Sports Night: Season 2, Episodes 4, 5, and 6

Date: April 18, 2021

Season 2, Episodes 4, 5, and 6

Music Video of the Day: Wishing one of my dearest friends a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY with a song from our favorite move.

Interstellar News: I liked how my post came out last Sunday, so let’s do THREE MORE Sports Night episodes today. Also, just to reiterate, IT’S A VERY MERRY UNBIRTHDAY to one of my favorite people on Earth.

Episode 4 – “Louise Revisited”

“This isn’t tv camp. I come in, I do my job, I do it better than anybody else, and I get out. I stopped trying to make friends a long time ago.”: A follow up to Season 1’s “Dear Louise…” in a way, because Natalie has been conversing with Louise without Jeremy. Casey is rigging an internet poll to crush Dan on who is “cooler”, and Jeremy is convinced to help. Dana goes to dinner with a friend from high school who is so boring she takes off her panties and then gives them to Casey. Sam is still being standoffish with the crew, but he really is good at what he does. I will say I absolutely love that Natalie wants to know more about Jeremy’s family and just dove right in, and he’s eventually okay with that because he realizes that’s what people in committed relationships do. I am also very fond of Dana and Casey’s interaction when he tells her he’d rather have dinner with her but he also understands that she has wants and needs and he can’t control her body or her… and he doesn’t want to either. The best bit, though, it what I included in the image above as Casey, just seconds before Dana and Sam talk, tells Sam where Dana’s underwear is and it’s just wonderful.

Episode 5 – “Kafelnikov”

“Sandbags on the levee, some plywood on the windows, a little thing called human endeavor.”: Dan meets Abby, who he later finds out is a therapist, and he’s confused if she wants a date or for him to be her patient. Jeremy runs a Y2K test, which is totally awful, until Dana realizes she forgot to tell Jeremy the control panel was rewired but not relabeled. This is a truly wonderful episode if you remember all of the hullabaloo around Y2K. The reason it wasn’t such a “big deal” is because the programmers of the world worked their asses off to make sure the world would not explode. They did things like run tests and check back ups and all sorts of stuff. Computer are “stupid” because they only understand 0’s and 1’s, but they also only do what they are told. It’s us that muck it up most of the time, because we press a button thinking it will do one thing without realizing someone rewired it to do something else entirely. Thus, my love-hate relationship with technology.

A side note, Dan doesn’t have trouble saying “Yevgeny Kafelnikov” until the next episode, so I have no idea why it’s the name of this episode.

Episode 6 – “Shane”

“I’m producing this segment. My contract doesn’t say anything about my having to pay attention to it.”: Dan is seeing Abby, the therapist, and it’s some weird not date/not therapy session in a bar. Casey interviews his “friend” Shane who’s just been traded to the Yankees, but in the interview Shane talks trash about New York. Casey says he’ll “take care of it”, but Dana refuses (as does Isaac) as it’s exclusive news. Natalie has an existential crisis about Hell not being a place but more of a state, but Jeremy helps her to make sense of it (which I find fantastic as his character is Jewish). Shane gets upset with Casey, Casey apologizes and also tries to explain that Shane should try to be more humble (it’s a passionate set of lines Casey delivers). Dan has trouble saying “Yevgeny Kafelnikov” and has a minor nervous breakdown where he finally decides to go to Abby for therapy for real. I love that this episode shows just how little power Dan and Casey have on the show, even though they are the ones everyone thinks of when they think about and watch Sports Night. I dislike how informal Abby is with Dan, as I feel it blurs the ethics of counseling, but I am glad he’s finally pursuing therapy and with someone who actually knows what she’s doing.

TA Out!