Entry 010 - Sports Night 107 (Dear Louise)
In which we receive a surfeit of backstory
SERIES: Sports Night
EPISODE NUMBER: 107
TITLE: Dear Louise
PREMIERE: 10 Nov 1998
WRITING CREDITS: David Walpert and Aaron Sorkin
DIRECTOR: Thomas Schlamme
With the previous character turnarounds of Jeremy and Natalie, it’s only fitting that an episode be reserved for consolidating those two character arcs. To drive that merge, we get ourselves an epistolary framing for a Sorkin screenplay, a framing device we’ll be seeing again from him later on. Coupled with that is arguably Mr. Sorkin’s first go at non-linear storytelling, though this instance of it is considerably more tame than others we will be experiencing much later. We are also complimented with a taste of Author Avatar to go along with it, though that subplot does have a troubling wrap-up, in my opinion — but we’ll have to discuss that later when we get to it as we now step through the episode.
NEW Dialogue Motif: Barn-burner
DAN: You won’t want to miss championship billiards at 1am. Yoshira Yatsumora takes on Greta Lipsik for the 9-ball crown, and when those two get together, it’s a barn-burner.
I looked up those two names and could not find any instance of them outside the transcripts for this episode. Mr. Sorkin certainly knows how to make up fake names.
CASEY: If you’ve had half as much fun watching the show as we’ve had doing it… well, then we’ve had twice as much fun doing the show as you’ve had watching it.
Hang on, I’m just checking your math on that… yes, I got the same thing.foreshadowing detected
DAVE: Music.
WILL: Go.
DAVE: Roll credits.
CHRIS: Go.
I somehow failed to mention this in previous entries for this series, but I think it’s worth pointing out how the music in this series blurs the line between diagetic and non-diagetic at times: the theme music to the in-universe Sports Night is the same as the music for the actual TV show, which makes for some brain-bending music sequences when you really pay attention. It’s the only series in the Sorkin corpus with this distinction, so enjoy it while it lasts.
DAN: If you wear something blue, you get $2 off a giant blue margarita.
CASEY: You know, I make a pretty good living, I can actually afford to wear what I want and pay full price.
DAN: I’m not promoting the economic upside as much as I am the opportunity to drink something giant and blue.
The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one.
DAN: Dana’s coming.
CASEY: Dana’s coming?
DAN: And you know what that can lead to.
CASEY: Oh — Boogie Shoes.
DAN: (singing) My, my, my, my, my boogie shoes…
I suppose one of the upsides to having your show on a Disney-owned channel is having the means to get the rights to play or sing certain songs on the air. This particular song was under the purview of the Warner Music Group, with which Disney had a licensing deal from 1995 to 2005.
CASEY: Hey, Jeremy, we’re going to this place called El Perro Fumando, where if, what, you wear a thing then something else happens for $2 less that it would have before.
Stunning specificity, man…
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Here’s the thing
Running count: 4
CASEY: Here’s the thing — if Dana gets, like, half a margarita in her, it’s a better than even chance she’ll get up on a table and start dancing to “My Boogie Shoes”.
DANA: I did it one time.
“And I was desperate!”
JEREMY: El Perro Fumando?
DANA: The Flaming Dog.
CASEY: Smoking Dog.
DANA: Not the Flaming Dog?
CASEY: The dog’s not gay.
Wow, way to assume, Casey.
DANA: I wasn’t suggesting the dog was gay, I was suggesting the dog was on fire.
CASEY: He’s not smoking on fire, he’s smoking a cigarette.
ELLIOT: He’s smoking a pipe.
KIM: He’s smoking a cigar.
DAN: I say he’s gay.
You guys are sharp as tacks, you know that?foreshadowing detected
JEREMY: I just want to write a quick letter to my sister Louise. She’s a sophomore at Amherst.
Hold on, let me look something up…
So… he would have been 32 at the time of filming — and he’s supposed to have a sister who is a college sophomore? That’s a heck of an age gap, my guy.
… Also, how am I just now learning I have the same birthday as Joshua Malina?
CASEY: I haven’t written a letter in years. I do everything by phone now.
JEREMY: My sister can’t hear.
So then whom were you fixing to call two episodes earlier, hmmm??
NATALIE: You want me to stick around for company?
