At any rate, here at last are the lines I picked. Did I miss your favorites? Share them in the comments.

Dan: Dana, Elliot wants to know why there’s a 20-pound frozen turkey on the light grid.
Dana: It’s 24 pounds.
Dan: I’ll tell him that, but then he’ll probably just want to know why there’s a 24-pound frozen turkey in the light grid.

Kim: It’s a time for giving thanks, a time to share in the warm embrace of family.
Natalie: Right. You don’t want to take any crap from your mother.
Dana: I really don’t.

Casey: Jeremy. November 23rd — does that date ring a bell? And don’t go to the computer.
Jeremy: Don’t have to.
Casey: What is it?
Jeremy: It was on this day in 534 B.C. that Thespis stepped out onto the stage at the Theater Dionysus during a choral song and dance and became the first man to speak words as an actor in a play.
Casey: (to Dan) Tell me I was supposed to know that.

Isaac: How can he find the hospital if he hasn’t rehearsed the route?
Dana: Isn’t Douglas a radar officer in the Navy?
Isaac: Yes, and if we were scrambling F-16s, I’d trust him to find the flight deck of the USS Coral Sea. But we’re having a baby, and you can’t find Berkeley General unless you rehearse the route.

Dan: Today is our anniversary.
Casey: Jeez, Dan, that night in Minneapolis with the Jagermeister, we didn’t do anything untoward, did we?
Dan: You mean, did we get married?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: No.
Casey: Good.
Dan: We recited the St. Crispin’s Day speech in the lobby of the St. Paul Radisson.
Casey: Was it untoward?
Dan: No, it was just embarrassing.

Casey: Impersonating my ex-wife never won anyone a place in my heart.
Dan: It’s an important day to me.
Casey: It’s an important day to me, too.
Dan: I don’t think it is.
Casey: How can I prove it to you?
Dan: Remembering it would be a step in the right direction.

Natalie: So Thespis is the Roman god of theater?
Jeremy: That’s exactly right, except he’s not Roman and he’s not a god.
Natalie: What is he?
Jeremy: He’s Greek, and he’s a ghost.

Dan: I remember what you were wearing. Do you remember what I was wearing?
Casey: I remember not thinking at the time that you were a woman.

Dana: I’m not gonna be beaten by a 6,000-year-old Roman god!
Jeremy: He’s a 3,000-year-old Greek ghost.
Dana: Well, I’m a 33-year-old television producer, and for one hour every night, this is my little corner of the world, and nothing screws up here unless I screw it up!

Isaac: Did a big frozen turkey fall down on the anchor desk during the last commercial?
Casey: Yes.
Isaac: And why?
Casey: Aw, Isaac, is there really an answer I can give to that question that will satisfy you?

Isaac: So you say a few words. You make a gesture. You remember an important date. Small price to pay for what you get in return. For what you get in return, it’s a steal. The rest is all vanity.

Dana: I’ve named this Thanksgiving it. I’m calling it, “The Thanksgiving of Mom’s Disapproval.” Included on the two-record set are the hit songs “Why Aren’t You Married?” and “Sports Is No Place for an Educated Woman” and “Didn’t Anyone Ever Tell You How to Cook a Turkey?”

Dana: (to Jeremy) For a guy who’s read The Hobbit 14 times, you’re not so dumb.

Elliot: Listen to this phone call I just got. Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford were accepting a humanitarian award over at the Sheraton. Kathie Lee got up to the podium, slipped and fell face first into a plate of tapioca.
Dana: At the Sheraton?
Elliot: Yeah.
Dana: All the way across town?
Elliot: Yeah.
Dana: Aaah! Ladies and gentlemen, Thespis has left the building.

Sports Night, ABC, Thespis, memorable lines

As with most episodes so far, this one begins with the beginning of a show. Unlike most episodes so far, this one has a turkey thawing in the light grid. Dana doesn’t want to take any crap from her mother over an improperly cooked bird, and somehow this connects to seeing how long one will take to thaw in the lighting system of a TV studio. You’d think that would be enough trouble for one night’s show. But you’d be wrong.

