By NEIL GENZLINGER
c. 2012 New York Times News Service
NEW YORK —
Dear Last Person in America Who Has Been Trying to Watch the Nighttime Olympics Coverage Without Already Knowing the Results:
Give it up.
If you have succeeded at all these past two weeks, it has been only by moving to a no-cellphone-reception cave or an Internet-free monastery.
The next time the Olympics are held in an un-American time zone, you’ll have no chance.
Spoilers won’t even be an issue because we’ll all be receiving real-time results, whether we want them or not, via the iBrain chips implanted in our heads (a mandatory part of the Federal Health Care Reform Act of 2015).
But take heart, you who are still resisting the instant-news tide. You can learn to love this brave new world. A guy in a rumpled trench coat proved it four decades ago.
Before we get to that, it’s worth noting that plenty of people have already made the transition.
Millions have been watching NBC’s evening coverage of the London Olympics even though they almost surely heard the major results earlier.
How could they not have heard, what with Twitter and text message alerts and all those instant Web updates?
At first blush the popularity of the evening broadcasts seems counterintuitive.
Why watch a sporting event — or, really, any kind of competition — when you already know the outcome?
What would be the point of “Jeopardy!” or “Dancing With the Stars” or even “Judge Alex,” if the episodes or the season began by revealing the winner?
Who’s-going-to-win television, though, is merely the most obvious format for sports and other programming; it isn’t the only one.
That’s because, embedded in our collective TV watching makeup, we all have what you might call the “Columbo” gene.
We have the ability, the hunger even, to watch something when we already know the resolution because we have done it before, most prominently with “Columbo,” the long-running detective series starring Peter Falk.
That show’s episodes didn’t build to the revelation of the murderer’s identity; they began with it.
The reason to watch was to see how Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo, one of television’s great characters, wore down the killer and cracked the case.
The gimmick worked for an extraordinarily long time. Falk, who died last year, first played the character in a 1968 made-for-TV movie, and he was still playing him in 2003.
“Wait a minute,” you may be saying. “There is no comparison between the Olympics and a moldy old detective show.”
But how is a crafty detective’s pursuit of a wily suspect most often described?
As a cat-and-mouse game. The key word there is “game.”
A game has a winner and a loser, whether it’s beach volleyball or a fictional murder investigation, and in “Columbo” there was never any doubt who was going to win.
So those of you who are still trying to avoid hearing real-time Olympic results need to focus on what made “Columbo” so enjoyable. It was the little things — all those delightful tics Falk put into the character — and the comfort of not having to figure out who done it.
“Columbo” was relaxation television, which, frankly, we could use more of in prime time, choked as it is with frenetic reality shows and densely plotted dramas.
And that’s how to consume after-the-fact Olympic coverage: as comfort food, not as a stress-inducing, thrill-of-victory-agony-of-defeat double espresso.
It’s liberating to watch all these obscure sports and not feel as if you had to take a crash course in how they’re played so that you can try to gauge who’s going to win.
Is 12.94 a good time in the 110-meter hurdles or a bad score in the men’s high bar?
Does water polo involve any actual strategy, or is it just a bunch of guys or gals goofing around in a pool?
Is there really any appreciable difference between one pair of synchronized divers and another? Don’t care; already know who won.
Just going to sit here and admire the impossibly fit bodies and be glad I don’t have to wear that ridiculous pool headgear.
With foreknowledge of the results, you can even make adjustments to suit your personal anxiety-tolerance level.
Don’t want to see Gabby Douglas’s excruciating fall? Turns out a balance beam routine lasts exactly as long as it takes to go to the kitchen and get some ice cream.
The ratings for NBC’s coverage prove that many people have already discovered the sedentary joys of this type of viewing.
But NBC deserves some criticism for not making it easier for holdouts to make the transition. Executives should have helped people learn to love already-know-the-results Olympics by subtly appealing to that “Columbo” gene mentioned earlier.
Bob Costas, for instance, should have been in a Columbo trench coat every time we saw him; you suspect that he could have done a pretty good Peter Falk impersonation. England; rain: it even makes sartorial sense.
An occasional shot of Mr. Costas next to a beat-up car would have helped too, though in deference to the host country it should have been a Mini rather than Columbo’s Peugeot.
And all those post-event interviewers should have adapted Columbo’s most beloved quirk, the just-one-more-thing grilling technique.
The detective, of course, was famous for questioning a suspect, then walking away, then turning around and saying, “Just one more thing,” repeating this until the beleaguered killer broke down and confessed.
Who wouldn’t prefer that to the obligatory questions and numbingly innocuous answers NBC has generally settled for?
INTERVIEWER So how does it feel to have won the gold?
ATHLETE I’ve been imagining this my entire life, and I’m proud to have been able to represent the United States.
INTERVIEWER Thank you. [Pause.] Oh, just one more thing: Do you ever wonder how much you could get for that medal on eBay?
ATHLETE I’ve dreamed about this since I was a child, and I’m glad to have been able to represent the United States.
INTERVIEWER Thank you. [Pause.] Oh, just one more thing: We know you wiped your prints off the gun, but are you sure you wiped them off the ammunition that’s still in the chamber?
ATHLETE All right, for God’s sake; I admit it: I am sick to death of hearing the National Anthem! I hate that song. And this unitard is uncomfortable as hell. I can’t wait to get the son of a bitch off. You happy now?
INTERVIEWER Back to you, Bob. Is it still raining up in the booth?
