Sports Night
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[edit] Introduction
Sports Night was a half-hour American television series, set in the production offices of a fictional sports show (the show-within-a-show is also called Sports Night). In spite of its name, sports play only a background or supporting role; the storylines focus on the characters, their relationships, their personal and professional problems, their ethical issues and, particularly in the second season, their problems with the television network executives. Although season one is plagued by a laugh track, this starts to fade by midway through the run, and has disappeared entirely by season two. The show was ostensibly pitched as a comedy, but the humour is always combined with drama, creating one of television's first dramedies. The show was created and, to a large extent, written by Aaron Sorkin and ran in prime time on the ABC network from September 22, 1998 to May 16, 2000.
The show had a large regular ensemble cast, headed by Josh Charles as anchor Dan Rydell, Peter Krause as anchor Casey McCall, Robert Guillaume as managing editor/executive producer Isaac Jaffee, Felicity Huffman as producer Dana Whitaker, Sabrina Lloyd as senior associate producer Natalie Hurley and Joshua Malina as associate producer Jeremy Goodwin. Season one featured regular guest appearances by Ted McGinley as Dana's boyfriend Gordon Gage, and Brenda Strong and Teri Polo also had recurring roles. In season two, William H Macy, Felicity Huffman's husband in real life, made several guest appearances as ratings expert Sam Donovan. Casting a shadow over the proceedings but never seen is Luther Sachs, the owner of Continental Corp, of which Sports Night's Continental Sports Channel is a subsidiary. In the final few episodes, the network is put up for sale, casting everyone's futures and livelihoods into jeopardy.
The fictional Sports Night is set in New York. The show broadcasts from Rockefeller Center, airing at 11pm nightly, with repeats in the daytime and, occasionally, additional shows on major sporting occasions ('March Madness' and 'Draft Day').
Sports Night suffered from poor marketing, and struggled to find an audience. Once cancelled by ABC, both HBO and Showtime put in bids for it. Aaron Sorkin, however, let these offers pass in order to focus on his new drama, The West Wing, then starting its second season.
Viewers familiar with the better-known The West Wing will see in Sports Night the foundations of many of the later show's trademarks, in particular the rapid-fire dialogue, and the many walk-and-talk tracking shots.
The show focuses strongly on character relationships. Dana is widely believed to be secretly in love with Casey, and, possibly, vice versa. Natalie and Jeremy have an often-rocky relationship. Dan falls in love with Teri Polo's character, Rebecca, who breaks his heart and, in season two, he has a nervous breakdown. Isaac Jaffee, generally a father figure to the team, albeit a bitingly sarcastic one, suffers a stroke midway through season one and is absent for a number of episodes; his recovery is charted throughout season two. (This stroke was written in to account for Robert Guillaume's forced absence, Guillaume having suffered a similar stroke in real life.)
Throughout the first season, the show was set almost entirely within the Sports Night offices – the control room, the studio, the bullpen, the editing room and, most frequently, Dan and Casey's office. In the second season, a number of scenes were set at 'Anthony's', a nearby bar, and some others in the offices of Dan's psychiatrist, Dr Abby Jacobs (Jayne Brook).
The show's 45-episode run is available on DVD as a boxed set of six discs (Region One release only). It has been rerun on The Comedy Channel in the USA, and has also been broadcast in Australia, and on the satellite channel ABC1 in the UK. Each new or re-showing leads to a resurgence in fannish activity as new viewers discover the show for the first time, or old ones rediscover it.
[edit] Terminology
Below is a list of terms and their definitions that are used in this fan fiction community.
- The main relationship in the series is between co-anchors Casey McCall and Dan Rydell. In spite of some lobbying, this has failed to result in a portmanteau name of either 'Canny' or 'Dasey'.
- As in many fandoms, 'woobieness' and 'angst' play a major role in Sports Night, particularly with regard to Dan Rydell. Dan has a particular twist to his lower lip, which is generally referred to as 'That Thing He Does With His Mouth'.
- Abby Jacobs, Dan's psychiatrist in season two, is frequently referred to as 'The Worst Psychiatrist in the History of the Whole World, Ever'.
