsense, by my estimation. They've arrived at the desk.

In the control room, the TCs are busy getting ready for the show. Will and Chris use up their line quota getting their signals crossed on some technical thing. Jeremy walks in, and Dana asks him for "the story" on UCLA-Arizona. So Jeremy expounds on shooting percentage and turnovers et cetera, and it's all meaningless, but I was annoyed because he said UCLA was "one for six from the stripe" and I'm all for colourful language in sports broadcasting, but for some reason, one slang term that really bugs me is "charity stripe" for "free-throw line." And I can't figure out why this one annoys me so much, except that maybe it was really overused in a game I saw once, because that's another thing that broadcasters do that annoys me: they latch onto a new expression and pound it into the ground. And I'm not talking about a signature catchphrase like "Holy cow!" but just comments worked into the play-by-play. I think it's Brent Musberger who can go an entire game without saying "three-pointer"; instead, everybody shoots "the three-ball." Similarly, teams in games called by Marv Albert never seem to "call a time-out"; instead, they're "going to talk it over." Not to mention the substitution of "New York Yankees" for "overpaid bums." ["Oh, here at MBTV HQ we call them 'Daniels.'" -- Sars] Anyway, Jeremy gives a litany of statistics but forgets to give the score. When they ask him for that, he says "wow" like he's stoned or something and they just blew his mind. Finally he gives them the score, and there's YET ANOTHER exchange of smiles between Natalie and Dana over what an amazing catch Jeremy is.

Theyre just about to go live, and Danny is still going on about how it's time and how Casey needs to "strike while the iron is hot" and, this being a "hip" show, they then have to mock such clichs as "strike while the iron is hot" just to show that they're aware that they just used a clich. Then there's some throwaway dialogue between Dana and Casey; as it turns out, there's some "wiggle room" for Casey to play with. He wants to know how much time he has, and Dana tells him he has five seconds. "You go to ten, I'll kick your ass," says Dana, and Casey whines something about artistic freedom, and Dana says, "Did you ever hear of me kicking your ass?" and Casey's stunning comeback is "yeah," but he tries to say it all tough. Now Danny tries to tell Casey that a lot has changed since he was out there, "where the women are," which I think was a book by Maurice Sendak. Casey asks if everybody still wears shoes, and Danny says, "Do they ever!" whatever that means. They go live and tease the top stories. When they come back, Danny asks Casey if he knows what the biggest difference is between women then and women now. "What?" says Casey. "You're on television," says Danny. Commercials.

Dana walks into Isaac's office; she sounds worried, because she got a note that Isaac wanted to see her. The reason why she's so worried (and annoying) is that Isaac doesn't usually send a note; he usually calls her office or does any one of a myriad of things that Dana lists, none of which includes sending a note. Isaac tries to get her to sit down, but she's got to yammer on, wondering whether something's wrong, and she says "I got a note!" about fifty times. Finally, she concludes with, "If this is going to be bad news, I'd like to sit." Dare I allow myself to chuckle? No, I daren't. They sit. "I want to start grooming you," says Isaac. Dana pretends not to know what he means, and says he had better be talking about her hairstyle. He tells her not to go nuts. He says that, "when the time comes," he wants the show to go to her. She tells him they'll have this conversation fifteen years from now. Isaac goes on for a bit about how she needs to position herself so that it's a smart decision for the network to make, and she needs to start coming to the monthly network meetings, but Dana's having none of it. She claims to not even want his job, saying that it stinks. "You get to create your own show and make all the decisions and have a big staff and make a lot of money," she says, sarcastically pretending that's not appealing to her. She says she wants to answer to people. "When I get a thought in my head, I like it to die right there," she says. I think she's experiencing a fair degree of success on that score. She reminds him that he swore when he hired her that he wasn't going to leave. He says he's talking about far down the line. "Then stop sending me notes," she says. Isaac tells her that the Luther-Sachs-Confederate-flag thing last episode was a "near-death experience," but sadly we never find out what Luther did over the whole thing. What he didn't do was fire Isaac, Dana tells us. "He yelled. He screamed. But he didn't fire you," she says. Isaac says, "You don't fire a black executive doing a race-related public-relations problem. You wait a while." Dana seizes this: "See? That's the kind of thing I don't know." Well, duh, Dana; that's exactly why he wants to start grooming you. But in the face of her "logic," Isaac backs down a bit, and as she leaves, Isaac tells her not to tell anyone about this conversation. She agrees and heads out into the hall.

Do I even need to tell you her first words to Natalie as they start walking down the hall are "He wants to groom me"? Did that come as a surprise to you? Are you someone who recently came out of a coma, and this is your first experience watching a television show? Because that would be your only excuse for not seeing that coming. Anyway, Natalie wants to know what Dana said, and Dana says she told him that everybody is very happy in their jobs. They stop. "Right?" says Dana. "Sure," says Natalie. Dana then accuses Natalie of imagining how she'd redecorate Dana's office. Natalie reacts indignantly to this, then admits that she'd keep the curtains and dump the plants. And thrice daily polish the desk with Jeremy's ass.

