Last month marked the release of the trailer for The Social Network, the new movie chronicling the development of Facebook. Admittedly, the trailer does leave one with some doubts as to how interesting or suspenseful such a film could possibly be ("The site got twenty-two hundred hits in two hours?" "Thousand. Twenty-two thousand."). But the film was written by Aaron Sorkin, the auteur best known for The West Wing. Although Sorkin has not always been reliable (the late, not-so-great Studio 60 pops to mind), his involvement is a reason for many fans of sharp writing and clever dialogue to keep an eye on The Social Network.
So The Social Network got me to thinking of Sorkin, and I couldn't help but reminisce over the reason I continue to follow his work. Although I admire what I've seen of The West Wing, I truly fell in love with his first series, the smart if uneven ABC sitcom Sports Night. The show followed the exploits of the team involved in producing a nightly show on a low-ranked cable sports network. Much like Friday Night Lights now, Sports Night suffered from the inability of its potential audience to get past the show's premise. ABC promoted it as "about sports. The same way Charlie's Angels was about law enforcement." Didn't work, and the show was canceled after two seasons.
It's been more than 10 years since Sports Night was canceled and, like Sorkin, most of the players have found their way to other projects. Of the six principal actors on the show, four currently have steady television gigs—Felicity Huffman on Desperate Housewives, Joshua Malina on In Plain Sight, Peter Krause on Parenthood, and Josh Charles on The Good Wife. Of course I'm glad that they're gainfully employed, but I can't help but miss the chemistry they shared, particularly Krause and Charles.
Krause's Casey McCall and Charles's Dan Rydell had an epic bromance well before that silly term ever entered our contemporary lexicon. Casey was confident but goofy, out-of-touch with pop culture and still licking his wounds from his recent divorce. Dan was clever and complicated, a romantic increasingly crippled by his own self-loathing. Their relationship was intense: best friends, writing partners, co-anchors. They understood each other almost perfectly, supported each other in times of need (Casey's discussion of the Starland Vocal Band after Dan has gone through a difficult broadcast, for one). They knew exactly how to hurt each other as well: Dan's icy "Casey, tell us—why should we care?" in the second "Draft Day" episode still makes me gasp. Their friendship seemed so completely genuine that it's difficult to believe that Krause and Charles didn't grow up on the same block, playing pickup ballgames and swapping trading cards.
It seems a shame to let a chemistry like that go to waste. I suppose it would be possible to coordinate their schedules so that one could guest star on the other's show, but, let's be honest, that would not be enough for me. In an ideal world, I'd like to see them both on a television show together regularly, but given the present success of both Parenthood and The Good Wife, that seems unlikely. I would be pretty happy to settle for a movie where the pair had significant screen time together. Krause and Charles are also both, fortunately, very talented actors, and I think they could do almost anything from partners in a gritty police drama to best friends in a featherlight romantic comedy. I bet they'd even make excellent rivals: for a girl, for a job, for the world's largest diamond, etc.The sky's the limit.
Do you know what I really, really want them to do, though? It took me this whole post to realize it.
I just want them to be Dan Rydell and Casey McCall again. Reunion movie, please?
No comments:
Post a Comment