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WORKING STIFFS | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - As they say on the sports shows, here's the breakdown: "Sports Night" is about a bunch of unlikable people who work on a nightly cable sports wrap show called "Sports Night" (read ESPN's "SportsCenter"). Hard-driving producer Dana Whitaker (Felicity Huffman), anchormen Dan Rydell (Josh Charles) and Casey McCall (Peter Krause) and Dana's perky, perky assistant, Natalie Hurley (Sabrina Lloyd), are veritable triathletes of work. They don't seem to have homes, or lives away from the job. They're dizzy with the thrill of producing live TV. They seem to be in competition to see who can be the dullest, most work-obsessed, self-involved person in the office. Dana gets my vote, especially for the episode where she and her starved-for-attention boyfriend Gordon go on a double date with Casey, and she ignores Gordon because she'd prefer to talk to Casey (mutual secret crush) about work and make cell phone calls to Natalie, who's holding down the fort, and squint at "Sports Night" on the TV over Gordon's shoulder. If "Sports Night" had a scintilla of irony, or wit, it might be a satire worth a damn. But no. "Sports Night," you see, is not a satire. Creator-writer Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the big-screen TV movies "A Few Good Men" and "The American President," is not making sport of these characters. He's Very, Very Serious. In every episode, he stops what little comic momentum the show has worked up so his characters can make dramatic, overwritten movie-blockbuster speeches about how much they love their jobs, dammit, and how they are better people for it! Despite the nearly uniform overpraise the show has received, it remains firmly in the low-middle of the Nielsens -- soon we'll start seeing articles bemoaning America's failure to recognize a great show when it sees one. But the truth is, "Sports Night" is a freaking mess. Part drama, part comedy, all self-congratulatory, "Sports Night" is most often referred to as a "dramedy," which is a TV-critic euphemism for "I don't know what it is either, so it must be brilliant." (I prefer the more succinct term, "coma.") The show has a laugh track, but it's the most unconvincing laugh track you've ever heard -- I swear somebody pulled those confused titters off of an old Andy Kaufman audition tape. When its supporters talk about how "funny" "Sports Night" is, they usually cite the show's rapid-fire exchanges between characters, drawing comparisons to Jerry and George's Abbott and Costello routines on "Seinfeld." But on "Sports Night," these exchanges aren't carefully, sparingly, doled out set pieces. This is the way the characters talk, all the time. Not only is this schtick unbearably cute, it goes on and on and ... Well, here's an example, from a scene where new guy Jeremy Goodwin (Joshua Malina) is about to get his chance to produce a segment of "Sports Night": Dana: Meet us in Isaac's office right after lunch. Casey: Jeremy getting the call? Dana: He's getting the call. Jeremy: I'm getting the call? Dan: You're getting the call. Jeremy: I don't know what that means. Elliott: It means you're getting the call. Jeremy: Really? Elliott: Yeah. Jeremy: I still don't know what that means. Dana: Isaac's office after lunch. Jeremy: I'm sorry -- is getting the call, you know, good? Dana: Better than a poke in the eye. Jeremy: How much better? There's more, but I can see your eyes glazing over. Now, imagine, oh, four or five or six of these exchanges an episode. And when the characters aren't being fast and coy, they're reciting stilted dramatic monologues that seem to have dropped in from the How to Write Like David Mamet seminar next door. It doesn't seem to affect the quality of the show either way whether the characters are being "comical" or "dramatic" -- the actors don't ever really convincingly interact, they're too busy engaging in self-conscious stagey banter. And if we can't believe that the characters are really connecting with each other, we're not going to connect with them. Not that you'd want to. Dana is a laughable (and not in a good way) Hollywood take on the go-go career woman; she's Holly Hunter in "Broadcast News" all over again, a dynamo on the job who turns into a complete idiot over boyfriend stuff. What Dana sees in Casey is a mystery; he's supposed to be The Sensitive One (as opposed to Dan's happy-go-lucky jock), but Krause plays him with a strange, unvarying, glassy-eyed, smirky stare. When he takes his anchor seat, turns to the camera and begins intoning some smart-ass intro to highlights from the Daytona 500 or something, he looks eerily like Dan Patrick of "SportsCenter" under a voodoo curse. But don't go thinking that "Sports Night" is about sports. Oh, every so often, sports is used to introduce heavy issues (racism, drug use, violence against women, hunting animals for fun) that eventually make their way into climactic speeches decrying some form of Neanderthal male behavior. But the speeches invariably feel clumsily inserted because -- again -- it's the comedy or drama, fish or fowl thing. I hate to say this, but "Sports Night" might actually be a more coherent, and better, show if it were an hour-long drama with comic overtones. But at an hour, the risk of stroke would double, so forget I said anything. The box score: not funny, not compelling, not a spoof, not a satire, not a drama, unappealing as a romantic comedy, not even about sports. There's nothing to get hooked on, because there's nobody to get emotionally involved with. And emotional involvement -- and the escapism it implies -- is what TV is all about. Even though it's set in the world of TV, "Sports Night" is deeply TV-phobic. It's a show made by and about people who have a pathological fear of relaxation. No wonder watching it feels like work. SALON | Feb. 22, 1999 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.