For one thing, Isaac is distracted by the fact that his wife, who has gone to visit their very pregnant daughter, and with whom he had a fight that morning before her departure, hasn’t called him yet. Dan is distracted that Casey doesn’t know the significance of the current date, and then everybody’s distracted when Casey asks Jeremy what the date means and Mr. Trivia tells them about Thespis, the first man to speak words on a stage as an actor and now a mischievous ghost who wreaks havoc on this day.

That’s not the day Dan was thinking of, and now he doesn’t want to talk about it, but that doesn’t stop Casey from trying during commercial breaks. Dana’s not afraid of Thespis, until he sends her falling to the floor. Then she takes it as a challenge to get through the first half of the show without error. Isaac’s babbling about how his son-in-law hasn’t rehearsed the route to the hospital yet, then Kim comes to his rescue with the news that his wife is on the phone.

After some nagging from Casey, Dan finally reveals that today is the anniversary of their first show together — not Sports Night, but the show they did before that. And then Casey goes from nagging to needling, acting gruff about the need to acknowledge the day and accusing Dan of imitating his ex-wife. In the control room, Jeremy is continuing to regale his co-workers and an adoring Natalie with facts about Thespis and pretty much any mythological figure that gets thrown at him. Isaac blows through saying he needs the next plane to San Francisco, and since Thespis seems to be causing only minor havoc, Dana leaves the show in Natalie’s hands and goes after Isaac to find out what happened.

Isaac tells her that his daughter has been rushed to the hospital for an emergency C-section. The medical problem she’s having is similar to one Dana’s sister-in-law had, and although they lost the baby, her sister-in-law was fine. That’s cold comfort to Isaac, who seems near tears as Dana rushes back to the show. It’s good that she’s back, though, because Thespis is feeling his oats now. Cues have been blown, screens have been wrong, and Casey has been left to recite the St. Crispin’s Day speech just to fill time. Plus, water is dripping on the anchor desk. Dana yells for everyone to get their heads in the game, she’s not going to let a 3,000-year-old Greek ghost screw up her show, nothing screws up her show unless she does it … which, of course, is when the frozen turkey plummets down from the light grid onto the anchor desk.

And still, the show limps along. During a break, Dan recalls that something was wrong with Casey back on that first show day five years back, and realizes that it was the fact that he lost the chance to do “Conan’s show.” Casey insists he was never seriously considered, and Dan insists he was; Dan insists getting stuck doing a show in Dallas was a come-down, and Casey insists it wasn’t — though it’s clear that the choice made for trouble between him and ex-wife Lisa. With a break and then a segment by Dan ahead, Casey stalks off to stretch his legs.

He winds up in Isaac’s office, where the boss is still beating himself up over his argument with Esther over the fact that he wasn’t showing enough enthusiasm about the baby, whining he was too young to be a Grandpa. Now, of course, that all seems like a terrible thing to have said. Casey talks about his fight with Dan, which is really about a fight he had with Lisa five years ago, and Isaac advises him to tell the truth. Showing the people you care about what you feel costs you only a little, he says, especially for what you get in return. Dana, in turn, is beating herself up about the humiliation she’s sure to suffer at the hands of her mother this Thanksgiving, and the lesson in humility she’s being given by Thespis right now, especially after the transmission goes out, leaving the show in a wave of static. Jeremy can’t do much about that, but he does advise her to appreciate her family and not stress so much about mom’s disapproval.

With more free time now that the transmission’s out, Casey tells Dan that he was offered Conan’s show, and he passed on it to work with Dan, who was not a consolation prize. Dan’s amazed that Casey didn’t believe he could do Conan’s show, and is angry at Lisa for undercutting his confidence. Casey would have done a great job, Dan assures him. And he’s good on this show, too. Things keep looking up when Isaac comes in with cigars and news of his new grandson, with mother and child doing just fine. The show comes back on, too, and Elliot delivers the good news that Kathy Lee Gifford has had a humiliating fall into a bowl of tapioca somewhere across town — Thespis has left the building! And so, now, do we.

Sports Night, ABC, Thespis, recap

Any disbelief concerning Thespis gets suspended pretty quick, and I love the way this episode plays on Jeremy’s geeky yet passionate knowledge of obscure information. For a guy who can sometimes be awkward and insecure, he did a pretty good job of freaking Dana out.