JEREMY: Me?
NATALIE: Yeah, I can stick around.
JEREMY: … No, I’ve got everything — word processor, envelopes.
NATALIE: Okay.
Abort, Natalie, abort!
NATALIE: Stamps?
Damnit!
JEREMY: Oh, I actually don’t have stamps to speak of, but that’s okay. I’ve found that when I need a stamp, one materializes. I never know where one’s going to come from, but they always do - stamps…
Okay, now I’mma have to ask you to abort, Jeremy.
CASEY: I haven’t found that. I’ve found that when I need a stamp, there’s never one around. This is back when I used to write letters. When I used to write letters, I could never find a stamp.
DANA: Hey, can you guess what I’m thinking now?
CASEY: That no one gives a damn about me and my history with stamps?
DANA: Bullseye.
You’re lucky Casey bailed you out, Jeremy.
DAN: How do we know the dog is a he?
CASEY: ‘El Perro’ is masculine.
DAN: Sounds like Dana’s translation has him leaning another way.
Being masculine and being gay are not mutually exclusive, Dan — watch yourself.
JEREMY: (V.O.) In your last letter, you asked me what Dan and Casey are like, and I can’t wait to tell you about them in person…
To my recollection, it’s never explicitly stated in this show whether or not Jeremy knows sign language. This implication that he and his deaf sister still meet on occasion is the closest we get — somehow I doubt Louise has an interpreter speak for her when visiting her brother, but I suppose it’s not necessarily beyond the realm of possibility. I know no deaf people in my life, though, so take my thoughts on the matter with a grain of salt.
JEREMY: (V.O.) … for now, I’ll just say that as impressive as they are on the air, the thing that constantly amazes me is that the pressure of writing and performing a live show every night never gets to them.
CASEY: What’s going on?
DAN: Where have you been?
CASEY: Well, I was in editing, Kim said there’s an emergency.
DAN: It is an emergency.
CASEY: Is it your mom?
DAN: What’s wrong with my mom?
CASEY: I’m asking.
DAN: It’s not my mom.
CASEY: Well, what is it?
DAN: Why did you say it was my mom?
CASEY: I didn’t say it was your mom.
DAN: Yeah, but you jumped to that right away, which makes me think there’s something wrong with my mom. Casey, what’s wrong with my mom, man?!
So much for never getting to them…
NEW Topical Signature: Writer’s block
DAN: I have writer’s block.
CASEY: You have writer’s block?
DAN: I have writer’s block.
CASEY: Emergency writer’s block?
DAN: I’m telling you.
CASEY: (sighs) Alright, how long?
DAN: A while now, about twenty minutes.
Amidst the closing of The Newsroom, Mr. Sorkin indicated he will never return to television, the chief reason being the writing schedule for a television show proved debilitatingly stressful for the man. This first instance of Mr. Sorkin’s writing one of his characters to have writer’s block is perhaps a glance into that stress, where even the smallest window of being unable to write feels like a proto-eternity. The difference, of course, is that Dan is part of a writing team:
NEW Dialogue Motif: Tall grass
DAN: Talk me through this!
CASEY: Well, are you totally lost?
DAN: I’m totally lost, man. I’m in the tall grass, I’m in the weeds!
…
CASEY: Hey, look at me — we’ve won awards.
DAN: Ah, you’ve won awards.
CASEY: You’ve won awards.
DAN: I haven’t won awards.
CASEY: You’ve been nominated for awards.
DAN: It’s not the same.
CASEY: Sure it is.
DAN: That’s easy for you to say, you’ve won awards.
Okay… I guess it’s not as much of a team as I thought? They’ve apparently been in a position where writing awards have been awarded to only one of them instead of the two of them as a team, if this conversation is any indication. Well, let’s give it another try, Casey:
CASEY: What are you working on?
DAN: Red Wings–Flyers.
CASEY: Alright, let me see. (reads off computer) “The Flyers played the Red Wings in a hockey game last night and they won 4 to 3.”
DAN: You see?
CASEY: This is more serious than I thought.
Nah, I don’t buy it — that sentence sounds like he didn’t even try, it doesn’t scream “writer’s block” to me. I suppose my writing process is different from theirs, though, so I won’t keep a bull pup.
ISAAC: ‘Morning, gentlemen.
