The Night My "Sports Night" DVDs worked

Before there was Mad Men, there was Sports Night.

Not as long-lived as some other Sorkin franchises, to me, it was a much realer, rawer encapsulation of the esprit de corps that arises and the quirky pseudo-families that are created in high-pressure, creative work environments than, say, "The West Wing". "Sports Night" is about a nightly sports newscast, and though the show kept its "dramedy" classification to the end, its comedy is of the wry, ironic kind. Its last episodes, in which there are vague attempts to account for everyone's happy end, echo the ends of every campaign (especially the losing ones, which are most of them) I've ever been on -- taking the time to thank and acknowledge the colleagues you've taken for granted, keeping tabs on where people are headed or thinking about heading, thinking about all the things you would have done differently, blaming the people who wield so much power but know too little to make the right decisions -- in the combination of remorse and relief that, seeing it here, makes me weepy.

Watching it more than ten years after its release heightens its pathos. The women with their big shiny hair, elbow sleeves, and Urban Decay Lip Gunk (they don't even make it any more, but I know it when I see it because I wore it to many a bar in those days); the chatter about Torre-led Yankees; talk about broadband being the future; a guy logging into his e-mail account and being greeted with "You've got mail!," as if there was ever a time when one didn't have mail when one logged on to one's account; the gratuitous shots of the Twin Towers -- it makes ten years feel like a really long time ago. The on-again, off-again romances/flirtations of Dana/Casey and Jeremy/Natalie gave me hope that overly articulate people could flirt in geeky ways/geek out in flirtatious ways, that you could have colleagues that you liked to hang out with after work as much as work with, and that there were all-knowing, reliable bosses who would always have your back. In my personal and professional experiences since then, I've been fortunate on a few occasions to work in environments which shared many of these characterists; more often than not, I've felt their conspicuous absence.

"Sports Night," like all Aaron Sorkin shows, appeals to the OCD/workaholics among us who dream of a job that is inseparable from us, and feels ok that way -- feels worthy of the time and passion we can't help but let it consume. Because of Disney Company's uniquely paranoid approach to DVD production, the DVDs from its 2002 release fare haphazardly at best in many players. So imagine my delight on a bored rainy Saturday when, flipping through my catalog, I tried a disc, and it worked. I can only echo Dana Whitaker's line from the last moments of the last episode: "My show is on!"