Dana: Have you two lived?

Dan: Dana, what--?

Dana: I don't think you've lived. I don't think you've lived until you have seen this show.

Isaac: You liked it?

Dana: Liked it? I don't know where to start.

Isaac: That's wonderful.

Dana: I honestly, I don't know where to start.

Isaac: Why don't you organize your thoughts and get back to us?

***

I remember making the annual trek down to Walgreen's to pick up TV Guide's Fall Preview issue in September of 1998. (Now I get the Guide delivered to my house every week, but this was back in the day before I had a respectable, paying job, so if I had to scrape together the $1.99 and ride my bike through the neighborhood to get my TV news and gossip fix, I probably appreciated it a little more, especially since all they tend to do these days are Country Music previews and reviews of children's shows I don't have the stomach for. I'm paying 44 cents an issue for this?)

I perused the night-by-night schedule grid to confirm that all my favorites were still where they belonged and then checked out some of the new series the networks hoped would entertain me. That year, everyone was abuzz about a little show on a little network called The WB. That show was Felicity. I was all about Felicity, especially since it was up against the likes of Spin City and Just Shoot Me. That was also the year of the Guiness Records show and a little show called Sports Night that I hadn't heard anything about. I remember thinking that ESPN had finally infiltrated the prime time lineup at ABC with a little mini-Sports Center. How dare they! Wasn't Monday Night Football enough? Given my natural aversion to all things athletic, I paid Sports Night no mind and got sucked into the abyss that was Felicity, until one night when someone said or did something that their boyfriend didn't like and all kinds of unnecessary drama ensued and I decided to do a little channel-surfing.

The next thing I knew, I was staring at Josh Charles and Sabrina Lloyd in what appeared to be an edit bay of some kind. I remember thinking, 'Hey, a TV station! I like TV. I even like shows about TV. I watch Murphy Brown, for God's sack!' They were saying something about a guy I'd never heard of named Chris Patrick, and by this point I had forgotten all about Felicity. I was listening to the guy, whose name turned out to be Dan (Charles), tell the girl, Natalie (Lloyd), that she had friends. I thought this was particularly cool, because no one ever told me that. I guess everyone just assumed I knew that they thought I was cool. Hmm. Meanwhile, back inside my television set, it looked like they were preparing for a national television broadcast of some kind. "Cool!" I said out loud to no one in particular. I flipped channels and waved goodbye to Keri Russell before settling in for some Aaron Sorkin-y goodness, and the next week I came back for more. That was it. There was no turning back. I was hooked for life, sucked into the world of Dan, Dana, Casey, Jeremy, Natalie, Isaac, and yes, even Bobbi Bernstein.

***

Casey: Do you know what a bomb looks like?

Jeremy: Actually I don't.

Casey: Does anybody? Chris?

Chris: No.

Casey: Will?

Will: No.

Casey: Dave?

Dave: No.

Casey: But we're bettin' our lives that a German Shepherd can pick one out. ... Is there anyone who can say anything that will make us feel like the smart thing to do is to stay in this building right now?

Dana: In ten minutes, three and a half million people will tune in to watch the two of you on television. Many of them will be women.

Casey and Dan: Yeah, okay/All right.

***

I've heard the show called a lot of things. The aforementioned TV Guide named it 'The Best Show You're Not Watching,' which confused the hell out of me, because I knew I was watching, and I knew there was a rabid fan base out there that was watching too. How did I know? Because we talked about the show constantly. The critics loved it. A 'dramedy,' they said, that was 'brilliant,' 'a gift for the thinking viewer,' 'TV's most unique series.' Now that's some critical praise. There was a lesson in that, though. It was a lesson I didn't really want to learn, which is why I put up such a fight, but it turns out that good reviews mean nothing, especially when you have people like Jamie Tarses yammering on about a laugh track, like, we're stupid and we can't figure out when to laugh. Thanks for looking out for us, ABC. But I'm not bitter.

***

Dana: We're in third place, Natalie. We're getting our asses kicked by ESPN and Fox.

Natalie: Those guys have been around forever, we're three years old.

Dana: We're still in third place.

Natalie: Every show on this network's in third place. It's a third place network. It doesn't mean we weren't doing the show well.

Dana: Isaac had a stroke.

Natalie: I know that. So what?

Dana: So I'm doing the best I can!

Natalie: No one's blaming you.

Dana: Everyone's blaming me!

