Louise Revisited

This episode starts with a shot of a computer screen with the Sports Night Web site on it, and the camera pans around and reveals Dan staring at the computer as Casey comes into their office. They say "hey" and "good morning" to each other, and Dan asks Casey if he knows what this week's "internet poll" is and Casey says, "Who's cooler, Dan or Casey?" and Dan tells him he's right, which is sad because the poll doesn't have a "neither" option. Dan pretends to decry the poll since they're "journalists," but still asks Casey if he knows how many people voted; Casey doesn't, and Dan informs him that 159 people have voted, so maybe the entire Sports Night audience voted twice each. "Really," says Casey. "You know who's winning?" says Dan. "I'm assuming you are," says Casey, and Dan says he's not. "I am?" says Casey, and I think that yeah, that's the only other possible option. "How 'bout that," says Casey, all false nonchalance, and he starts saying something about Notre Dame until Dan interrupts him to tell him he's winning 153-6, and Casey seems surprised and says, "Quite a landslide so far," and then he starts blah-blahing about some "grassroots groundswell" but Danny isn't having it and says, "How are you rigging it?" Casey makes this "come on!" face and says, "Danny." Dan asks him if he stayed up all night voting for himself. "Yeah, like I don't have anything better to do than beat your ass in an internet poll," says Casey. Dan says, "Here's the thing about you: it's not that you want to win so bad, it's that you won't admit you want to win." Casey insincerely offers to withdraw from the competition, but Dan won't give up because he has "plenty of fans." "At least half a dozen," says Casey. Then the two of them decide to leave off this macho posturing, which is completely ridiculous anyway since we're talking about an internet poll, for crying out loud.

Casey strolls out of the office, passing Jeremy, who says hello, and Casey does that "walk with me" command thing that is really annoying, done by people who want to exert authority over someone without giving them the courtesy of actually stopping to talk, preferring instead to pretend to be so busy that they can't actually stop walking and so they give instructions while the other person trails pathetically behind like a six-year-old kid brother. In Casey's case, though, he's all annoyingly secretive and tells Jeremy to walk "casually" so it doesn't look like they're up to something and I think Casey should turn off the monthly TBS James Bond-athon once in a while, because I'm not sure exactly why a producer talking to the on-air talent would arouse suspicions, but whatever. Casey leads Jeremy out into a deserted hallway/stairwell-looking set that I don't know if we've seen before. We learn that Casey in fact did stay up all night voting for himself, and Jeremy manages not to bust up laughing at that. Casey wants Jeremy to help devise a way to vote faster and more efficiently. "I want to bury him," says Casey. Jeremy says it's unethical, since the results are announced over the air, which is pretty sad, since internet polls are hardly representative surveys of anything because of the potential for precisely the kind of abuse being discussed here, although to his credit Jeremy does call them "idiot polls." Although maybe that just means that every single one of them is about Dan and Casey. Weenie Jeremy is worried about getting in trouble, and Casey convinces him by reminding Jeremy of all the pranks Dan played on Jeremy when he was new, like gluing all Jeremy's things to his desk and sending Jeremy for the "ignition keys" to the cameras, and I have to say those are pretty funny, and reminded me of when I worked in a restaurant in Calgary, and the standard joke to play on the new waiter or waitress would be to say the cappuccino machine was broken and give them a cup and a saucer and send them over to a neighbouring restaurant for a "cup of steam" and tell them they'd have to trap the steam in the upside-down cup over the saucer, and you would not BELIEVE how often the new person fell for that.

"This is what men do," says Casey, which is I guess true but still sad, and I sometimes wonder why women deign to have sex with us. But you know I'll be trying out that glue prank very soon. Then Jeremy actually looks around to make sure no one is listening in on them, and the whole time they've been talking in these hushed tones as if everybody else isn't too busy doing work to pay attention to these two nimrods. Jeremy says a whole bunch of computer stuff that means he'll set up Casey's computer to vote for him 2,000 times a minute, 24 hours a day. "You are a magnificent young man," says Casey, who I think is getting a little turned on.

After some commercials, we come back to Jeremy reading something and then jumping out of his skin when Natalie comes in. She wants to know why he's reading her mail, which he counters by asking why she's writing to his sister, as though that's anywhere close to being as bad a transgression. Natalie wants to know why it bothers him that she's writing to his sister. He denies it does, then says he doesn't want to discuss it because there are so many people around, as though that's ever been a deterrent for anyone on this show ever, and as if to prove my point, Natalie yells out, "Jeremy's been reading my mail!" to the entire newsroom. Jeremy thanks her for that, and I'm thankful that this scene is over but at the same time I have that vague feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, knowing that this subplot is obviously going to get on my nerves in a major way.