Danny and Casey's office. Sally is there, arguing with Casey. But arguing in that pleasant way people argue when they really want to do each other, but haven't yet, but probably will. They're arguing about which body part Sally injured (she was a college basketball star) against which team. Sally says it was her ankle that she injured in a game against Clemson, while Casey says she injured her knee against Louisiana Tech. So Sally stretches out her left leg, placing her foot on Casey's knee. "This is my ankle," she says, and she actually seductively narrows her gaze at him. Casey is so dead. He freezes up completely, which was pretty funny. "No doubt about it," he says. "It was injured playing Clemson," she says. "Came out of it okay," he says, glancing around. "You think?" she says. Danny comes in and pleasantly but firmly tells Sally to put her leg on the floor. She explains they were discussing an old college injury (which Dan says was her knee). "It was my ankle," says Sally, except it's Danny now, so she says it all irritated instead of all horny. "You see how you were able to tell me that without taking all your clothes off?" says Danny. Sally responds that she just assumed he'd do that in his head anyway. What's her point? She tells Casey she'll see him later and wiggles off, saying, "Dan's going to want to warn you about me." Dan does warn Casey about Sally, not out of any personal experience, just from a general sense that she's evil. He accuses Casey of flirting with Sally. Casey denies it, then allows he might have been doing it unconsciously. "Was Sally flirting with me?" he asks. Danny says yes. I was going to bust on Casey for being completely clueless, but then I have to admit I'm much the same way. I mean, I realize when I'm flirting, but I sometimes have a hard time deciphering whether I'm being flirted with or not and I pretty much have to be hit over the head, like I remember going to a party, and there was a girl there I liked and she liked me, and it was obvious to everyone but me, so I was in full-on charming mode and we were in the kitchen and I was pouring myself a screwdriver when she tipped the bottle up and dumped a whole lot more vodka than I needed into my glass and I said, "What are you doing?" and she whispered in my ear, "I'm seducing you," and EVEN THEN I was still thinking to myself, "Hmmm, I wonder if maybe I play my cards right" Also, I was wearing a toga. Not that that's important or anything, but it always makes me laugh because it was supposed to be a toga party and then it turned out not to be, except I wasn't informed. So for the rest of this episode, I just imagined everybody wearing togas and it made things vastly more entertaining.

Isaac's office. He's working. Kim and Elliot crowd the doorframe, due to the large sizes of different areas of their bodies. Isaac wants to know what's up. Elliot says, "I'm a team player, Isaac. Always have been, always will be. But everyone moves up one notch and you make this one [meaning Kim] senior associate, I'll lead a mutiny the likes of which will sink this show for good." Isaac, unfazed, says, "Okay. Kim?" Kim says, "When I get Natalie's job, is there a union regulation that prevents me from making Elliot my man-slave?" I can't imagine anyone filing a grievance over being made Kim's man-slave. Isaac says, "All right, that's it. Follow me." He gets up from his desk and storms into the newsroom, ordering the cast into the conference room. He tells Sally she'd best come along too. "Is this what I think it is?" she says, skipping along behind Isaac. "Probably not," he says. Inside, he asks how everyone is, but as everyone starts to answer, he grumpily says, "Ah, who gives a damn. My name is Isaac Jaffe. I run this place. Anybody else who runs this place, please raise your hand." Everybody is silent. He tells them all that he's not quitting and not getting fired. "Let me add, Dana, that things I say in my office stay in my office." Dana: "Natalie's my second-in-command; she's the only one I told." Natalie: "Jeremy's my boyfriend; he's the only one I told." Jeremy delivers possibly my favourite line in the entire series, "I told many, many people," and looks suitably ashamed as the laugh track kicks it into overdrive. Isaac then busts on Kim and Elliot and reminds them that the production team is in fact a team and will work for and with whomever Dana tells them to. "Thank you," says Dana, and you just know Dana was a total brown-noser in school. Isaac tells her to shut up, which is what you always wanted the teacher to tell the brown-noser. Isaac then says there are many shows at CSC and there's nothing wrong with healthy competition, but they're all a family and will treat each other with respect. Of course, Sally chips in with a bunch of crap about all the respect West Coast Update has for everyone on Sports Night, forcing Danny, standing beside her, to say, "He's talking about you, ya freak." Laugh track goes nuts again. Isaac says, "Thank you, Daniel," (shout-out to me) and then tells everyone to go do his show.

In the control room, Dana and Natalie are all gaga over Casey calling Dana "smoky." Then Natalie wants to know if Jeremy thinks she's smoky. Jeremy wisely says he does. He also thinks she's a slow drink of whisky. I think I'm going to need a slow drink of ipecac. Dana practically has to hose them down as the show goes live.

At the desk, Danny tells Casey he doesn't think it's time anymore. Well, this whole episode was a little cul-de-sac, wasn't it?