Instead of Dana/Casey squabbling this time around, we got Dan/Casey squabbling, with Casey looking like a jerk for not remembering the anniversary of his first show with Dan. I’m not sure about the wisdom of bringing a real show into the Sports Night world by having Casey reject his chance to do “Conan’s show,” but I liked getting more information about their history together, and the advice Isaac gives Casey to show appreciation to the people who are important to him.

And it was nice to have a little break from the Casey/Dana/Gordon triangle.

The other serious subplot amongst the Thespis silliness was the drama of Isaac’s daughter and her pregnancy complications, which had some resonance with Dana’s turkey trauma (Isaac’s daughter was cleaning the house for her mother’s visit just like Dana was obsessing over Thanksgiving dinner) and Casey’s (Isaac worries that he didn’t show enough appreciation for his daughter and unborn grandchild). It makes for a nice package, with a range of emotions and a variety of happy endings.

What did you think about this episode? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Sports Night, ABC, Thespis, review

Bradley Whitford (Danny) is appearing on Broadway as a man engaged to three stewardesses in Boeing-Boeing, a sex farce that won the Tony for Best Revival of a Play last night. A couple of pieces of West Wing trivia: Mary McCormack, who played Kate Harper, co-stars in Boeing-Boeing as the German stewardess; and Mary Louise Parker, who played Amy Gardner, sometime girlfriend of Whitford’s Josh, gave out the Tony for Leading Actor in a Play that went to his Boeing-Boeing co-star, Mark Rylance (Brad wasn’t nominated, alas). Also sadly not nominated: Aaron Sorkin or anybody or anything associated with his play The Farnsworth Invention.

Sarah Paulson (Harriet) will be in ABC’s remake of Cupid, which ran for one season in 1998 and starred Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall in the roles now to be played by Bobby Cannavale and Paulson. If you missed it the first time, here’s the story, according to The Hollywood Reporter: “Cupid centers on the manic Trevor Hale (Cannavale), who thinks he is the Roman god of love, Cupid, banished to Earth until he can match 100 couples. Paulson will play Dr. Claire Allen, a psychiatrist specializing in affairs of the heart.”

Steven Weber (Jack), having completed a guest-starring stint on Brothers & Sisters, is lined up for another one on Psych, the USA detective comedy that co-stars Dule Hill, who was Charlie on The West Wing. Weber will play the brother of Corbin Bernsen’s character and uncle of screwball pseudo-psychic Shawn Spencer. According to TV Guide, “Weber’s Uncle Jack hits town claiming he has a map to hidden Spanish treasure. A race to beat raiders to the loot ensues, with James Roday [Shawn] presumably doing his best Shia LaBeouf.”

Ayda Field (Jeannie), who bounced right from the single-season Studio 60 to the single-season Back to You, has been cast in yet another show for next season, an untitled comedy by the creators of Will & Grace. According to TV Guide, “The pilot centers on two men — one gay (Alan Tudyk), one straight (Josh Cooke) — who are best buds and business partners. Field will play Cooke’s girlfriend.” Maybe the third time will be the charm.

Studio 60, NBC, Bradley Whitford, Steven Weber, Sarah Paulson, Ayda Field

Our Sports Night marathon continues tonight with Episode 8, “Thespis,” which originally aired on November 17, 1998.

The synopsis, according to the DVD box: “The ghost of Thespis is running amok on the set as a nervous Dana practices defrosting a Thanksgiving turkey on the show’s set lights, and the gang experiences other troubles.” Those troubles, which certainly deserve a mention, include Isaac’s daughter having an emergency C-section and Casey not remembering the anniversary of his first show with Dan. Best of all, though, is the frequent opportunity Jeremy has to show his impressive mastery of obscure factoids, in this case of gods and ghosts.

Cue up your DVD and watch this episode with me tonight, and come back during the week for a review, recap, and memorable lines.

_{Photo by Terri Mauro}

Sports Night, ABC, Thespis

From “Pilot”

Tell the writer’s room they’re going to have to stretch it another 25 seconds, and I’m sure that making it longer was the missing ingredient to making it funny.

