Entry 008 - Sports Night 105 (Mary Pat Shelby)

SERIES: Sports Night

EPISODE NUMBER: 105

TITLE: Mary Pat Shelby

PREMIERE: 20 Oct 1998

WRITING CREDITS: Tracey Stern and Aaron Sorkin

DIRECTOR: Thomas Schlamme

I’ve spent the better part of the last few entries dunking on the character of Natalie and her annoying tendencies, and for good cause. It would therefore stand to reason that I would think of this episode as a nice change of pace for her character — but it’s actually a mixed bag for me, for a couple of reasons.

For one, I want to state up front that no woman deserves what happens to Natalie in this episode, no matter how annoying they were leading up to that point. That the act was considered necessary by those involved seems to miss the point of why Natalie needed some development in the first place. Contrast that with what happened with Jeremy two episodes earlier, where the reason he acted the way he did beforehand was given explicit reason and that reason was challenged in a way that corrected that behavior — we get no such challenge correlation in this case.

For two, this episode doesn’t feel as much like character development to me as much as it feels like Natalie’s being given a completely different character from the beginning of the episode. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer her character here from how it was in previous episodes, but I would have preferred to see a proper A-to-B mapping on the two characterizations.

I suppose both of those objections come with the caveat that we’re dealing with an episode partially credited to a woman. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the writing of Natalie’s character was Tracey Stern’s doing, in that regard, thus giving Mr. Sorkin a well-deserved look at how not to write women like they just stepped off the Love Boat. It was likely also her doing to have what happens to Natalie happen to her, as it is an apropos subject for a woman in what has historically been considered a “man’s job”. Still, though, I wish there had been more appreciation for context leading up to the occurrence — and the writing of women in this episode still has its flaws as well, in my opinion, which we’ll see later as we now step through the episode.

NEW Dialogue Motif: How much do you like/love me

DANA: We got him?

ISAAC: How much do you love me?

DANA: We got him?

ISAAC: I’m asking you right now, this very moment, how much do you love me?

DANA: Isaac!

ISAAC: (mouthing) We! Got! Him!

…

DANA: I am so hot for you right now.

Not that I don’t appreciate the enthusiasm, Dana, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean that kind of love. Get your mind out of the gutter.

DANA: We need it promoted.

ISAAC: What, do I look like I just sailed in from Minskapinsk?

DANA: No, you don’t, but you’ve got to stop using Yiddish expressions.

ISAAC: They work for me!

DANA: Not as much as you think.

The term ‘Minskapinsk’ appears to be a Jewish in-joke I’m evidently too white to understand regarding the two Belarusian cities of Minsk and Pinsk, which both had largely Jewish populations before the advent of World War II (that largely went away, for obvious reasons). If anyone is able to shed any more light on the in-joke, I’d appreciate elucidating comments.

DANA: How much do you love me?

DAN: I want to grow a goatee.

DANA: Very, very bad idea. How much do you love me?

DAN: I think it would look good.

DANA: I think you’d look like Colonel Sanders. How much do you love me?

DAN: A little less than I did before the Colonel Sanders thing…

“Though now I have an inexplicable craving for fried chicken…”

DAN: Oh, we gotta promote the hell out of this.

DANA: What, do I look like I just sailed in from Minskapinsk?

I’m looking at a map and I don’t see any major rivers flowing through either Minsk or Pinsk in the landlocked country of Belarus, so the “sailed in” part of the quip makes even less sense to me now…

DANA: How much do you love me, right now, this very second?

NATALIE: What did I do?

Oh, Natalie — you just immediately assume you did something wrong? I mean, you did, but in previous episodes, and Dana doesn’t seem to be referencing that at the moment.

NATALIE: Since when do we do pre-interviews?

DANA: Since we booked Chris Patrick.

NATALIE: You’re kidding!

DANA: No.

NATALIE: Seriously?

DANA: Tomorrow night we are going to win our time slot in fourteen major markets for the first time since we went on the air.

FOURTEEN!

DANA: Does this strike you as something I’m inclined to joke about?

NATALIE: No.

DANA: See?

NATALIE: But you’re not generally inclined to joke about much of anything at all.

DANA: Yes, but if I were, this wouldn’t be it.

NATALIE: Right.

DANA: Now what does that mean?

NATALIE: What does what mean?

DANA: Are you saying I don’t have a sense of humor?

