coalescent

Sports Night, if you haven't heard of it, is the show Aaron Sorkin created before The West Wing. It was a half-hour show set backstage at a late-night cable show called, yes, Sports Night, and ran between 1998 and 2000. Thanks to the kindness of

lamentables, I've been gradually working my way through it over the past couple of months.

Now, I knew from a certain episode of The West Wing that Sorkin seemed to be a space fan, but I was still taken a bit by surprise by 'The Sweet Smell of Air'. Dana Whitaker, the producer of Sports Night, wants to discuss a potential Michael Jordan interview with her boss, the managing editor Isaac Jaffe:

DANA: Hi, Isaac--

ISAAC: Hi. Dana, listen to this, this is fantastic. [reads from magazine] "Bioengineering might one day create living creatures adapted to survival in space."

DANA: OK.

ISAAC: Space birds.

DANA: ... OK.

ISAAC: Don't you wanna know how they're gonna fly without air?

DANA: Uh ... OK.

ISAAC: It says here they're gonna fly on sunlight.

DANA: ... So, we got this Michael Jordan offer ...

ISAAC: And further out where the sunlight grows weaker, they're gonna bioengineer a squid.

DANA: ... Squid?