I’m with your husband. I watched the premier and again on tape with my daughter, and both times I could have sworn he said 1996.
I thought he said 1996 too. Wait, does the show take place in 2016?
See post 75. Apparently it’s a badly mumbled 1986.
Oh, I get it. I know he meant 1986, but it didn’t come out very clearly.
After my husband and I watched the show, we started talking about what was really happening on SNL in 1986. Wasn’t that the year the cast included Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Michael Hall and Joan Cusack? The year they eventually apologized for the quality of and wanted to pretend never happened?
I hope the Judd Hirsch character shows up again. Is he supposed to be a recurring character? If not, that was a really good one-off performance.
If you go to IMDB it shows most of the recurring characters and how many episodes they’re in (that have been shot… most right now is 6). Judd Hirsch doesn’t appear on that list. I think he’ll be a major, recurring character like John Amos was on West Wing – not quite full time but around enough to be known. Especially as he apparently has history with two of the main characters, both good and bad was implied.
Badly enunciated, anyway. The best I can describe it is he held the “nnn” from the end of “nineteennnnn” too long and had a very open vowel sound somewhere between an “ai” and a “eye”, so it came out “Nahnteennuhdeesix.” "uhdee’, if you will, after the extended “nnn”, sounds ambiguous as best. Took me a couple of times to hear it, and I have some training in speech pathology. If I was the director, I would have had him reloop it, because it did cause confusion.
I heard it as 1996 as well. So let me throw out a WAG.
It was in the script originally as 1996 and 10 years. Then somebody noticed that The Daily Show was celebrating its 10th anniversary, which of course means that it started in 1996. Not wanting people to make that connection, Sorkin changed it to 1986 and 20 years.
Hughley botched it by remembering the original line but trying for a last minute save. It was still the best take of a difficult and noisy scene so they left it in, especially since they knew what the line should be and that made them hear it more clearly than the rest of the audience.
Kinda convoluted, I know, but for sure I heard 1996. And with so many others hearing the same some explanation is needed.
Easy to do when you’re the boss. 
Who played Chubbsie, BTW?
Eek! My daughter ate my post.
Am I delusional, or was there a similar scene in West Wing in the “coming together of the team” where someone said “Is he for real?” because when Matt & Danny said that to each other it rang very familiar.
I love the way Sorkin brings in a crew. He brings in best friends and best enemies because they are the best for the job. I’m a sucker for that sort of sequence. It is one of the few redeeming qualities of the movie Armaggedon, however, I think Sorkin does it best.
Perhaps I am so spoiled by Sorkin it didn’t seem especially dialogue heavy to me, maybe I’ll be more aware of it on my second viewing. Then again, that is another place where he has me by the short and curlies. I love his dialogue.
This is now in my Season Pass list as the coveted #1 spot. (That which must be recorded or people die) No, I don’t care how much my husband likes Survivor, it is my damned Tivo!
Could be, but the closed captioning did say “1986”.
Hmm…slow Dope day today if this is the only nit we have to keep picking at! Maybe we should go trade some more pirate jokes in MPSIMS. 
That would be Nate Torrence, whose character is actually called “Dylan.” He’s called “Chubbsie” in those CapitalOne commercials with David Spade.
Yes, but it was “the real deal.” That was in a flashback in “In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part 1” to when Josh and Sam joined the Bartlet for America team. Josh went to visit Sam on his way to New Hampshire, and promised to come back and get him if Bartlet was indeed “the real deal.” Josh ultimately pulls Sam out of some meeting where he’s brokering the sale of an oil tanker IIRC, and they leave to join the campaign together.
Did Rick & Ron (or something like that) – the two bad writers, ever appear on screen?
Ah, that’s where I’ve seen him. And I pride myself on not watching commercials.
I don’t think so. I wonder if they never WILL appear on screen, and their malignant unseen presence will become a standing joke?
Naaah, seems to cheap for Sorkin. And actually, having well-meaning but just-not-very-talented people hanging around would be interesting.
Ricky and Ron are gonna be present. One of them’s being played by Evan Handler, who was Bruno Gianelli’s consultant Doug on TWW.
And D.L. Hughley pretty clearly said 1986. I don’t know what’s wrong with all you people.
Yeah, it looked to me like that one expression was a smug self-satisfied smirk. It seemed very inappropriate in most scenes.
And I’m still trying to figure out how Matthew Perry’s character, who had back surgery two days before and was full o’ pain killers, was able to bound up a flight of stairs two at a time then fold himself into the back seat of a prop taxi cab.
People in Hollywood get muuuuccccchhhhh better painkillers than the rest of us.
I’d say Matthew Perry knows what’s realistic for a guy on painkillers, what with that whole Vicodin addiction he had.
He said 996. The show originated as a showcase for Viking warriors to tell stories about their latest raids. “Peripheral Vision Sven” was a particularly notable warrior so named because he had unparalleled powers of observation.