DVD Review: “Sports Night: The Complete Series 10th Anniversary Edition”
Rating: 96
When ABC put “Sports Night” on the air in 1998, there were no sit-coms operating free of laugh tracks, and Aaron Sorkin desperately wanted his creation to be the one. After several episodes he finally got his wish, but “Sports Night” was simply too far ahead of its time. A decade later, the best and brightest current television comedies rise or fall on the basis of the material rather than an outdated Pavlovian trick. With “Sports Night: The Complete Series 10th Anniversary Edition” hitting the racks, the show demands a full-scale reassessment.
Focused on a “SportsCenter”-like show featuring anchors Dan Rydell (Josh Charles) and Casey McCall (Peter Krause), “Sports Night” was never really about sports and was more about the lives of the people working for Continental Sports Channel. The Dan-Casey repartee was based on the chemistry between Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann, but the show-within-a-show was just a setup for the romantic foibles of Casey and executive producer Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman) and Sorkin’s exploration of the social issues that affect everyone — even people working on an insular sports show.
While Sorkin’s “walk and talk” style had been employed previously in “A Few Good Men” and “The American President,” “Sports Night” was where he perfected the technique before launching “The West Wing.” In contrast to the bare-bones 2002 release, the 10th anniversary edition is packed with extras, including a “face-off” with the “SportsCenter” hosts and eight commentaries. Few people saw it in its original two-year run, but “Sports Night” remains a remarkable experiment in uncompromised television.
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Still one of my favorite TV shows ever. I wish that I hadn’t already bought the original set.
“You’re wearing my shirt, Gordon.”