At some point, Dana, you should stop asking questions to which you don’t want the answers. First questioning Casey’s “I bet you will”, and now this — it’s like you’re actively picking for a fight sometimes.

DANA: Never mind.

Thank you.

DANA: You’ll interview him right after the game tomorrow, then hustle on back. I need you here ninety minutes before showtime.

NATALIE: You sure you don’t want Jeremy?

DANA: I want you.

“Oh, Dana, I’ve been waiting my entire life to hear you say — wait, you didn’t mean it like that.”

NATALIE: Jeremy knows the NFL.

DANA: So do you!

NATALIE: Not like Jeremy.

DANA: You’ll do fine.

Here’s our first inkling that something may go wrong: Natalie is quick to try to pass off the assignment to Jeremy. On the one hand, she is correct to say Jeremy knows the NFL well — more continuity from the pilot — but at the same time it’s hard to say from her reaction if that’s the actual reason she’s aiming to pass it off. It could just as likely be an actual discomfort she’s trying to hide — much like Jeremy’s discomfort two episodes earlier, one could argue — as potentially evidenced by what Dana says next:

DANA: This man is a convicted felon, and he’s talking to us and nobody else, so let’s make it count, you got it?

NATALIE: Yeah.

Oh, he’s a convicted felon, you say? Gee, I wonder what felony he has on his record where he’s still allowed to play professional football afterward!

NEW Dialogue Motif: I’m talking to myself

DANA: SportsCenter, Fox Sports News, and here comes Sports Night led by Dana Whitaker in the number three car… I’m talking to myself, and that can’t be a good sign.

Well, at least you admit it.

Also, is it my imagination, or has there not been a single laugh track instance in this episode so far? Seems like perhaps ABC has started to learn its lesson at this point.

DANA: I’ve just been on a conference call with Patrick’s agent and his lawyer.

CASEY: Ah, and here come the guidelines.

You mean the rules?^{foreshadowing detected}

DANA: Five minutes and 30 seconds total — Casey will ask a question with a follow up, then Dan, and so on.

CASEY: Mary Pat Shelby?

DANA: Off-limits.

CASEY: How off-limits?

DANA: Completely off-limits.

CASEY: Totally off-limits?

DANA: Entirely off-limits.

“Absolutely off-limits?” “Thoroughly off-limits.” “Unconditionally off-limits?” “Utterly, wholly, and comprehensively off-limits.” I could do this all day, folks.

NEW Verbal Tic: Damn right

CASEY: You are getting played like a fiddle and I’m serious.

DANA: I am not getting played. I got beat.

CASEY: Damn right, you got beat.

DANA: I know. I got beat.

CASEY: You promote the thing non-stop, all day, all night, then they get you to agree to this nonsense at the eleventh hour and there’s no chance you’ll pull it. You got beat like a drum!

“That’s hot — wait, what?”

NEW Dialogue Motif: Hop in the shower/money on the nightstand

DANA: Something was better than nothing and we needed this.

CASEY: Yeah, and Patrick’s people need to show their guy can still sell sneakers and soda — and when the whole thing’s over, we hop in the shower and they leave the money on the night table. Plus, we get to show Mary Pat Shelby that unless she can catch 80 passes in a season, the world could honestly give a damn about her concussion and broken jaw.

Oh, they could? Wait, no, you meant the opposite, goddammit…

NEW Dialogue Motif: Doing a big thing badly

DANA: I don’t think I need a civics lesson from you, Casey.

CASEY: Well, I think you need one from somebody, Dana, ‘cause you’re doing a big thing badly.

“Maybe you want the civics lesson from a hooker instead?”^{foreshadowing detected}

DANA: I’m aware of the moral questions posed by this, but I’m also aware of the fact that this is a third place show that doesn’t deserve to be, but I can’t educate viewers to that fact unless they’re watching us in the first place. So, your pedantic scolding aside, I’ll do anything short of a wet t-shirt contest to get us there — and these days, the wet t-shirt contest isn’t looking so bad to me.

Ayo?

RETURNING Dialogue Motif: I wasn’t listening

^{Previous instance: Sports Night 101}

CASEY: I wasn’t really listening, I was handicapping the odds of something falling on your head when you were talking.

Really? That’s how you respond to her quip about the wet t-shirt contest? After having shouted about wanting to see her naked last week?

NEW Dialogue Motif: “It was yesterday”

CASEY: Didn’t you use to care about these things?

