Watching Studio60

As a follow-up to the recap, here are some memorable lines from the Sports Night episode “The Hungry and the Hunted.” Did I miss your favorites? Share them in the comments.

Casey: He’s going to kick the field goal.
Isaac: No, he’s gonna go for the first down.
Casey: Well, they’ve got to score twice to win, why not just get the three right now? He’s got the wind at his back.
Isaac: He doesn’t have the leg.
Casey: He’s got the wind at his back.
Isaac: I don’t care if he’s got the wind at his back and a song in his heart, he doesn’t have the leg.
Casey: You’re a crazy man from St. Louis, you have no business being in sports.
Isaac: Jeremy?
Jeremy: Yes sir?
Isaac: Florida State, fourth and 2 on the Purdue 39 and down by 9. What’s Bowden gonna do, kick or play?
Jeremy: I really don’t know.
Isaac: I’m asking what you think.
Jeremy: It’d just be a guess.
Isaac: I want you to guess.
Jeremy: I don’t like to guess.
Isaac: Guess anyway.
Casey: C’mon, c’mon.
Jeremy: Why?
Isaac: Because this is fun. The job should be fun.
Jeremy: I’m having fun.
Isaac: You should have more.
Jeremy: I’m having a lot of fun.
Isaac: Jeremy!
Jeremy: I’m having tons of fun!
Isaac: Guess!
Jeremy: Alright, fine. He’s going to split three wide receivers and put a tight end in the backfield with the tailback in motion. A play-action fake will freeze the strong safety, and Kittis will find his primary receiver over the middle. It’s a play called Red Rocket right, slant 42, “Z” out. He’ll get the first down, probably a lot more.
Isaac: What are you, insane?
Casey: Hey, wait, wait, wait, they’re not kicking.
TV announcer: Kittis lines up under center with three wide receivers split and the tight end in the backfield. Tailback in motion, the play-action fake, and Kittis has Renfro over the middle for the first down and more! First and 10, Florida State on the 16! Incredible! That’s a play Coach Bowden’s got called Red Rocket right, slant 42, “Z” out.
Isaac: You take a lot of fun out of this, Jeremy.

Casey: Dan’s talking about the rough-and-tumble, livin’-the-razor’s-edge, run-till-you-drop, never-say-die world of offshore yacht racing.
Kim: Time for the America’s Cup?
Dan: We’re only a year-and-a-half away.
Dana: I don’t wanna get scooped, but we can probably postpone our coverage for I guess, like, a year-and-a-half, can’t we?
Dan: Greatest sport in the world, Dana, greatest sport, great for kids.
Natalie: All you need is $40 million and a dream.

Casey: “October the 8th, 1998, A.D.” A.D. They’re worried I might accidentally show up 2,000 years before the birth of Christ.

Jeremy: I don’t know anything about hunting. I’ve never hunted. I’ve got a deli on the corner and they deliver 24 hours, so …

Natalie: I want Casey to ride with Dana.
Dan: I get it.
Natalie: Do you?
Dan: I ride with Isaac, and Casey and Dana fall in love.
Natalie: Right!
Dan: Wow, is that a stupid plan.

Dan: I’m starting to get a little cheesed at people telling me the reason I don’t like soccer is that I don’t understand it. I think I do understand it. I think I understand it just fine. I just happen to think it’s a mind-numbing bore, and that any reasonable person would rather be playing it than watching it.
Casey: Well, I know it doesn’t match the pulse-pounding excitement of a good sailboat race.

Dan: I gotta tell you, at this point, the length of this conversation is way out of proportion to my interest in it.

Dan: He’s making me crazy. He’s been making me crazy all day. It doesn’t work for me. I’m more comfortable making him crazy.

