So I've just watched a week straight of Sports Night, all three seasons. And I've had these things on my mind all week that I need to spill, so it's going to be long. Skip now or forever read this post.TOPIC I - The Wizard Behind the Curtain
1. Writing Style - It's Not a Criticism
From episode 1 I've had that weird wizard-behind-the-curtain sensation.
I had the same feeling the last time I read
Georgette Heyer. And the last time I re-read
Connie Willis'
Bellwether it was so strong as to be almost jarring, similar to this Sports Night time.
It's when you've read or watched a writer's work so much that you see the structure under the surface. The cast of Sports Night talk exACTly like the cast of
West Wing. I'm sure it was the case with
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip as well, but it didn't hit me over the head that time.
It's weird, cause you go around feeling like the only people in the world who talk like the West Wing characters are the West Wing characters. You feel like it's *their* thing. Intellectually you know it's Sorkin's Thing, but you can forget. With Sports Night I couldn't forget. There were moments when the show's head cheese, the Stern-yet-Fatherly Isaac, would walk into a room and say and do something exactly the same way as the president would in WW.
Almost every character could have been played equally well by another good actor, or the cast of WW. Wouldn't hardly change the show.
The only actors who really stood out for me as transcending Sorkin were two actors who I loved in
David Mamet's
State and Main:
Clark Gregg and
William H Macy. They were acting like themselves, because they're
character actors. So they brought that extra something special that only they can bring.
I'm not saying all this as a criticism of Sports Night. It just came from watching back to back episodes of the entire show. For the same reason I rarely read more than 3 books in a row from one author, because no matter how great they are, by book three you can see the wizard behind the curtain and it loses a little magic. What IS interesting is that I haven't watched West Wing in yeeeeaaaars. Maybe 10 years. And Studio 60 in four years. I've always loved Sorkin's dialogue, so it must have really imprinted on my brain.
2. Okay There's a Bit of CriticismOne criticism, though, is that ALL the characters in SN talk à la Sorkin. I'd be curious to rewatch WW and see if by then he'd learned to limit it to only certain characters. Cause in Sports Night the ubiquity of the style of talking gave me some cognitive dissonance. You can imagine an inner circle of friends all talking the same, because that definitely happens; but not an entire office. My boss and I have worked together for 13 years and you would not mistake my dialogue for his.
Incidentally, kudos to Joss Whedon. The "Scoobies" in
Buffy all talk the same, but not everyone in the town, and not the characters on
Dollhouse.
Anyway. Just somethin' on my mind.
TOPIC II - Sorkin At His Best
The other thing I spotted in the first episode was the reason why Studio 60 failed in the beginning. Sorkin's at his best when balance drama / touchingness / with humour. Politics was the best playground for this style, because it can so easily be grave, moving, infuriating, righteous, and funny. I've never forgotten the one small scene where a hurricane is about to hit a fleet of Navy ships, and at the end of
the episode the president gets on the phone with a young signalman and talks to him until the line goes out. Shiver.
How can you be that moving with a comedy show? (Studio 60 was supposed to be another Saturday Night Live.) It could have been done, but he floundered for the first half of the season. There were these moments where you felt like you were supposed to be Moved, and you just weren't. They weren't sufficiently important. Only towards the end did he pick up steam--one of the only scenes I really remember was
the Christmas episode, when the band-of-the-night were New Orleans musicians, playing "O Holy Night" in front of devastation scenes from Katrina. Shiver!
And proof that Sorkin could have been moving with comedy just as he was with politics, was that he managed it with sports. In
the very first episode one of the main characters is feeling disenchanted with his job, when they start reporting on a 40 year old South African athlete, whose knees were broken because of his political protests, breaking a world record in running. And the character runs to the phone to call his son and tell him to watch. Brilliant!
The episode made me want to tear my hair out because that's how good Studio 60 could have been, and with a subject dear to my heart. Comedy is very important. Georgette Heyer wrote "fluffy" books, which she herself put down a bit; but her favourite fan letter was from an ex-Romanian(?) prisoner who for 12 years told the story of Friday's Child over and over to her cellmates, and it's what kept them sane.
It's what Spike Lee does when he's at his best--he's able to bring poignancy out of
basketball, or
TV, or
politics. It's also what I loved about
Slings and Arrows, which was about a Stratford Festival type theater.
So anyway. There's my rambling. Aaron Sorkin. Brilliant. Better make a TV show again one day. Might need to
lay off the shrooms from time to time.
Haley likes to play hide-and-hit games, where you hide somewhere, and then bat at the other cat through an opening. But Minion doesn't play right.
She bats for awhile, and then runs into the box WITH Haley. You then hear "MROW!!" , you see the box move a lot, and Haley comes shooting out.
I had to put the Snappy Toms in a bowl under the bed, and then closed to door to make her feel safe.
