Talk:Sports Night

March 9, 2006
I made a few reworkings on the article today, mostly on grammar and language. A few points I thought I should indicate for anyone who has any opinion on some of the bigger changes I made:
 * I added Brenda Strong as a regular guest star since she now has gotten some Desperate Housewives fame.
 * I took out the line: The show is often somewhat self-referential: in many episodes, the characters are often gossiping or going over everything that's happening in the show - gossiping as viewers would normally do. It seemed somewhat repetative.  This is a sitcome, that's kind of what happens on sitcoms and especially dramedies.
 * Reworked the main overview section. It's mostly the same information but I moved some things around to make more sense or give it more flow.  Sorkin's dialogue, for example, was mentioned near the beginning and the end and now it is all in one place.
 * Made the reoccuring cast a subsection of the main cast
 * Totally retooled the 'Trivia' and 'Similarities' section, combining them into one section on similarities and subdividing it by similarities with the West Wing and then similartieis with Desperate Housewives. I have a feeling Sorkin's new show will have even more similarities than both of these. --Torourkeus 06:25, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I was actually trying to take out the Desperate Housewives references because they're irrelevant. There really isn't a connection there other than the fact that Felicity Huffman was on both, and Brenda Strong does a voiceover. Having a couple of tech crew working on both shows doesn't mean anything since you could easily find crew members in common between Sports Night and any show. In terms of connections, Desperate Housewives is not at all related in the same way as West Wing is (connected by many actors, key crew (creator, writer, director, etc.), thematic elements, episode titles, etc. I still intend to take this stuff out.
 * Also, some of your sentences are cumbersome. There's also a glaring typo. I plan to fix this. Please don't take it personally, since it's a really good edit otherwise. adavidw 07:28, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I think there is some, theres a lot of guest appearances that were the same on both. Same with desperate housewives and west wing.
 * The sentance fixes are fine, I did that in the middle of the night. at the very least I hope it was better than it was before.
 * Plus I think the Boogie Shoes reference is amusing, lol. --Torourkeus 15:20, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Stroke
If anyone could add to the paragraph about Guillaume's stroke, the line that is there right now is unbelievably short. --Torourkeus 06:25, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Desperate Housewives
Why does Desperate Housewives get a special place on the links section. What do either have to do with each other? Yeah, some people have appeared in both. So what? I see no such section about Sports Night on the Desperate Housewives section. I'm sure DH gets enough hits without Sports Night pimping it.

Similarities
I don't really have the time to do the work to do the details, but there was another West Wing episode that was a reworking of a Sports Night episode. The Sports Night ep in question was the one where Alberto Fedrigotti just wouldn't die, preventing the show from going on. The West Wing ep involved a guy named Stackhouse filibustering, which was preventing a bill being passed that the WW staff wanted to report on that day. And I think both were narrated in voiceover by a character writing a letter to a relative.

Also the Dana "Boogie Shoes" thing was redone on WW with CJ doing "the Jackal."

I'd add these myself but I don't recall episode titles or anything.--Bsteger 22:19, 14 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Those are nowhere near the level of parallel that the Sword of Orion / Emergency-Jail episodes have. The Stackhouse filibuster is the center of the show in terms of how the staff is going to deal with him. Fedrigotti ep is more about Dana and Gordon and Casey and Fedrigotti is a catalyst for that. As for the Boogie Shoes vs. Jackal, there's absolutely nothing similar other than two females "singing". One is ridiculed, one is revered. One is central to the plot, the other is ancillary. Unless someone can point to a Sorkin or Schlamme quote that those were deliberate parodies/references/homages etc. then they don't need to be added (I've listened to the West Wing commentary on both episodes and there is no such mention).

Another similarity: Watching the episode "Sally", I noticed that there is a fishbowl in the editing room (where Dana and Natalie are talking about Gordon) – a fishbowl very similar to the one given to CJ Cregg by Danny Concannon in The West Wing. --Fred Bradstadt 21:00, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * what about the episode where dan embarrasses himself by using the wrong for of "secular" in front of hillary clinton... which i believe is exactly like an episode of the west wing where sam refers to the the wrong "K-stan" country in front of... someone important. whom i cannot remember. like, a former secretary of state, or something. that's more than a passing resemblance. i'd add it... but i haven't the specifics on hand.
 * --Heterodoxus 22:35, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

separate article?
It seems like the similarities and cross-references between Sports Night, Studio 60 and The West Wing should be combined into one page, rather than being spread across all three articles. Any comments on that? -- Mohrr 21:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For sure. I put a red main article in the Studio 60 article sometime ago that was removed, but the point was that someone could fill it in.  It read something along the lines of Similarities between the works of Aaron Sorkin.-BiancaOfHell 22:55, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Characters
Ought there to be some sort of description of the characters? I mean, many shows have whole articles devoted to their characters, I think the least we can do is write a paragraph for everyone. --148.61.207.67 02:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Not confirmed?
Then does this belong in the article? "In the episode "Cliff Gardner", J.J. and two other network executives critique the material written by Dan and Casey, finding it to be too smart for the average viewer. It has been speculated (not confirmed) that the conversation was adapted from a conversation Sorkin had with ABC network executives regarding the show's material." --75.178.92.119 (talk) 23:52, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * good catch, I've removed it. -Markeer 16:19, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Peer review for Aaron Sorkin
I have started a peer review of the Aaron Sorkin article. I would really appreciate any input to better the article! -BiancaOfHell 01:29, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Similarity sections
At the moment, these seem overlong, filled with inane trivia (the same sound departments?????) and lacking any real relevance. If the best someone can do is to list which actors appeared on both sets of shows, then it really calls into question just how justified these sections are. Homages to events on another show are not similarities. The Studio 60 section is nothing but pointless trivia so I'm cutting it and putting it below for others to debate. The same should be done with the West Wing section as well. RoyBatty42 20:12, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip also emulated Sports Night in many ways.
 * Most notably, they are set "behind the scenes" on a television show.
 * Creator and head writer Aaron Sorkin went on to write Studio 60 on Sunset Strip.
 * Felicity Huffman guest starred in the pilot episode.
 * In Season 1 Episode 4 of Sports Night, Danny is told that the network is faced with a copyright infringement issue after he sang Happy Birthday, which is protected property, to Casey on air. In Season 1 Episode 4 of Studio 60, the show deals with a copyright issue when a joke written for Simon by the writers room turns out of have been performed almost a year earlier by a stand-up comic (it later turns out the Studio 60 owns the copyright on the issue).

Similarities edit: It mentions that both Sports Night and WW have characters named "Rostenkowski." The Rostenkowski referred to in West Wing was a real representative, Dan Rostenkowski. Clean it up?--Stevenredd (talk) 09:49, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Sport Night.jpg
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Userbox
For those of you who are a fan of the show and want to put a userbox on your page, user this code: ... Enjoy! Chengwes 03:52, 11 September 2007 (UTC)