“Where? Oh, you meant us.”
JEREMY: (V.O.) Isaac Jaffee is the Managing Editor of Sports Night. He’s led a pretty remarkable life. He started out as a stringer for the Atlanta Journal, won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Gemini missions, and retired as London Bureau Chief for CNN — but his passion has always been sports. Three years ago, when Luther Sachs bought Continental Corp and announced that he was starting a cable sports division, Isaac came out of retirement.
Oh, okay, thanks for the sudden backstory drop! I suppose this sort of dump is one of the advantages of the epistolary format, since it’s hard to conceive of a more “natural” way to spread out this kind of information across multiple episodes. At the same time, though, I feel like there could have been something made of someone conversing the information out of the man himself at some point. Beggars can’t be chosers, though.
NEW Sorkin Name: Chad
ISAAC: My 16-year-old daughter is dating a Republican in her class named Chad.
DANA: Chad’s a 16-year-old Republican?
ISAAC: That’s right.
DANA: I didn’t know 16-year-olds had party affiliations.
Strictly speaking, they don’t — and thank goodness they don’t, otherwise the US Communist Party would be triple its current size.
ISAAC: Chad was just elected president of the Connecticut Young Black Republican Caucus. He has a 3.9 GPA, he is co-captain of the lacrosse team, he plays the French horn, and does volunteer work at a crisis hotline.
DANA: Sounds wonderful.
I don’t know, he sounds really White to me — are we sure Chad is Black?
ISAAC: Dana, did you hear me? He’s a Republican!
Case in point!
DANA: Lot of folks are running in that direction these days, Isaac.
“I even heard there’s this one guy who wrote a pilot script but can’t get it aired because — wait, I’m not supposed to know about that.”
ISAAC: Yeah? Well, I don’t want them sniffing around my women.
Excuse me? Your women? Must you be that possessive of your daughter?
NEW Dialogue Motif: Father’s dungeon for daughters
DANA: What are you going to do?
ISAAC: What any reasonable man would do — I’m calling a building contractor and installing a dungeon.
(DANA laughs)
Gotta laugh so you don’t cry, I guess…
NATALIE: Kelly Kirkpatrick just called in from Kansas City. She was scanning and she picked up a police report…
I’m sorry, she was doing what now? What is a sports reporter doing trolling police scanners? Is that what she does when she’s bored or something? Or was she just expecting to hear another report of Chris Patrick raping someone?
NEW Sorkin Name: Russell
NATALIE: He was a pitcher with the old Kansas City Monarchs.
ISAAC: Archibald Russell?
NATALIE: Yep.
ISAAC: Oh, good lord.
DANA: What?
ISAAC: Archibald Russell was A.K. — I knew him as A.K.
That’s understandable — ‘Archibald’ is quite the White name for a Black athlete to bear.
CASEY: You know him?
ISAAC: Sure, I know him — sweetest man in the world, terrific ball player. Nobody noticed him because he played on the same team as Gibson and Jackie.
In case you were wondering — yes, he was referring to that Jackie. Jackie Robinson indeed played for the Kansas City Monarchs before being called up to the MLB. The reference to ‘Gibson’, however, is a goof — catcher and slugger Josh Gibson never played for the Monarchs, instead playing primarily for the Homestead Grays and the nearby Pittsburgh Crawfords, a timezone away from Kansas City. Also, for what it’s worth, the name Archibald Russell is made up (hence presumably why it sounds so fucking White).
(JEREMY enters meeting late)
ISAAC: Dana, do the story, would you? Somewhere up front?
DANA: Yeah — Jeremy, put together something on an old Negro league pitcher named Archibald Russell.
NATALIE: He’s at Mercy Hospital in Kansas City.
Hold on…
So… are we to believe he’s being treated at a children’s hospital?
JEREMY: Yeah, it’s no problem, but I don’t know if we can fit it anywhere up front.
DANA: Sure, we can.
JEREMY: We’ve got four top 25 games, plus we’ll probably have some word on Tyson, and we’re gonna want to put the Lakers-Knicks in the first ten.
DANA: We’ll do it anyway.
Abort, Jeremy, abort!
JEREMY: Well, I’m just saying, is there really room for a story with at best local interest in Kansas City maybe — (DAN stops him)
You like the taste of your toe jam, buddy?
