Watching Studio60

With the Studio 60 episodes all recapped, it’s time to broaden this blog to All Things Sorkin (see the change to the banner above?) and consider other shows by the Studio 60 creator. First up is Sports Night, which ran for two seasons from 1998-2000.

I’ll be doing the same review, recap, and memorable lines for the Sports Night episodes as I was doing for Studio 60, and if you’re out there reading this and watching along, I hope you’ll share your thoughts on revisiting these episodes, too. This show was somewhat spiritually related to Studio 60 since they both involved putting on a show (and a bantering couple who never could quite seem to get it together, although at least they didn’t argue about religion). It will interesting now to pick out familiar plot threads and dialog, since Aaron Sorkin is pretty well-known for stealing from himself.

This week I’ll be watching and writing about Episode 1, creatively named “Pilot,” which first aired on September 22, 1998. The synopsis, according to the DVD box: “Casey ponders leaving Sports Night as his divorce woes start showing through on air, while Dana hires Natalie’s favorite choice for an associate producer job — a good-looking candidate named Jeremy.”

You know, I love Joshua Malina, but would you describe Jeremy as a “good-looking candidate”? I’d have said “endearingly dorky,” especially since this episode had that absolutely over-the-top sports-geek meltdown.

There was also the weirdness of a laugh track in these early episodes. The producers didn’t want laughter, the network did, and so, according to an Entertainment Weekly article, they went with a studio audience, to be sweetened by laugh track. Sorkin is quoted as saying, ”Once you do shoot in front of a live audience, you have no choice but to use the laugh track. Oftentimes [enhancing the laughs] is the right thing to do. Sometimes you do need a cymbal crash. Other times, it alienates me.”

Me, too. But as I recall and Wikipedia confirms, the laugh track eventually faded away as the show become more of a dramedy.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, though. Let’s watch that old pilot tonight and discuss tomorrow.