Entry 036 - Sports Night 205 (Kafelnikov)
In which Y2K can bite me
SERIES: Sports Night
EPISODE NUMBER: 205
TITLE: Kafelnikov
PREMIERE: 2 Nov 1999
WRITING CREDITS: Matt Tarses & Bill Wrubel
DIRECTOR: Robert Berlinger
Aight, well, I guess I have to address the elephant in the room here.
Yes, Mr. Sorkin is not credited for writing this episode. Yes, we’re going to go through this episode anyway. “Why?” you enquire. “I’m glad you asked!” I respond.
By many accounts, Mr. Sorkin ran his television writers’ rooms much like a dictator. The man himself even admitted it in a rather roundabout way that we’ll get into much later on. In the cases where he eschewed taking credit, while the credited writers certainly wrote initial drafts for the episode he would inevitably come in and at the very least make some changes of his own (if not rewrite entirely… but we’ll talk about that in a later entry). The reason I feel confident saying that? Even in this episode, there are Sorkinisms present to add to our tallies.
As such, this project will go through episodes of Sorkin television shows which Mr. Sorkin is not credited for writing. There will be one exception to this rule later on, but I’ll give that its due explanation when we get there. For now, let’s step through this episode.
NEW Plot Bunny: Rely on the love of an audience
DAN: The thing is, when you don’t have much of a family life growing up — that’s the wrong way of putting it. The things you need, that anyone needs — what happens is you become someone who relies on the love of three or four million total strangers watching you on television.
ABBY: What happens when they go away?
DAN: (beat) Well, you try to avoid that.
Gee, you’d think with how Dan relies on audience numbers he would have been less antagonistic toward the idea of a ratings consultant a month ago. At least he’s started being friendly toward Sam, so far…
RETURNING Sorkin Name: Abb(e)y
Previous instance: The West Wing (recurring)
NEW Sorkin Name: Jacobs
ABBY: Ah, I gotta go.
DAN: Really?
ABBY: Yeah, the guy I came with looks like he’s ready to go.
DAN: I’m Dan Rydell, by the way.
…
ABBY: Abby Jacobs — and this is my card. You should call me, Dan.
DAN: Yeah?
ABBY: Yeah. Call me.
Note that Dan gets a card rather than a number written on his hand. This action will have consequences™.
NEW Plot Bunny: Crossword help
DANA: “Menlo Park monogram”, three letters.
CASEY: T-A-E.
DANA: Thank you. Uh, five letters, “kindergarten adhesive”.
CASEY: Paste.
DANA: Thank you.
I had to label this plot bunny as a new one because the previous instance got cut: a throw-away segment in The American President where President Shepherd enlists Sidney’s help in solving a crossword while on Marine One. Still think I’m overinterpreting Sorkinisms for this episode?
CASEY: … if an outside observer were to happen into this bar — a loner, maybe — if this guy [saw us sitting —]
DANA: [The loner.]
CASEY: If this shivering loner were to look in this direction, he would assume the two of us are on a date.
DANA: He’d be wrong.
CASEY: Mnh-mnh — the loner’s a fairly bright guy who’s known for his smarts.
We talking John Nash or something?
DANA: The longer you wait, the longer you wait.
Another edition of Null Semantics Theatre in the can, folks!
JEREMY: I am victorious.
DANA: Excellent.
NATALIE: Jeremy fixed the K-Y thing.
JEREMY: Y2K.
Natalie is a complete horndog, exhibit #5327: I’d be willing to bet her insistence on refering to Y2K as “K-Y” is a not-so-subtle nod to the lubricant brand of that name.
DANA: Jeremy, the whole show runs on computers. Our entire organization runs on computers.
Good lord, way to date the episode — if someone said that today, the proper response would be something along the lines of, “uh, well, yeah, and the sky is blue on a sunny day, what’s your point?”
JEREMY: Tomorrow night at 6, I’ll recalibrate the computers to believe that it is January 1st, 2000, and you’ll see that we’re Y2K-compatible and that I am facing the future as the servant of no master.
Man, the Y2K craze must have been wild to have Jeremy speaking this effervescently on the matter…
DANA: “Give the slip”, five letters.
CASEY: Elude.
DANA: (beat) I finished the crossword.
Suuuuuuuuure, you did…
DAN: I talked to her all night.
CASEY: You talked to her for twenty minutes.
You got that deep into your life story in twenty minutes? Dan, my guy, read the signs!
