Sunday, February 6, 2022

Harder, better, faster, stronger.

Go around the world and get lucky when you lose yourself to dance. Ice dancing, that is.

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• Close-ups! Dramatic music! Compelling voiceovers! We start the night with fluff. Looks cool, though.
• It's time to luuuuuuuuuuuge! There are four runs in the luge competition and two of them have happened already. When? It doesn't matter because the US won't medal in this anyway, and so NBC is only going to show the last run. Jonathon Gustafson is the first US luger we see, then Tucker West, and then Chris Mazdzer, who won silver in 2018. Mazdzer ends his run in first place. That's good! But now he has to hope that three people don't pass him to beat him for a medal. That's bad! Unfortunately, everyone we see who follows him beats his time. Mazdzer finishes eighth. But in the post-race interview he does get to Zoom with his wife and toddler son. Awwwww.
• It's time for some Mikaela Shiffrin fluff. Her dad, Jeff, used to be Mikaela's de facto photographer at all her races. But in 2020 he was in a bad accident and died. Understandably it was traumatizing, to the point that she considered giving up racing. But she didn't, and now NBC did a whole story on her dad. It's a very nice piece. That doesn't mean it isn't fluff.
• Back to the slopes for the Women's Freestyle Moguls. This sport makes my knees hurt just watching it. This is the final. Does that mean there are medals? Oh no. This is just a qualifying race for the "super-final." What? Does nobody know what words mean anymore? "Final" means the end. You don't have races after a "final." Once I went to McDonald's and said I wanted a small Coke. They said they didn't have a small, they only had medium, large, and extra large. That means the "medium" is your smallest size! Give me the small! Apparently that employee has now graduated to naming Olympic events.
• Jaelin Kauf of Utah speeds down the course into first place with one skier to go. Everyone back in her hometown goes nuts via Zoom. Australia's Jakara Anthony is the only one who can beat her and…. she does. Anthony, gold. Kauf, silver. Jaelin gets to do a Zoom call, too. Imagine how special these meetings would be if they were in person instead of Zoom because a certain country hadn't released the coronavirus on the entire world. Oh well!
• We are LIVE for the Women's Giant Slalom. Finally! Something real! Well, except for the snow. Every flake on the mountain is man-made because there isn't normally snow on these mountains. That seems like something that should have come up in the bidding process for the Winter Games. Good thing there's no corruption in the International Olympic Committee!
• Ahhh!!! Mikaela Shiffrin goes down! Near the top of the run, Shiffrin caught an edge while passing the fifth gate and missed gate six. She's the second skier to get in trouble in that spot. Analyst Ted Ligety does a nice job during the replay describing Mikaela's "boot out," where her boot hits the ground during the turn, causing her ski to slide out and knock her off her feet.
• It's time for more Team skating with the Pair's Free Skate. The first couple, Japan's Ryuichi Kihara and Riku Miura are coached by Bruno Marcotte. Are they going to talk about him? No. We don't talk about Bruno-no-no-no.
• Is it just me, or is "Russian Olympic Committee" a cooler name than just "Russia"? It sounds like a crime syndicate, which I guess it sort of is. They should just rename the country.
• We're now LIVE in the Free Dance portion of the Team competition. This, of course, is different than Free Skating because in one the skaters touch most of the time, and in the other, the dancers only touch most of the time. This whole thing is a scam isn't it? They just created another title so they could show more figure skating.
• Many teams skate but I couldn't tell you anything about them. They're all good. The American team of Madison Chock and Evan Bates are next to skate. They're dressed like they just stepped out of the movie Tron. My bad. Johnny Weir tells us that Evan is dressed up as an astronaut and Madison represents the extraterrestrials. Okay. I can see astronaut for his outfit, but she's dressed more like Gozer the Gozerian. And now they're skating to Daft Punk. Team Rockwood approves.
• Mike Tirico tells us that IOC President Thomas Bach says he met with Peng Shuai 36 hours ago. Shuai says she's okay, says Bach. Well, why would I have any doubts about what the leader of the world's largest corrupt organization says? I'm sure everything's fine. Go about your day, comrades! Nothing to see here!
• Let's head over to the Big Air Freestyle Skiing event, where the big story is Eileen Gu, who was born in America but decided to forsake her home country to work for the communists who torture political prisoners. That's not a choice I would have made, but who am I to stand between someone wanting to make a lot of money in licensing contracts and genocide? Great choice, Eileen! Gu does a perfect jump and sticks the landing. She'll have forced-labor slaves making her merchandise in no time!
• Was there really no place better to hold the Big Air event than right next to a power station? It's a little strange that every time one of these skiers catches big air that the most prominent thing in the shot is the giant cooling tower in the background with the Olympic logo painted on it.
• We are LIVE again with the Women's Free Skate portion of the Team event. Zhu Yi, formerly of America but now of China, goes first. She falls twice during her program, cementing her position as a skater who's a disappointment to two countries.
• Karen Chen, the American who's still an American, skates a great routine and guarantees her team a silver medal. I guess when you spend your time practicing instead of stabbing freedom in the back you can win a medal. Let that be a lesson for all you would-be defectors out there.
• Last up tonight, Kamila Valiyeva of the Russian Olympic Committee crime syndicate. Even with a fall, she's so much better than everyone else that she beats her nearest competitor by 30 points. It's crazy how good she is. Some might even say… criminal.

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Overall, a pretty good day as far as fluff goes. I'm betting there might have been some high-quality fluff that NBC had in store for the Men's Downhill, but since the event didn't happen, neither did the fluff. Maybe they'll bring it in tomorrow. See you then!     

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