Entry 035 - Sports Night 204 (Louise Revisited)
In which the epistolary framing is apparently so last year
SERIES: Sports Night
EPISODE NUMBER: 204
TITLE: Louise Revisited
PREMIERE: 26 Oct 1999
WRITING CREDITS: Miriam Kazadin and Aaron Sorkin (teleplay), Miriam Kazadin (story)
DIRECTOR: Mark Buckland
DRAFT SCRIPT: HTML
I’m getting the distinct feeling that the prefacing production note in the draft script for last entry would have been considerably more apt for this episode of television than the episode for which it was written. Not only is the draft script for this entry labelled as the “REVISED UPDATED FINAL DRAFT” (I fucking swear, I will delete the word ‘final’ from the dictionary if I have to), even between this draft and episode there were major additional changes.
To wit: as the episode name would suggest, the episode as originally written receives a similar epistolary framing as with its season one progenitor, only with Natalie as the letter writer rather than Jeremy. That framing is completely absent from the final episode, which as a result led to a number of scenes’ being rearranged or removed entirely.
As for the episode itself… (sigh) let’s just get into it.
DAN: You know what this week’s internet poll question is?
CASEY: “Who’s cooler, Dan or Casey?”
Already it’s time to talk re-org: this scene and the next we see for the cold open were originally the first two scenes of Act II in the draft script. Its promotion to the cold open came at the cost of a how-did-we-get-here teaser shepherded by the cut epistolary voiceover which foreshadowed a non-linear timeline which got lost as part of the Great Rearrange™.
DAN: You know who’s winning?
CASEY: Well, I’m assuming you are.
DAN: No.
CASEY: I am?
…
DAN: You’re winning, a hundred and fifty three to six.
Really? Have things changed that much since thirteen months ago when Casey was struggling to be considered cool in the first place?
DAN: How are you rigging it?
Aight, I see Dan is just as skeptical.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Here’s the thing
Running count: 16
DAN: Did you stay up all night voting for yourself?
CASEY: Yeah, like I don’t have anything better to do than beat your ass in an internet poll.
DAN: Here’s the thing about you — it’s not you want to win so bad…
“It’s how brazenly bad you are at it.”
DAN: … it’s that you won’t admit you want to win.
Ah, shoot, wrong show, my bad.
CASEY: Danny… if you like, I’ll withdraw my name from the competition.
(beep) Sarcasm Self Test complete! (beep)
DAN: I’m gonna work now.
CASEY: As will I.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Walk with me
Running count: 5
CASEY: Walk with me.
JEREMY: Walk with you?
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Walk with me
Running count: 6
CASEY: Walk with me.
JEREMY: Okay.
CASEY: Casually.
JEREMY: Casually.
CASEY: So it doesn’t look like we’re up to something.
JEREMY: What are we up to?
CASEY: Nothing.
JEREMY: (beat) What kind of compromising situation [are you about to ask me —]
CASEY: [Shh, shh, shh, shh…]
Yeah, he kinda telegraphed that, didn’t he?
CASEY: I was up all night voting. At first I kept returning to the home page and going back, then I figured out I could hold down the return key and hit F12 for refresh, but even that was taking too long.
Dang, he’s basically doing the same thing I did back in high school when I figured out how to rig freerice.com to submit over and over again — except in my case, I was able to write a macro to do everything for me.
NEW Plot Bunny: Crazy glue prank
CASEY: Jeremy, your first week here, Dan crazy-glued all your things to your desk.
JEREMY: Yes.
CASEY: He made you go look for the ignition keys to the cameras.
“He put olives in your coat pockets.”foreshadowing detected
RETURNING Dialogue Motif: What men do™
Previous instance: Sports Night 116
CASEY: This is what men do, Jeremy.
JEREMY: (pause) Alright, I’ll tell you what’s gonna happen. We’re gonna telnet into the network mainframe and FTP a Perl script right through a DK trapdoor into the CGI server.
