A Win For "Sports Night" - television programming - Brief Article

Progressive, The, Dec, 1999 by Fred McKissack

NBC's "Must See Thursday" is, well, dead.

Not that anyone should care. I don't.

Yes, by all means, curl up with a good book, such as Susan Faludi's Stiffed.

Forget there was once a time when Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer made a mockery of the yuppie, pseudo-intelligentsia who didn't realize that it sucks to spend so much time enjoying the world's most thoroughly unfriendly and dysfunctional clique.

Ignore the Chicago of ER, where doctors and nurses and paramedics--despite their numerous personality conflicts--really do care about the patients. I'm waiting for After ER, where the insurance company tells you that the money's dried up, the Canadians don't have a better health care system, and neither God nor Ralph Nader can save you.

Tune out Frasier (going down the tubes), Friends (really should be off the tube), and Jesse (Christina Applegate deserves better).

OK, now save your TV groove--and don't play like you don't have one--for Sports Night (ABC, Tuesdays). It's about the people behind the show of the same name on the fictional Continental Sports Channel. CSC, we are told, trails in third place behind ESPN and FOX Sports in the ratings among all-sports channels.

Before you yawn yourself to another section of the magazine, just read me out for a little bit. If you like good writing, where wit rises above your average dick joke, dialogue is fast paced and meaningful, and characters are not only multidimensional but actually likable, then this is the show for you. It's not just another sports show. Indeed, it's not just another TV show.

Peter Krause and Josh Charles play Casey and Dan, the anchors of Sports Night. They are directed by producer Dana (Felicity Huffman), whose boss, Isaac (Robert Guillaume), is recovering from a stroke. Guillaume, who is recovering from a stroke in real life, is well cast, not because there was a need for a "black character" but because his ability as an actor makes his role as the executive producer believable. But it is interesting that two minorities, Huffman and Guillaume, are at the top of the fictional hierarchy. You don't see this outside the box.

The supporting characters help keep the show moving along. Sabrina Lloyd and Joshua Malina play Natalie and Jeremy, two young producers who are also in love. This season, William H. Macy has joined the crew as a rude, abrasive ratings expert, brought in by Isaac to boost the show's popularity. Even he's growing on me.

Executive producer-writer Aaron Sorkin may be receiving high praise for The West Wing (Wednesday, NBC), but it's Sports Night that should be getting the applause. Sorkin says he isn't a big sports fan, which may be a plus, since he doesn't confine himself to the playing field and the locker room. He actually brings in real issues. For example, episodes last season ranged from the assault by a football player on Natalie--which included a discussion about whether or not to capitalize on this attack as a ratings booster--to Isaac's decision to condemn the network's president for supporting his alma mater's stance on the Confederate flag.

While this may not be a radical's notion of radical television, Sorkin--who also wrote the movie The American President and won the Outer Critics Circle award for Outstanding American Playwright for the stage version of A Few Good Men--has his heart in the right place. You see it in how he's taken care to create adult characters for an adult audience to talk about. That's a pretty rare occurrence.

It's a shame that far too many are talking negatively about The Boondocks. This sometimes shocking but always funny comic strip is from the mind and hands of Aaron McGruder, who should be encouraged for exploring America in this medium rather than being blunted by people who are laughably screaming "reverse discrimination" in a vain attempt to down him. I wonder if these are the same people who bitched so loudly at feminists to get off the PC bandwagon for asking if the comic strip Beetle Bailey was way out of step with the rest of America.

Here's the quick synopsis, and see if you can figure out why some people might have some problems: The Boondocks is the story of the brothers Freeman, Huey, and Riley, a.k.a. Escobar, who grew up in the Chicago ghetto but move to suburban Maryland to live with their grandpa, whom they constantly annoy by threatening to form a neighborhood Klan Watch. Gramps just wants some peace and quiet--to doze in the afternoon and dream of going fishing with Dorothy Dandridge. Recently, little Riley, who longs to be a thug, altered their street sign from Gurgling Brook Lane to Wu-Tang Drive. There's also Jazmine, their biracial neighbor, whom Huey accuses of hiding her racial identity as she slicks back her nappy mane into a ponytail. For her part, Jazmine coaxed Huey to act out scenes from Gone with the Wind, much to his dismay.

The characters are complex and engaging, which is rare for the comics. In an interview featured in The Onion, McGruder says his influences were Berke Breathed (Bloom County and Outland), Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes), and Charles Schulz (Peanuts). Using children as a way of discussing adult issues is nothing new, yet McGruder delves deeply into issues of race, class, and gender--stuff you usually don't find on the comics page of mainstream papers.