(CASEY sits down to have his chair sink down to the ground)
DAVE: Sports Night’s at ready-one, we are live in thirty seconds.
DANA: Whoa, whoa, whoa.
DAVE: What?
DANA: I just want to make sure that’s not actually true.
NATALIE: No.
DANA: So there’s no way we’re broadcasting this preposterous exercise?
NATALIE: No.
ELLIOT: We’re just simulating this preposterous exercise.
Y’all aren’t really getting into the Spirit of the Hill™, are you?
NEW Dialogue Motif: Did you just call me baby?
JEREMY: Let’s do it, baby!
DANA: (beat) You weren’t just talking to me, right?
JEREMY: No, I was just saying in general.
Case in point.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Musical theatre appeal
Running count: 7
DAN: Those stories, plus — Luciano Pavarotti shocks the track world by running the 100 meters in six seconds, my mother hits the cycle, and Martina Hingis sings selections from “No, No, Nanette”.
I would be less shocked than the track world, evidently — good opera singers have very well-developed abdominal muscles from their training, they could easily slide into lower body-heavy sports.
DANA: So far, so good.
JEREMY: I’d say a little better than good, Dana — chyrons, over-the-shoulder, animation, sound, cameras, communications, and what’s this? The LC Wire being updated on my PowerBook.
Objection! PowerBooks were inherently immune to the Y2K problem! Mr. Sorkin would have known that, why did he leave that in?
DAN: She has a name.
CASEY: The girl at the bar?
DAN: The girl at the bar has a name.
…
DAN: So we can stop calling her ‘the girl in the bar’. She’s not, like, a girl who hangs out in bars, like a bar girl.
Not only that, she’s NOT A GIRL AT ALL, SHE’S A WOMAN! (devolves into coughing fit)
DAN: We talked for quite a while.
CASEY: Yeah, and then she went home with another guy.
DAN: The guy she came with?
CASEY: Yes.
DAN: She was with that guy, that was the guy she came with, you know, and then there was me.
CASEY: Then there was you?
DAN: There was.
“Did she never hear birds singing before then?”
CASEY: Zamfir, master of the pan flute, was 26 for 32 in passing…
“… and everyone agreed it was very, very cool.”
JEREMY: Graphics are up, my good friends. As sure as the sun sets in the west, as sure as there will always be an England, the graphics are up.
DANA: Natalie?
NATALIE: Yeah?
DANA: Way too much sugar for him lately.
You sure it’s that and not that he got into Natalie’s stash of herbs?
DAN: She gave me this.
CASEY: Her card.
DAN: The digits.
CASEY: So she’s a shrink.
DAN: (beat) Really?
CASEY: Yeah, she’s a headshrinker.
For those who have to look it up like I did: the reason “shrink” or “headshrinker” is used to denote a psychiatrist appears to be either because the practice of psychiatry was once viewed largely as the practice of reducing the size of people’s inflated egos, or because the field was once regarded in much the same light as the pseudoscience of phrenology. Etymologists disagree.
CASEY: Have you called her yet?
DAN: Yes.
CASEY: To make an appointment?
DAN: I called her to make a date.
CASEY: You sure?
DAN: Yes, I’m very sure.
…
CASEY: Where is it?
DAN: The date?
CASEY: Yeah.
DAN: Her office.
CASEY: (beat) Okay.
DAN: I’m sure she understood that meant I’m picking her up at her office.
CASEY: I’m sure. What time?
DAN: Seven — fifty.
CASEY: 7:50?
Dan’s willful ignorance here is… really quite something. He manages to spill his life story to a woman in the matter of twenty minutes, thinks nothing of the woman’s going away with another man while still giving him her card, then thinks nothing of the suspicious specificity of the time they scheduled for their “date”. Early last season we saw Dan take a swing at the concept of therapy, so I suppose it’s not entirely unexpected he has a blind spot there, but it’s still a rather awkward premise for the situation.
JEREMY: At the press of this button, the Y2K problem will officially cry uncle — and I’ll say, “Yeah? Who’s your daddy? I am! That’s right, say it, Jeremy’s your daddy.”
Tempting fate, anyone?foreshadowing detected
(JEREMY presses the button, all the monitors go to static)
Yep.
DANA: Okay, well, I’m just gonna run to the ATM, pick up some bottled water and canned goods, and I’ll be right back.
You get bottled water and canned goods from an ATM? Please tell me Ms. Huffman simply forgot the word “then” was written in the line.