NEW Dialogue Motif: The way it was meant to be played
CASEY: Archibald “A.K.” Russell is probably not a name you’re familiar with, unless you were lucky enough to watch the Kansas City Monarchs play baseball the way it was meant to be played.
Yep — the Monarchs played baseball so well they had more players poached by the MLB than any other Negro league team. A.K. probably started to feel left out at some point!
JEREMY: (V.O.) And then Kim came in with The Note.
…
DANA: You got the graphic locked in?
WILL: Yeah.
DANA: Show it to me, please.
(preview screen shows graphic: Archibald “A.K.” Russell 1917-1998)
… This is supposed to be a comedy show, no? Oh, that’s right, we have Aaron Sorkin writing, never mind.
CASEY: Elliot, are you telling me the ice cleared, the goalies came out of the net, and they just started going after each other?
ELLIOT: Yeah — took their gloves off and everything.
…
KIM: Technically, it’s just one glove.
CASEY: How is it one glove?
KIM: Goalies wear one glove and one catcher’s mitt.
ELLIOT: It’s a first baseman’s mitt.
KIM: Catchers!
ELLIOT: First!
Had to look this up because I have zero interest in hockey — Mr. Sorkin appears to be working off outdated information for this exchange. The “trapper” or “catch glove” goalies wear was originally modelled after a baseball glove, but has since evolved into something markedly distinct. Note, however, that it’s still referred to as a glove. To be fair, though, hockey players have historically been slow to adapt to new regulations on equipment — just look at the history on helmets in hockey. (shudders)
NEW Dialogue Motif: Tell ‘em X => “X”
CASEY: Would you please tell Dana her hair looks good?
KIM/ELLIOT: Your hair looks good.
“Looks fantastic, always has — get out.”foreshadowing detected
JEREMY: (V.O) Dana Whitaker is the executive producer of Sports Night, a great accomplishment for a woman her age. She got her love of sports from her father and six brothers, one of whom plays for the Denver Broncos. She got her education from a series of exclusive all-girl schools that her mother insisted she attend so that she wouldn’t grow up to be like her father and six brothers. The result is an irresistable combination of brilliance inside the office and something a little less than brilliance anywhere outside of it.
Hoo boy — you’re lucky Dana doesn’t screen your mail like you screened Natalie’s.
DANA: Gordon’s taking me to Gracie Mansion tonight for dinner with the mayor.
CASEY: Exactly what consequence would befall you if the mayor is displeased with your hair?
DANA: You don’t think he’s gonna like my hair?
Swing and a miss, Dana.
DANA: I think you’re having some Gordon issues.
CASEY: I’m not having Gordon issues.
DANA: You are.
CASEY: I’m not.
DANA: Little issues.
CASEY: I’m really not.
You know, for once, it appears Casey actually doesn’t care here. That would be a refreshing change of pace, if that’s the case.
DANA: Do you feel inferior because he’s a lawyer?
CASEY: I don’t feel inferior — and if I felt inferior, it wouldn’t be because he’s a lawyer.
DANA: Would it be because of his obvious physical prowess?
CASEY: … I really couldn’t comment on his prowess.
Coward.
DANA: Though God knows I could.
Geez, keep it in your pants, Dana!
DANA: You have an envy of postgraduate degrees, always have.
CASEY: Do you have a sense of exactly what day you turned into a lunatic woman?
What the hell?! Are you looking to get fired?
CASEY: By the way — read in the paper this morning about Sammy Galino.
DANA: You can’t mention that.
CASEY: Really?
DANA: No, seriously — Casey! When Gordon gets here, you can’t make fun of the Sammy Galino thing.
CASEY: I think I can.
(sigh) So much for Casey’s not caring…
DANA: Casey, he and his team worked for four and a half years to build a case against Galino. This would have been a huge blow to organized crime in Brooklyn and in the whole city. They worked 18-hour days, they wanted this, there is no comedy here!
The T.V. listing would beg to differ, Dana.
CASEY: Sure, there is.
DANA: What?
CASEY: He lost!
Case in point.
NEW Dialogue Motif: Southern District™
DANA: Please don’t call him Deputy Gordon.
CASEY: He hasn’t made deputy?
