Sports Wing

[avram]

It’s pretty common for artists to reuse material from their earlier work in their later pieces, especially when the early stuff was much less popular. While reading Alan Moore’s Captain Britain comics (recently reprinted) I noticed bits that got reused in V for Vendetta (the British concentration camps) and Watchmen (a soliloquy by a character who can see through time, meditating upon events both past and future).

I’m a big fan of Sports Night, a sitcom Aaron Sorkin wrote before The West Wing. You can catch it in reruns on Comedy Central at some thing like 3:30 AM some nights; it’s worth devoting some videotape to. I was reminded of it by tonight’s episode of The West Wing, “Posse Comitatus”, the season ender. (Which, BTW, beat the Buffy season ender all hollow. Last night I was interested, but skeptical. Tonight, I had tears in my eyes, and then coldly furious, and finally on the verge of cheering, all within a span of maybe ten minutes.) The prayer by Thomas Merton, which Leo quotes (but attributes to a “famous monk”) to Bartlet — “I don’t always know what the right thing to do is, my Lord, but I think that the fact that I want to please you, pleases you” — was also quoted by Isaac to Casey (and likewise without Merton’s name attached) in the Sports Night episode “The Reunion”. And I’m pretty sure there was an episode of Sports Night that also used Rufus Wainright’s “Hallelujah” as background music, but I can’t remember which it was. (I’m hoping against hope for “Eli’s Coming”.)

I’d also been idly wondering if Simon Donovan (CJ’s bodyguard in the past few eps of The West Wing) was related to Sam Donovan (the consultant Isaac hires to bring up the ratings in Sports Night’s second season).

Oh, it looks like I’m not the only one who’s been noticing these things.

Comments

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Rufus Wainright’s “Hallelujah”

Is actually Leonard Cohen's if I remember correctly.

The same song, though recorded by a different artist, is used in Shrek, right?