What Kind Of Day Has It Been

Dressing room. Dan's getting his hair brushed while Casey jabbers away on a to-be-revealed-eventually topic. "There's the formality," he says. Dan says "yes" as the hair-brusher tells him to please stop moving. Dan sits ramrod straight as Casey says, "Strange formality." "Why are you worried about it?" asks Dan. "'Cause I'm his father," says Casey. "You know what he's started doing? He's started shaking hands with me. He's nine. You'll see it when he comes by tomorrow, he'll be like, 'Hi, Dad.'" Casey holds his hand out for anybody who doesn't know what he meant by "shaking hands." "Leave him alone" is Dan's advice, as he starts playing with his severely sculpted hair. We hear Natalie give the "five minutes to air" signal and summon the first team to the studio.

Casey gets up and circles around Dan, settling his butt on the hairdresser's counter. "On the other hand, he's starting to play baseball well," he says. "Yeah," says Dan, still fussing with his hair. "Did I mention yesterday's game?" asks Casey. "Yes, you did," says Dan, as the hairdresser returns. "In fact, I believe I know the stats." Despite Dan saying he's familiar with the story, Casey gives Dan the box score: "Three for three with two RBIs, two walks, and a stolen base." "Yes," says Dan, with apparently not enough enthusiasm for Casey, who says, "What, you don't think that's impressive?" like, RELAX, Casey, we're sure your kid's the A-Rod. Dan calls it very impressive, and Casey says, "You bet your butt that's impressive," and Dan has to agree again. "Started off slow, but turns out he's got some game." "He does!" says Dan brightly. He's then dismissed from the hair chair, and he and Casey head off into the Walk and Talk.

"My boy can play ball!" brags Casey. Dan, bored, says, "I'd consider taking him out of school." "See, you joke about this," says Casey. Dan says he's not kidding: "There's nothing he can learn in fourth grade that he can't pick up in a good minor-league farm system." Casey then repeats Charlie's stats again. Is everyone paying attention? Do you think this will be important? Do you think you want to jot this down? On second thought, don't sweat it; I'm sure it's going to be repeated many, many times in this episode. Dan continues to pile on the sarcasm: "And you should be his agent, 'cause that usually works out well too." "I'm just sayin'," says Casey. This is what passes for a transition on this show, as we all know, and Dan senses it's time to talk about his problems. Suddenly he becomes indignant and asks Casey if "she" shouldn't have come crawling back to him by now. "Rebecca?" asks Casey. Casey actually asks this. Casey apparently isn't quite sure who Dan might be talking about here. Perhaps Dan is talking about Dana. Or Kim? Or maybe...Elliot? Having confirmed that Dan is indeed talking about Rebecca, and having already bitched about his problems and boasted about his son, Casey determines that he has no more need for empathy and makes a snide comment on how he'd have thought Rebecca would come crawling back to Dan, but instead went crawling back to her husband. Then again, maybe Casey's just trying to get Danny over it, which is something good friends do, and Dan does need to get over this. Natalie pops up, not unlike something out of a Whack-a-Mole game, to tell them that "30's long." Casey tells her to check her shot sheet because Dan fixed it; except that whenever a character on this show says "shot sheet," I hear "Chachi."

Natalie takes the scene handoff and strides into the control room, yelling that Dan fixed 30. Then she asks Will to show her Riverfront Stadium. When he tells her Riverfront's up, she informs him that that isn't Riverfront. And everyone piles on poor Will, as Kim and Elliot say, "That's Three Rivers," and "Riverfront's in Cincinnati," and Will kind of gets his back up, saying he knows where Riverfront is. Even Chris jumps in, telling Will that Three Rivers is in Pittsburgh and reminding him that Pittsburgh is in Pennsylvania. Will gets up to fix a monitor or something, but not before he hisses a sarcastic "thank you" at Chris, and I'm guessing Chris is sleeping on the couch tonight.

Dana comes in, babbling about how great her new camera is, and I was momentarily stunned that Sorkin actually carried over a Dana quirk from one episode to the . Anyway, Dana announces that she's taking the "maiden photograph" tomorrow, and she wants everybody to bring nice clothes. Elliot, a little more confused than he ought to be, asks if she's planning to take a picture of their clothes. Kim dryly says she thinks Dana wants them to wear the clothes, but I for one would like to caution Kim against jumping to any hasty conclusions. Dana spoils my fun by telling Elliot that that's exactly what she means, and tells them to spread the word.

Kim gives the boys some show-related info, then lets them know about Dana's inaugural pictures. Dan says he didn't know that Dana took pictures, and Casey brings him up to speed on Dana's sudden interest in photography. Dan asks if this is part of her psychotic episode. Casey says it is. "Well, then, sign me up!" says Dan. Allison finishes touching up the two of them and tells them to have a good show. Casey chases her backstage and asks if he told her about Charlie's performance in the ball game. Allison says "no" and "that's great" and she's clearly humouring him. Casey says, "I wasn't there to see it, but that's a different thing, and I'm not going to get morose right now." That's good, Casey. You wouldn't want your absence from your son's life bum you out or anything. He babbles a little bit, with Allison providing monosyllabic answers until Casey says he can see she's feeling "chatty" at the moment. Jeremy walks between them, whining about "three batters" and "seven pitches." He whines his way into the control room, where Dana asks him what he's got. Jeremy says he's got nothing, because "the bottom of the order went down in seven pitches," so I guess Byung-Hyun Kim wasn't on the mound. "Whatever happened to the ninth-inning rally, huh?" asks Jeremy as he takes his seat. And, as I continue to suck up to Sars in my final recap, I would like to say that after this year's World Series, I believe the New York Yankees own the copyright to the term "ninth-inning rally." ["Close. It's 'futile ninth-inning rally' they own the copyright to. Good try, though." -- Sars] Dana agrees with Jeremy, and also asks why nobody uses the semi-colon anymore, and I'm wondering why Dana even bothers speaking sometimes. "This show could use a ninth-inning rally," says Jeremy. Dana: "I think, under the circumstances, the show's doing just fine." Jeremy agrees with her, so Natalie asks why he said that the show need a ninth-inning rally, then. Jeremy explains that he wasn't speaking metaphorically; he thinks the show they're about to do could use an actual ninth-inning rally. Dana and Natalie strangely continue to misunderstand him. "I'm going to start again, because that's how completely you've both missed the point," says Jeremy, but then he just goes back to work while Dana and Natalie look confused.