Watching Studio60

Our Sports Night re-watching session continues today with “Smoky,” the twelfth episode of Sports Night. Join me in reviewing the episode today, and come back through the week for a recap and memorable lines.

“Smokey” marks the beginning of the Dana-Casey-Sally triangle, or really, the Gordon-Dana-Casey-Sally rectangle of shirt-swapping doom. I’m with Dan about Sally being some sort of evil alien force. It’s the tallness and aggression and the blind self-confidence. If she were setting her tractor beams on a friend of mine, I’d be frightened, too.

Speaking of clueless, how does a guy like Casey, who didn’t know fantastically unsubtle Sally was flirting with him, come up with something like “smoky” to unhinge Dana? Guess it’s that sort of thing that’s allowed him to keep her off-balance all these years. Love that Jeremy not only knew what it was but was able to add “a slow drink of whiskey” to the evocative conversation, even if he didn’t get Natalie’s geek-speak/phone sex connection.

Isaac looked pretty clueless to be telling Dana something and expecting her to keep it private, but it was worth it for his snipes at Sally and then smackdown of the whole staff. And, of course, for Jeremy’s great line: “I told many, many people.”

I let some time go by in my re-viewing of the first season here, between episodes 10 and 11, and now I can’t remember, thinking back to the earlier ones — was Kim always this snippy? Funny snippy, I mean, but between her saying “Who gives a damn?” to all Jeremy’s play of the year suggestions in the previous episode and wanting Elliot to be her man-slave in this one, she seems to have stepped up her game. Maybe Sally’s been coaching her.

Sports Night, ABC, Smoky, review