Sports Night replay: Episode 1-11
I’m going to try and get going again on this watching of Sports Night episodes, especially now that I have my shiny new 10th anniversary DVD set. Even without all the keen extras, I’d love this new set because each episode is an individual entity, as opposed to one big clump in the old version (making it tough to, say, fast forward to the start or end of an episode.
But there are those nice extras, and I’m looking forward to getting into them. The episode we left off at, “The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee,” is one of the ones with a commentary — from Josh Charles, Peter Krause, Sabrina Lloyd, and episode director Robert Berlinger — but there’s nothing very dishy about it. Mostly reflections on how long ago it was, how annoying the laugh track was, and how wonderful it was working with Robert Guillaume.
This episode did indeed have a lot of Isaac goodness in it, culminating in an editorial challening Confederacy loving network owner Luther Sachs to do the right thing on behalf of some college football players who refuse to play under the Confederate flag. Although he spends much of the episode worrying about giving Sachs the excuse the man’s been looking for to fire him, he does the right thing himself and makes it pretty tough for the boss not to.
Still, despite the strength of that storyline, this will always be for me “The One With Donna Moss.” What a great performance by Janel Maloney as Monica, the wardrobe assistant who lays a smackdown on Casey for accepting credit on The View for the way Monica’s boss dresses him. According to the commentary, the actress was cast as Donna on The West Wing after this, and surely as a result of it. Also from the commentary is a confirmation that all those staffers name-checked in Dan and Casey’s sign-off were in fact staffers of the real Sports Night, the show outside the show.
Share your thoughts about “The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee” in the comments, and stay tuned this week for a recap and memorable lines.
Sports Night, The Six Southern Gentlemen of Tennessee
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