Friday, August 22, 2008

Olympics Close Out

It seems like the Olympics just started, and yet the Games will be finishing up with the closing ceremonies Sunday night.

Generally, the closings have as much, if not more, fanfare than the openings, and considering the visual spectacle China put on two weeks ago, expect a good show.

NBC has done a fairly solid job with its coverage, though it could have used some more variety. If you wanted to watch something other than volleyball, track, swimming, gymanstics or men's basketball, you were pretty much out of luck. And if you wanted to watch some of the great athletes from around the world, you needed to hope they were facing a highly rated American.

Considering all of the buildup heading into the Games, the events themselves seemed a bit anticlimactic, save for the swimming, of course.

But if you haven't gotten your fill of spectacles yet, fear not - the Democratic National Convention kicks off Monday.

WEEKEND'S BEST BETS: Monk finally begins to show interest in another woman besides his late wife as he tries to prove guest star Joanna Pacula innocent on "Monk" (USA, 9 p.m.), followed by a new "Psych" at 10 p.m. "Stargate: Atlantis" (Sci-Fi, 10 p.m.) is also new.

On Saturday, catch a new "Primeval" (BBC America, 9 p.m.) and last week's at 8 p.m., always useful if you are like me and accidentally erased it before watching it on tape.

On Sunday, tear yourself away from the Olympics for an hour to catch an all-new "Mad Men" (AMC, 10 p.m.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow...a 1:47 am post? You must yhave really been hankering for your Friday column, Phillip.

Once again, the only really important thing this TV weekend is "Mad Men". My '2nd' favorite show on the weekends has been the surprisingly enjoyable "Swingtown" on CBS, which is off this week because of pre-season football and returns next week.

Also, even though I am typically a political junkie and watch the conventions every 4 years, knowing how scripted they normally are, this year's Democratic convention may have a little entertainment since Hillary Clinton (the candidate I preferred) is keeping her name in the nominating process and considering how passionate her supporters are and not fond of Obama (neither am I) I am hoping the convention offers some fireworks - at the very least it will be interesting to watch.

The only question I have about the Olympics is the same question I ask every 4 years - my goodness, are they OVER yet? It's bad enough I can't even watch Joe Scarborough's enjoyable "Morning Joe" on MSNBC with my morning coffee because some boring competition has been on. But then ESPN this week has really kicked me while I'm down by puling off "Around the Horn" and "Pardon the Interruption" for a week long torture fest known as the Little League World Series.

Like it wasn't already difficult enough finding the energy after work to run at the gym.