DAN: Yes.

CASEY: And it wasn’t that long ago that you did.

DAN: No.

CASEY: I mean, it was, like, yesterday.

DAN: Right.

CASEY: Now, when I say ‘yesterday’, I’m not speaking metaphorically, I mean it was yesterday. What happened to your values?

DAN: I find that maintaining them is a lot of work. I take a day off every now and then.

“Like The Purge, only with considerably less violence.”

DAN: … once in a while when I consider the effort it takes to diligently adhere to a moral compass, I take myself out of the lineup and I rest for the next game.

CASEY: I swear, you could run for Congress and win.

If that’s the case, then Dan, I have a district you should move to immediately…

JEREMY: Hey.

NATALIE: Oh, hey.

JEREMY: How’d it go?

NATALIE: I didn’t know anyone was using the room.

JEREMY: I’m pretty much done.

After having his attempts to connect with Casey get shat on last episode, we see Jeremy continue his trend of ostensibly seeking out genuine conversations with his coworkers. Something tells me this attempt won’t end very well, either…

JEREMY: What happened to your wrist?

NATALIE: What?!

JEREMY: What happened to your wrist?

NATALIE: Oh, god, yeah — I jammed it in a thing.

Stunning specificity, man…

NEW Dialogue Motif: Perfectly fair question

JEREMY: I once got an Indian burn that looked like that. My sister Louise tied me to a tree.

NATALIE: Why did your sister Louise tie you to a tree?

JEREMY: That’s a perfectly fair question but I honestly couldn’t tell you.

Detective Jeremy on the case, except not really — he brings up the resemblance to an Indian burn but didn’t openly question the caught-in-a-van-door story. Is he trying to get Natalie to open up, or is he genuinely clueless?

NATALIE: I’m gonna find another room.

JEREMY: I should call and ask her.

WARNING: CONTINUITY ERROR DETECTED!!

I’m gonna give Mr. Sorkin the benefit of the doubt and assume Tracey Stern wrote most of that scene? If that’s not the case, then we’re forced to confront the idea of Mr. Sorkin’s straight up forgetting what was planned for two episodes after this one. We’ve already seen that our good friend Carol McKechnie was overworked by this point so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility, but it still seems like a stretch to me.

NEW Plot Bunny: Can’t tell a joke

DANA: Alright, first of all — a priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar.

CASEY: What are you doing?

DANA: I’m telling a joke. A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar.

CASEY: Don’t do it.

DANA: Why?

CASEY: It will end badly for you.

DANA: I can tell a joke!

CASEY: No, you can’t.

DANA: You’ve seen me tell jokes.

CASEY: You telegraph your jokes.

DANA: I don’t telegraph my jokes.

CASEY: You do it with a Satanic grin.

“— which really freaks out the Western Union clerk, let me tell you…”

NEW Verbal Tic: There it is

DANA: Who thinks Danny should grow a goatee?

(general grumbling in the room)

DANA: There it is.

Oh, come on, that was hardly a reliable vote-counting mechanism.

CHRIS: It actually presents a lighting problem.

DAN: … A lighting problem.

DANA: People, we need to focus for a minute.

DAVE: Yes, the goatee.

DAN: A lighting problem?

WILL: It would be a bit of a lighting problem.

DANA: Folks —

DAN: I have a hard time believing that my growing a goatee is going to cause any kind of lighting problem.

Me too — it’s not like they’re lighting him from underneath, is it?

CASEY: Hey, these guys still haven’t figured out how to light your nose.

What the fuck, Casey?!

DAN: (throws a tissue in the air) Can I get a flag on that play, please?

That’s how you respond to a casual anti-semitic crack? Your tolerance for that shit is much higher than mine, man.

Side note: I think I heard a rather muted laugh track on that line from Dan. So much for its being gone…

ISAAC: There’s a story coming out of the Meadowlands. A maintenance worker, a custodian, or somebody witnessed Christian Patrick in an otherwise empty locker room exposing himself to a woman.

DAN: What does the woman say?

ISAAC: We don’t know who the woman is, but if she was in there, it’s likely she’s press.

Everyone in the room should have put two and two together at this point, and yet it takes a few more lines of information.

ISAAC: The witness says he saw Christian grab the woman’s arm, and there was some kind of struggle.

JEREMY: Her arm?

ISAAC: Yes, he —

JEREMY: Wait, he grabbed her arm?