No, there are strict rules or procedures for this kind of thing. I just didn’t follow any of them.

I faced off with Standards during a live broadcast, Harry. The guys I know who’ve done that feel lucky if they get a job directing Good Morning El Paso.

From “The Long Lead Story”

I’m getting a little tired of the lute players getting all the great women.

Jack Rudolph’s wandering the streets, so no one in L.A.’s safe tonight.

From “The Wrap Party”

I’m a real World War II buff. I used to set up little scenes with toy soldiers that I’d paint myself, and then I’d shoot it in Super 8. Which would help explain why I didn’t kiss a girl till I was 19.

From “The Option Period”

We got to the goodnights 37 seconds early. Danny had to ask Jessica Simpson to fill. Nice girl, nice performer, don’t want her to extemporize on our air. She had time to thank her pets, and then she asked us all to pray for peace in the Midwest.

From “The Harriet Dinner Part 2″

I’ve got the animal kingdom Axis of Evil down there.

Studio 60, NBC, Timothy Busfield, Cal Shanley, quotes

Casey: If you’ve had half as much fun watching the show as we’ve had doing it, well, then, we’ve had twice as much fun doing the show as you’ve had watching it.

Dan: If you wear something blue, you get two dollars off a giant blue margarita.
Casey: You know, I make a pretty good living. I can actually afford to wear what I want and pay full price.
Dan: I’m not promoting the economic upside as much as I am the opportunity to drink something giant and blue.

Casey: Hey, Jeremy, we’re going to this place called El Perro Fumando, where if, what, you wear a thing, then something else happens for two dollars less than it would’ve before.

Jeremy: El Perro Fumando?
Dana: The Flaming Dog.
Casey: Smoking Dog.
Dana: Not the Flaming Dog?
Casey: The dog’s not gay.
Dana: I wasn’t suggesting the dog was gay. I was suggesting the dog was on fire.
Casey: He’s not smoking on fire. He’s smoking a cigarette.
Elliot: He’s smoking a pipe.
Kim: He’s smoking a cigar.
Dan: I say he’s gay.

Dan: How do we know the dog is a he?
Casey: “El Perro” is masculine.
Dan: Sounds like Dana’s translation has him leaning another way.

Casey: We’re the best, okay? The very best.
Dan: Yeah?
Casey: Well maybe not the best. But we’re pretty good.
Dan: Right.
Casey: I put us easily into the top 30 or 40.
Dan: Okay, this isn’t helping me.

Dan: I can’t write!
Casey: What are you working on?
Dan: Red Wings/Flyers.
Casey: All right. Let me see. (Reads off screen) “The Flyers played the Red Wings in a hockey game last night, and they won four to three.”
Dan: You see?
Casey: This is more serious than I thought.

Isaac: My 16-year-old daughter is dating a Republican in her class named Chad.
Dana: Chad’s a 16-year-old Republican?
Isaac: That’s right.
Dana: I didn’t know 16-year-olds had party affiliations.
Isaac: Chad was just elected president of the Connecticut Young Black Republican Caucus. He has a 3.9 GPA. He is co-captain of the Lacrosse team. He plays the French horn and does volunteer work at a crisis hotline.
Dana: Sounds wonderful.
Isaac: Dana, did you hear me? He’s a Republican!
Dana: A lot of folks are running in that direction these days, Isaac.
Isaac: Yeah? Well, I don’t want ‘em sniffing around my women.

Casey: Listen, Dana told me you were a little down about the verdict in your trial, so I just wanted you to know I’m not gonna do any jokes, I’m not gonna give you a hard time.
Gordon: I appreciate it.
Casey: So this party at Gracie Mansion must be going pretty late.
Gordon: Yeah, we’ll catch the tail end of it.
Casey: Do you think the mayor’s gonna chew you out for so spectacularly blundering the case?
Gordon: I don’t actually work for the mayor. I work for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Casey: And a hell of a year you guys have been having.
Gordon: You know, Casey, I won’t deny this hasn’t been my finest hour, but there’s really nothing you can say that’s gonna rattle me. I’m just happy to be here, happy to be talking to you, happy to be having sex with Dana every night.
Casey: You know, it really wasn’t my intention to discuss any Dana-related matters. No, I was just reading this New York Times piece on the forensic evidence, the ballistics match, the eyewitnesses, and the 78 hours worth of wiretaps, a portion of which included the defendant saying, “I killed him. I killed him. I killed him dead,” and was wondering what the heck a fella has to do to get thrown in jail on your watch?
Gordon: Well, how ’bout I run you through an IRS audit and we find out?

