X Company; Ovation. 9 pm CST. Series Premiere.
A drama about a secret Allied spy training facility set during World War II.
Wednesday, 2/21
The Amazing Race (CBS; 8 pm CST). Season Finale.
Friday, 2/23
Seven Seconds; Netflix. Streaming. Series Premiere.
A white cop accidentally kills a young black man with his car and calls his fellow officers to help, and a cover-up gets out of control.
Sunday, 2/25
Olympics Closing Ceremony; NBC. 7 pm CST. Special.
Ash vs Evil Dead; Starz. 8 pm CST. 3rd Season Premiere.
After the last season, Ash finally is considered a hero in his hometown.
If you know anything about Ash-- or this show-- you know it'll go South in about ten seconds...
Seriously, I didn't think they could get crazier than Season One-- but Season Two was off the rails. I fear what Season Three will do to poor Ashley J. Williams.
So, as you can from Sunday's notable: the Olympics are still going. You've got a week left.
If you haven't yet, give it a try. NBC, NBCSN, and CBNC airs a few hours every day (NBCSN is close to 24 hrs/day).
I, as always, try to catch everything, and that lasted about 2 days. There's just so much.
But I have caught bits of every sport so far. I do some FFing through the recordings (live is for suckers) but try to hit every U.S. game (which I'll blow through pretty quickly) or run. Skipped some of the trials but tried to watch every medal round.
It's magic.
Off the top of my head:
Watching Maame Biney talking to Apolo Ohno at the Opening Ceremony totally left me absolutely smitten. How can you not love an 18 year-old that was just so perfectly teenaged?
She didn't win any medals, but she was just so much to watch and listen to; she grabbed-- and enjoyed-- the moment.
And how about the 17 year-old Red Gerard?
First, I had never seen the insanity that is Slopestyle before, but when I saw his last run, I knew it was special.
The youngest snowboard gold medalist ever...
And one of the unsung heroes of the CNBC curling broadcast is the director who kept the cameras trained on Russian Mixed Doubles curler Anastasia Bryzgalova almost a little too long every time she was on screen.
There probably hasn't been a better way to get new fans to the sport than the extra attention paid to her.
But U.S. Mixed Doubles-- and Men's Team-- curler Matt Hamilton and the memes that attached to him came close.
Or how about Chloe Kim winning the gold medal before she even did her third run-- but instead of doing the safe thing and just taking a nice, leisurely run to get to the bottom and taking her place on the stand, she did a run, as if she needed it?
All that after she Tweeted her regret that she didn't finish her breakfast sandwich and was hangry...
And, yeah, his past may have some indiscretions catching up to him outside the games, but watching Shawn White remind everyone what that name means during the Halfpipe was really a testament to how some athletes handle pressure.
As big numbers were put up in the qualifier round, he reached into his bags of tricks and pushed himself to the highest score-- and the #1 rank for finals.
And on his last run, he needed a big score-- and did it in amazing fashion.
Speaking of amazing, Chris Mazdzer became the first U.S. Olympian Luge medalist with his silver on a track that messed up many other sliders.
Facing the other direction (Luge is feet-first, Skeleton is head-first), South Korea's Yun Sung-bin's Iron Man helmet was badass.
The surprise of the first week had to be the Czech Republic's Ester Ledecka and her run at the women's Super-G.
Some background first:
Ledecka's specialty is snowboarding.
She was in the 26th position for the finals; nowhere near the top skiers.
She was borrowing a pair of Mikaela Shiffrin's skis.
She had the last run-- and was so far out of contention that NBC announced Anna Veith as the gold medal winner before she even started it.
Then she ran a mind-blowing race that bested Vieth's time by one-hundredth of a second and couldn't believe it:
Mirai Nagasu became only the third woman-- and first American woman-- to land a triple axel in figure skating-- and took the silver.
Nathan Chen had a rough early go of it in the team competition and the short feature-- and then attempted an unthinkable six quads in his long performance to blow the competition out of the water. It wasn't enough for a medal after his earlier missteps, but he gave the world something to fear for 2022.
But when one talks Olympic Magic, you cannot leave out Adam Rippon, the man who answered a question about how he can compete with people a decade younger than him with "I can't explain witchcraft."
I became a fan of his after I heard about his Tweet thumbing his nose at Mike Pence (Rippon is openly gay; Pence is actively not "down" with the gays).
But then I started seeing Rippon answering questions in the most refreshing way, and I became a mega-fan.
Some gems from interviews and Tweets over the past few months:
"I was recently asked in an interview what it's like to be a gay athlete in sports. I said it's exactly like being a straight athlete. Lots of hard work, but usually done with better eyebrows."
“There are so many emotions when I step on the ice. I want to represent my country to the best of my abilities. I want to make Reese Witherspoon proud."
“The other day I was joking to one of my friends. He was like, ‘You’re kind of everywhere right now.’ I was like, ‘I know; I’m America’s sweetheart.’ He laughed in my face.”
“People have told me, ‘Oh, you’re a lot different than what I thought.’ I say, ‘Oh, what did you think?’ They’re like, ‘Oh, we just thought you were an assh—.’ I’m like, ‘Oh … yikes.’ I’m just trying to share who I am, my personality … Sometimes I might meet people and they might just not like me, not want to get to know me. And that’s okay. They’re boring as hell anyway.”
“With everything going on in the media about me this Valentine’s Day I don’t want people to get distracted and forget how beautiful I am (on the outside).”
"I might not be the best, but I'm the most fun. I'm going to skate my heart out."
Adam got a bronze in the team figure skating and didn't medal in the singles competition-- even after a wonderful program that kept him on his skates and not his ass-- that apparently wasn't as technically difficult as many of those with higher scores that didn't land all their tricks perfectly (and I learned what many know: figure skating scoring is fucked up), but he made me a fan.