ISAAC: We’re getting a lot of —

JEREMY: Could it have been her wrist?

ISAAC: Yes, but —

JEREMY: Son of a bitch! (storms out)

Detective Jeremy actually on the case now!

ISAAC: What’s with him?

Seriously?!

CASEY: (after a pause) It was Natalie.

And Casey is the first to verbalize it? Not the woman who sent Natalie into the lion’s den in the first place? A lot of people slow to the punch on this one…

ISAAC: We’ll have a car come pick you up, take you home.

NATALIE: Why do I have to go home?

ISAAC: It’s going to be uncomfortable for you when he gets here.

NATALIE: Am I being fired?

DANA: Don’t be ridiculous, he’s saying —

NATALIE: Then I’d like to stay. I’m the senior associate producer here, I’ve got a show in 38 minutes. I’d like to be allowed to do my job.

And we have our first entry into the Sorkin archetype of “puts the job before their own well-being” — despite the lingering physical and impending psychological damage she’s enduring, Natalie wants to continue doing her job, no matter how many people tell her to take some time for herself first. Once again, this Natalie is unrecognizable from the Natalie of previous episodes so it feels disconnected, but this character beat is nonetheless a refreshing one that we’ll see defined further in future episodes (though not as much as I would have liked — but that’s for another entry).

RETURNING Dialogue Motif: Whole new ballgame

^{Previous instance: The American President}

DANA: This is a whole new ballgame.

CASEY: It is?

DANA: Yeah.

CASEY: It’s a whole new ballgame? Because we only agreed not to discuss Mary Pat Shelby, but we never agreed not to discuss any further acts of violence? Is that why it’s a whole new ballgame?

DANA: Listen! You pompous jackass, I am closer to Natalie than anybody in this world…

All evidence to the contrary…

DANA: … and I’m also a woman, so don’t imply that I’m somehow insensitive to what’s happened here, but… there happens to be an exclusive story sitting in the greenroom that’s gonna be wildfire whether we light the match or not. It happened. It’s news. I can’t decide not to pursue it, just ‘cause it happened to us! Not only that, I think Natalie deserves to have her story told.

Er, Dana, you kinda went off the rails there…

DAN: Don’t use the last part.

Oh, good, I’m not the only one who noticed.

DAN: Of course it’s a legitimate news story and it would be embarrassing if we weren’t the ones to break it… but Natalie didn’t seem all that anxious to me to have her story told — and speaking as a friend, I think it’s wrong of you to use that.

Here’s the start of what I mentioned in the introduction about women still not getting written as well as possible — so far, Dan is being a better friend to Natalie than Dana. Despite Dana’s claim to being closer than anyone else to Natalie, Dan seems to be more in-tune with what Natalie wants from everyone than Dana is.

CASEY: I thought you were taking a break from moral accountability.

DAN: I threw in one for nothing.

Something tells me it wasn’t really ‘nothing’ to him.

BURKE: We don’t know what happened. [We don’t know if anything —]

DANA: (overlapping) [We know that Natalie has a mark on her wrist] the size of a charm bracelet and we know that we have a live interview with your client.

Mr. Sorkin’s penchant for courtroom drama comes in handy at this point — instead of having Dana forcefully assert that what happened happened, she instead pulls out the “I have enough to convince a jury” card with her surface-level forensic analysis. It certainly does the trick in this case, as Patrick’s reps immediately look to play ball.

DANA: Natalie will deny reports that she was sexually assulted in an empty locker room, and I’m including league security as well as press inquiries. In exchange, I get a five minute interview with Patrick in which Mary Pat Shelby is fair game. You do what I’m telling you and your client stays off America’s Most Wanted.

EVANS: And you get your ratings.

DANA: (flatly) Yes, I do.

And Dana’s letting the implied accusation roll off like it was nothing further shows she knows what she’s doing — if she had denied the accusation, she would have lost her power position in the negotiation and she knows it. Certainly it looks like Patrick’s people didn’t expect that calm of a reaction.

NATALIE: Dana knows what she’s doing.

Hey, I just said that!

NATALIE: She did the smart thing.

JEREMY: Forget about the show.

NATALIE: Look —

JEREMY: She thinks it’s what you want! You can go to her right now, Natalie, it wouldn’t be as bad as you think.

NATALIE: Yes, it would.

