la dolce vita

Summing Up Day 14

They clear the Olympic program for this event. They don't come right out and say it, but Olympic organizers don't schedule anything to go up against the juggernaut that is the women's free skate.

Not on NBC's dime.

The free skate, in terms of its power on the TV schedule, is the Super Bowl. The Academy Awards. The series finale of "Seinfeld." No one wants to program against it. (Yes, Fox had new shows last night, but not after 10 p.m., which is when NBC's marquee Olympic sports come out to play.)

Oh, the men's aerials ran past the start time for the first group of skaters, the ones that were no medal threat. And the women's curling match went into an extra end, so it overlapped a bit. But by the time the final six competitors took the ice for warmups, skating was the only game in town.

As well it should be. Usually.

This should have been an amazing night, a night that could have salvaged what has been deemed by even the most generous as a fairly boring Olympics. Is there any worse charge in sports, in 2006, than boring? Be brash, be tasteless, be rude -- but never be boring.

Yet that's what these Games have been, by and large, and that's what we got last night as well. In fact, it really did resemble the series finale of "Seinfeld," come to think of it.

After an electrifying night of performances Tuesday in the short program, the top skaters were tentative at best and sloppy at worst. Only Shizuka Arakawa of Japan came through unscathed, though her program, while cleanly skated, was less than thrilling.

And less than thrilling was more than enough for gold.

I'm sure you saw it all unfold on NBC, spread out over several hours and wedged between the aerials, the snowboarding, the biathlon, the commercials, the special features, the "Today" show promos, the previews of next week's new episodes of "Medium" and "Law and Order: SVU." Somewhere, a programming executive at NBC just smiled at the thought that fresh episodes of "Joey" will soon be airing. And then cried because these Games have actually driven him to look forward to fresh episodes of "Joey."

All of America joins in that weeping.

So now the Olympics limp toward their anticlimactic conclusion. Bode Miller has one more chance. So does Anton Apolo Ohno. The four-man bobsled is always fun. The hockey semifinals and medal games could be interesting, especially if Alex Ovechkin keeps Russia in it. The Closing Ceremonies will have a Fellini theme, literally, so that could be fun. But sadly, the air has been slowly leaking out of this balloon for two weeks.