CASEY: I like the sound of that…
I personally know what all those technical terms are except for “DK trapdoor”, which as far as I can tell is just made up. Translated into closer-to-human terms: Jeremy is going to log onto the server hosting the website using a security exploit and add a script to the website which will run automatically in the background.
JEREMY: Ignition keys to the cameras? We’ll see who has the last laugh.
Oh, like it will ever be a contest for the last laugh when Joshua Malina is involved…
NATALIE: Hello.
JEREMY: Ah!
NATALIE: Did I scare you?
JEREMY: No.
NATALIE: Why did you yell?
JEREMY: I meant to say ‘hi’.
NATALIE: What happened?
JEREMY: I misspoke.
Someone help Jeremy up, he’s most definitely not good on his feet.
NATALIE: Since when have you been stealing my mail?
Oh, listen, sister, you’re behind the curve if you’re just now finding out Jeremy has been intercepting your correspondence. Have you changed your password yet?
DAN: Casey got another hundred and fifty thousand votes overnight on the internet poll.
CASEY: It’s true.
…
DAN: That’s a Rose Bowl and a half full of people.
The capacity for the Rose Bowl stadium has changed over the years — the official count as of this writing is 89,702 seats, but by 1997 the maximum seating capacity was 104,091. That number was likely what Dan had in mind with that verbal estimation, though it should be noted the capacity had actually shrank after the 1998 Rose Bowl game to fewer than 100,000.
DANA: Before I forget, we’re doing the 8 o’clock rundown at 7:30.
ELLIOT: 7:30?
DANA: Yes, I have a dinner engagement at 8 and so we’ll do the 8 o’clock rundown at 7:30.
ELLIOT: Should we call it the 7:30 rundown?
DANA: Elliot —
ELLIOT: I mean on the paperwork.
DANA: On the paperwork, you should call it the 8 o’clock rundown. All that’s happening is we’re doing it at 7:30.
JEREMY: Like the Saturday Evening Post.
DANA: Yes.
JEREMY: Which for a time came out on Sundays.
Nowaways the Saturday Evening Post comes out on the first of the month roughly every other month, so it’s severely misnamed at this point!
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Here we go
Running count: 3
DANA: Here we go.
ELLIOT: Word is San Diego and Seattle are ready to make a deal…
…
DANA: Sam?
SAM: Yes?
DANA: Is our meeting disturbing you?
SAM: I’m sorry?
DANA: I was wondering if our meeting was disturbing you.
SAM: A little bit, but I’ve been through worse.
DANA: It’s interesting you can make that determination, seeing as how you’ve been paying no attention whatsoever. How is it that you can do that?
SAM: Well, I’m just that good, I suppose.
DANA: Look —
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Shove it up your ass
Running count: 2
SAM: Lead with the Packers, move the Chargers and the Seahawks to the tease, get B-roll on the Patriots. We can do better than LeFlourier in In Focus. The 8 o’clock rundown is at 7:30, and if Dan mentions the internet poll one more time, I’m gonna cram a motherboard up his butt.
“Technically I outrank him, so I can do that.”foreshadowing detected
DAN: Think I could take him?
CASEY: No.
DAN: Really?
CASEY: Yeah.
DAN: I think I could take him.
CASEY: Yeah, to lunch, maybe.
CASEY: Dinner engagement?
…
DANA: He was a guy from my Spanish club.
CASEY: Oh, what’s his name?
DANA: You’re not gonna believe it.
CASEY: Well, try me.
DANA: Cab Calloway.
CASEY: The bandleader?
DANA: No.
CASEY: A different one?
DANA: Yes.
CASEY: A different guy named Cab Calloway is who you’re going out with tonight?
DANA: Having dinner with.
CASEY: Cab Calloway.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Let me tell you something
Running count: 10
DANA: Let me tell you something, we had a hell of a time finding him a Spanish name.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: I would think/imagine
Running count: 3
CASEY: Yeah, I would imagine.
