Friday, February 6, 2026

Bocelli sings and then some other stuff happens.

I mean, that's the important part, right?

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• We start off tonight in… uh… Santa Clara, California? Mike Tirico is announcing from Levi's Stadium, home of Sunday's Super Bowl. Because there's only one thing that's bigger than the Olympics, and that's the NFL. Priorities.
• With that established, NOW we go to Milan in San Siro Stadium, where the athletes are assembling. Your hosts tonight: boring and straightforward Terry Gannon, noted goofball Mary Carillo, and first-time announcer Shaun White, the Flying Tomato. This is his first Olympics NOT as an athlete, having spent the previous five competing. We'll see if he can move on to commentary without sounding like a rookie.
• D-O-Double G is back! Snoop is in Cortina, previewing all of his fluff. It sounds like there's going to be a lot. At least he's fun.
• Let's watch a bunch of young athletes look at old home videos of themselves. Awwwww… so cute! Does this count as fluff? Tonight is the Opening Ceremonies (OC from now on) and home videos aren't that, so… yep!
• It's time for the OC to start, and we're going to start with a video straight from the Italy tourism department. Look how awesome Italy is! You know, except for actually building things on time .
• Once again, I'm just describing what I see at the OC. I'm not on drugs. Don't blame me if everything here sounds weird. 
• An angel appears on the stage. My bad. Terry says it's Cupid, looking for Psyche. Isn't Cupid supposed to have a bow and arrow? Italians don't even know their own myths. Anyway, he finds her, which isn't that hard since she's in a transparent box about 20 feet away, and this inspires a bunch of ballet dancers from the Milan Opera House to start dancing. Because of course it would.
• Cupid finally got Psyche, so now a group of stylized paparazzi has taken the stage, stalking an Italian hottie. Just don't make her crash in a bridge tunnel. That wouldn't be a good way to start the Games. The hottie avoids the photographers long enough to direct big head mascots of Italian composers Giuseppe Verdi, Gioachino Rossini, and Giacomo Puccini, who would surely be honored by their enormous head counterparts. They dance around on stage for a bit and then three giant tubes of paint hover over the stage, tipping over to pour "paint" – really enormous swaths of fabric – over the stage. An army of people wearing monocolor Color Rush outfits emerge to parade around these color splotches. Why? Because! That's why!
• Here come the Solid Gold dancers! Sort of. A woman in a sparkling gold outfit is surrounded by men in gold pants. The Color Rush and Solid Gold dancers meet in the middle of the big spiral stage and then fireworks erupt on the stage around them. It's weird, but it did look cool.
• Mariah Carey is here! Is she Italian? No. She was born in Huntington, New York. But she's here to sing Volare in Italian. Does she know Italian? Beats me. It sounds like she does. She seems a little sedate, though. They must have told her not to move off the middle of the spiral. C'mon, Mariah! All I want for the Olympics is you to move!   But she can still hit the high notes, so good for her.
• Kirsty Coventry is the new corrupt president of the IOC, and she waves to everyone before running off with their briefcases full of Lira. Ha ha! Just kidding. Italy is on the Euro, now.
• A group of stick-thin supermodels in matching red, green, and white Armani suits parade across the stage holding the Italian flag. A smaller group of traditionally-attired women in Cortina get ready to raise their flag. And now, the Italian national anthem. When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's Amore! No, not really. Grammy-winner Laura Pausini, dressed in a sparkly, black dress, sings while the supermodels and a stadium full of Olympic fans look on. In Cortina, about 50 people in a small town square watch their flag being raised. I'll bet those tickets were a lot cheaper.
• Time for more dancers. Mary says this group is about the duality of city and nature. I'm not sure which group is which. You'd think what was "city" and what was "nature" would be more obvious.
• Two big soon-to-be-Olympic rings are swung over the stage. Terry says the people who are riding in them are trying to communicate. Aaahhhh! They both jump off the rings and are lowered to the stage on cables. I guess that was the communicated symbol for three more rings to float in, because here they come. Gee, I wonder what those five rings will make? City and Nature dancers celebrate enthusiastically as fireworks explode from the hoisted rings.
• Stanley Tucci tells us all about the Duomo cathedral in Milan, and how every one of its details matter. Similarly, he notes how all Olympians focus on the details to become champion athletes. The rest of the segment cuts back and forth between athletes and gratuitous Duomo shots. Fluff? Oh yes, but so pretty.
• Athlete time! Each country is led in by a mylar-wrapped escort carrying what looks like a block of ice with the country name carved into it. That's pretty cool. Ha! Get it? They're also having  smaller ceremonies simultaneously in Cortina and two other locations. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but does this mean there's a chance that Oklahoma City will get some kind of Opening Ceremony for the 2028 Los Angeles games? That would be amazing.
• Saudi Arabia has a cross-country skier! How does that happen? Well, he was born in San Diego and goes to college in Utah, that's how.
