Skip Bayless’s ‘First Take’ return is anti-nostalgia

Credit: ESPN, Nickelback

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Nostalgia is defined as the sad pleasure experienced in recalling what no longer exists; a wistful or sentimental yearning for a return to, or the return of, some real or romanticized past period, or an irrecoverable past condition or setting.

We live in the era of nostalgia. We’re steeped in it, especially in pop culture. You can’t make a movie or TV show that isn’t a remake, a reimagining, a legacy sequel, or some other kind of referential work. Whatever artistry or creativity ever existed in Super Bowl commercials has been replaced by “Hey, remember this?” beats.

ESPN knows nostalgia well. The recent Rich Eisen-hosted episodes of SportsCenter have been perfect nostalgic rituals, the latest of which even included the iconic theme song and graphics packages that elicit a Pavlovian response in any sports fan of a certain age.

On Friday, Skip Bayless returns to First Take for the first time since June 2016. For one morning only, he’ll sit across from Stephen A. Smith on ESPN airwaves to recapture the tête-à-tête energy that was the cornerstone of the Embrace Debate era of sports television. This will all go down almost nine years to the day everyone assumed it would never happen again.

As far as I can tell, aside from those who are participating in or associated with First Take, no one wants this.

There is no sad pleasure to be experienced in recalling what no longer exists. For all intents and purposes, it seems that everyone who participated in the Smith-Bayless experience, whether as an audience member or a cataloguer, regrets it.

There is no wistful or sentimental yearning for a return to the Embrace Debate era. Successful as it may have been, it’s widely regarded as a cultural ebb that ushered in the modern ESPN era of entertainment over sports.

There’s nothing romanticized about this time period. No one outside of ESPN’s and FS1’s walls is happy it happened and glad we’re still dealing with the aftershocks. There’s little happiness over Smith’s already-tired political ambitions, and Bayless haunts the sports-centric corners of social media like a Ghost of Debates Past.

The reunion is happening because Smith wanted it to happen. Not out of any demand other than that of Bayless, whose cultural cache is practically non-existent at this point. February’s Smith-Bayless reunion on The Arena: Gridiron passed like a fart in the wind. Most people probably don’t even know it happened.

Smith and Bayless are doing their part to hype Friday as an event years in the making. And sure, perhaps the reunion gives First Take a ratings pop. There is a certain fascination in it. Not in a nostalgic sense, but in the kind of morbid desire one has to see the aftereffects of a car crash. You slow down, you look, you see something you wish you hadn’t, and you speed off, hoping to forget all about it.

For as much as the Smith-Bayless era of First Take was popular, it actually didn’t leave much of a cultural imprint behind. It’s like a hit CBS show in that way.

Everyone remembers that Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless used to yell at one another every morning on ESPN, but no one could tell you anything about what they yelled about. There are no iconic moments. No memes from that era continue to populate social media platforms or Slack channels. There isn’t a single debate, take, or zinger that has stood the test of time. It was all ephemeral nonsense.

Perhaps in that way, this reunion is the perfect embodiment of the modern nostalgia ritual. Resurrected IP shoved out there to arouse a mild curiosity from an audience that remembers the names and faces involved. It sounds slightly interesting on paper, and you might even convince yourself that you’ll watch, for old time’s sake. But then, when the time comes to buy your ticket (or tune in), you remember….

‘Wait, I don’t actually care about this.’

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