Watching Studio60

I watched “The Apology,” the second episode of Sports Night, again last night, and thought it did a great job in developing the characters introduced in the pilot. Isaac is established as loving his staff but taking no guff. Jeremy is so involved with sports he can’t be objective, and Natalie is so involved with Jeremy that she can’t be, either. Dana’s got a crush on Casey, who is uncool. And Dan enjoys bantering with his co-workers on completely random subjects, with this week’s aerobics stalker replacing last week’s New York renaissance. This week, of course, Dan got himself into trouble by talking in favor of legalizing marijuana in an Esquire interview. It didn’t matter that the interviewer missed the point that he thought it should be a healthcare issue and not a criminal issue; the network still wants an apology and lays down all kinds of threats to get it, good-lawyer-bad-lawyer style.

The apology that Dan eventually delivers on air — to his younger brother, who died in a car accident as a teen because he was copying his big brother and getting high — is moving, and yet … am I the only person who thought that there, at the end, when Casey sort of quietly leaned over to Dan, he was going to say something like, “You don’t have a brother.” The apology seemed too “Lifetime Movie of the Week” to be for real on a comedy show and I kind of thought it might be made up, but this show did mix serious themes in with the silly and I guess this was the start of it. At any rate, Casey’s easing the discussion back to his lack of coolness once again was a pretty nice little moment.

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

Sports Night, ABC, The Apology, review