A Girl Named Pixley

As we fade in from black, we hear Casey delivering a quote from an athlete who is speaking in the third-person. "Said Waters following the game, 'Ricky Waters isn't lugging the rock the way Ricky Waters is capable of lugging the rock.'" In the control room, Chris signals to Dana that there's ten seconds left. Dana instructs the boys to fill it, which Casey does by inanely wondering if Waters wasn't speaking about himself in the third person, but maybe about someone else in the second person. "Who'd you have in mind?" says Dan the Straight Man. "Oh, Ricky Waters the rock lugger in Toledo?" suggests Casey, and a bunch of the suck-up TCs chuckle suck-uppingly in the control room, and nobody points out that even if Waters had been referring to this Toledo rock lugger, that quote was still in the third person, since the second person means using the pronoun "you." Whatever. Dana sarcastically says "dynamite" and I wonder if later on in this episode she realizes how good she had it when these dingbats only had to fill ten seconds. As they outro, Dan is speaking in that voice that people use when they are trying to contain their laughter as if what Casey said was so gut-splittingly funny. Although he could be laughing at what a lame fill that was.

After they're out, Casey tells Dan that he has a date with a girl named Pixley who works in the building, and Dan wonders how Pixley is spelled, and we get endless banter about this name. Dan asks Casey what she does but Casey isn't "one hundred per cent sure." "She didn't tell you?" asks Dan as they walk to their office. She did tell Casey, but he admits he wasn't really paying attention. This is the sort of behaviour I expect from Dan: complete self-centredness, but not...oh, wait. Never mind. It's very Casey. "You weren't paying attention to Pixley?" asks Dan, incredulous. Casey suspects Dan is now looking for any excuse to say her name, which Dan admits is growing on him. Casey says he's not looking forward to the date. Dan says he might have a good time, but Casey says it's not a "pleasure date" but a requirement, "like home ec." Dan sympathizes at the mention of home ec. He asks if Casey learned anything. "I can do this thing where you hollow out a grapefruit," says Casey, a skill Dan also learned. Casey says the nonsense officially begins tonight. Dan says for everyone else, the nonsense began a long time ago. Yeah, like exactly seven episodes ago. "Six months on the Dana Whitaker Dating Program," says Casey, as he starts stripping in the office, a sight I'm sure inspired some of the steamier Sports Night slash fiction. Dan doesn't think the plan will last six months; he thinks it will last one night because jealousy will rear its ugly head. "It will rear its ugly head! It will look around and then it will eat Tokyo." "I like the sound of that," says Casey, as he changes into a black T-shirt and blue pullover thingy. Dan asks if it's okay if he gives Pixley a call after she stomps out of the restaurant tonight. Man, this episode is almost all Dating Plan. I can't take it. This is my last recap before MBTV sends me to Santorini for a holiday and I can't deal with this. I think I am developing multiple personalities to cope and I feel one coming on. I think it's my haiku-writing Zen monk personality...

It is my hope that through the unfolding of the action, I shall guide the reader into revelation and wrest the universal from the specific. "Casey leaves on date/Pixley, that enchanted name/'Be honest!' cries Dan."

Okay, I got nothing.

I'm really sorry about that, that was really contrived, I'm already really throwing back the Scotch. I will get through this. I'm being pushed to the edge, but I'll fight my way out, like when the Brian Dennehy character pushes John Rambo to the edge in, uh, Rashomon I think it was. ["For God's sake, MacEachern. Go lie down." -- Sars]

Dana and Natalie are walking through the newsroom, but as bad luck would have it, they're also discussing the date with Pixley. Or at least Natalie's trying to, but Dana says she's concerned about something (not Pixley). "When we're in the office, I like to talk about work," says Dana. Oh, okay. Yeah, I was actually going to comment on that, since in this episode, for the first time ever, the characters' personal lives seem to be intruding on their professional lives. I mean, I thought I had the wrong show for a second there. Dana is concerned that they don't have enough for tomorrow's show. The schedules are empty, there are no press conferences scheduled and there's no pre-tape in the can. "Two hockey games, that's all we've got," says Dana. GODDAMMIT. What is Sports Night's problem with hockey all of a sudden, I'd really like to know? This Dating Plan already has me in a mood so I'm not of a mind to be charitable with Dana here, so I'll point out that major-league schedules are determined well in advance and this empty day should not be a surprise; it's a poor reporter who relies on press conferences for stories, two hockey games are good for at least six hours of commercial-free footage, and it's a very poor executive producer who only starts thinking about any given show less than twenty-four hours before that show airs. I'm having shirts printed that says, "Sports Night made me apoplectic."

