The last three were Australia (Melbourne 2032), USA (LA 2028), and France. Tokyo was USA, France, Japan. I don’t know when they started the next two countries ending last.
I think that’s the reason.
So, my wife turned it on to see the opening ceremony. I figure, not my cup of tea, but I’ve watched TV I didn’t love before.
Now, to be fair, I believe the coverage hasn’t officially started yet. But Paris is some 5 hours ahead of us, so the real ceremony has long since finished. The whole thing is going to be cut and edited and overdubbed to present whatever BS story they want to feed the audience. I HATE that shit.
First there was freaking Steven Spielberg nattering on about “the story of the Olympics.” Uh oh. They aren’t hiding the fact that they aren’t going to worry about showing actual competition.
Then they introduce some NFL QB and a singer as co-hosts? WTF do THEY have to bring to the Olympics.
When they went into an interview of Snoop Dogg about what it was like to carry the torch, I had to leave the room.
I’m not a huge fan of watching sport (tho I did enjoy the end of the (British) Open last Sunday. I would LIKE to enjoy watching the Olympics. But they just insist on doing it in a way that repels my every fiber.
How galling.
There’s an article in the NYT about NBC hiring Snoop in response to record low viewership for Tokyo. Now, there’s a number of reasons why Tokyo might have been bad (12 to 16 hour time difference, Peacock was bad, people like me who wanted to watch sports watched them live via another way, etc.) but once again the concept of “do a better job” is apparently anathema to NBC.
Isn’t that “Gauling”?
Been watching the replay for the parts I missed during my meeting earlier and just realized the Notre Dame bells were rung during it.
Not necessarily, cf. “gallic”.
Lady Gaga’s number could not have been better. The act was Mistinguett, Edith Piaf, Marilyn Monroe and Madonna all at once, and she pulled it off. Bravo.
Belize had one guy, waving his flag for all he was worth.
Could not take my eyes off Le Fantome. Between the costume, the parkour and the general Mission: Impossible feel to it, that is the coolest thing in an opening ceremony since London 2012.
Also have to applaud the bravery of people doing the can-can on a ledge above a major river.
The clown menage-a-trois was unexpected.
“While we were away in a commercial, there were a couple speeches about how the Olympics can bring peace. Now back to Peyton and Kelly.”
The coverage is always terrible. This was worse.
I am so glad I got to watch the Australian coverage. No commercials, no talking heads, minimal commentary – the Aussie accents are a nice bonus.
The live coverage at least had the advantage of happening in real time so at times they just ran of stuff to say.
Can Can! I love Can Can. 
You can’t do a Paris celebration and not have that!
I only watched the prerecorded version because I wanted to see lighting of the cauldron as an homage to the first hot air flight in Paris. It was something Benjamin Franklin witnessed and seemed appropriate to the event. The Eiffel tower bit had me searching for some Pink Floyd music. The rest of it was … something. And a lot of it.
That’s still a couple of hours away.
I Tivo’ed that. Unfortunately, it didn’t record “Tokyo Olympiad” which I’ve never seen in its entirety, and is very hard to find in any format.
Did anyone watch the opening ceremony? I didn’t, but I’m seeing chatter that a lot of people found it bizarre, if not outright offensive.
Read on-line that the torch/balloon is tethered to the ground and throughout the olympics will be raised into the sky at sunset every day then brought back down at around 2a.m.
I watched it. “Bizarre” is a good start. I guess we’re so used to watching the opening ceremonies set in a stadium, with the athletes parading by country, maybe a musical act or two, a couple of speeches, and the torch, that today’s ceremony, which was not set in a stadium, would have been strange to begin with. Then it got stranger.
Boats going down the Seine, carrying national teams. No problem there.
Cut to some masked guy doing parkour across Parisian rooftops. What?
More boats and national teams. Phew!
Oh wait. Lady Gaga in a song-and-dance number on a set of riverside steps. Well, okay.
More boats and national teams. Back to normal.
Huh? A heavy metal band doing opera?
And so it went. Boats with national teams interspersed with all kind of weird stuff. A decapitated Marie Antoinette carrying her head, and the head sings. Bearded drag queens. Strange pictures of faces half-submerged in the river. Somebody running through the Louvre. BMXers doing their thing on a barge. A French rapper rapping in French. Et cetera. If it was weird, it was there.
The emphasis in the speeches was on Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion; which nobody there seemed to have a problem with, but I’ve seen a few (okay, more than a few) comments online that, to be as nice as possible, I’ll report as “stupid woke Olympics.” Yes, those comments, and other stronger ones, came from those who were offended.
Hope this answers your question.