Sports Night/The Hungry and the Hunted

The Hungry and the Hunted
Season 1, Episode 3
Airdate	October 6, 1998
Production Number	N-303
Written by	Aaron Sorkin
Directed by	Thomas Schlamme
← 1x02 The Apology	1x04 → Intellectual Property
Sports Night — Season One

The Hungry and the Hunted is the third episode of the first season of Sports Night.

Jeremy gets "the call," sending him out into the field to produce a hunting segment that provokes an extreme reaction. Casey has his own extreme reaction when he sees Dana in her "little black dress" at a fancy reception. Natalie puts the first step of her master plan into action. Dan wishes he could avoid the drama, but that's not going to happen.

Starring: Josh Charles (Dan Rydell), Peter Krause (Casey McCall), Felicity Huffman (Dana Whitaker), Joshua Malina (Jeremy Goodwin), Sabrina Lloyd (Natalie Hurley) and Robert Guillaume (Isaac Jaffe),

Guest Starring: Kayla Blake (Kim), Greg Baker (Elliott)

Co-Starring: Ron Ostrow (Will), Jeff Mooring (Dave), Timothy Davis-Reed (Chris)

Plot Overview

Isaac and Casey watch a college football game in the office area and debate whether the coach will call for a kick or a running play. Isaac asks Jeremy for his opinion, which he does not want to give. But Isaac presses him, and Jeremy predicts a specific and complicated play. Isaac and Casey don't believe him, until they see the coach run the exact play Jeremy called.

At the rundown meeting, Dan pushes for a story on offshore yacht racing. Dana refuses, but Dan takes the opportunity to misquote a famous poem on sailing, touching off a debate on the poem's author. Jeremy is asked to meet Dana and Isaac in Isaac's office, because he is "getting the call." The staff congratulates him, but Jeremy is nervous. Dana assures him that getting the call is "better than a poke in the eye," but she won't say how MUCH better.

The entire staff is invited/obligated to attend a black tie affair hosted by Luther Sachs. Natalie counsels Dana on what dress to wear, while Dan gives her advice on shoes. In Isaac's office Jeremy is assigned to produce his first segment for CSC's outdoors show, and he seems nervous about the prospect of going hunting. Natalie gives Jeremy some briefing material and a snack bag with Twinkies and candy.

On the evening of the reception, Natalie asks Dan to ride in one limo with Isaac so that Dana and Casey can share the other limo -- and according to Natalie, fall in love. Dan thinks the idea is stupid, but agrees to go along. While putting on his tuxedo, Dan grumbles about how no one cares about American major league soccer, but he's floored when everyone in the office can name an MLS team except him. When Dan mentions the limo arrangement to Casey, he claims to be too grumpy after a long day's work to notice how Dana looks, but he's floored (literally) when Dana walks by him in a flattering evening gown. Isaac gets a call from the outdoors show saying that Jeremy's in the hospital.

The next day, the studio experiences intermittent sound problems. Dan admits to Natalie that her plan seems to have worked; Casey won't shut up about Dana or her date for the evening. Jeremy returns to the office looking downhearted, but he tells everyone that the trip went well. Isaac calls him into his office. They confront Jeremy with the truth: he threw up and hyperventilated on the hunting expedition.

Jeremy tells his story: the hunting had been going poorly, and Jeremy had snuck away for a moment to eat a Twinkie by a stream. He encountered a mother, father and baby deer, and the smell of the Twinkie drew the female out. One of the hunters told Jeremy to step away, and shot the deer. This was too much for Jeremy, and he reveals his strong feelings against sport hunting to Isaac.

Isaac chastises Jeremy for not trusting in him enough to give his opinion on hunting before going out on the expedition. Jeremy responds that he was worried about not fitting in, and endangering his chances at Sports Night. Isaac reassures him that he won't endanger his position just by stating his opinions, and tells him that if he does his job, the fitting in will happen naturally. Jeremy is heartened by the news, and calls his father to tell them he "got the call."

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• Jeremy gets his first production assignment, an outdoors segment. He passes out in the second day after witnessing a hunter shoot a deer.

Characters

• Casey has his first romantic feelings towards Dana, although she may not have noticed.

Trivia

The Show

• The poem Dan recites is "Sea Fever", by 20th Century poet John Masefield. Dan actually misquotes the poem, combining the first line from the first stanza with the fourth line of the second stanza, as can be seen here.
• In this episode, we hear about Dana's boyfriend Gordon, but we will not meet him until the next episode.
• Dan's antipathy to soccer is first mentioned.
• This episode utilizes some hand-held camera work, rare for a half-hour program.
• The song playing at fade-out is "Hymn To Her" as sung by The Pretenders.

Allusions and References

• Casey deliberately mixes up poet Walt Whitman with country singer Slim Whitman.
• The website for American major league soccer is here, although the team roster has changed since the Sports Night crew gave their list of teams.

Memorable Moments

• Jeremy is very sorry he correctly called the Red Rocket Right, Slant 42, Z Out play.
• Dan complimenting Dana on her decision to wear black Manolo Blahnik shoes, and her reaction.
• Casey tumbles to the ground watching Dana go by in her black dress.
• Jeremy's monologue about watching the deer being shot, the angry yet caring response from Isaac, and the tender response from Dana.