Natalie only wants to talk about Dana's personal life as they walk into Dana's office, not noticing Casey's big ol' rectangle head as he gets up to tell Dana he's going off on his date. He's checking for signs of jealousy; Dana exhibits none. "You understand, the time you see me, I'll have already gone on the date," says Casey. Dana tells him that yes, she does understand the time-space continuum. Casey tries once more: "For the record, if she stays over, I'm making her this thing where I hollow out a grapefruit." I guess Hollowing Out The Grapefruit must be in some updated version of the Kama Sutra. After Casey leaves, Natalie suddenly decides it's time to work. But Dana does her crumbling facade thing and says, "Her name's Pixley?" Commercials.

Open on Isaac's feet moving slowly on a treadmill. Jeremy comes in and actually says, "You're working out on the treadmill?" and Isaac busts on him for such a dumb question. Jeremy makes small talk, the kind where it's obvious he's got something on his mind. He clambers up on the treadmill and wonders aloud if he were to "pop this thing up to ten" would Isaac go flying out the window onto Fifth Avenue. Isaac says his hands would be around Jeremy's neck and Jeremy would come with him, so it's a wash. Isaac then asks Jeremy if he's on "Isaac patrol" tonight, and Jeremy pretends not to know what he's talking about. Isaac says he knows the gang takes turns making sure he gets out of the office okay. "Yes, and doesn't that make us rotten people," says Jeremy. Isaac, the coolest boss alive, says, "There are plenty of reasons why you're rotten people." Jeremy says Dan is on Isaac patrol and Casey's on a date with Pixley. "Casey's out with Pixley? You suppose the two of them could be any more white?" says Isaac. Jeremy laughs because he's such a soul man, then he gets down to the reason for his visit.

He's nominated for some sort of producing award and good for him and all, but you know that any award that Jeremy is up for would be the kind handed out in a ceremony the day before the main awards ceremony. "I want to win bad, Isaac," says Jeremy. Isaac says "yes." "You know that feeling?" says Jeremy. "Well, I work in sports, so I'm trying to think if I've ever had contact with people like that," says Isaac. Heh. Jeremy compliments him on his steady stream of zingers, especially since, you know, Isaac had a stroke and everything, like Jeremy basically says, "Way to not be a vegetable, boss!" and he's asking Isaac what he thinks about preparing an acceptance speech in advance. According to Jeremy, Isaac's been nominated for these sorts of things many times and lost. "I won the Pulitzer," says Isaac, except he says it Pew-litzer instead of Pull-litzer and at any rate it has probably been replaced on his shelf by some useless snowglobe-type gift from Casey. "It's a real honour, sir," says Jeremy. "No, I meant it's one of the many objects around the room I could grab and shove..." and Jeremy hastily cuts him off before we can visualize the rest of that inspirational scene. Isaac tells him to have in mind the people he wants to thank, but nothing is ever simple with Jeremy, who starts fretting about the order in which he'd thank them. And nobody but the main cast gets mentioned. Jeremy can't decide and says, "Tell you what, let's talk about it," and sits down. Isaac, who has already sighed and rolled his eyes about eight hundred times this scene, asks Jeremy to pop his treadmill up to ten.

In the meeting room, everybody else is engaging in some sort of weird activity -- I mean, they're talking and discussing stuff, and making notes and I think it has something to do with sports, but I'm unsure exactly what they're...oh, they're working. All told, the running time for tomorrow's show is six minutes and twenty-five seconds. Elliot tries to leave because he has a date but Dana says, "Sit your ass down, Valentino." I guess because Elliot's not on the Dana Whitaker Dating Plan, it means she cracks the whip and swears at him. Nice double standard. Or maybe it's some sort of anchor privilege thing, because Dan pops his head in and Dana wonders what he's still doing there. She says it in a friendly way, unlike when I pop into the newsroom in the evening and the reporters say, "What are you doing here?" in such a way it makes me think they heard me coming and rolled the keg into the darkroom or something. Dan says he's on Isaac patrol, but he doesn't know where Isaac is or what he's doing, so Dana says, "Keep up the good work." Dana tells Dan they only have six minutes and twenty-five seconds for tomorrow's show. Dan says it's no problem, he'll "stretch it." He starts giving Kim a massage, unsolicited. Casey says he's stretched that much time into an hour before. "No, you've stretched six minutes and twenty-five seconds into seven minutes and twenty-five seconds," says Dana. "Hmmm. Certainly seemed like an hour," says Dan. Coincidentally enough, on this commercial-free tape of the episode, it has been seven minutes and twenty-five seconds -- and it certainly seems like about eight hours.

