If the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Sochi was about the history of Russia, then the closing ceremonies Sunday were about its culture. And NBC proved it knew about as little about the latter as it did the former.
Hiring Cris Collinsworth to come over to do commentary on the event with Al Michaels — because the two did commentary on all those Sunday Night Football games — was a mistake because the guy had no clue about Russia or culture.
As a beautiful, inverted landscape floated by, commemorating the famous imagery of the painter Marc Chagall, Collinsworth piped up: “Can I ask a question: Why is the house upside down?”
The same sort of thing occurred when a team of top ballet dancers performed and Collinsworth clunky said it looked like the “Phantom of the Opera.” I guess he could have said “Cats.”
For all the attention given to ice dancing, by the say, hardly a word was spoken about the ballet, what they were trying to represent, who was dancing or even the music playing. It was just some odd cultural thing happening, according to NBC.
A Russian expert was on hand to help provide context but Vladimir Pozner was unwilling even during the Russian Literature portion to identify a single one of the writers whose portraits were unfurled. Rather the focus was on the swirl of papers on the arena floor.
At least we got to see these things. A salute to Rachmaninoff ‘s Piano Concerto No. 2 by 60 grand pianos was cut altogether from the NBC broadcast, as was a piece about the Russian circus.
There was plenty of time for the giant, creepy animatronic bears, bunnies and cougar meant to symbolize something. The tear-shedding bear with moving eyes looked a little like Teddy Ruxpin about to tell a Russian folk tale.
When he blew out the Olympic torch, it looked at first as if he were on fire. But the torch was passed to South Korea, which hosts in 2018.
Collinsworth better start studying that culture now if he wants to keep up at all.