• Because the OC are happening in more than one place, the teams look smaller. Austria has 117 athletes in their Olympic team, but only about a third of them are in Milan. NBC has to cut between all four locations, so instead of one big Olympic team, we get to see several smaller portions of Olympic teams.
• In all four locations, the teams enter through a big golden ring. It's like they're all coming in through a Stargate.
• China is here, with traitor Eileen Gu.
• Snoop is hanging out with the Jamaican bobsled team, asking if they're here to represent. Team Rockwood daughter Sara asks, "Why do people think Snoop is so hype? Are adults just delulu?" So there you go, old people. Snoop: no longer cool.
• Sara thinks that the country escorts look like they're wrapped in a sleeping bag. She's not wrong.
• Iran has four athletes who made the Olympics, proving that their government hasn't shot everyone yet.
• Snoop is interviewing Team USA flag-bearer and bobsled captain, Frank Del Duca. Unsurprisingly given his name, Del Duca has some Italian heritage. Snoop says he does, too, then starts listing some names, but I'm not sure if he was serious or joking. None of the athletes around him seemed to know, either. Maybe he's just delulu.
• Ukraine has athletes who made the Olympics, proving that the Russians haven't shot everyone yet.
• Venezuela has one athlete who made the Olympics, proving that Maduro didn't shoot everyone.
• Samuel L. Jackson is here to introduce Team USA, mother*****s! It takes him three minutes, but he's into it! Still fluff, though.
• Team USA enters, 232 athletes strong. Sean and Terry talk about them even while France is entering the arena. Because who cares about France?
• And here comes Italy! As of yet, neither they nor France has surrendered.
• Back to the creative part of the ceremony, where a woman – Sabrina Impacciatore of "White Lotus –    watching TV on her couch is surprised by the two Olympic mascots sneaking into her living room. Nothing weird about that. They turn her into an animated character who journeys back in time through all the previous Winter Olympics. She then appears onstage with dancers in 1924 garb to celebrate the 1924 Chamonix games. Sabrina looks out of place, though, since she's wearing mylar and spandex tights. Maybe she'll end up in the future. She does! First in the 1970s and then in the '80s with a bunch of neon clad dancers with Sony Walkmans. Why would she leave that time? It's perfect! At least, that's what a delulu Snoop fan would say. Finally, she dances off stage with a bunch of women wearing big fuzzy helmets.
• IOC president, Kirsty Coventry, welcomes all the athletes of the world to the Milan-Cortina games, and gives an inspirational speech that completely blinds everyone to the fact that she's taking money under the table. So inspiring! In Africa, where she is from they have a word: "Ubuntu." It's a font! Also, an operating system!
• And now, she hands off the opening of the games to Italian president, Sergio Mattarella. Wait! They know Sergio?
• Okay, I've been mocking everything in the OC, but now Andrea Bocelli is here singing Nessun Dorma, so I'm going to shut up, because he's perfect. There's even a shot of an Italian athlete crying tears of joy because he's perfect. There will be no dissent here.
• Oh yeah, the torch came out while he was singing. Imagine how perfect you have to be to make the Olympic flame irrelevant.
• Anyway, back to the OC. A bunch of dancers in baggy raincoats are joined by Italian rapper, Ghali. Maybe he's the successor to Snoop. Nah. Don't be delulu, old people.
• The raincoat dancers spread out so Charlize Theron can tell us all about Nelson Mandela's words of peace. She's 50? Looking good, Charlize!
• Time to raise the Olympic flag. Italian opera singer Cecilia Bartoli serenades the audience in Milan. I mean, she's good, but she's no Andrea Bocelli.
• A little girl looks at a model of the solar system and is joined by an ESA astronaut who will lead her to… what are those? I'm going to call them the Planet Dancers. The dancers in the middle are wearing glowing hula hoops. The dancers surrounding them all have their heads poked through light reflectors. No, I don't know why.
• Time to do some cauldron lighting, both in Milan and in Cortina. I'm not sure how this is going to work. Obviously there are two, and the torches are being passed around by famous Italian athletes. No, I don't know any of them. Oh wait! Alberto Tomba! I do know him. Tomba and fellow skier Deborah Compagnoni hold the torch together at the Arch of Peace, then the platform they're standing on ascends to a Hoberman sphere with a chamber in the middle. The chamber is the cauldron, so they light it and the sphere itself illuminates and expands. That's cool. Back in the stadium, the astronaut hands the little girl the Hoberman sphere that was the sun in the solar system model. So we're stealing the sun, now? Anyway, fireworks explode at all the locations and everything is good. Let the Games begin!

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Unlike Paris, which seemed determined to prove how weird they were, Milan hosted a pretty tasteful Opening Ceremonies. And seriously, if you didn't watch see Bocelli live, you need to click that link. You're not going to see anything better than that today. Tomorrow we'll get rocking with events! Be there or be delulu, like Snoop. Ciao!       

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