Natalie: Guys, on page 66, halfway down in the NFL injury report, it says, “Collins is expected to miss practice this week, the result of a bulging disk.”
Dan: Yeah?
Natalie: There’s a typo on the Teleprompter. They left out the “s.”
Casey: “Collins is expected to be sidelined a week to ten days with a bulging di — ” Uh oh.
Dan: Whoa, that’s a big 10-4.
Casey: My next line in the script was, “Let’s go to the videotape.”
Natalie: We might have gotten some phone calls.

Sports Night, ABC, Dear Louise, memorable lines

It’s another end of another show, and Dan’s planning to head to a place called El Perro Fumando to drink giant blue margaritas. He tries to get Casey to come along, but his partner’s not going for it … until Dan mentions that Dana will be there, and “boogie shoes” may ensue. That changes Casey’s mind pronto.

But the likelihood of Dana getting half a margarita in her and dancing on a tabletop isn’t enough to get Jeremy to join them, and neither is Natalie asking him to come along. He’s got a letter to write to his sister Louise, to whom he writes because she can’t hear. So as the gang heads off to drink giant blue things, we move into one of those letter-writing flashback episodes.

Via voice-over, Jeremy explains to his sis that he’s been with the show three months, that he loves the place, that it feels like home, and that tonight was the first time he’d been asked to go out with the guys after work. He writes about Dan and Casey, and how they deal with the pressure of writing and performing. In the flashback, though, Dan’s not dealing very well. He’s got writer’s block — not just writer’s block, but emergency writer’s block, the kind of writer’s block that prevents him from composing anything other than simple, colorless sentences. That’s death for a sportswriter.

As Casey tries to help, Isaac stops by their office, and Jeremy’s letter follows him through the hallways, expositing on his long career in journalism — starting as a stringer, ending as London bureau chief for CNN, and coming out of retirement to run a sports network. In flashback land, though, what’s on Isaac’s mind is not so much the show or the ratings but the fact that his 16-year-old daughter is dating a Republican named Chad. His plan, as he tells Dana, is to install a dungeon and moat.

Natalie stops by Isaac’s office to see whether he’s heard of someone named Archibald Russell, who was carjacked in Kansas City. The name sounded familiar to the reporter there, but not to Isaac. Natalie mentions that there’s a run-down meeting coming up, and that’s where Jeremy’s letter-writing quickly heads, as he explains to Louise that a recent run-down involving Archibald Russell has stuck in his head.

The flashback, though, starts before Jeremy gets into the run-down room. If he’d been there, he would have heard Natalie tell Isaac that Archibald Russell played in the Negro Leagues, and Isaac remember him as A.K. Russell, and feel terrible that the guy was badly hurt, and resolve to call his kids. Isaac asks Dana to do a segment on Russell, and that’s when Jeremy comes in and is asked to put something together. Having missed the background, Jeremy wonders why they’re going to use airtime early in the show on a story like this, then feels terrible about it later, when Dan and Casey do the segment and have to update the graphic during the commercial when word comes in that Russell has been pronounced dead.

After commercial, though, things lighten up with Jeremy’s letter-writing thoughts on Dana, who we find out has six brothers, one of whom plays for the Denver Broncos. Her education at elite all-girl’s schools at her mother’s insistence has led, Jeremy writes, to “brilliance inside the office and something a little less than brilliance anywhere outside of it.” To illustrate, we see her determined to get Casey to like her hair, because she’s going to a dinner at the mayor’s with Gordon and she wants everything to be perfect.

