The Big Show: Top 5 Moments From 'Sports Night'

"SPORTS NIGHT" DIDN'T reinvent the half-hour sitcom, but it deserves more credit than it gets. And in 1998, the show was revolutionary for its ability to combine serious issues (steroids in sports, sexual assault, infidelity) with situational comedy.

The show about the inner workings of a fictional ESPN "Sportscenter"-style show was one of the first in the so-called 'dramedy" genre, and it was also creator Aaron Sorkin's first foray into television. ("The West Wing" started after "Sports Night's" first season.)

The complete series — just two seasons — was released on an eight-disc 10th anniversary edition DVD this week, and it reminds viewers why "Sports Night" was so good: It featured relatable, motivated and likeable characters, and it was sharp, witty and funny when it wanted to be, and it was touching when it needed to be. It just never found an audience.

Josh Charles and Peter Krause starred as Dan Rydell and Casey McCall, the two-man anchor team ranked third behind ESPN and FOX. Casey was straight-laced, Dan a bit more dry and sarcastic — but together they have the kind of natural chemistry you saw from Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick on the golden days of "Sportscenter."

Felicity Huffman — the real star of the show — plays "Sports Night's" producer, Dana Whitaker, a strong woman holding her own in a man's world. Natalie Hurley (Sabrina Lloyd) and Jeremy Goodwin (Joshua Malina) are her associate producers, who also happen to be dating. The great Robert Guillaume rounds out the cast as managing editor Isaac Jaffe, who has covered everything from the famous "The Dodgers win the pennant" baseball game to NASA. Issac is everyone's father figure — a staple of Sorkin's work.

The program was also incredibly accurate for what it was — a bonus feature on the DVD set has ESPN employees comparing the show to real life — and in the series "Sports Night" has to grapple with the network stepping in to make changes, its parent company being sold and nearly losing the show. If anything, it seems Sorkin was writing from experience — Sorkin fought against a laugh track, which is annoyingly there in season one, but gone in season two — and "Sports Night" was all the better for it.

Below are our picks for "Sports Night's" Top 5 highlights. (If you haven't seen the show, here's your spoiler alert warning.)

» 5. The pilot
What better place to start than "Sports Night's" pilot? It instantly set the tone of the show, the character's relationships and got you hooked — all in one 22-minute span. From the opening moments — the tension before the start of a broadcast — to the closing —fittingly, the beginning of the next night's broadcast — the show is one rapid fire trip. Centering on Casey, who is recently divorced, the episode follows his near exit from the show. After an athlete is arrested in a Strip Club, Casey, who has a 7-year-old son, starts to worry that these athletes, not him, will now be his son's role models and he can't take it. By the end of the show, a 41-year-old marathon runner returns his faith by setting a world record, captivating the entire newsroom in the process. Casey's emphatic broadcast opening — "… and guess what? Ntozake Nelson's got something to say about a world record! Seeing is believing" — is the perfect punctuation to open the series.

» 4. Isaac returns from his stroke
Sorkin always borrowed from real life for "Sports Night," but never as accurately as with Isaac's stroke near the end of season one. In real life, Guillaume had a stroke during shooting, forcing Sorkin to decide between a replacement and a plot line. Thankfully, he opted to write Isaac a stroke. In the season finale, Issac makes his triumphant return at a time when everyone needs it most. Dana had just called off her engagement to a cheating fiancee, while Casey is grappling with a worsening relationship with his son. A few moments before air Dana, who had purchased some high-end photo equipment as a new hobby, tries taking a picture of the gang, but nothing is working. She begs for one good thing to happen and in walks Isaac — the moment made ever the more touching because it was Guillaume's return to the set in real life. You can't fake emotion like that.

» 3. Dana and Casey finally kiss
Sorkin built the tension between Dana and Casey from the very first episode, building on it during season one. There's Dana's jealousy over Casey sleeping with another woman, Casey trying to break up Dana's engagement and Natalie and Dan constantly in each Dana's and Casey's ears about how they're both in love with each other. All the tension came to a head in the season two opener when Dana and Casey finally kiss — 90 days after Dana's engagement ends. The scene works because, true to form, Casey almost doesn't do it. They're in the moment when he walks away, leaving the room to go do the show. Then, in true Sorkin-style, he burst back into a waiting Dana as they finally kiss. While nothing ever came of their relationship, this kiss only helped to build the tension that would naturally dry out — from both ends — by the end of the series.

» 2. Jeremy and Jenny argue in the rain
In the middle of season two, Jeremy and Natalie, who had been dating since mid-season one, break up, leaving an awkward strain on the workplace. One night, Jeremy meets an adult film actress, Jenny, at a bar and the two hit it off, but he's uncomfortable with her profession. This leads to one of the series' rare outdoor scenes, with Jeremy and Jenny screaming at each other in the rain. It showed Jeremy's good-hearted nature, but also that he was more than that — it gave his character the chance to finally take a risk, something he direly needed.

» 1. The series finale
Might as well start with the beginning and close with the end. "Sports Night's" series finale was a bittersweet affair. The faux-show's parent company, Continental Corp., was up for sale and no one knew if "Sports Night" would be back (which they also didn't know, in real life). After a mild bidding war and premonitions from a strange man (guest star Clark Gregg), a company named Quo Vadimus buys Continental Corp. No one one's the show's fate until the final scenes and when an emphatic Dana runs to the bar — during what could be the fictional show's final broadcast — to talk to the mystery man. When she realizes who he is, the owner of Quo Vadimus, and how he plans to keep the show, she screams, "My show is on! My show is on! My show is on!" Two years of emotion bottled up into one emphatic statement — if only "Sports Night's" actual fate had been as good as its faux one.

Written by Express contributor Rudi Greenberg