If you know me well, you've heard me talk about Sports Night. One of those critic's darlings that gets canceled tragically after the first couple of seasons. Aaron Sorkin (of the West Wing's) early attempt. Brilliant though, brilliant. Clips of the show are making their way slowly onto YouTube and in honor of the first couple of shows that I just watched, I wanted to tell you why:
The show is earnest. Earnest bordering on preachy. But in a TV landscape filled with snarky sarcastic one-dimensional characters, Sorkin writes characters with depth, who stand for things, with interesting and troubled pasts who truly care about each other.
I respect particularly Sorkin's male characters. The female characters are great too, BTW, assertive and smart, but I think that male characters are so often simplified to meat-headed sex machines that the loyal and thoughtful men on Sports Night are beyond even refreshing. Here's me and earnest: they're awe-inspiring. They make me want to help my students be good kids and to raise good sons and to fight for goodness. It's weird and fantastic. (I suspect you see this on West Wing too. Something about a group of dedicated people fighting the good fight just makes me glad.)
And it's about sports. And I still love it.
(If you're a first-timer: they do this really bad gimmicky laugh track the first part of the first season. It goes away.)
Monday, October 27, 2008
Why I Love Sports Night
Posted by Kjerstin Evans Ballard at 8:04 PM
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4 comments:
I stumbled on to this show when we first got Tivo about five years ago. So I think we got to see every single episode. It really is a good show. Be careful about dosage though. I got sucked into a West Wing marathon the other day and ended up hating all those smug bastards by the end.
I love Sports Night, too.
One of my favorite clips is when Dana comes back from going into a church. Yes, her response is earnest and yes, it's believable and yes, you rarely see that on tv.
speaking of things to view...let's have a bad movie night!
I've been meaning to get into this show. I barreled through 7 seasons of the West Wing in 6 months and loved it (although 2 seasons in 2 weeks was probably the most ridiculous Christmas break ever). I love love Aaron Sorkin, and I bet I'd love this show too.
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