Does anyone else miss Sports Night? (1 Viewer)

[Alan K]

Or is it just me? I thought it was one of the most innovative shows I've ever seen.

 

[Joel Mack]

With nearly every fibre of my being...
Seriously.

 

[Alan K]

I know there weren't very many episodes, but are there reruns out there anywhere?

 

[Peter D]

It is rerun on Comedy Central - that's where I caught it for the first time. Really was a great show, if a bit uneven at times. You can really see a lot of it in the witty banter of the West Wing (which for those who don't know, was created and is written mostly by the same guy who did Sports Night).

 

[DaveF]

I watched it the first season or two and really enjoyed it. I quit watching the second or third season. The formerly clever and snappy writing seemed to have become just people repeating themselves, snappily; it was like a half-hour of:
Person 1: "Hello"
Person 2: "Hello?"
Person 1: "Hello!"
Person 2: "Hello??"
Person 1: "Hello!!!"
Person 2: "Oh, Hello."
Of course, other friends disagreed with me, so I might be alone on that one
Fortunately, Aaron Sorkin has since brought us "West Wing", which I think outstrips most other shows for both drama and humor, and is the perfection of the dialogue he aimed for on Sports Night.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Uhh, I didn't think Sports Night was on that long.

 

[Ken Chan]

Yeah, just watched the series finale again on Comedy Central last week. "Anybody who can't make money off of Sports Night should get out of the money-making business."

It was on for two seasons -- 45 episodes. The quality did dip a bit in the middle, but it finished well.

//Ken

 

[Brad Grenz]

I loved the show. I don't have pay cable and *I* wish Showtime had picked it up...

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I know I'm in the vast minority, but to me 'West Wing' isn't half the show that 'Sports Night' was.

I'd LOVE unedited DVDs of SN.

 

[Dave Morton]

I loved sports night. I thought the writing was top notch and the acting was great. I also thought the person playing the Natalie character was a babe. She's one of those girl next door type that just has something about her that I liked

 

[Patrick Sun]

I am still having a hard time believing that the guy playing Dan Rydell is/was going out with Jennifer Connelly.

I loved the show when it was on, never missed an episode. I thought was kind of cool when Jeremy was going out with the porn actress, played by Paula Marshall.

 

[DaveF]

I didn't realize SN was only on two seasons. It seemed longer than that. Well, I guess I watched the first season, but didn't care for the second.
I appreciated how they wrote into the show Robert Gouliet's (sp?) real-life stroke. I think that was a brave thing to do, from a TV-making viewpoint, and allowed a good actor to carry on. It also brought in a breath of "real-life" into the realm of "everyone's super beautiful and super buff" TV sitcom.
And yes, "Natalie" was smokin'

 

[Todd Hostettler]

Are they still showing this on Comedy Central? I religeously watched the back-to-back Thursday night showings... which they've since replaced with (shudder) "The Man Show" and "Martin Short In a Fat Suit."

 

[John_Lee]

Person 1: "Hello"

Person 2: "Hello?"

Person 1: "Hello!"

Person 2: "Hello??"

Person 1: "Hello!!!"

Person 2: "Oh, Hello."

True.

I loved the show, and watched every episode, both when it first came out and in syndication on Comedy Central. But it did get a little formulaic in turning a single observation into 5 minutes of 'banter.'

"I really like bread"

"You really like bread?"

"I'm telling you. On the list of things I like, please place BREAD."

"So its bread you like?"

"Bread it is."

"Bread, huh?"

"That's what I'm saying."

. . . .

"Places people."

New scene

 

[DavidJ]

Just wanted to add that both my wife and I loved the show. It was one of the best things on.

 

[Derek Miner]

I loved the show when it was on, never missed an episode. I thought was kind of cool when Jeremy was going out with the porn actress, played by Paula Marshall.

Boy was I ecstatic when I saw Paula Marshall show up in Sports Night. I fell in love with her when I got hooked on Cupid, another victim of ABC's cancellation (anyone got some tapes of that show?).

I was shocked that I had missed the resolution to her storyline when it originally aired. I happened to be flipping channels and came across the episode on Comedy Central (in the usual 1:30am slot)... can you imagine a storyline about an "adult film actress" being handled like this on any other "sitcom"? I thought it was hillarious that Jeremy told everyone she was a "Choreo-animator."

 

[Sean Cauley]

I think the Comedy Central reruns still come on in the morning (10:30 a.m., I think); at least, they were on the week of Thanksgiving, when I was home from work on vacation.

I wish they'd found a way to cut the inappropriate laugh track from the first-season episodes, but as it is it makes for an interesting history in how they slowly moved it out over a full season.

I'm happy to have The West Wing, but I do miss my SportsNight. Has anyone else picked up on the reworkings of SN plots on WW? For example, the storyline where Jeremy obsessed about the yachting accident to deal with his father's affair was lifted almost exactly for Rob Lowe's character on WW (his obsession was with a fifty-year-old espionage case). I don't think it's a bad thing, mind you; it's just a fun game to see what themes Sorkin hits again and again.

 

[DaveF]

Has anyone else picked up on the reworkings of SN plots on WW?

I don't remember the SN stories well enough to have caught that. But the banter in WW is clearly derived from SN. But I think Sorkin learned from SN, and now the banter is both more interesting (less repetitive), and is no longer the sole form of dialogue -- making it all the more effective when it is used.
As for the "obsessive" plot, if it works, run with it

 

[Alan K]

I also thought the person playing the Natalie character was a babe.

I thought I was the only one!

 

[Sean Cauley]

And the episode where Natalie kept throwing water on Dan to surprise him out of writer's block was one of the funniest things I've seen on TV.