DANA: You understand that, you know, in real life we’re doing a show at eleven o’clock.
JEREMY: That’s in four and a half hours, I’ll be done fixing this in five minutes.
That claim has about the same energy as whenever this one architectural software engineer I used to work with would claim it’d take four minutes to pair-program something, then you’d look at the clock and it was six hours later.
DAN: I do not need therapy.
Seriously? You’re still denying it?
NEW Dialogue Motif: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest reference
DAN: Don’t you think she’s wrong if she thinks that?
CASEY: Listen, McMurphy, if it were up to me, I’d let you and the big Indian out of the hospital…
“… but first I’m gonna have to smother you with a pillow.”foreshadowing detected
DAN: … I may not be a framed picture of mental health, but doctor girl’s got another thing coming if she thinks I’m gonna go lie on her couch and, you know, talk to her.
… Is… is that a rape threat? You’re really going off the deep end here, Dan, pull it back.
NATALIE: Casey?
DAN: Natalie.
NATALIE: Yeah?
DAN: I’m not crazy.
NATALIE: Yeah, right.
Deserved.
NATALIE: … Sam Donovan called from Detroit last night and said it was a good show.
Oh, yeah, there’s a count against this episode: Sam Donovan is completely absent. Is it perhaps possible this episode was written before the rating consultant arc was conceived? None of the rest of the episode seems to have any direct continuity with previous episodes in this season — aside from the reference to the dating plan in the cold open that feels tacked on — so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
DAN: Wait.
NATALIE: What?
DAN: He’s telling Casey it was a good show?
NATALIE: He was telling all of us it was a good show.
DAN: But you were telling Casey.
NATALIE: I was telling both of you.
DAN: You were looking at Casey.
NATALIE: I was looking at both of you.
DAN: You were looking at Casey longer.
Children, please — you’re both in the wrong. Natalie certainly didn’t make it clear she had shifted her audience from Casey to the room at large, but Dan, that doesn’t give you license to berate her about it. It’s a simple mistake, no need to blow it out of proportion.
NATALIE: Jeremy’s got it just about fixed, so it’ll just be —
(all the lights go out)
You see? Nat already has enough on her plate as it is.
RETURNING Verbal Tic: Here’s the thing
Running count: 17
DANA: You can try again another time, but you have to tell the computer that it’s not January 1st.
JEREMY: Yeah… here’s the thing.
DANA: No.
JEREMY: The thing is —
DANA: Please don’t say it.
JEREMY: I can’t get the computers back.
DANA: You can’t get the computers back.
JEREMY: No.
DANA: Why?
JEREMY: Do you see anything that runs on electricity working right now?
DANA: No.
JEREMY: Well?
DANA: You really think this is the best time to get snippy with me?
Mmm, I think it’s the perfect time to get snippy with you.
NEW Non-Verbal Signature: Walk into a closed door
JEREMY: Be back in a minute.
DANA: Fine.
(bump heard off-camera)
JEREMY: I’ve walked into a door.
Well, we’ll just have to take your word for it, won’t we?
NEW Sorkin Player: Mary Ostrow
Character: female psych patient
DAN: Hi.
WOMAN: What?
DAN: I said hi. I’m not here for an appointment, I’m just here socially.
WOMAN: Please don’t talk to me.
“I get enough talk from Ronnie.”
DAN: Is she ok?
ABBY: Who?
DAN: Her.
ABBY: She’s fine.
DAN: She didn’t look that good.
ABBY: She’s fine.
DAN: Really?
ABBY: Yeah.
DAN: I mean, I don’t want to question your professional opinion, but she looked a little…
ABBY: What?
DAN: Crazy.
ABBY: She’s fine.
If Mr. Sorkin didn’t write that exchange, then the repetition on “she’s fine” emulates his style quite well, if you ask me.
ABBY: Have you ever been in therapy?
DAN: Me?
ABBY: Yeah.
DAN: No.
ABBY: Really?
DAN: Never felt the need.
ABBY: Okay.
DAN: What about you?
ABBY: Me?
DAN: Have you ever been in therapy?
ABBY: Still am.
DAN: Really?
ABBY: Yeah.
DAN: That’s allowed?
ABBY: Encouraged.
DAN: You’re kidding.
ABBY: Why are you surprised?
DAN: ‘Cause I’m — well, I’m not. I-I just assumed that someone who needed a therapist would want someone with, you know, a full supply of marbles.
Oh, good fucking lord, Dan…
ABBY: I have roughly the same number of marbles as everyone else.