[edit] Timeline
Below is a partial timeline of events that took place in this community.
[edit] 2000
- Pre-January 2000, a Sports Night fan fiction archive was established by Cori Lannam.[1] Although an excellent and comprehensive resource, this site was plagued by server difficulties throughout its life. The archive was substantially revamped and improved in October 2000. In early 2003, the site went down. On February 14, 2004, a 'grand re-opening' of the archive was announced. On January 5, 2005, a message was posted to slashsn stating that trickster.org had gone down and the archive would shortly be moved. It has never been resurrected, although random pages can sometimes be found via The Wayback Machine.
- On January 19, 2000, the Yahoo chat group slashsn was created. [2] The first message posted was from Emily Brunson. Its stated aims were, "To discuss the inherently slashy properties of the TV show Sports Night, to drool over Dan and Casey and Josh and Peter (and everyone else on the show), to post slash fanfic, and to de-stress after the show airs. There's already lots of het-centric SN lists out there (and more power to 'em, the show needs all the support it can get), so let's have a good and slashy one! Discussion, fanfic, and what-have-you allowed, including discussion of other projects the SN folks are/have been involved with, especially if you've a slash-eye's view". As of January 1, 2007, the group is still sporadically active, with 544 members (mostly lurkers) listed.
[edit] 2003
- On May 21, 2003, the LiveJournal community allcrossovers was created. [3] Posted to the community was fan fiction from some of the following fandoms: Angel, Animorphs, Blade, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, CSI, CSI: Miami, Doctor Who, Grey’s Anatomy, Guyver, Harry Potter, Highlander, Lord of the Rings, Lost, Northern Exposure, Smallville, Sports Night, Star Trek, Stargate, Tomorrow People, Tortall, Veronica Mars.
- On May 26, 2003, the LiveJournal community inthetallgrass was created. [4] Posted to the community is fan fiction for Sports Night and The West Wing, and also, more recently, Studio 60. The first Sports Night fic posted was a het piece, 'Six Months', by Jora (Casey/Dana), on May 28, 2003. The first Sports Night slash fic posted was 'Like a Practical Joke (if you take out the punch line), by Oro (Dan/Jeremy), on June 1, 2003. The community is, as of January 1, 2007, maintained by sloganeer.
- On August 13, 2003, the LiveJournal community sn100 was created by michellek. [5] This community provides a prompt to inspire the creation of drabbles (short fics with a strict count of 100 words), initially weekly, latterly fortnightly. The first challenge posted was 'The West Wing titles', and the first responses were posted on August 14, 2003: '20 Hours in LA' by tangleofthorns, aka Luna, 'Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc' by mandysbitch, 'The Portland Trip' by Meadowlion, 'A Proportional Response' by warlordkittens, and 'Isaac and Ishmael' by tangleofthorns/Luna.
- On October 1, 2003, the LiveJournal community crack_van began accepting Sports Night fan fiction recommendations. An overview of the show, written by hyperfocused, can be found here: [6]. Due to lack of volunteers, Sports Night was dropped from the community's regular schedule in March 2006. It was reinstated as a 'small fandom', for one month only, in November 2006.
[edit] 2004
- By 2004, a number of X-Files fan fiction writers who were part of the “Yes Virginia” group of fan fiction authors had migrated to other fandoms. Some examples of this migration included Harry Potter with the author Parsons, Lord of the Rings with the author Sebasky, West Wing with the authors Sabine, Punk, and CazQ, Stargate with Suelac and Minnow, Farscape with the authors Suelac, Fialka, Sab and Pene, Sports Night with the authors Sabine and Punk, Smallville with the author Punk, and Buffy/Angel with the authors August/Unwinding, Minnow and Sebasky. As they migrated, they took their traditions of machete beta reading with them.
[edit] 2005
- On October 5, 2005, the LiveJournal community snarchive was created by laylee as a means of filling the gap left by the demise of the Trickster archive. [7] The first fic archived to the site was 'Zinger', by riverlight, archived on October 7, 2005.
[edit] 2006
- On December 7, 2006, hermitsoul posted a comprehensive overview of Sports Night in the LiveJournal community newbieguide ([8]).
