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| 2:42 | 1:06 | 0:12 |
| Events | Ads | Fluff |
* We're over a week into the Olympics, and who's in the studio tonight? Matt Lauer. Does Bob have to take a paycut because he's only working half of the Games? He probably just uses his sick days at work. Wouldn't you like to get the amount of money that Bob Costas is getting paid not to work?
* Over to the mountain for the women's snowboardcross. Lindsey Jacobellis will be racing tonight. Rembember her from 2006? Think "choke." I love this sport. It's all the chaos of short track speed skating but on a mountain. On the first run, the Czech Republic's Eva Samkova has a camera mounted on top of her helmet. Will NBC be showing us this angle later? We can hope.
* We do! Austria's Susanne Moll was wearing a camera in the second run, and when a crash took out the first two boarders, NBC went to a replay from her angle. Very nice. I mean, not so nice for the lead boarder who got knocked out, but great for the viewer.
* If you didn't remember about Jacobellis, NBC is going to remind you now with a minute of fluff about how she choked in 2006 and got knocked out in 2010. Tonight she makes a clean first run. Good job, Lindsey!
* Mary Carillo is back, talking about dolls. How many thousands of miles will we go away from Sochi tonight? "Six hours east of Moscow," starts Mary. So, waayy away from Sochi. Anyway, we're talking about the Matryoshka nesting dolls, which are a big business in Russia. This is starting to look less like the Olympics and more like an episode of "How It's Made." We watch craftsman lathe the wood, prepare the wood for painting, and paint the folk art on top of it. What can I say? I like "How It's Made", but that's not what I tuned into tonight. Fluff!
* Back to the snowboardcross where we learn that Samkova "rocks a mustache." What is the deal with women wearing painted on mustaches? I don't understand the trend. Hipsters!
* Oh no! Lindsey crashes again! She was leading and only had two turns left to go and she missed the landing on one of her jumps. Unlike 2006, she wasn't showing off on this one, she just caught a bad edge. So once again, she won't have a chance to medal. Lindsey is a real-life example of why it's important to finish a race before you start celebrating. Had she done so in 2006, she would be a gold-medal winner trying to win again. But now, even though she was clearly one of the best racers in this year's competition, she came up empty again. She's the Dan Marino of snowboardcross.
* To the Sanki Sliding Center, where tonight we get the two-man bobsled event. Steven Holcomb of the US is the defending Olympic champion from Vancouver. In his prerace interview he says that the pressure is off this year because they won the gold in 2010. See, Lindsey? This is exactly what I'm talking about.
* I don't know what this effect is actually called, but they've used it in both skiing and now the bobsled. When NBC shows replays for the sports where only one competitor is on a course at a time, they are able to superimpose one athlete over the other to show which one is faster. It really highlights exactly where the differences are made in competition.
* To the Iceberg, for the short program of ice dancing. Well, thank goodness we're finally getting to see some ice skating in prime time. It can't be easy to do all of these moves, make them look easy, and ice skate all at the same time. This is why "Skating With Celebrities" didn't take off. It's easy to teach someone just how to dance. It's hard to teach them how to dance and how to ice skate. But during NBC's late night broadcast last night, I came up with a celebrity-based reality show that I think would be huge. Imagine the ratings for "Curling With The Stars."
* Tracy Wilson shows us a video segment demonstrating via split-window a few of the differences between ice dancing and figure skating. It was actually informative. That might be the first time I've complimented NBC's ice skating announcing team. It feels strange.
* Meryl Davis and Charlie White get some recycled fluff from the other night. We don't even get new fluff? That's just sad. They won silver in Vancouver and they want to win gold. That's about the only new information we learned. That took two minutes and it should have been obvious to begin with.
* Bobsled. Jamaica bobsled. They're in 30th place, but at least they didn't crash. Analyst John Morgan demonstrates his diplomatic commentary by describing their poor driving down the track as "using all of the ice."
* During the post-race interviews, Steven Holcomb, the captain of USA-1, talks all about what went right and what to expect for tomorrow's race. His teammate, Steve Langton, stands silently nearby, never saying a word. He's Teller to Holcomb's Penn.
* To the mountain for the men's super-g. We get to watch a few people be unsuccessful and then we get some Bode Miller fluff. Tom Brokaw interviews Bode and his wife, Morgan. She says it was love at first sight, but not for her. That's sort of how I'm feeling about this piece.
* Bode's wife predicts that Bode will win by a second. She might be a little biased. Heeey! Bode won't win by a second, but he is in first for now. It is really charming that his wife keeps giving Bode encouragement as each skier comes down the mountain. Bode thinks he wasn't fast enough, but two skiers later, he's still in the lead. Morgan is wearing a mic, and NBC keeps cutting to her talking to Ted Ligety, asking him if he thinks that Bode's time can hold on. Ligety just grits his teeth. You can tell he doesn't think it will, but he's not telling that to Morgan. I hope Bode's time holds out, but regardless, this is great TV. Whoever decided to mic Morgan should get a raise.
* Bode's still in first, and now Morgan is counting the remaining skiers. Four left! Booo... Kjetil Jansrud of Norway beats Bode out by almost a half a second. Well, the gold is gone, but there should still only be three skiers left to beat him out of silver.
* The benefits of tape delay? We get to hear the recorded replay of the Norwegian TV commentators announcing Jansrud's run. They were just a bit excited. It was like the Scandanavian version of "gooooooaaaalllll!!!!"
* Canadian Jan Hudec ties Bode for second and now there's one racer left, American Andrew Weibrecht, who won the bronze in Vancouver. He's on fire! At least on the top of the course. If he can just stay upright he might even win! Noooo! So close! Weibrecht comes out of nowhere to win silver, so Bode and Hudec tie for bronze.
* In the post-race interview, NBC's Christin Cooper makes Bode cry when she keeps asking him questions about his brother, who died after a seizure a few months ago. Surprisingly, I'm not going to blame her for this. I don't think the question was rude, Bode was just overcome with emotion.
* Back to ice dancing. "Not only are Virtue and Moir (Canadians) and Davis and White (Americans) rivals, but they train together and have the same coach," says Tom Hammond. I don't think Tom knows what "rival" means. Let's change that sentence. Not only are the Cowboys and the Steelers rivals, but they train together and have the same coaches! Yeah, you would never hear that.
* Meryl Davis and Charlie White got dancing tips from "Dancing With The Stars" dancer Derek Hough. They end up in first place at the end of the short program portion. Hmm... Derek danced with one Olympian (Shawn Johnson) in DWTS and finished second. His sister, Julianne, danced with one Olympian (Apolo Anton Ohno) in DWTS and finished first. Maybe Meryl and Charlie should have hired the other Hough.
* It's the end of an era! Matt tells us that Bob will be back in the Fortress of Solitude tomorrow night. Our long Olympic nightmare is over!
* Finally, on the medal stand Andrew Weibrecht, silver medalist, gets almost completely ignored so we can see how Bode Miller reacts to being the bronze winner. The guy who actually won? Meh! Who cares?
Another really good night for NBC. Only 12 minutes of fluff in four hours is very good. Has it all been this low because Bob hasn't been there and NBC felt the need to focus on events? If so, that's been to our advantage. Let's hope that the return of Costas doesn't mean the return of fluff. Come back tomorrow and we'll find out!