Like now, for instance, as everybody gathers in the conference room for the rundown and Natalie tells Casey that Jeremy's been reading her mail. Dan announces that Casey got 150,000 votes overnight on the internet poll. "Am I the only one who thinks it's strange?" says Dan. "I think you're the only one who cares," says Kim, the lone person who doesn't piss me off this episode (except for Sam, and I suppose Will and Chris and Dave, except they don't get any lines that I paid attention to so they don't count). Dana announces off the top that the eight o'clock rundown will be at seven-thirty, which seems to throw Elliot into a tizzy because he won't know what to put on the paperwork or something, and if the people on this show would like to quit being so useless sometime this episode, I'd really appreciate it. Dana, who looks quite nice in a red dress, has a "dinner engagement." I don't know what kind of dress it is. The best I can offer you is that besides being red, it has no sleeves. Many annoying comments from the staff follow, including Natalie informing Dana that Jeremy's been reading her mail. Casey puts his hand up and says, "Dinner engagement?" and Dana says, "Something we can talk about later," yet forgets to add, "Or not, since it's really any of your damn business," but at least Dana's attempting to keep personal stuff out of the meeting, unlike Casey, who gives a very annoying "okey-doke" like Dana's the inappropriate one here. Meanwhile, we've had several shots of Sam with his feet rudely up on the conference table, and he hasn't once looked up from the papers he's shuffling on his lap.

Later, Dana comes back and bumps into Natalie, who makes a Cab Calloway joke that consists of her going, "Hi de hi de hi de ho," which I imagine for someone named Cab Calloway is a lot like people who launch into "Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling" when I'm around, except for the small problem that nobody else in the entire world is named Cab Calloway. ["Yeah, try 'Sara' by Jefferson Starship. No? No, I didn't think so. It's not even spelled the same way! Gah. Anyway." -- Sars] Dana takes Natalie into Dana's office to reveal that she took off her panties off during dinner, just by shifting in her seat, because Cab was boring and she was still annoyed at having to answer to Sam who knows everything, and she read in a magazine about people doing this or some such nonsense. Natalie's slightly scandalized, while Dana's slightly excited, or maybe this is what empowerment looks like -- I don't know. It should give you some idea just how irritating this plotline came across when I can't get on board with the idea of women talking about taking off their underwear. Although if anyone on this show should have this plot, it's the highly three-dimensional Kim, who pops in to get Dana for something, even though Natalie wants more details. In the doorway, Dana bumps into Casey, who came by to ask how dinner went and to say, "Hi de hi de hi de ho," and I hate to tell Sorkin that that was hardly worth this whole Cab Calloway contrivance. Then Casey tells Dana he ran her Dating Plan by Sam, and Sam thinks Dana's insane. Then he admits that Sam didn't actually say that, but Casey could tell from Sam's demeanour. Dana flits off to look at graphics, and Natalie tells Casey that Dana came back from dinner without her panties, then walks away as a flustered Casey presses for details, which Natalie won't give, prompting Casey to do this self-affirmation thing about not letting that get to him even though it clearly is and if the commercials had come any later, my aneurysm would have been fatal instead of just extremely debilitating.

Later, we're in the middle of the show with Casey delivering his lines pretty flat-line and then flubbing a throw to a field reporter, because he's distracted, I guess. They've got five minutes and forty seconds to annoy me before they go back live. Dan asks if Casey knows why Dan's ticked. Casey successfully pinpoints it -- that it's not just Casey winning, but that he wanted to win, as though Dan wasn't just as guilty of that as well. "I really can't take it anymore," says Casey, as the two of them get up and take off their mikes, but he's talking about Dana, not Dan. Dan expresses genuine concern at first, but Casey won't tell him what's going on, saying only that it has to do with underwear, so Dan starts going off on Casey cheating on the poll. Casey's not paying attention and moves toward the control room to talk to Dana, then thinks better of it, at least for now. "Whatever," says Dan, summing up the entire episode.

Ugh. Dan and Casey's office. I start repeating "almost done, almost done" to myself. Dana tells Casey to look in his top drawer. He does, and finds Dana's black panties, as the drumbeat of Neil Finn's "She Will Have Her Way" kicks in. Casey smiles instead of being pissed at this woman who is making him date other women while stuffing her underwear into his desk drawer. How cruel is Dana, anyway? She says it's so he'll have something to look forward to. "I'll keep these, if you don't mind," he says, putting the panties in his pocket as he walks past her into the newsroom. "I don't mind a bit," she says, smiling.

In the newsroom, Casey passes Sam and quietly says, "Everything's cool; I got her panties right here in my side pocket," and Sam says "okay" and watches him go, looking slightly befuddled. A moment later, Dana comes up to Sam to inform him that he doesn't control her life: "I happen to not be wearing panties right now and if you had a thousand guesses you couldn't tell me where they were." "Casey's side pocket," says Sam. Dana looks unfazed but says "dammit" as she turns and heads back to the control room, and okay, that was funny too.

We're taken out as Casey and Dana take their seats, with Dan and Natalie respectively noticing what a much better mood they're each in. Meanwhile, a computer screen shows Dan holding steady at 233, with Casey's tally at 2.6 million and rising, not unlike my blood pressure throughout this episode.