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(More customer reviews)[I rate it 4.5 stars.]
"Sports Night" is about an eponymous fictitious hour sports news show on the fictitious Continental Sports Channel. It's a sit-com targeted at an audience who knows what "eponymous" means without consulting a dictionary. But this comedy isn't really about sports at all. It's about intelligent, articulate people who use humor to relieve the pressures that their demanding jobs entail.
Aaron Sorkin is the creator of "Sports Night". He also created "The West Wing" a year later, and when he realized that it was a lot easier selling viewers a fictitious White House administration than a fictitious sports news crew, he dropped "Sports Night" like a hot potato. Most everyone knows that "The West Wing" isn't really about Washington politics; instead it's about intelligent, articulate people who use humor to relieve the pressures that their demanding jobs entail. But few people have even heard of "Sports Night". It's a shame, though, because "Sports Night" may be the funniest show you never watched.
There are plenty of valid criticisms of "Sports Night". For supposedly intelligent people the characters adopt a large number of unreasonable prejudices. These are all politically correct prejudices, of course. In the world of "Sports Night" when a homeless man flicks open a switchblade he's only cutting a sandwich to share. Aaron Sorkin certainly has trouble writing multiple character voices. Without seeing which characters recite which lines you'd be hard pressed to match characters with dialog from a script; the phrasing and delivery are largely interchangeable. And fully half of the humor of "Sports Night" comes from a predictable formula of repetition. Here's my pastiche of a "Sports Night" dialog:
A: "We need to talk."
B: "Is it about X? Because I'm tired of talking about X. We can talk about anything you want, as long as it's not about X."
A: "OK, then."
B: "It's not about X?"
A: "It's not about X."
B: "OK, then."
A: "It's about X."
B: "I've got to tell you, if I could make your head explode using only the power of my mind, they'd never get the stain out of the carpet."
"Sports Night" in its 2-year run won quite a lot of awards, but none of them were from the writing. It's good that there's still a lot of comic meat left after you strip away the repetition schtick, and much of that comes from the talented cast: Josh Charles (who got his start in John Waters's "Hairspray), Peter Krause (now in "Six Feet Under"), Felicity Huffman ("Out of Order"), Joshua Malina (who followed Sorkin to "The West Wing"), Sabrina Lloyd ("Sliders"), and Robert Guillaume ("Benson"). But the most significant people on "Sports Night" weren't the writers or actors, but rather the impressive crew behind the cameras. Here are just the award "Sports Night" won (skipping the 22 other nominations):
1999 DGA Award, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series: Thomas Schlamme
1999 Emmy Award, Outstanding Multi-Camera Picture Editing for a Series: Janet Ashikaga
1999 Emmy Award, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series: Thomas Schlamme
1999 Humanitas Prize, 30 Minute Category
1999 Television Critics Association Awards, Outstanding Achievement in Comedy
2000 DGA Award, Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series: Thomas Schlamme
2000 Emmy Award, Outstanding Cinematography for a Multi-Camera Series: Peter Smokler
2000 Genesis Award, Television - New Series
2000 PGA Golden Laurel Nova Award, Most Promising Producer in Television: Aaron Sorkin
2000 TV Guide Award, Best Show You're Not Watching
Do you remember the first episode of "ER"? This was ground-breaking television; it pulled you into the story by its technique of using moving cameras to record an action-packed scene in a single continuous piece rather than assemble lots of short cuts together. It's not surprising that Thomas Schlamme directed several episodes of "ER" before bringing this technique to "Sports Night". Continuous action is very expensive to shoot as it requires the sets to be contiguous, the lighting to be in place for all the places the camera will move to, and most importantly all the actors and camera and sound people have to avoid mistakes for the duration of the scene. But the payoff is a superior viewing experience. This show really delivered.
I could go on about the great recurring guest cast, with people like Teri Polo, Brenda Strong, William H. Macy, and Jayne Brook. Or the great music that ends most every episode. I could tell you that you'll be disappointed by the extras on the DVD collection (none at all). Or that Sorkin bowed to network pressure and added a laugh track for about half the first season before it became clear that the viewers were people who didn't need a laugh track to get the jokes. But the most important thing I can tell you is that you really should check out "Sports Night". Despite its several flaws it got many things right. "Sports Night" is good entertainment.
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With breakout and memorable performances by Josh Charles (In Treatment), Robert Guillaume (Benson), Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives), Peter Krause (Six Feet Under), Sabrina Lloyd (Sliders) and Joshua Malina (The West Wing), this was writer/producer Aaron Sorkin's (A Few Good Men , The American President) first television series. And it was director Thomas Schlamme's first collaboration with Sorkin. The pair, who would continue to click brilliantly with The West Wing and Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip, may not have known it at the time, but with Sports Night they defined a new style and raised the bar for all television programs to follow.
Critically acclaimed when it debuted on ABC in 1998, Sports Nigh was an innovative half-hour program about a team of funny, smart and likeable people who put on a daily live sports cable newscast, much like ESPN's SportsCenter. They are a group of consummate professionals whose personal lives operate in apparent chaos, communicating every uncensored thought and feeling through a libretto of witty and honest chatter over the hum of the separate-but-integrated live show-within-the-show. 10th Anniversary Special Features: *The Show: An in-depth look back at Sports Night with creator/writer Aaron Sorkin, directors Thomas Schlamme and Robert Berlinger, cast members Felicity Huffman, Peter Krause, Josh Charles, Joshua Malina, and Robert Guillaume, Emmy(r) award-winning editor Janet Ashikaga, Emmy(r) award-winning director of photography Peter Smokler, producer John Amodeo, and set designer Thomas Azzari.Includes never-before-seen behind-the-scenes home movies shot by John Amodeo. *Face Off: ESPN's SportsCenter vs. CSC's Sports Night - Sports Night's real-life ESPN counterparts discuss what the series got right and wrong. *A Conversation with Aaron Sorkin and Thomas Schlamme *Inside The Locker Room - A look at the innovations of Sports Night with Aaron Sorkin, Thomas Schlamme, Robert Berlinger, Janet Ashikaga, Peter Smokler, John Amodeo, and Thomas Azzari. *Season Gag Reels *8 Episode Commentaries including creator/writer Aaron Sorkin, director/executive producer Thomas Schlamme, director Robert Berlinger, editor Janet Ashikaga, and cast members Peter Krause, Josh Charles, Joshua Malina, Sabrina Lloyd, Greg Baker, Kayla Blake, Timothy Davis-Reed, and Ron Ostrow. *Original Promos *36-Page Booklet including an introduction by creator Aaron Sorkin
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