Jeremy talks about the Casey-Dana situation, and then we see Dana taunting Casey about Gordon’s post-graduate degree, of which Casey allegedly has an envy. Casey’s got an ace up his sleeve, though — Gordon, an assistant D.A., failed to get a conviction against a notorious mobster, after four-and-a-half years of work, and though Dana insists Casey dare not taunt him about it, Casey’s clearly planning to.

Then we’re back in a run-down meeting, and the subject is back to Dan’s writer’s block. Natalie’s got an idea that with shock therapy — surprising him with the unexpected, like a glass of water to the face — she can knock him out of it.

Later, Casey’s going to try to win one against Gordon by teasing him about his loss, but once again, Gordon easily gets the upper hand, suggesting that perhaps a full audit of Casey’s finances, including his involvement in an office betting pool, might be of some interest. Casey retreats to the safety of his anchor desk, where Dan is still melting down over his sudden loss of talent. Natalie’s on the job, though, surprising him with an air horn and then yet another glass of water in the face. If you can’t fight it, you might as well laugh.

During a break in the show, Natalie gives the guys a heads-up about a Teleprompter error that left the letter “s” out of the word “disk,” and that’s the cue for Jeremy’s letter to finally get around to Natalie. He explains to Louise that the uproar over the Christian Patrick situation has died down, and that things have been awkward between him and Natalie since they’re almost-dinner in the previous episode. He wants to ask her out, but is afraid that will make things even more awkard …

… except now we’re back in real time, and the gang is coming back from their blue-margarita-drinking adventures, Dana’s dancing being too hot for the Smoking Dog. As the party continues at the office, Natalie pulls Jeremy aside, acknowledges the awkwardness between them, and kisses him to bump things up to the next level.

She’s also brought him stamps, and wants him to dance with her, so it’s time to wrap the letter up. But not before Jeremy tells Louise that Dan got over his writer’s block with the help of a female professional volleyball player he met at the bar, who reminded him of why men write: to impress women.

And with that, we leave everyone dancing to “My Boogie Shoes.” C’mon. You know you want to get up and dance too.

Sports Night, ABC, Dear Louise, recap

I watched “Dear Louise …,” the seventh episode of Sports Night, again last night, and enjoyed the little trip down Exposition Lane offered by this letter-themed outing. It’s kind of a formula, the voiceover-plus-flashbacks episode, but there were enough funny bits here to make it work. Plus, Natalie and Jeremy’s first kiss!

Natalie was full of surprises this episode, not just with that smooch she planted on Jeremy, but with her sneak attacks on Dan’s writer’s block. I remember reading somewhere that some of her water-throwing, air-horn blowing shocks was unexpected by both Dan and Josh Charles, the actor playing him. The last water-in-the-face brings such a look of genuine surprise to Peter Krause, the actor playing Casey, that I think that one at least had to have been improvised. It’s funny, regardless.

The usual Dana-Casey teasing was kind of eh this time around, but it payed off big with Casey’s attempted smackdown of Gordon, and Gordon’s total and complete shutdown of Casey. Our sports guy is overmatched for sure, so it’s a good thing that Dana really does secretly, improbably, love him best.

Isaac railing about his daughter’s Republican boyfriend was funny, and all the goings on about El Perro Fumando and big blue margaritas at two dollars off, and Dana putting on her boogie shoes. I sort of wish they’d kept the whole thing light, and left out the sad story of the Negro League player being carjacked and killed. The poignancy seemed out of place in this otherwise light-hearted outing.

All in all, though, this was a letter I, like Louise undoubtedly, was happy to get. What did you think about this episode? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Sports Night, ABC, Dear Louise, review

The synopsis, according to the DVD box: “While Jeremy drops a line to his sister about his job, Dan smashes into writer’s block, Isaac endures his daughter’s new boyfriend and Natalie indulges Jeremy with a kiss.”

Well, technically, I think Jeremy was done with that letter to his sister when Natalie kissed him, and what was really memorable about Dan’s writer’s block was the way Natalie tried to shock him out of it, but whatever.

Cue up your DVD and watch this episode with me tonight, and come back during the week for a review, recap, and memorable lines.

_{Photo by Terri Mauro}

Sports Night, ABC, Dear Louise