I love Aaron Sorkin, and hadn’t watched this when it was on TV, and the DVDs are hard to find. I finally stumbled upon it on Netflix Watch Instantly last night. I’m only 8 episodes in, but it found its footing pretty quickly. A few thoughts…
All the trademark Sorkin idiosyncrasies are present: fast talking, the walk-n-talk, the unabashed liberalism, the dramatic swell of music as someone pontificates dramatically. But it is extremely bizarre to have this all set against a laugh track (actually I think it might be an audience, but it’s still annoying and disjarring). Josh Molina’s character is almost a caricature of his character in “The West Wing” - but it seems it gets toned down each episode, so there’s hope. There’s still a tremendous amount of heart, and the comedy aspect to this show seems forced - like the network dictated it be a sitcom.
The laugh track came and went episode by episode, as the network wavered on whether or not it was a sitcom. I remember it being very jarring when it was there.
Yeah, the Jeremy character can be really annoying at times. I refuse to believe a person could exist who has an encyclopaedic knowledge of… well, everything.
He’s kind of like Reid on “Criminal Minds” only at least Reid just throws out random factoids from time to time. Jeremy just seems to know everything.
Jeremy is a “good with books, bad with people” cliche overblown. It’s doubly annoying in that his “bad with people” translates as “awkward” rather than “problematic.” I’ve known some people with encyclopedia brains – they tend to have much more jarring social problems.
For some reason, his character doesn’t actually bother me much, though. I guess I’m just thankful that he’s not written as being quite as smug as I think he could have been.
It’s interesting to see how well the Sorkin dramedy works in a 22 minute format. Sometimes the plot points get close to being lost in the shuffle, but Sorkin is so good at boiling things down to showing only what we need to see that he saves it. For instance, we know of plenty of activities and events that take place outside the studio - but we’ve NEVER gone outside the doors of the studio and offices (at least through season 1). There’s *some *cheating, but that’s just with sporting events. He manages to throw away the writers adage of “show, don’t tell” and have us thanking him for the privilege. He’d have been a tremendous radio show writer/producer back in the day.
Edit: That’s not true - there was the double date scene in the restaurant. Damn.
Coincidentally, I just pulled out my DVD set and watched the first 2 episodes for the first time in several years. I was surprised that I found the pilot to be more than a little clumsy, kind of like a first draft or something. Much of the dialogue seemed unnatural even for Sorkin (“I think ‘yesterday’ should be in the first sentence and I’ll tell you why”), the jokes forced (“Tell Spike Jones to sit down and shut up!”) the metaphor about the runner WAY too obvious, and the characters – especially Jeremy – somewhat cartoonish and over-the-top.
Then I watched the absolutely brilliant second episode, in which Dan “apologized” for his interview remarks about marijuana, and I remembered why I loved this show so much. Looking forward to working my way through the series again.
This show cemented my love for Sorkin’s writing. Yes the laugh track is annoying and I think parts of the show don’t age well, (Like the show within a show), but the dialog is great and the stories are compelling even when they’re a bit heavy handed. My favorite is the f-u to the network in the final episode. I always think of that scene when a favorite show gets cancelled:(quote spoilered for the OP who probably hasn’t gotten there yet)
“People who can’t make money off of Sports Night should get out of the money-making business.”
-The Stranger
I don’t know how true it actually is, but Casey quoting Napoleons battle plan of “Just show up…and we’ll see what happens” has been a mantra of mine since the moment I heard him say it.