Casey: How many people can you think of named Gordon.
Dan: How many people can I think of named Gordon?
Casey: Yeah.
Dan: Two.
Casey: That’s how many I got. Which were your two?
Dan: Gordon Lightfoot and Gordon Liddy.
Casey: Those are my two. Those are the exact same two that I got. Can you think of any more?
Dan: No.
Casey: Neither can I.
Dan: Good.
Casey: And it’s my feeling that if those are the only two you got, and those are the only two I got, those should be the only two there are.
Dan: Granting the premise.
Casey: And you should. You should grant the premise Danny.
Dan: I do.
Casey: ‘Cause we’re two pretty well-educated people, and we both thought about it, and we both came up with only two Gordons.
Dan: I’m granting the damn premise.
Casey: You should.
Dan: Casey, you’re driving me –
Casey: My point is, here we are. We’re going along in life and everything’s fine. As far as we know, there are only two Gordons out there, when all of a sudden, a third one comes along.
Dan: The guy talking to Dana at the thing last night.
Casey: The guy talking to Dana! The guy out there talking to Dana — Gordon!

Casey: One more question.
Dan: Can I get a Teamster to hit Casey in the head with something heavy?
Casey: Look, how did you know the guy’s name was Gordon?
Dan: We were introduced.
Casey: At the reception?
Dan: Yes.
Casey: By Dana.
Dan: Yes.
Casey: Interesting.
Dan: Not really.
Casey: You think they were on a date?
Dan: Yes.
Casey: You think they were on a date.
Dan: Yes.
Casey: I totally disagree. She introduced you to him. Big deal. It’s not like she walked up to you and said, “Dan, this is my date, Gordon.” I want to know exactly what she said when she introduced you to him.
Dan: She said, “Dan, this is my date, Gordon.”

Jeremy: Bob and Eddie were using the I.R. 50 Recon by Buscomber. It’s got a 16-inch microgroove barrel with .30-.30 mags, side-scope mount, wire-cutter sheath, quick-release bolt, mag catches, and a 3-pound trigger, so I figured we must be going after a pretty dangerous duck.
Isaac: You can wiseass all you want. You’re going to tell me what happened.
Jeremy: We shot a deer. In the woods near Lake Mattatuck on the second day. There was a special vest they had me wear so that they could distinguish me from things they wanted to shoot, and I was pretty grateful for that. Almost the whole day had gone by, and we hadn’t gotten anything. Eddie was getting frustrated, and Bob Shoemaker was getting embarrassed. My camera guy needed to reload, so I told everybody to take a 10-minute break. There was a stream nearby, and I walked over with this care package Natalie made me, sat down. When I looked up, I saw three of them — small, bigger, biggest — recognizable to any species on the face of the planet as a child, a mother, and a father. Now, the trick in shooting deer is you got to get them out in the open, and it’s tough with deer ’cause these are clever, cagey animals with an intuitive sense of danger. You know what you have to do to get a deer out in the open? You hold out a Twinkie. That animal clopped up to me like we were at a party. She seemed to be pretty interested in the Twinkie, so I gave it to her. Looking back, she’d have been better off if I’d given her the damn vest. And Bob kind of screamed at me and whispered, “Move away!” The camera had been reloaded, and it looked like the day wasn’t going to be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and I closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don’t play bridge and go to the prom, but you can’t tell me the little one didn’t know who his mother was. That’s got to mean something. And later at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting and how it related to the Native American Indians, and I nodded, and I said that was interesting, while I was thinking about what a load of crap it was. Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food and it was clothes and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin. And they knew the gods wouldn’t be so generous next time. What we did wasn’t food, and it wasn’t shelter, and it sure wasn’t sports! It was just mean.

Jeremy: Not fitting in is how qualified people lose jobs.
Isaac: But a lot of the time, it’s how they end up working here.

Isaac: It’s taken me a lot of years, but I’ve come around to this: If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people, and if you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.

Isaac: You don’t know us very well, so if it’s hard trusting us at the beginning, maybe it’ll help to know that we trust you.

_{Photo by Terri Mauro}

Sports Night, ABC, The Hungry and the Hunted, memorable lines