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| 2:25 | 0:56 | 0:13 |
| Events | Ads | Fluff |
* Welcome to the Fortress of Solitude, where Bob might have given us a preview of some upcoming fluff by hinting that an unnamed athlete has a relative that shows him "what inspiration really means. Fluff doesn't really need foreshadowing, Bob. But it seems that Bob is paying the price for his fluff promotion. Now it appears that both of his eyes are infected. He might be blind by the end of the Olympics!
* To speed skating and the men's 500-meter race. The best part of speed skating? That camera that runs alongside the track at the same speed the skaters move. Not that the skaters look slow, but when that camera matches their speed, you really understand just how fast they're moving.
* Two skaters from the Netherlands have won on consecutive days. Tradition says that after winning gold, the Dutch celebrate in the Holland House. Last night, the house was visited by Vladimir Putin. Well, he does love a winner. Here's a question: the Netherlands' flag is red, white, and blue, but their national color is orange. How does that work? Can you imagine if the official school color of the Michigan Wolverines was Buckeye red?
* Back at the Fortress of Solitude, Bob introduces Canadian Alex Bilodeau, whose brother Frederick has cerebral palsy. This would the inspiration from the opening tease. Frederick was at the Vancouver Games when Alex won his gold medal. This story took five minutes. Do I even need to tell you how it went? I'm sure you could write it and I don't even know if you have any writing experience. But Frederick is in Sochi tonight, so we might get this same story four years from now if he wins again.
* I like the Cadillac ELR commercial, but I do have one problem with it. The spokesman says that the US left the keys in the moon car because Americans were going back first. That statement might be a little suspect given that the Chinese just drove their car around on the moon two months ago.
* An increasingly-squinty Bob Costas segues us from the mountain to the ice rink, where now we're going to watch the 1500-meter short track speed skating. Oh no, there's no Ohno! Well, not on the ice, anyway. He's in the booth this year He's pretty good there, too.
* Promos! Who's getting up at 5 am to watch curling? Anyone? Anyone? Well, you could always DVR it and save the action for later.
* To the mountains for the women's super combined, that's one downhill run plus one slalom run. Just for fun, let's count cameras on the downhill run. I count 18 live cameras. That's in an event that takes about two minutes. This doesn't even include the super-slow-mo or extreme close-ups cameras. By comparison, a standard college basketball game takes six cameras. That this is only one of dozens of events shows you how big a production the Olympics really is.
* Reporter Steve Perino gives us some interesting perspective on the sport by showing us the difference between the downhill and slalom skis. More of this, please!
* Julia Mancuso fluff! She loves nature and skiing! Except in her off time, when she goes to Maui and trains outside by surfing, scuba diving, and playing the ukelele. What a horrible life! Skiing in the mountains until she gets bored, then surfing in Hawaii until she's ready to return. This is fluff? Where's the pathos? The disappointment? The tales of woe? Somebody in the fluff deparment took the night off.
* After the downhill, Julia is in first place. I guess all that beach time paid off.
* Back to the moguls. Alex Bilodeau had sad fluff. Julia Mancuso had happy fluff. Currently Julia is in first and Alex is in second. What is the world coming to when sad stories aren't a predictor of success?
* Russia's remaining mogul skier is Aleksandr Smyshlyayev. Every time I say his name out loud my computer screen gets covered with spittle.
* Bilodeau kills it on his final run and wins gold. I guess his fluff was inspirational. Will Mancuso hold up her end?
* Is it just me, or when you look at the uniforms in short track speed skating are you reminded of the football uniforms in Starship Troopers. It is just me? Alrighty then.
* Back on the mountain for the slalom portion of the women's combined. Here's a question that NBC could answer for me: how do the slalom skiers know which poles to slalom through? There are red poles and blue poles, and the skiers don't hit all of one color or alternate. How does this work? It would be nice if NBC would tell me. If you know, drop me a line in the Facebook comments below!
* Mancuso survives on the slalom hill, which was better than a lot of the people before her, and gets a bronze medal. So, now we have our answer. Sad fluff is more effective than happy fluff. Let that be a lesson to all of you future Olympians. It doesn't pay to be happy. Well, unless you want to be happy on a Hawaiian beach and still win a bronze medal. I guess that doesn't really suck.
* After watching the exciting finale of the men's 1500-meter short track speed skating, we close the night with fluff. Cris Collinsworth tells us all about Shawn White and the pressure that he feels. This is a very strange piece. First Shawn had a wreck in the halfpipe. Then he bailed out of shooting a commercial (apparently for GoPro) because he didn't feel comfortable snowboarding. Then he turned his life around by playing with his band at Lollapalooza. And suddenly he qualified for the Olympics and now he's back, although Cris says Shawn is nervous. I don't have any idea what any of this means, but it doesn't look happy. And if today's previous fluff is any indication, that's a good sign for the Flying Tomato.
So today we've learned that it's not just fluff that makes a difference, but the right kind of fluff. The bad news is that today there was more of it. So in the spirit of Julia Mancuso, aloha! We'll see you tomorrow!