- On December 8, 2006, the LiveJournal community sn_updates was created. [9] It is a Sports Night newsletter, posted to LJ each Sunday.
[edit] Kerfluffles
Perhaps because of its diffuse nature, there appear to have been remarkably few fannish feuds or other disruptions in Sports Night fandom. The fandom has a floating population, with new authors and readers discovering the show on a regular basis, while others leave, but these departures are generally thought to be due to natural entropy rather than any unpleasantness.
[edit] Influential Stories
bj [10]: Ubivis, Roar, Roar, the Thunder and the Roar
Candle Beck [11]: Seeing the Future, Fall
catwalksalone [12]: Up Where the Air is Clear, A Voice in the Wilderness, in your games, your rules, you choose to win or lose; SN GraFix.
Charlemagne: Fair Trade; Gynaecology; Visual Aid.
Helen: Unspoken, The Call of the Wild and Semaphore (these are the only Sports Night fics by this author).
Anna-Marie Jennings: Echoes (a Sports Night/The West Wing crossover), Sleep, Crashing, A Better Writer For It.
k: Possibility of a World; Even Sugar Peas Run Out of Snap.
Kristophine: Painting Shadows, Catching Light.
A S Lawrence [13]: We Disappoint, They Disapprove; The Beautiful South; Every Day a Little Death; I Will Be With You Again.
laylee [14]: Evening the Keel, The Llama Series.
lordessrenegade [15]: Chains That Define Who I Am, MiniSN [16]
Luna: The Fog's Lifting; Seven Stories About Dan Rydell, Four of Which are True.
out_there [17]: Like Sailing and Home Runs, Not Homophobic.
Pares: This Year's Prom Theme.
Sabine: Where Have You Gone, Tom Glavine.
scrunchy [18]: Ghosts and Sharks, Faith Will Carry, Decatur.
Sinead: The First Move, The Memory of Hurts
[edit] Fandom Members
Sports Night's fan membership is at present primarily located on LiveJournal. Authors writing in the fandom as at January 1, 2007 include scrunchy; lordessrenegade; catwalksalone; quiesce; out_there; laylee; gothams3rdrobin; likethesun2; phoebesmum. There are a number of LiveJournal communities dedicated to Sports Night. These include sportsnight and quo_vadimus for general chat; snicons for icons; sntranscripts for transcripts of the episodes; sn100, which issues a fortnightly drabble challenge; and snarchive, which serves as a repository of Sports Night fan fiction. SN fanfiction can also be posted at inthetallgrass, which caters to all three Aaron Sorkin shows. More fanfiction can be found in the memories section of crack_van, a community created for fan fiction recommendations, although Sports Night is no longer regularly featured in this community. sn_updates is a weekly newsletter which attempts to draw all the disparate strands of Sports Night fandom, which is widely diffused and thinly spread-out, with many fans and communities being unaware of one another's existence, together into a cohesive whole.
[edit] Fandom Size
Sports Night is believed to be potentially a large, or at least medium-sized fandom but, lacking a central rallying point, it is divided into separate communities, many of whom are unaware of, or possibly unwilling to acknowledge, one another's existence.
[edit] External Links
- Graecia site [19]: an old site, not updated for some time, but still containing some useful material, including a number of Sports Night original scripts and episode transcripts.
- The Josh Charles Pictures Archive.[20]
- Our Boys [21]. (Although this claims to be 'the best in ... Sports Night fiction', the site has apparently not been updated since 2001, and the fics listed therefore do not represent the substantial body of work written since that time.)
- Remix Redux [22]: Sports Night fan fiction created through an annual Remix challenge.
- Sportsnight-fans.net [23]: includes a huge gallery of Sports Night screencaps.
- TVIV Sports Night page [24].
- First We Show Up ... [27]: fan fiction by catwalksalone, mainly Sports Night.
- Thrown Roses [28]: Sports Night fan fiction by A S Lawrence.
- Amazed by the Mathematics [29]: Sports Night fan fiction by Annie-Lee Grayston.
- Cosmic Debris [30]: Sports Night fan fiction by lordessrenegade.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
Below is a partial list of articles and academic sources to help you continue to learn about this community.
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