Quotes

• (Isaac and Casey are watching football.)
  Casey: They gotta score twice to win, why not just get three right now? He's got the wind at his back.
  Isaac: He doesn't have the leg.
  Casey: He's got the wind at his back.
  Isaac: I don't care if he's got the wind at his back and a song in his heart, he doesn't have the leg.
• Casey: (to Isaac) You're a crazy man from St. Louis, you have no business being in sports.
• Dan: Newport's gonna put up a challenge, New Zealand and Australia each have new keels and Japan's looking for an American tactician, maybe even a whole afterguard. Now, interestingly, Italy has developed a new hundred-and-forty percent Genoa but the I.O.R.C. says it may not meet specs because of a bolt in the backstay.
  Dana: Honest to God, I have no idea what sport you're talking about.
  Casey: Dan's talking about the rough-and-tumble, live-on-the-razor's-edge, run-till-you-drop, never-say-die world of offshore yacht racing.
• Dan: (reciting poetry) "I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky. To the flung spume and the blown spray and the..." I don't know, the thing in my eye.
  Dana: Thank you.
  Dan: That was a poem by Mr. Henry David Thoreau.
  Casey: It's Wordsworth.
  Dan: Or Wordsworth.
  Elliott: Uh, might be Whitman.
  Kim: Might be Byron.
  Dan: It's not Byron.
  Casey: I think it is Whitman.
  Isaac: It is not Whitman.
  Casey: I think it is.
  Isaac: It's not Walt Whitman.
  Casey: I'm sayin' I think it's Slim Whitman.
• Dana: You have to imagine, Danny, how much I don't give a damn about blown spume.
  Dan: It's "flung spume and blown spray," but actually I like your way better.
• Casey: (reading off his invitation) "October the Eighth, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-Eight, A.D." A.D. They're worried I might accidentally show up two thousand years before the birth of Christ.
• (Natalie plans the transportation to Luther Sachs' reception.)
  Natalie: I want Casey to ride with Dana.
  Dan: I get it.
  Natalie: Do you?
  Dan: I ride with Isaac, and Casey and Dana fall in love.
  Natalie: Right.
  Dan: Wow, is that a stupid plan.
• Dan: I've been thinking a lot about soccer lately.
  Casey: And?
  Dan: Pretty much through with that.
  Casey: Yeah?
  Dan: You know to save my life I couldn't name five teams that play in the MLS. I know there's Luxembourg.
  Casey: The MLS is an American soccer league.
  Dan: Luxembourg doesn't play in this league?
  Casey: No.
  Dan: So I don't even know Luxembourg.
• Dan: I gotta tell you, at this point, the length of this conversation is way out of proportion to my interest in it.
• (after a sound malfunction in the studio)
  Dana: Dave, Chris, Will, what are you guys doing tomorrow morning at ten?
  Dave: We've got a basketball game at the "Y".
  Will: Yeah, it's a three-on-three with the guys from--
  Dana: (ignoring them) Dave, Chris, Will, what are you guys doing tomorrow morning at ten?
  Chris: Fixing the sound system?
  Dana: There you go.
• Dan: Can I get a teamster to hit Casey in the head with something heavy?
• (Jeremy is agitated after his hunting trip.)
  Jeremy: We shot a deer! In the woods near Lake Mattatuck on the second day. There was a special vest they had me wear so that they could distinguish me from things they wanted to shoot, and I was pretty grateful for that. Almost the whole day had gone by, we hadn't gotten anything. Eddie was getting frustrated and Bob Shoemaker was getting embarrassed. My camera guy needed to re-load so I told everybody to take a ten minute break. There was a stream nearby and I walked over with this care-package Natalie made me. I sat down and when I looked up I saw three of them; small, bigger, biggest. Recognizable to any species on the face of the planet as a child, a mother and a father. Now, the trick in shooting deer is you gotta get 'em out in the open. And it's tough with deer, 'cause these are clever, cagey animals with an intuitive sense of danger. You know what you have to do to get a deer out in the open? You hold out a Twinkie. (pause) That animal clopped up to me like we were at a party. She seemed to be pretty interested in the Twinkie, so I gave it to her. Looking back, she'd have been better off if I'd given her the damn vest. And Bob kind of screamed at me in whisper, "Move away!" The camera had been re-loaded and it looked like the day wasn't gonna be a washout after all. So I backed away, a couple of steps at a time, and closed my eyes when I heard the shot. Look, I know these are animals, and they don't play bridge and go to the prom, but you can't tell me that the little one didn't know who his mother was. (pause) That's gotta mean something. And later, at the hospital, Bob Shoemaker was telling me about the nobility and tradition of hunting and how it related to the Native American Indians. And I nodded and I said that was interesting while I was thinking about what a load of CRAP it was. Hunting was part of Indian culture. It was food and it was clothes and it was shelter. They sang and danced and offered prayers to the gods for a successful hunt so that they could survive just one more unimaginably brutal winter. The things they had to kill held the highest place of respect for them, and to kill for fun was a sin. (pause) And they knew the gods wouldn't be so generous next time. What we did wasn't food and it wasn't shelter and it sure wasn't sports. It was just mean.
• Jeremy: Not fitting in is how qualified people lose jobs.
  Isaac: Yeah, but a lot of the time it's how they end up working here.
• Isaac: It's taken me a lot of years but I've come around to this: If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. And if you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.