As the Winter Games in PyeongChang prepare to close, we take a look at some of the media medalists.
Betwixt and between the twizzles, tweets and twerks, the distinction of amplitude to altitude sickness, a figure skater’s wardrobe malfunction and figuring out why social media loathes Lindsay Vonn, we have these closing ceremonial takeaways from NBC’s Winter Games compilation:
— Don’t feel bad for Scott Hamilton, one New York Times story told us, just because some feel Johnny Weir usurped him as lead figure skating analyst and led him to becoming a Dick Button-ed down studio commentator during these Games.
Weir may come off as Pee-wee Herman’s estranged younger brother, but he earned this role by capturing the audience as much with his rococo costume changes and swashbuckling hairstyle as he was with his polished and ethereal observations from Day 1, working in concert with the ultra-lip-glossed Tara Lipinski.
The two who became the Peacock Net’s prized peacocks will deservingly be assigned — with Uber driver Terry Gannon – to handle the closing ceremonies on Sunday and keep the chemistry pure.
“To quote Elizabeth Taylor: Now is the time for guts and guile,” Weir said before Thursday’s women’s final skate. In a Winter Games all about diversity and inclusion, Weir and Lipinski had both for the duration.
— Leslie Jones’ audacious Twitter account was like watching a get-outta-my-way adult take over a kiddie bumper car ride at an amusement park and ignore the “Please Do Not Crash Intentionally Into Patrons” sign. Her social media game was on display two years ago in Rio, and NBC reprised the role of crazed American celebrity fanatic, likely with some trepidation.
One version of the “Saturday Night Live” comic played out in amongst the “Today” show lemmings. The other consisted of unhinged audio provided over her own video as she watched events such as curling (“This is the Olympic Janitor Games: They have the best Swiffers and best janitor shoes”), to figure skating (“I’m trying to figure out if you’re a majorette or a L.A. Clippers cheerleader”?) to women’s hockey games (“Let’s make the penalty box like prison… let them fight it out”), all while demonstrating new ways to conjugate curse words.
During the women’s U. S.-Canada hockey finale, she blew up good at NBC’s Pierre McGuire for a between-period interview he did with Team USA’s Gigi Marvin, asking her to recall American’s loss to Canada in 2014.
No one sleeps on @Lesdoggg, who at one point tweeted out a photo of her right hand wrapped in a brace, an injury she demands she got from over tweeting.
Brace yourself. She’ll be tweeting Sunday night during the Closing Ceremony from back home in New York, and she has already referred to the Weir-Lipinski-Gannon trio as “The Royal Family of Fabulousnessnessness.”
How much did we miss Bob Costas?
Not enough to pull out a quill and compose public lamentations about it. What comes to mind is the line from the movie “Office Space” when Peter Gibbons is quizzed by two consultants about why he was missing a lot of work lately. “I wouldn’t say I’ve been missing it, Bob,” he replied.
To be fair, Costas was just fine sitting this one out by choice at his snowbird retreat in Newport Coast, just as he was excusing himself from the NBC Super Bowl ice fishing excursion in Minnesota. He deserves the right to avoid potentially hazardous trips.
(Those who wondered of Costas’ whereabouts, find the Jeff Cesario/Chet Waterhouse podcast called “Play With Pain,” where he plainly admits he wanted no part of South Korea.)
With that, Mike Tirico’s Olympic-ness was confirmed: He can handle the sleep-depravation with as many Vitamin B12 shots at 4 a.m. that one should have to endure. Tirico’s versatility, affability and, more important, pleasantry warmed up each night behind a desk that appeared to be the entrance to Disneyland’s Matterhorn.
By the way, what’s the harm in asking Costas to spend a few days at the network’s Stamford, Conn., studios and become a sage Olympic essayist in the future? It’s a role providing context we’ve need since the passing of Dick Enberg, and admitting that Jimmy Roberts might be OK at it, he’s never given us anything memorable.
The viral call of the Winter Games was delivered via the screams of Steve Schlanger and louder screams of Chad Salmela on the historic U. S. victory in the women’s cross country team sprint.
“Here comes Diggins! Yes! Gold!” won’t go down as the most objective call, but for Samela, who has been compared to Rowdy Gaines for his shrieks of delight, now provides a soundtrack we can’t get out of our heads.
Deadspin.com cranks out the most disingenuous headlines in the history of online pretend journalism.
(If it’s true, we really don’t know. It’s written that way to prove an absurd point).
Since ‘Spin convincing declared “Bode Miller Is The Worst Sports Commentator Who Ever Lived,” based on how the former gold-medal-downhill skier-turned-commentator “has turned some of the Olympics’ most exciting and dangerous spectacles into dirges,” we differ without even begging.
Miller may have a golf-style approach, but explains the kind of mindset he and others have to have had if they competed in this event. Any more excitable, and they’d never have success here. If the solution is to have Miller in studio so there’s a face to go with his words, maybe that’s it. Otherwise, he proved one doesn’t have to full-throttle Samela to be effective.
Mea culpas, they happen. Like Dan Hicks having to explain why he declared a winner in the women’s super-G before it was over, but then had a different finish.
Hockey analyst Mike Milbury delivered the most haphazard comment that should have made L.A. audiences take notice.
During the U. S. men’s hockey team loss to the Olympic Athletes from Russia, Milbury referred to Russian player Slava Voynov as “a special player, and an unfortunate incident left the Los Angeles Kings without a great defenseman.” Unfortunately, taken out of context, it reads as if Milbury was glossing over a point made by play-by-play partner Kenny Albert that Voynov had been arrested for spousal abuse in 2015, his six-year, $25 million contract with the Kings was terminated and he went from jail to immigration custody to being sent back to Russia.
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U. S. women’s hockey team wins Olympic gold against Canada in shootout Milbury circled back in a statement to the Associated Press to explain that his intention was to go over the impact of the incident on hockey. “As I said at the time he was suspended, the league made the right call, 100 percent,” Milbury said.
–If L.A. viewers were so messed up by the 17-hour time change that they confused PyeongChang’s daily weather-delayed schedule with P. F. Chang’s take-out menu, it didn’t show up in the NBC research data of “total audience” reporting. The West Coasters loved the all-live approach that started at 5 p.m. nightly and carried on into the night.
Even if the Nielsen TV numbers don’t match up to recent events in Sochi or beyond, NBC chairman Mark Lazarus has already said the Olympics “continue to defy media gravity,” and insisted these last two-plus weeks will have more media consumption than any other Winter Games in history.