That’s crap — the name ‘Cab’, short for ‘Cabell’, actually has a cognate in the Spanish word cabello, meaning ‘bald’. I suppose their high school years were before the times of resources like behindthename.com, though, so I shouldn’t complain.
DANA: What about you?
CASEY: What about me?
DANA: Are you ever gonna ask anyone out?
CASEY: Oh, I’ve got a call in to Lena Horne.
For those who had to look it up like I did: Lena Horne was a professional singer and dancer who among her many achievements made her film debut as a dancer in the musical short film Cab Calloway’s Jitterbug Party. She was 82 years old at the time of this episode, so in case in flew over your head: yes, Casey is joking.
DANA: I gotta go.
Cut after this moment is an apropos line from the lost epistolary voiceover:
DRAFT NATALIE: (V.O.) And so Casey found himself, as Casey so often does, confused. He wanted to talk to Dan, but Dan was in editing. He wanted to talk to Isaac, but Isaac was in budget meetings. He wanted to talk to me or to Jeremy, but Jeremy and I were fighting about the letter you sent me. With that in mind, he found himself at an office door he never thought he’d be knocking on.
This voiceover prefaces an entire scene which got cut wherein Casey lets himself into Sam’s office. In that scene…
Hey, look at that, another opportunity — impromptu solo table read!
This scene adds basically nothing to the story, so I don’t mind its being lost — even though it does mean a verbal tic’s being denied another click. In its place, a scene buried deeper in Act II as originally written was moved up:
RETURNING Verbal Tic: How ya doin’
Running count: 23
DAN: How ya doin’?
SAM: We’re up four to seven tenths in all the key demos, adult males 18 to 49.
DAN: I was just shooting the breeze.
Strange rewrite at the top of this scene: as originally written in the draft, Dan is the one to quote the ratings numbers in an attempt to get the attention of an again-unresponsive Sam. This rewrite makes sense, I would argue, since it enforces how job-focused Sam is compared with the interpersonal focus Dan is attempting. To wit:
DAN: You do you job good, no doubt about it, people here respect you, but you don’t seem to be making an effort to have any fun.
Abort, Dan.
DAN: We’re fun people — Dana, Natalie, Jeremy… I’m nothing but fun. For instance, I could say something funny and make you laugh.
I said abort!
DAN: Or it wouldn’t even have to be funny. It could be serious, or personal. See what I’m saying?
SAM: I’ve noticed you people have an ability to chatter at someone with energy and enthusiasm regardless of whether they appear interested or not.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Dan.
Side note — Josh appeared to drop part of one of his lines in the above sequence: “I could say something funny and make you laugh, and maybe you’d join in with something funny of your own.” I sincerely hope that was only cut for time, because its absence loses the aspect of Dan’s aiming to have Sam contribute to the camaraderie of the Sports Night staff rather than just experience it.
DAN: And that’s not just on camera.
Another cut here: as part of Dan’s pause expecting a reaction from Sam, he awkwardly notes how he didn’t even get a smile. Time was in short supply, I trust?
NEW Dialogue Motif: This isn’t X camp
SAM: … there’s a preconception when I show up that I’m going to be an obnoxious, snivelling philistine, or a suit, or someone’s cousin. That’s what you thought when you heard I was coming, right?
DAN: Yes, but I —
SAM: But this isn’t TV camp — I come in, I do my job, I do it better than anybody else, and I get out.
That sounds… precisely like TV camp, Sam — you come in for only a limited period with no self-investment in the long term. If this truly weren’t TV camp, you’d be looking to embed yourself more thoroughly rather than acting like a fucking contractor. (cough) Keep it to yourself, Jesse…
DAN: Hey, look, I may have prejudged you and that was wrong and I hear that, but at least I turned around, man. You’re, like, staying where you are. I’m saying we think you’re a good guy. We like you, we think you’d like us if you got to know us — but if you wanna do your thing and live in a cave, that’s cool too. I won’t bother you anymore… at least, I won’t bother you anymore tonight — tomorrow, who knows?
It never knows, Dan.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: I would think/imagine
Running count: 4
NATALIE: How was Cab Calloway?
