[SPN] Shane

TV Programme: Sports Night
Season: 2
Episode: 6
Date I watched this episode: 28/12/2009
Time since I last watched this programme: 4 months, 19 days.

This day was kind of unofficially my "midseason premiere day". This was pretty much entirely by coincidence, as I'd intended to watch Rome instead of Jericho but my laptop didn't have enough battery to play what I thought would be a 50+ minute episode. But it's kind of cool as I watched the midseason finales of this programme and also Jericho on the same day, and I had then watched the midseason premieres on the same day too.

This episode should have been called "Kafelnikov". (See my previous review for more details). In fact, the whole "Shane" storyline to this ep was a bit pointless, without really any moral to the story, except to give Casey something to do and an excuse not to help Dan out. It also led to the silliest, most cheesy scene in this PROGRAMME so far, with Dana dancing to "Walking On Sunshine" - I didn't appreciate this.

Dan's initial chat with Abby at the bar was kind of a mix of "business" and "personal" and was quite funny to see the way Danny handled that. However, it really brought his problems bubbling to the surface and hit a bit of a turning point in Dan's arc in general. I don't think Dan had ever thought before about how therapy would work - it is going to be a long process, rather than a "quick fix" which is what he was expecting from Abby.

He's just trying to get his head around the fact that his problems run deeper than not being able to pronounce Kafelnikov's first name. That's not just the least of his problems, it's not one of his problems at all. "It's a hard name to pronounce" to quote Abby. Dan kind of thought this is how it would manifest itself, but by the end of the episode he's just beginning to realise how this is going to play out.

Dan's relationship with Abby has also taken a big hit in this episode, I think. He can't really carry on dating her when he is seeing her in a professional capacity. Also, he has kind of ruined things by bursting into her office like that - which even I could see was wholly unprofessional.

The third story in this episode was with Natalie and "Hell", and even this was much more well-executed than Casey's story. The Hell story did have kind of a moral to it - that people don't do bad things because they know they're wrong, not because of any fire and brimstone, or certainly this is true in Natalie's case. I think I could see that already but it's a good piece of direct character development.

In general this was an episode with a pretty key main storyline, and a few extra bits tagged on for good measure. But Josh's and Jayne's acting kind of redeemed it, and I'm looking forward to seeing where this can go in the next episode.