Jeremy walks in and Dana says, "What did you find out?" and Jeremy, displaying a self-absorption that even Casey would find off-putting, blah-blahs forever about his speech dilemma, whom to thank, whom to leave out. Then he realizes that's not what Dana was asking about. She calls him a "matzo ball." He makes a big show of taking out his little piece of paper and crossing something out and saying, "Well, that opens up a slot." Dan suggests doing a story on Darren Kehoe, who's dying. Dana has never heard of him, but she's hoping he's a great and accomplished athlete whose death would warrant a forty-five-minute feature on tomorrow's show. "Absolutely," says Dan. "He came this close to winning a bronze medal in archery at the 1932 Olympics." "How close?" says Dana. "He came in seventh," says Dan, and Dana looks less than impressed, although I swear I saw NBC do an hour-long profile on that guy during their coverage in Sydney. Dana should be taking her cues from NBC, the network that can spin stirring documentaries about the most boring athletes ever. She ponders it and says, "All right. He's dying?" and her "he's dying?" was a little hopeful and people probably laughed. I did too, but because it's very much how the industry works. The wire editor will ask me if I want a bus crash story for the front and my first question is always, "Did anyone die?" And he'll say "no" and I'll say, "What else you got?" but he'll say "seven injured, all children" and I really hope I don't go to hell but I'll say, "Seven kids hurt? Okay, that's good, I can work with that, that's something," and honest I'm not a callous person, really, and neither is Dana, who's hoping the guy is dying from some rare disease, one to which Sports Night can bring some attention. Dan mulls it over and says, "He's dying from having been alive for ninety-eight years," which was pretty funny. Dana looks disappointed and then tells everybody to go back to their desks and come back in thirty minutes with either some ideas or the contents of their desk in a box. Jeremy tries to weasel some Chinese food out of Dana by offering to put her back on the list. She kicks him to the curb!

Dana and Natalie walk, and Natalie tells Dana that Jeremy wants really bad to win that award, but she knows he won't win it. They make it to a production room, and Natalie says she overheard someone getting one of those calls that ensure the person who won the award will be at the ceremony. But she doesn't want to tell Dana who actually won the award, which naturally only makes Dana want to know even more, and finally Natalie reveals it to be Dana's arch-nemesis, Sally Sasser. And we continue with the overdramatizing as Dana collapses onto a table and says, "Sally!" the way Seinfeld says, "Newman!" She asks if Natalie's going to tell Jeremy, and Natalie says "no" but doesn't explain why not. Then Dana tries to put me out of a job by recapping everything that has happened thus far on the show -- but without the snideness, pointed barbs, tangential stories and fine, fine editing. ["Heh. Subtle, yet effective." -- Sars] The scene fades to black with Dana and Natalie irritatingly nodding their heads in unison like two life-size bobblehead dolls.

Back from commercials, Casey is having dinner with the extremely cute Pixley. And while Casey dressed down for the date, Pixley got dressed up. He's saying what an interesting name Pixley is and asks if it came from her mother, and she says she's pretty sure it came from both her parents, because in order for us to see she's not the mental equivalent of Dana, she has to be a complete airhead. Casey makes a face as if he's not the type who goes straight for the airhead. After endless hours of conversation about the name Pixley, Casey asks if she's enjoying her fish, and she is, and Casey tells her she should take her time with it. So she thinks he has to get somewhere, and suddenly she gets all worried and wondering if she's being boring and telling Casey he can go if he wants, like Pixley, my child, who hurt you? After Casey does a good job of damage control, she smiles and the date continues. Then this: "In a perfect world, I wouldn't be here with you, I'd be here with someone else," says Casey. Pixley looks like she's been stabbed and drops her fork. But this time, as Casey explains that he's in love with someone else (who is a pretty "high standard" for Pixley to match up to), we witness the birth of Pixley's backbone as she gets pissed at him, says, "Good night, Casey," and stomps on out of there. Hmmm. Cute, sassy, hates Casey. I think I'm in love!

Back at the office, papers are scattered all over the meeting room, as are those Chinese food takeout boxes that I never get in real life, just the aluminum bowls with the cardboard tops. Dan says, "There's a coxswain at Columbia," and Dana makes disparaging comments about coxswains, when really you'd think she should be grateful for anything at this point. She doesn't call a coxswain a competitor, she calls him "the guy who shouts 'faster' while eight preppy guys row his lazy ass down a river." Like maybe Dan and Dana have switched brains here. Dana wants to know what the coxswain did. "He fell out of the boat," says Dan. "All right, put it down," she says. Kim, in a gratuitous leaning-over shot to pick up some Chinese food, says it's worth a minute thirty. Do you think it's an accident that the crew is thinking up ways to fill up a show while this episode itself is really only so much filler?