DANA: He was good.
NATALIE: (singing) Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho…
DANA: He gets that a lot.
NATALIE: I would think.
And yet you did it anyway, Nat? Have some respect for the guy, would you?
NEW Plot Bunny: Dropped panties
DANA: I took off my panties.
…
NATALIE: You took off your panties at dinner?
DANA: Yes.
NATALIE: At the table?
DANA: Under the table.
NATALIE: Could people see you?
DANA: Not unless they were under the table.
I would think you’d want to check first to make sure before doing that…
DANA: The thing is, I’m not exactly sure why. I think it had something to do with Sam Donovan and not having the kind of control over the show I’m used to; I think it had something to do with Cab Calloway [sic] being a staggeringly boring dinner companion; but mostly… I’d heard about other people doing it.
NATALIE: What other people?
DANA: Other people.
Stunning specificity, sister.
DANA: In magazines.
NATALIE: What magazines?
DANA: Good magazines — and at the movies.
NATALIE: What movies?
DANA: Movies, they do it — at restaurants, in limousines.
NATALIE: Which restaurants —
DANA: Don’t ask what restaurants and limousines.
Once again, Natalie is perhaps accidentally being coded as low-key bisexual, this time through verbally chasing after panty droppers. She’s lucky Jeremy doesn’t eavesdrop on her non-written communication.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: How ya doin’
Running count: 24
DANA: How ya doin’?
CASEY: Fine.
DANA: Good.
…
CASEY: Hey, I ran your dating plan by Sam Donovan and he thinks you’re insane.
DANA: He had a conversation with you?
CASEY: Eh, no, but I could tell from his demeanor.
Since the scene earlier got cut, we have no way to validate what Casey claims here about his conversation with Sam — which is just as well, since the scene itself consists of Sam’s not giving two shits about Casey’s dating plan woes.
CASEY: A hundred and seventy-nine penalty minutes.
NATALIE: In a sixty minute game.
CASEY: That’s crazy.
NATALIE: Not as crazy as Dana [sic] coming back from dinner without her panties.
CASEY: What?
NATALIE: (beat) Hmm?
You just can’t keep your damn mouth shut, can you, Nat?
CASEY: I’m just gonna let this one roll right over me.
NATALIE: I think that’s a good [plan.]
CASEY: [Let it] roll right over me.
NATALIE: Yes.
CASEY: Plus, there’s a lot going on — I have a show in an hour and I’m supposed to be dating other women for six months and Dana came back without her panties and that’s the part I’m gonna let roll right over me.
DAN: If you’re from Cleveland, you may want to turn down the volume on your set for a moment.
CASEY: Coach Hindle threw gasoline on his simmering quarterback controversy today in College Station when he sang the praises of his sophomore sensation after practice.
This sequence surrounding football in Cleveland? Not in the draft script! The news item along with the rather muted control room action surrounding it was added in exchange for the following sequence getting shortened:
DAN: The win was the third in a row for the Philadelphia Flyers, who gave the Mighty Ducks plenty to cry about with, count ‘em, one hundred and seventy-nine penalty minutes.
CASEY: In the meantime, for more on the Flyers and the Ducks, we take you to Jack Jankowicz in Anaheim.
NATALIE: It’s Connie.
CASEY: Forgive me, Connie Morton in Anaheim.
As originally written, Casey initially responds to Dan’s citation of penalty minutes with the following:
DRAFT CASEY: Those of you wondering how a hockey team can rack up 179 penalty minutes in a 60 minute game, your curiosity is both well-founded and commendable. For the answer, feel free to write to me or Dan at www-dot-SportsNight-dot-com, and we will satisfy your quest for knowledge.
I suppose that was cut for the same reason the web address verbally given in episode 111 was made deliberately nonsensical? For what’s it worth: when I checked, it appeared www.sportsnight.com is not a taken web address, and it would seem Disney didn’t want to bother splurging on the address even back then.
CHRIS: Five-forty back.