DANA: He is the Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern district…
Yes, this is a repeating dialogue motif — in this instance it’s used correctly as it’s referring to the Southern District of New York (the U.S. Department of Justice, it turns out, has multiple districts for the city of New York alone). Future instances, however… well, we’ll see.
ELLIOT: How’s the writer’s block?
DAN: You’re gonna need to get someone to fix my computer.
KIM: What’s wrong with it?
DAN: It’s in several pieces on the floor.
Sounds to me like you accidentally upgraded to Windows 11, Dan.
JEREMY: (V.O.) There’s nothing that Dan likes more than writing…
The author avatar continues — I think it’s fair to say what’s said of Dan here can also be said of Mr. Sorkin.
NEW Non-Verbal Signature: Drink thrown in face
DAN: And I want to ask for your patience and support during this period.
(NATALIE throws a cup of water in DAN’s face)
DAN: … Okay — why did that happen?
NATALIE: Shock therapy.
DAN: Shock therapy.
…
NATALIE: That was step one. There’s not going to be any more water.
DAN: What’s step two?
(NATALIE throws another cup of water in DAN’s face)
CASEY: Do you think the mayor’s going to chew you out for so spectacularly blundering the case?
GORDON: I don’t actually work for the mayor, I work for the U.S. Department of Justice.
CASEY: And a hell of a year you guys have been having.
I could not for the life of me find anything that indicated the USDOJ was having a year from hell in 1998 like Casey implies here. The closest thing I could find was that the antitrust case against Microsoft was first filed that May, but the case was still in the fact-finding phase at the time this episode aired, so I doubt that was the intended reference.
GORDON: You know, Casey… I won’t deny this hasn’t been my finest hour, but there’s really nothing you can say that’s going to rattle me. I’m just happy to be here, happy to be talking to you, happy to be having sex with Dana every night.
CASEY: You know… (pause for laughs)
Goddamnit, the laugh track — again, we have a case where the rhythm of language is compromised to make room for unnecessary disembodied voices.
CASEY: … [I] was wondering what the heck a fellow has to do to get thrown in jail on your watch.
GORDON: How about I run you through an IRS audit and we find out?
“They have these computers files…“callback detected
GORDON: Is that your name up on a Monday Night Football office pool?
CASEY: … Yeah.
GORDON: Are you familiar with Federal Section Code 4 of the RICO Act?
You’re gonna have to rephrase the question in a way that actually makes sense, Gordon.
GORDON: … why don’t you go write your television show and leave the smarty-boy remarks to those of us with postgraduate degrees?
Once again, it appears to be implied that Dana directs Gordon how to push Casey’s buttons when they interact — no way he knows to bring up postgraduate degrees otherwise. How does that make you feel, Gordon?
CASEY: Gordon is a more formidable foe than I suspected.
ISAAC: Yeah, well, my daughter’s dating a Republican.
All in all, Casey, I think Isaac’s problem is bigger than yours.
CASEY: You gotta relax — it’ll pass.
DAN: You had to write my script for me tonight.
CASEY: Well, you’ve had to write for me before.
You’ve both had to write for each other before, yet the writing awards were given to Casey individually instead of to Casey and Dan as a team? What gives?
CASEY: Just take however long you need, sip your coffee, and relax.
DAN: Yeah. (starts sipping his coffee)
(NATALIE comes up from behind and blasts a bullhorn, prompting DAN to spit out his coffee)
NATALIE: Did it work?
The show’s already written, Nat, you’re kinda late to the party.
DAN: Natalie, I don’t have the hiccups. Writer’s block doesn’t go away just by —
(NATALIE throws another cup of water in DAN’s face; CASEY starts laughing loudly)
Really, Casey? You’re gonna laugh at your partner’s pain here? Some writing team this is…
CASEY: That’s eleven third-period goals in three games and that would be a record except for what, Dan?
DAN: The Montréal Canadiens.
CASEY: The Montréal Canadiens of 1973, les habitants — thirteen third-period goals in three games.
More language porn used to disguise the fact that that is an absolutely ridiculous statistic to even have on hand…
DANA: I’m still looking for the chyron on two.
WILL: It’s on four.
CHRIS: It’s on two.
WILL: It’s on four.
KIM: We got a chyron on two?
DANA: Mushmouse and Punkin’ Puss are looking for it.