Tell him, sister! Dan’s preconception that therapy is only for crazy people is way beyond the realm of truth.
DAN: I have, actually, an excess of marbles.
Fuck’s sake, Dan…
ABBY: You’re a nice guy and you’re a smart guy.
DAN: Thank you.
ABBY: So why doesn’t your father like you?
DAN: (beat) What?
ABBY: I believe in cutting through the first six months and getting to the stuff.
…
DAN: Hang on a second there, Sigmund. Why do you think my father doesn’t like me?
Oh, I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with your telling her you rely on the love of three or four million strangers?
DAN: My father likes me, Abby. She likes me just fine.
ABBY: (beat) ‘She’?
DAN: What?
ABBY: You said, “She likes me just fine.”
…
DAN: Why did I say that?
Is it sad that I doubt Mr. Sorkin wrote this segment because it feels like a Freudian slip that actually works?
DANA: Don’t move.
CASEY: Why?
DANA: You look nice in the candlelight.
CASEY: (beat) Over here like this?
DANA: You were fine.
CASEY: No, I want to go back to the way it was.
DANA: Don’t worry about it.
CASEY: Over here?
DANA: You know, you can squeeze the life out of a moment like nobody I’ve ever met.
What? Was there really any moment to squeeze there? I’m at a loss here.
DAN: Hey.
CASEY: Hey, where have you been?
DAN: I was cutting some new film.
JEREMY: The circuits here are all GFCI — my point being that there’s probably no need to check for a ground fault in the Ethernet bridge — but, you know, yes, go ahead and do it anyway. I suppose I’m not really in a position to give advice — except to say, is it possible that a spike in the slave sync signal shorted out the bus?
NATALIE: Honey?
JEREMY: Natalie, I think it’s possible that a spike in the slave sync signal shorted the PCI bus so the DMA controller had an IRQ conflict.
Aight, time to cross-reference the technobabble:
- GFCI: Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter — an electrical safety device which cuts off an electrical circuit when it detects a electrical current leakage to ground, or “ground fault” (which means Jeremy is probably wrong to say there’s no need to check for one, if I’m interpreting that information correctly)
- slave sync signal: the master clock of a computer or network to manage the synchronization of its “slave” devices (yes, that’s the actual term for it)
- PCI bus: Peripheral Component Interconnect bus — the standard interface through which hardware components are connected to the motherboard of a computer
- DMA controller: Direct Memory Access controller — a hardware component allowing other hardware components to bypass the processing unit of a computer for direct access to RAM
- IRQ conflict: Interrupt ReQuest conflict — an event in which multiple hardware components simultaneously attempt to request immediate attention from the processing unit of a computer
Based on the cross-reference, having the DMA controller cause an IRQ conflict is quite possibly a non-sequitir, considering said controller specifically bypasses the CPU which can be the victim of an IRQ conflict. I’m more of a software guy than a hardware guy, though, so take what I’m saying with a grain of salt.
NEW Non-Verbal Signature: The “Damnit” Slap™
JEREMY: Dave, isn’t it possible that a spike in the slave sync signal shorted the PCI bus?
DAVE: No.
JEREMY: (slaps the panel) Damnit! (slaps the other panel twice) Damnit, damnit —
NATALIE: Jeremy.
JEREMY: — damnit.
I’d rank this one last among the others we get… but only just.
NATALIE: You weren’t here the first year. On a list of the top ten things we screwed up, knocking the power out with a Y2K test wouldn’t have made the cut.
What?! You mean to tell me at least ten things worse than bringing about a full power outage came about in the first year of this show? How did it remain on the air?!
JEREMY: … this is a metaphor.
NATALIE: For what?
JEREMY: For this! For this! For this new millennium which everyone seems to be looking forward to, and I’d like to be looking forward to it, and why am I having trouble getting on board?
Maybe because there’s still another year left in the current millennium and everyone is jumping the gun? Just saying…
RETURNING Plot Bunny: Empty firing threats
Previous instance: Sports Night 110
NATALIE: Dana, tell Jeremy not to fear the new millennium.
DANA: Don’t fear the new millennium.
NATALIE: Do it better than that.
DANA: There’s nothing to fear from the new millennium.
NATALIE: You see?
DANA: Though I suspect you’ll be spending a good part of it looking for a job.
Don’t count your chickens before they hatch, Dana.
NATALIE: Pep Jeremy up.
CASEY: (beat) Why?
