Two weeks of Parisian backdrops ground to an end with Tom Cruise, Red Hot Chili Peppers and a handoff to L.A. that felt borrowed from a dated Hollywood script.
And so the two weeks when I become interested in athletics every four years have drawn to a close, with a ceremony to mark the occasion. There were many ceremonies along the way, of course, and the Olympic Games are themselves a sort of ceremony writ large, a ritual against which the athletes of Earth measure their worth — though obviously they are busy with international competitions in the years between games, winning medals and trophies and setting world records. But the world has agreed that this is the Big Show, as the world agrees on little else.
Since this is technically a television review, let me just say, before we get to the spectacle, that what came between the opening and the closing, as something to see, was exceptionally well presented — at least if you were watching via Peacock. (I can’t speak to NBC’s broadcast coverage, apart from the opening ceremony, where the commentary was intrusive and uninformative, and the closing, about which more below.)
It was a platform one could dive from in any direction, a well-executed interface that allowed one to follow any sport in any number of ways — everything, anytime, from before the beginning of an event until well after the end, into what I think of as the hugging round. So many hugs! All that goodwill and affection, not just among teammates but between competitors, who represented diversity among and within nations, whatever the peculiarities of their individual governments and nativist movements. It’s a world you want to live in. (The Olympic spirit: It’s not just about the gold, silver and bronze.) An illusion, perhaps, but as Marlene Dietrich said, “You can’t live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.”
As for Paris, the staging of the games — and “staging” feels like the right word — in and around the central city felt inspired, somehow at once very old-fashioned and brand new. To be sure, there were parts and people of Paris that remained unseen, if not intentionally hidden. But erecting temporary open-air stadiums below the Eiffel Tower, in the Place de la Concorde and in the gardens of Versailles demonstrated that a host city might have something to show the world outside — literally outside — its big arenas, something essential to the spirit of the place.