***

I'd like to think that we the fans did what they could to save the show. I mean, we didn't stage any debt-causing billboard drive like some other rabid fans we could name, and it's really not that economical to send wine and spackle through the mail, so the Tabasco sauce approach wasn't really an option. We did write letters, though. And we told our friends.

My God, did we tell our friends. Ask anyone from The Youth Group Formerly Known as CPL what my favorite show of all time is, and they'll tell you stories about the Sports Night quote of the week during Pat's News and the time I hijacked the meeting and made everyone watch what ended up being the series finale. R will tell you about the flyers I made in the computer lab at my old school and distributed with reckless disregard for my safety to the student body after school on Tuesdays.

In the end, ABC got heartless and replaced the masterpiece with The Geena Davis Show, of all things. I do remember staging an Anti-Geena Davis Campaign in the early days of the site, which was thankfully shot down by some people with some common sense on the 1_SN list. Heh. That's hilarious. I had completely forgotten that I did that, and then here it is in the archives on the list (if you're wondering what names I called Ms. Davis, I do remember 'wench' coming up more than once; my apologies if she's reading this now. I know now like I knew then that the whole thing wasn't her fault, but her show did suck too).

This is about to sound really sad and pathetic, but here it is: Sports Night really did change my life. I know that at least one crazy fan ended up getting a television writing gig out of the whole experience, but the show arrived from the heavens at a time in my life when things were just starting to gel. Much like a kid succumbing to the temptation to put his handprints in freshly poured cement, Sports Night left its mark on me.

The show was one of the first to encourage my love of words, reminding me that it's okay to not use contractions sometimes and introducing me to phrases like "Off I go" that I still use every day. Indirectly, the show has encouraged my love of writing, which has basically led to the site you're reading right now. Also, as Brian Ford Sullivan best put it, "Sports Night makes me excited about life." In a choice between Sports Night and Just Shoot Me, one will end with me in the bathroom rationalizing the razor blades and the other will just make me want to run through the hills screaming for joy.

The show also is indirectly responsible for what is still a big part of my daily routine. Back in the day, a site called Mighty Big TV was doing recaps of, among other things, Sports Night. A guy I'd never met named Daniel was gently poking fun at the best show ever. His editor was someone named Sars, who turned out to be the Sarah we all now know and love at Tomato Nation. Of course, the site is now known as Television Without Pity, and its staff has produced a lot of other wonderful sites, most notably Hissyfit and the enjoyable Damn Hell Ass Kings. Mmm...writers. My people.

In a small way, the show gave me hope for the future. I would get out of Illinois, as it turns out. I would write on a regular basis, and at least a few people would read it. There were people out there like me: just as crazy, just as in love, just as snarky. I would find them one day, and together we'd walk really fast down the hallways of life.

Plus, the music. Dude. The Starland Vocal Band, K.C. and the Sunshine Band, The Pretenders, The Band, Tommy James and the Shondells, The Beach Boys, Three Dog Night, Neil Finn, Betty Everett, Todd Thibaud, Katrina & the Waves, Susan Tedeschi -- could you ask for a better soundtrack? Plus, W.G. Snuffy Walden. The music is such a big part of the whole Sports Night experience, and I don't think the music people get enough credit for that.

***

Dana: It was really quite something. The music began and I just started to cry. I don't know where it came from. It was like... church. I didn't know we could do that. Did you know we could do that?

Casey: Well, when I forget, something usually reminds me.

Dana: I didn't know we could do that.

***

Maybe someone who's not me will read this and make some sense out of it, because I sure as hell can't. I just hope it shows that I'm speaking from inside myself. Okay, the hell? Ow. I wish I'd tried to write this sooner than the Tuesday I planned to post it. Oh, well.

I wanted to stick in something about how I never can make it all the way through "What Kind of Day Has It Been" without tearing up, and how Isaac's wit is unmatchable in all of Sorkinland. I don't know. Maybe I'll come back and fix this later. I just...can't express how this show makes me feel...about myself, about life.

I sat down to write about how, while I love the show like I've never loved anything, there's an element of surprise in first-run television that you can't get with bootleg VHS copies of the episodes, but then I discovered some things about the show I'd forgotten. So maybe the surprise isn't gone. Maybe when I go to Wal-Mart tonight to pick up my boxed set and smell the cases (you had to know I was weird) and put the first disc into my DVD player, it will all be new again. Sometimes the people and things you thought you knew best can surprise you, you know.

***

Natalie: Two guys have ascended five miles into the sky. They walked up a wall of ice and are preparing to knock on the door of heaven itself. There's really no end to what we can do. You know what the trick is?

Dan: What?

Natalie: Get in the game.