The Quarter life Crisis

Netflix instant stream has granted an eternal life to long dead movies and TV shows that would have otherwise slipped quietly into the unseen void of entertainment history, remembered only by IMDB’s deep web.  The latest series I dared to revive is Sports Night.  Its Aaron Sorkin’s first TV show and it’s funny, it’s smart and has depth and conviction in all the same ways as his next show, The West Wing, it’s just not as good.  All of the best elements of The West Wing are there, the quick back and forth banter, the walking and talking, even the characters.  Dana Whitaker is C.J. Craig, Dan Rydell and Casey McCall are Josh and Sam, Jeremy Goodwin is a nerdier version of his own future Will Bailey, Natalie is Donna and Isaac is Leo.  The shows share a striking number of motifs and storytelling devices, even entire plot lines.  Unfortunately, unlike The West Wing, Sports Night is a show going nowhere.

Sports Night suffers from the same problem that brought down Sorkin’s other non West Wing show, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip; it is way too serious for its own good.  Sorkin tries to squeeze very serious conversation about very serious subjects into a show about making a sports show.  Well, we’ve all seen SportsCenter, and it’s a show about internet memes, pop music and top ten plays and not much more.  It’s a pretty far stretch that on any given day, their entire staff would be embroiled in a crusade against drug policy or hunting.  It’s like trying to get Kirstie Alley into Brooklyn Decker’s bikini, it just doesn’t fit.

Even more so, I think Sports Night was doomed because of the format.  It was never going to survive as a traditional sitcom with a laugh track.  Aaron Sorkin’s writing style doesn’t fit the ridged story telling mechanisms of Two and a Half Men or Home Improvement.  If the show was made today in a mocumentary format, a la The Office, I think it would be extremely successful. 

In the end, Sports Night’s biggest problem is that it isn’t The West Wing.  It seems like The West Wing is the show Sorkin wanted to make all along, and let’s be glad he got to make that masterpiece.

Above all else, this show is more evidence to prove the already uncontested fact that Aaron Sorkin is smarter than everyone.  A lot smarter.  Like, an I feel bad that he has to share the same planet with the rest of us, level of smarter.