Had to look this up because I’m a whippersnapper: Punkin’ Puss & Mushmouse is a Hanna-Barbera cartoon from 1964-66 that has been described as a hillbilly equivalent to Tom and Jerry. Understandable that it didn’t last as long, I suppose…
NATALIE: On page 66, halfway down in the NFL injury report, it says, “Collins is expected to miss practice this week, the result of a bulging disk.”
DAN: Yeah?
NATALIE: There’s a typo on the teleprompter. They left out the S.
CASEY: “Collins is expected to be sidelined a week to ten days with a bulging di—” uh oh!
DAN: Ooh, that’s a big 10-4.
CASEY: My next line in the script was, “Let’s go to the videotape.”
NATALIE: We might have gotten some phone calls.
You probably would have picked up a few share points, though!foreshadowing detected
JEREMY: (V.O.) You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t said anything about Natalie Hurley in this letter. I’m sure you were reading in the papers about the incident in the locker room. Things have calmed down here considerably since then. I fell asleep once while making her dinner, and that’s a whole other story, but since that night, it seems like things have been kind of awkward between us.
Awkward? You? Whatever gave you that idea?
JEREMY: What’s going on?
CASEY: Lola Falana over here got us thrown out of the bar.
Eh… she’s too White for you to be calling her Lola Falana, Casey.
NEW Dialogue Motif: Barney Fife insult
DANA: What, is there a law against dancing now?
…
CASEY: There’s a law against shooting somebody and dumping the body at Bayside, but you wouldn’t think so listening to Barney Fife.
Good lord, Casey — you’re lucky Dana is too drunk to realize you just insulted Gordon like that.
NATALIE: I’m going to do something now, and I don’t want it to startle you.
JEREMY: Are you going to throw water at me?
NATALIE: No. (kisses JEREMY)
Might as well have…
NATALIE: No big deal, just something we did.
Um… okay? Is that your way of chickening out if he responds negatively?
NATALIE: (hands JEREMY something) Stamps.
Well, they sure did materialize this time!
JEREMY: (V.O.) Dan finally got over his writer’s block. He met Stacy Kerr at the Smoking Dog — Stacy plays on the women’s professional beach volleyball tour.
Nope, I’m sorry — that woman does not look like a volleyball player, I call B.S. My mother used to be a volleyball coach, I know ‘em when I see ‘em.
JEREMY (V.O.) And in that moment, Dan was reminded once again why he wanted to write in the first place. It’s for the same reason anybody does anything — to impress women.
(heavy sigh) Good fucking god…
I know it’s more than likely intended as an underhanded Dead Poets Society reference, but even so I am very much put off by the conclusion here. For one, as an asexual myself, I can assure you nothing I do is intended to impress women — and I’m sure a good deal of gay men and straight women will tell you the same thing if you asked them. For two, I’d be extremely surprised if impressing women was the main driver for Mr. Sorkin’s writing practice — and we do have to explore that implication, since Dan has so far been serving as an author avatar in this matter. Mr. Sorkin’s troublesome dating history notwithstanding, the man’s dedication to language speaks to me more as a self-fulfillment endeavor than as a literary equivalent of pheromone spreading. We’ve already had the questionable treatment of the concept of male homosexuality earlier in the episode, so it’s a little hard not to connect the dots and reveal a certain shortsightedness on the subject. I don’t think we can really blame that on the co-writer for this episode, either — David Wolpert’s only writing credit prior to Sports Night is for Ellen, and, well… I hope I don’t have to tell you why that means we can’t blame him.
Well, aside from that, what do we think of this episode? It’s, uh… serviceable, I guess? As intriguing as the epistolary framing is, it does make for some awkward pacing, with moments of massive exposition dumping coupled with sudden-onset plotline denouement. The tonal inconsistency is also quite jarring for this episode, with the deep moment of mourning a athlete’s death coupled with moments of the laugh track coming in with a vengeance. I suppose it’s fair to call this a “bridge” episode, but to be honest I’m not entirely sure where the bridge is going at the moment. We’ll have to see what happens in the next episode, I guess.
If you think what you read was worth reading, then you might find it worth it to subscribe so that you’ll be the first to read what comes after it. Coming up next: tò télos ho khrónos apaiteî.
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