Isaac is trying to sleep when Jeremy comes in and says, "You trying to sleep?" "You are on fire tonight," says Isaac. He's waiting for his ride, but his wife's at a benefit and she's late because they're dancing and she loves to dance. For some reason, Jeremy jokingly asks, "Think you'll have to smack her around when she gets here?" Uh, not funny. Jeremy wants to talk about his speech some more, which he's decided not to prepare. He talks about some trivia about an extra speech written as Apollo 11 landed on the moon in case the astronauts couldn't get back. I wish this episode were about that, it's more interesting than anything else I've heard so far. Anyway, Jeremy decides that preparing the speech in advance is "bad karma." Isaac decides to yank off the Band-Aid and says, "Son, I'm sorry. You deserve to win as much as anyone. But you didn't." Isaac says Natalie told him about Sally Sasser winning. Jeremy seems disappointed (and also confused), especially since Natalie knew. As he's leaving, Isaac says, "You know what sucks?" Jeremy says, "Losing an award?" Isaac says, "I was gonna say, 'Not being able to dance with your wife.'" Jeremy looks slightly shamed. Isaac, the only man who can break my head and my heart, asks Jeremy to turn out the light. Jeremy does and leaves.

Back in the meeting room, torpor seems to have set in. Dana asks for word on the archer. "He's still alive, if that's what you're asking," says Dan. Dana wonders if the archer is gay because that would make a better story. Natalie is shocked, but Dana says she's going to make this guy the most famous seventh-place archer in the history of sports, the least he can do is "die in a timely manner and be gay." I say she's not totally wrong. I feel a kinship with Dana that my alcoholic haze is doing nothing to dispel. Jeremy walks in and asks to speak to Natalie.

In the control room, Jeremy tells her he found out from Isaac that she knew about him not winning. "Do you have any idea how stupid I feel?" he says. She apologizes. He wants to know why she didn't tell him the truth. Her answer, surprisingly sensible, is that he was so excited about being up for the award, that telling him he didn't win would only have brought him down sooner than necessary. "I'm searching for an ethical leg to stand on," he says, smiling a little. "Speaking of which, I should mention I'm very grateful that I'm able to dance with you." "You're not able to dance with me," she says. "Yes, but if I could dance, I could dance with you," says Jeremy. Oh, all right. Heh. Natalie laughs, but she doesn't understand. "I just generally feel stupid," he says. Natalie goes into wounded-ego-massage overdrive and suggests they get dressed up tomorrow night and have a good time celebrating that he got nominated for an award, and when they get home, she'll see if she can't replace his feelings of stupidity with something else. The audience goes, "Woooooo!" "Natalie, you can't just always make things better by offering me sex." She lifts her eyebrows a little. "Well, yes, I guess you can." They kiss. Get a room! Casey strides by. "Where is she?" he says. Oh, great. Is he in Neanderthal mode again? "I want to talk to the house madam, where is she?" Jeremy tries to tell him his story, but it's a little cryptic and confusing and not about Casey, so Casey shakes his head and asks again where Dana is. Natalie finks her out.

In the meeting room, Dana is surprised to see him, and he asks to have a word with her. She says sure and he orders her outside. As they walk out, Dan says, "Did Pixley storm out?" and "Were you being a pisher?" and Casey denies everything and says, "I wasn't mean to Pixley." Outside, to Dana, he says, "I was totally mean to Pixley." This whole thing is so aggravating for me that I want to deal with it as efficiently as possible. I think the Dating Plan is stupid. So does Casey, but he also thinks it's mean, basically because he has to tantalize women with his magnificence but then has to tell them that he has to date other women for six months so he can go out with Dana. She wants to know why he told Pixley that. "It seemed like the right thing to do," says Casey. "In retrospect?" asks Dana. "Not so much," he says. She starts annoyingly smirking at him and -- get this -- starts giving him crap for "taking a dive" and that he has to try the Dating Plan for real. And Casey gets really agitated about this and so do I, mainly because I'm siding with Casey, especially when he tells Dana that he had to be honest with Pixley because he "liked her a lot." And she seems distressed that he liked her a lot, this girl he went out with, even though she FORCED HIM TO DO IT. But the pain only intensifies for me as Casey is now gleeful that she's distressed, and he pokes his head into the meeting room to tell Danny, "Jealousy's rearing," and Danny says "'kay." And if you thought it could get no worse, Casey makes a horrifying comment about how if he hadn't "pulled the plug," he'd be over at her place right now, doing Jell-O shots and "watching her please me." He actually says that. Dana calls him disgusting. And now I side with Dana. And that's it, I can't recap any more Dating Plan, we know how it turns out.

They go back into the meeting room and Dana smacks Jeremy for losing to Sally Sasser. The show ends on cutesy scene involving the Plot of No Consequence, and the crew is now resorting to filling up the show with bridge results, which Dan thought was "the sport of kings." Which even in my Dating Plan-induced rage was kind of funny. We're out.