NATALIE: He fears the new millennium.
CASEY: Me too.
NATALIE: Good job.
CASEY: (beat) This century was my home.
JEREMY: Exactly.
CASEY: Men like Jeremy and me, we’re twentieth century men.
Stark realization of the staggering whiteness of that statement coming in three… two… one…
ISAAC: The next millenium will be spectacular. It will be. I’m managing editor of Sports Night and a hundred years ago, I wasn’t allowed to vote. The future’s just fine with me — and I have to say that I find it vaguely amusing that a computer that can calculate the quadratic equation in a nanosecond hits the panic button when it’s asked to count up to 2000.
Nope, that’s not what the Y2K problem was. The basic problem behind the Y2K scare was that early programmers, with their punch card mentality still in full effect, set up their systems to store year values as only two characters whose individual values incremented in the range of 0-9, rather than four characters, which would have been twice as expensive memory-wise — or, confusingly, as an actual fucking number instead of numeric characters, which would have been just as memory-efficient as two characters (two bytes can be used to represent numbers up to above 32 thousand). Computers affected by Y2K weren’t counting to 2000, they were counting to 9 twice. Unix systems and Macintoshes (which at this point weren’t Unix systems yet) had developers who weren’t quite so lazy and as such weren’t affected at the time — those developers don’t have to panic on that front until 2038.
ISAAC: I’ll see you upstairs.
“Then I’ll be flying to Seattle afterward.”
DANA: Jeremy, which button did you hit?
…
JEREMY: It was video release.
DANA: No, and I think this is interesting. This section of the board was rewired this morning.
JEREMY: It was?
DANA: Yes.
JEREMY: Why aren’t the consoles relabelled?
DANA: As far as that’s concerned, there’s no question that there’s a way to look at this where it’s my fault.
JEREMY: What’s another way to look at it?
DANA: There’s no other way to look at it.
I’ll say — rewiring a board without relabelling it? That’s a recipe for disaster generally, Y2K test or no — and you were harping all this time about having a show in four and a half hours! Shame on you, Dana.
DANA: Hey! I said I was sorry, it was heartfelt, I made an apology.
CASEY: No, you didn’t.
DANA: Like I need to apologize with you people.
Actually, you really do, Dana.
DANA: Jeremy, I’m honestly sorry.
JEREMY: There’s no point in assigning blame.
ELLIOT: What happened?
JEREMY: It was Dana’s fault!
Dana deserved that.
JEREMY: You may have won the battle, but there’s a war still to be waged, my foe.
NATALIE: Honey, when you talk to the computers, you don’t ever hear them talk back, do you?
JEREMY: No.
NATALIE: Good.
Nobody expose Natalie to the world of software engineers who work from home, she would not be prepared for the shit we say to our computers.
RETURNING Dialogue Motif: Damn straight
Previous instances: The West Wing 101; Sports Night 202
CASEY: The human mind, Alyson, it won’t be denied.
ALYSON: Good.
CASEY: It just won’t.
ALYSON: Okay.
CASEY: You could try denying it, but it won’t work. You know why?
ALYSON: ‘Cause it’s the human mind?
CASEY: Damn straight.
“Did I mention my aim is true?”
DAN: I think I may have some stuff going on.
CASEY: I know.
DAN: It’s gonna be okay.
CASEY: I know.
DAN: Let’s do a good show.
CASEY: Danny? The human mind will not be denied.
Despite Dan’s best efforts throughout the entire episode, that statement has proven to be true.
Well, what shall we say about the first episode Mr. Sorkin entrusted to other writers? As I mentioned partway through, I have a sneaking suspicion the script for this episode was likely in a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency state for a while given its near-lack of continuity with the last four episodes. For what the episode aims to accomplish, though, I’d say it’s a serviceable episode. While it probably could have been set up a little better, having Dan finally come to terms with the necessity of therapy makes for a refreshing character beat for the man. Bringing Jeremy into the limelight after having been a largely sidelined character so far this season also makes for a refreshing beat, if a rather dated one. I do have to say, though, that Isaac’s walk-on role feels rather smarmy as written, but that’s probably just because I’m viewing it from the lens of twenty-six years later as well. All in all, I think Mr. Sorkin was right to trust these two writers.
Speaking of trust, if you trust my ability to see this project through, then I’d highly recommend subscribing to this blog to witness the act firsthand. Coming up next: that’s not the only piece of the Constitution we’re ignoring, buddy.
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