JEREMY: Natalie —

NATALIE: Yes, it would! Private conversations in the corridor? Secret meetings in Isaac’s office? “We’ll have a car take you home”? I’m already out of the loop!

And as we all know, she prefers to get the loop going instead.

RETURNING Verbal Tic: Résumé recitation

^{Running count: 5}

NATALIE: I have a journalism degree from Northwestern. I started out as a summer intern, I worked my way up to Senior Associate.

RETURNING Dialogue Motif: Cocktail party joke

^{Previous instance: The American President}

NATALIE: Tomorrow, I’d be a cocktail party joke — so it’d actually be every bit as bad as I think.

“I might as well have slept with the President!”

JEREMY: Isn’t there anything I can do for you?

NATALIE: … No.

Once again, Jeremy’s attempts to connect get shat on. This small exchange arguably justifies what Jeremy ends up doing in the next episode, which we’ll get into in the next entry. It also incidentally adds some color to what happens next:

PATRICK: (holds out hand) Chris Patrick.

JEREMY: (slaps hand away) Get your hand out of my face.

“You’re not my friend, so stop looking at me.”

PATRICK: I’m six-four, 230 pounds — bench press three bills, run a 4-4 forty. (sniffs) What, you wanna dance with me, junior?

Is that sniff in the middle of the line supposed to imply the guy is hopped up on cocaine? I’m probably reading too much into that…

JEREMY: You touch her again, I’m gonna have you killed. Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m gonna pay someone $50 to have you killed.

Okay, before we start dunking on the low dollar figure there, it’s important to note there’s an important economic lesson to be had here! A dollar figure that low is what happens when you have a monopsony: there are likely plenty of people out there (supply) with the skill and motiviation to kill Chris Patrick if given the opportunity, and Jeremy (demand) has the power to exercise a bidding war amongst those people. As he’s the only one paying, it’s pure lowest-bidder-wins, thus the dollar figure of $50.

… Alright, I know I’m being silly. In all likelihood, Jeremy threw out the ridiculous dollar figure to allow for plausible deniability should the line ever show up in a courtroom. “Did you take the threat seriously, or did you know he was joking?”^{foreshadowing detected}

RETURNING Verbal Tic: Let me tell you something

^{Running count: 2}

PATRICK: Well, let me tell you something, Skippy — by the look in her eyes when she got a load of me? Seemed pretty impressed.

Oh, go fuck yourself.

DANA: I sent here there on purpose.

No kidding!

NEW Dialogue Motif: Wouldn’t complain if her hair were on fire

DANA: Does Natalie know?

CASEY: Of course she knows. She learned from you. It was the right thing to do.

DANA: Does she know I sold her?

CASEY: Dana, Natalie wouldn’t complain if her hair were on fire. She wants what’s best for the show…

Put it another way: Natalie is altruistic to a fault. She could be having a heart attack and still be cutting film due in an hour, it would appear.

CASEY: … and she knows what I know.

DANA: What’s that?

CASEY: You tend to do the right thing.

Does she, though?

(DANA takes CASEY’s hand and presses her forehead against it)

Okay? Did Dana take that to mean she’s already doing the right thing, then? Also, I guess their arguing last week has been completely forgotten at this point?

NATALIE: You came in here to say something.

DAN: I came in to ask you about your wrist.

NATALIE: No, you didn’t.

DAN: It’s what everybody’s doing.

NATALIE: You’re not everybody.

DAN: I can work on that.

Once again, Dan is proving himself to be more of a true friend to Natalie than Dana has, first with his friendly attempt at levity here, then with the following couplet:

NATALIE: You’re not gonna tell me to be strong?

DAN: Hasn’t been my experience that you need to be told that.

(chef’s kiss) Bless you, Dan.

NEW Verbal Tic: I would think/imagine

NATALIE: We all remember a Boston Globe reporter who was strong, Danny. There isn’t a female sports journalist that [sic] didn’t learn their lesson from it.

DAN: I would imagine.

NATALIE: She had death threats. The FBI had to open her mail. Every loser who knew how to dial a phone was calling talk radio saying she was a bitch who shouldn’t have been where she was in the first place. And when it was all said and done, she had to pack up her life and move to the other side of the planet.

