YAY! Time to forget about awards seasons and TV shows for the time being, and focus on what’s really important: all the cracked out stuff everyone wore at the US National Figure Skating Championships this weekend. Note: we miss Johnny Weir. We miss him so bad. Won’t SOMEONE think of the glitter? I also desperately miss Dick Button. Nothing against Scott Hamilton, who was a great skater and seems like a great dude, and who I LOVED when I was a little kid, but the only actual technical note he ever gives is toward the end of everyone’s free skate, where he always says something along the lines of, “her legs are really burning right now.” There is NO actual technical commentary anymore, and it drives me nuts. I don’t know if someone at the network decided that it was too mean to be critical of figure skaters, but that’s bullshit. It’s a sport, these people are highly-trained athletes, and it’s useful for the viewer to know what the JUDGES are seeing and possibly thinking. Did that spin travel too much? Did someone just two foot a landing? Are those arms in an incorrect position? When I’m watching the Dodgers and someone drops the ball, Vin Scully doesn’t say, “but he has such spirit.” He says, “that’s the third error tonight for SoAndSo.” Without Dick Button OR SOMEONE to actually provide athletic context (and, obviously, to occasionally sigh passive-aggressively, “Well, that was pleasant” when someone who’s been whiffing it finally lands one), the whole exercise feels a little bit more patronizing than it ought. Yes, figure-skating is beautiful and full of artistry and fancy outfits, but it’s also a SPORT, and it irks me that NBC doesn’t seem to want to actually hire someone to call the freaking game. AHEM. Sorry about that, but it’s been weighing on me. AND NOW ON TO THE OUTFITS.