DANA: Dan, Casey, that’s five minutes and forty seconds, not five minutes and fifty seconds, not five minutes and forty-one seconds, but rather —
CASEY: Five minutes and forty seconds.
DANA: Yeah.
CASEY: Cracked your code.
You know, Dana, if you feel like you’re losing control of the show, maybe don’t take it out on your casters like that? That’s just mean.
CASEY: … I can’t take it.
DAN: What happened?
CASEY: I can’t tell you.
…
DAN: Does it have anything to do with you [sic] being a conniving, scheming, stop-at-nothing, claw-your-way-to-the-top, cheats-at-solitaire, you know, guy?
CASEY: What?
DAN: I think you know [what I’m talking —]
CASEY: [Hey, I have] a real thing here.
Do you suppose Sam would care more about morale if he witnessed the show’s casters’ being on completely different wavelengths during the same conversation?
DAN: There are rules prohibiting cheating, you know what they’re called?
CASEY: They’re called rules.
DAN: They’re called rules.
Not guidelines?foreshadowing detected
RETURNING Dialogue Motif: Perfectly fair question
Previous instances: Sports Night 105, 115
JEREMY: You’re gonna write another letter to my sister.
NATALIE: Yes.
JEREMY: I have absolutely no problem with that.
NATALIE: I’m glad, sweetie.
JEREMY: No problem, no way, no how.
NATALIE: Good.
JEREMY: Crossing that sacred territory into family members.
NATALIE: I cross it with gusto.
JEREMY: Cross away, for I have no problem with this, as you are my girlfriend and she is my sister.
NATALIE: Then why are you talking like Theodoric of York?
JEREMY: That’s a perfectly fair question.
Because you’re a wild and crazy guy, that’s why.
DANA: Move. I need to talk to Natalie.
JEREMY: Why can’t you talk to Natalie from [right over —]
DANA: [I need] to talk to her privately.
JEREMY: Ah, no problem — I’ll just stand over there for five minutes and forty seconds and think about what my life was like before I met any of you.
Good lord, Jeremy, are you looking to get fired?
DANA: Does Casey know?
NATALIE: No.
DANA: You sure?
NATALIE: Yes.
Natalie, please…
NATALIE: Dana?
DANA: Yeah?
NATALIE: Casey knows.
DANA: Oh, Natalie…
NATALIE: I accidentally told him.
Should have just led with that, Nat — no need to give Dana a false sense of hope.
DAN: Tell me for real — is this ‘cause I crazy-glued Jeremy’s stuff to his desk?
Oh, so he’s actually aware that his actions could have consequences! Should have thought of that before pulling a prank on a character played by Joshua Malina!
CASEY: You and I are about to have an abrupt conversation.
Oh, dear…
DANA: Natalie, remind me to give you a beating in the morning.
JEREMY: I’ll do it.
Ayo?
RETURNING Verbal Tic: You think?
Running count: 7
DANA: It’s easy to explain.
CASEY: Really?
DANA: Actually, it’s hard to explain.
CASEY: You think?
There’s evidence to suggest she doesn’t, to be honest.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Let me tell you something
Running count: 11
DANA: I’ve always taken people’s word for it that certain things were dirty and certain things weren’t. I have always taken people’s word for it — and I’m a grown woman, and at some point you want to decide for yourself, is the world’s gonna fall down if I do this or if maybe everyone should mind their own business. Let me tell you something, Casey, the world didn’t fall down. In fact, truth be told, I liked it.
CASEY: Dana —
DANA: And that’s all I’m going to say about it.
CASEY: Dana —
DANA: So think what you will, but that’s all I’m gonna say about it.
It’s at this point in the publicly-available draft script that we have the notation “[two pages missing]”, so we have no idea how much of the following sequence was changed from originally written:
CASEY: Do you think I think you [sic] taking your panties off is a bad idea?
DANA: Yeah, but —
CASEY: I support the idea. I’m in favor of it, believe me.
DANA: Casey —
CASEY: I am the president of Dana should get undressed.
