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| Events | Ads | Fluff |
* Bob is back! He still has his eyes, as well as his sense of humor, joking that he's sitting in tonight for Matt Lauer and Meredith Viera. But just so you'll remember why he was gone, I'll post this link. Enjoy!
* To the Iceberg where we will start with... fluff! Of course we will. Both Tessa and Scott of Canada and Meryl and Charlie of the US have their own private parking spaces at the training center in Michigan that they all share. Both teams want to win, says their coach, but one will lose. That's profound, isn't it? I wouldn't have been able to figure that one out on my own. Of course, they could be like the alpine skiers and tie. But that would mess up this piece, wouldn't it? Forget I said anything.
* Wait, after all of that we don't even start at ice dancing? Psh! Whatever! We're off to men's aerials freestyle skiing. This is the winter Olympics' equivalent to the summer Olympics' diving event. What all of these athletes are doing in the air is incredible, but it's all so complicated that the only thing I know how to judge is the landing. If there's no splash it's good, if there is a splash it's bad.
* A women's hockey update. The USA and Canada will meet again for the gold on Thursday. We're coming for you, Canucks!
* Bobsled fluff! Russia's two-man bobsled driver, Aleksandr Zubkov, has been around the Olympics for a long time. He's in his fifth Olympics, but has never won gold. He's so old (39) that his daughter is now competing in luge for Russia. All of Russia knows the Zubkov name, he says. For not winning? I'd normally doubt that, but then I think of Lindsey Jacobellis. You still have two more Games to go, Lindsey!
* Zubkov is the first sledder we see tonight and he gets a new track record. According to Slate, that's not good news for the other teams.
* The Jamaican bobsled team has a new song and music video supporting their team. Take a look. Apparently they've been working on the graphics since 1988.
* Bob and Mary are back together again. Good times. Except we're going to talk about Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, something that happened 20 years ago. Now we can't even talk about something thousands of miles away in modern day Russia for fluff. Instead, we're headed to the other side of the planet for something that happened two decades ago. Even worse, this segment is just a preview for an even longer story we're going to see this Sunday. I'm getting my snark ready.
* We've seen two segments tonight where Steven Holcomb and his brakeman, Steve Langton have demonstrated both how they push start the bobsled and how they drive down the track. In both segments, Langton said a total of three words. Well, that's more than Teller would speak with Penn, so yesterday's analogy might be a little off. Maybe he's more like Robin Gibb in the Barry Gibb Talk Show.
* The USA has a 62-year drought in medals in the two-man bobsled, can Holcomb pull it off? He's doing well so far. It's close! WOOOOO!! By three hundreths of a second, Holcomb steers USA-1 down the track for a medal! NBC shows a great split-screen video showing that their start in heat four was four hundreths faster than their start in heat three. Little things make a difference.
* Now we'll see if Slate really knows what it's talking about. If they're right, the Swiss will hang on to second and the Russians will hang on to first. The Swiss hold up their end of the deal, now Zubkov has to live up to his fluff. Really, he has such a big lead that barring a crash, it would be impossible for him to lose. And he doesn't, just as predicted.
* So, an aside on bobsledding here. Slate's suggestion for the bobsled is to only have two runs, which would make things closer. I have a different idea. Start with 30 teams. After the first run, eliminate the bottom ten. Then erase all the times and start over. Eliminate ten more teams after the second run. Erase all the times again. Now run heats three and four and add only those two times together. This way you still keep four heats, but only the last two count for the medal. If you have a bad race early, you're out, but you would be anyway under the current format.
* Back to the Iceberg for ice dancing. American siblings Maia and Alex Shibutani dance to a medley of Michael Jackson songs, including Thriller. Not bad, but I've seen better.
* First of the "rivals" is Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir of Canada. I will be watching for all of the detailed technical issues. Ha ha ha ha! Not really. I don't know any ice dancing technical issues. Unless they fall down I can't tell any difference between any of them. Well, they're beautiful, aren't they? And all of the frizzlelip moves they did were spectacular. Did you know there's no such thing as a frizzlelip? If not, then you know just as much about ice dancing as I do.
* Unsurprisingly, Virtue and Moir move into the lead. Davis and White are shown waiting in the wings. But up next, Kevin Bacon! Or at least Nikita Katsalapov, the Russian who looks exactly like him, and his partner Elena Ilinykh. They'll be skating to "Let's Hear It For The Boy." No, no they won't. They're skating to "Swan Lake." That's much more appropriate here in Mother Russia.
* The last skaters on the ice tonight are Meryl Davis and Charlie White, trying to avenge their 2010 loss to Virtue and Moir. Avenge me! Avengggge meeee!
* Well, they don't fall down. That's all I know, so let's see their scores. It's gold! Davis and White are the first US gold medalists in ice dancing and have the highest score ever recorded. What does that mean? I have no idea. I just know that I love goooolllld! So I guess that if Charlie White is the first to ever win gold in this event, that must make him the greatest American hero, right?
* So let's see if Davis and White sing the national anthem. What? We're not even going to get to see it? NBC shows White and Davis on the podium in the background, then shows a post-competition interview, but never actually shows the medal ceremony. All I can say to this is WTF, NBC?
* Back to the mountain for more snow diving, I mean, freestyle skiing aerials. We're on the "final" round, which is the second-to-last round. Apparently no one in the Olympic committee knows what the definition of "final" is. The last round is called the "super final." Anyway, the super final doesn't have any Americans in it, so everyone is probably tuning out now.
Given that there was so little fluff, you think I wouldn't be that upset with tonight's broadcast, but NBC had two major fails. First, the fluff that was there was the worst kind: fluff promoting more fluff. Second, there's really no excuse for not showing the medal ceremony of Davis and White. They've been hyping this competition all week and instead of the medal ceremony, we saw an interview. That's pathetic. Hopefully this isn't a preview of things to come. See you tomorrow!