The reporter Natalie references here is Lisa Olson, an American sports journalist who was working for the Boston Herald (not the Boston Globe) when she was the victim of sexual harassment while interviewing players in the Patriots locker room in September 1990. The resulting barrage of hate sent in her direction did indeed prompt Boston Herald parent company News Corp to transfer her to Australia, where she stayed until 1998 when she moved back to care for her father. There’s no record of whether Lisa was purposefully sent to invoke the incident like Dana does in this episode, however — but given News Corp is involved, I wouldn’t be surprised…

DAN: Nat, I have absolutely no problem with you [sic] going along with Dana and taking a pass. The only reason I came in here was to tell you this — no matter what you decide, you’ve got friends… and this is what friends gear up for.

The throughline of “work friends are true friends” continues from the pilot here — Dan (correctly) notes how everyone in the office are willing to go to bat for Natalie if they ever need to. It still irks me a little that Dana was unable to verbalize this herself, but Dan’s calm demeanor nonetheless provides a nice contrast to Natalie’s ill-hidden tension.

DANA: Kim!

KIM: Yeah, right here.

DANA: Um… I need you to cut a new intro, blow off 30, and um… give it to me in two minutes.

Wait, what? Did we skip some lines in her conversation with Casey? She showed no indication of fixing to change her mind in the tail end of what we saw there. Not that I’m not glad she did change her mind, but still…

DANA: Jeremy! I need you to create five minutes. Can you do that?

JEREMY: Are we?

DANA: Yes!

JEREMY: Absolutely.

Oh, man, you can tell that ‘absolutely’ is from the heart there.

DANA: Isaac.

ISAAC: Yeah?

DANA: We did a big thing badly.

ISAAC: I know.

DANA: Can I try and fix it?

You mean ‘try to fix it’? (clears throat) Sorry, pet peeve.

DANA: This interview’s off!

EVANS: What?

(everyone else cheers)

DANA: I want to thank you for coming down, but we’re going to do a show now and I need you to clear the studio.

CASEY: Let’s go, move it.

BURKE: You can’t do this, Isaac.

ISAAC: It’s done.

…

DAN: Folks, I’m pretty sure I heard my boss ask you all to leave the building.

Dan’s prophesy proves true: everyone immediately follows along with Dana’s announcement of calling off the interview without any trace of hesitation. Natalie has herself a loyal team behind her, for sure.

BURKE: This is a third place show on a fourth-rate network.

DAN: Yeah, but that’s all gonna change once I grow a goatee.

CASEY: He’s just crazy enough to do it, too.

“He has no regard for the lighting guys at all, let me tell you.”

RETURNING Verbal Tic: How ya doin’

^{Running count: 2}

NATALIE: How ya doin’?

PATRICK: Jeez…

NATALIE: (chuckles) Yeah.

PATRICK: A lot a fuss about nothing, huh?

Oh, strongly go fuck yourself.^{foreshadowing detected}

NATALIE: You remember how much you wanted to play professional football when you were a kid?

PATRICK: Yeah.

NATALIE: That’s how much I wanted to be a sports reporter. I was just there doing my job. But tomorrow, the sky’s gonna fall down on both of us, ‘cause as soon as my show comes down at midnight, I’m going over to the 23rd precinct and I’m swearing out a warrant for your arrest.

YOU GO, GIRL!! BURY HIM!!

NATALIE: Right now, this second — how much do you love me?

… What? W-why… why would you say that? I — huh? What?!

DANA: I’m so sorry.

NATALIE: It’s okay.

Wait, really? It is? I’d be fucking pissed at her, man. Natalie is being quite forgiving here…

DANA: What can I do?

NATALIE: Tell me a joke, Dana.

Eh… be careful what you wish for, Natalie.

Alright — let’s be real here, this is a good episode. My inflated standards, however, are keeping me from calling this a great episode. Dana’s apparent inability to be as good a friend for Natalie as possible makes the upgrade on the writing of women an imperfect one, with Dan instead filling the role of true friend. Natalie’s immediate forgiveness of Dana’s using her also leaves something of a sour taste, but arguably that beat simply serves to emphasize Natalie’s delibitating altruism of putting the show before everything else. Natalie’s character indeed gets a huge upgrade with this episode, but the lack of context leading up to the change leaves a feeling of whiplash for those who have been paying attention. Despite that, at worst I would say this episode serves as a reset button for how female characters will be treated going forward in this series, which even this early on was starting to feel necessary.

If you like what you read, then I’d appreciate it if you subscribe to this blog so that the next entry will be delivered directly to you when it’s ready. Coming up next: let me list to you the three things going on here, with the second one split into four subparts…