DANA: Thank you.
CASEY: I don’t think you should do it in a restaurant, but wh-what am I talking about? Go ahead, do it in a restaurant. I’m just saying I wish you were doing it with me, instead of Guillermo from your Spanish club. I-I wish I didn’t have to wait through this heart-stoppingly frustrating six-month waiting period before I even get to smell what perfume you’d wear on our first date. I wish it was me you were having dinner with tonight.
Aaaand she’s smiling for Casey’s monologue, which means she likes what she hears… except she still feels the need to cockblock herself further. How did people keep their patience with this subplot when it aired?
JEREMY: I’ve decided to become buddies with your father.
NATALIE: That’s not funny.
…
JEREMY: How’s that internet poll going, Dan?
DAN: Don’t think I’m not on to you, my friend.
JEREMY: I spent seven hours looking for the ignition keys.
DAN: Jeremy —
JEREMY: Today, I take care of all family business.
NATALIE: Jeremy —
JEREMY: Dear Hank…
This sequence here is a brilliant example of how television comedy can work without a laugh track, if you ask me — there’s a natural rhythm to it that contributes to the hilarity of the situation which would have been ruined by waits for disembodied voices.
DANA: Look in your top drawer.
CASEY: Is there an animal in there?
DANA: Why would there be an animal in there?
CASEY: ‘Cause last time, there was an animal in there.
Huh? When would there ever have been an animal in that desk drawer? And what sort of animal was it? So many questions unanswered by that line…
CASEY: I’ll keep these, if you don’t mind.
DANA: I don’t mind a bit.
And here in the draft script we have another notation “[page missing]”, obfuscating the following:
CASEY: Sam, everything’s cool, I’ve got her panties right here in my side pocket.
SAM: Okay. (CASEY walks away) Hi, Dana.
DANA: And as for you, you see, you don’t control my world. I happen to not be wearing any panties right now and if you had a thousand guesses, you couldn’t tell me where they were.
SAM: Casey’s side pocket.
DANA: (beat) Damnit.
Oh, like he wouldn’t have been able to guess that even if Casey hadn’t just told him…
DAN: Casey and I are just getting warmed up here in Rockefeller Center…
Here it is! I’ve been waiting for this moment! I first foreshadowed it 364 days ago and now it’s time!
In the entry to episode 106 then later the entry for episode 109, I mentioned that the Sports Night fandom ostensibly disagreed on where in New York the Sports Night newsroom resides. The reason I said that? For the longest time, the Wikipedia page for Sports Night stated that the in-universe show aired from the World Trade Center — this despite the multiple mentions in season one of Sixth Avenue in relation to the studio’s location. The citation for the incorrect location on the Wikipedia page even pointed to this episode, which makes the mistake even more questionable. The confusion apparently arose from inter-scene establishing shots of New York sometimes consisting of a shot of the World Trade Center. Nonetheless, this episode firmly establishes that the Sports Night studio resides in the Rockefeller Center — which is an interesting choice, considering Disney owns the show but NBC is a key tenant of Rockefeller.
As such, I edited the Wikipedia page to correct the given location. You’re welcome, America.foreshadowing detected
But now to review the episode itself: we have ourselves what I think the TV Tropes website would refer to as a classic case of Conflict Ball, and on multiple fronts. The Casey-Dana storyline continues to drag itself along its questionable path of conflict; a front of conflict opens up between Casey and Dan for no apparent reason, though that conflict arguably gains better context in subsequent episodes; and Jeremy decides it’s time for another conflict with Natalie for absolutely no fucking reason. The Sam Donovan subplot that was given considerable charge last episode gets rather thoroughly sidelined for this episode, which makes the taste of everything else all the more bitter. Something tells me Mr. Sorkin’s mind was perhaps elsewhere by this point… but we’ll see more in later entries on that subject.
For now, the subscribe button has your name on it if you squint hard enough, so I’d recommend just hitting it to save your eyes the strain. Coming up next: … time for a trust fall?
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