Good evening from Rio! I’m not actually in Rio, but Bob Costas’ smarminess is so thick that the dew point in your living room actually increases about five degrees when he’s on the screen – which is thankfully less these days! – making it feel like you’re in Brazil. Can I get anyone a Caipirinha?

We’re going to begin our night in the pool. But not the pool you were expecting. Rather, the outdoor pool that will soon morph into a safe haven for drug-ravaged Brazilian youth once the games are over– the diving center. Because NBC hasn’t been able to successfully create another hour of prime time swimming events – men’s 400m cocktail raft anyone? – and because not even they can justify a full hour of hype without any actual athletic endeavors, they went ahead and put on taped men’s diving and crossed their fingers that viewers would get thrown off by the blue water and wouldn’t call in to complain.

I’m really not sure how to comment on men’s diving other than to say my father-in-law was apparently a very good diver in college and holds a few records at central Pennsylvania colleges, so there will be no nut-hugging Speedo jokes here. What caught my eye, however, was a peculiar sign that warned divers, “Do not waste water.” This, next to two pools containing roughly 1 million gallons of water that will likely be dispersed through a fire hose for crowd control should the broke bastards whose homes were bulldozed to make room for the Olympics decide to protest corruption surrounding the games. But hey, at least Brazil cares about global warming… perhaps at a detriment to the athletes, because it seems they forgot to provide them with adequete cover to, you know, change out of those tiny banana wagons:

And is anyone else disappointed that one of the few exciting elements of diving – that cool camera that goes underwater with the divers – is controlled by… a guy releasing a rope like a vaudeville-ian stagehand nailing the finale with a perfectly-time curtain-close?

Sometimes it’s best to leave some things to the imagination, which is actually exactly what NBC has done with their graphics, ahem, packages:

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We’re gonna need an extra chryon for the women’s event!

Let’s head on over to the real pool.

First in the water, darling of the 2012 Olympics and apparent college-diet enthusiast Missy Franklin, who opted not to turn pro after London and turned down millions so she could go to Cal. How’s that working out? Well, she failed to qualify for the finals of the 200m freestyle, posting a time of 1:57– two seconds behind her pace as part of the relay for the same event in London.

“Missy Franklin is a great racer, that doesn’t just go away,” says the delightfully-hyped color guy whose name I don’t care about. Uh, yeah, apparently it does. And Franklin’s struggles with distraction, fame and maintaining a high level of performance speak to just how impressive what Michael Phelps has done is, especially when you consider that he also had to sell that perfectly-crafted redemption narrative and produce a very well-behaved baby so he could market a whole new line of branded products at the games. If Franklin is smart, she’ll hire Phelps’ PR guy and return in 2020 with a tale about how fame drove her into anxiety eating and it wasn’t until she was 620 pounds and needed to be forklifted from the pool that she realized she needed to turn things around and, lo, her understanding husband is here at the games to support his wife as she attempts to reclaim the glory of her youth, stretch marks and all! This is what the Olympics are all about, Dan!

Let’s move it, because it appears Franklin has.

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Next up it’s Katie Ledecky. She coasts to an uninspiring second-place finish in the other semifinal for the 200m freestyle, coming in behind a Swedish swimmer whose name sounds like a high-end Ikea product. Me thinks Ledecky was holding a little something back to give Bjorn Bork Soderham Side Chair Tommy Soderstrom some false confidence heading into the finals.

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Next up the finals of the men’s 200m freestyle, where Conor Dwyer, whose family looked like it was about to break out into raucous and drunken celebration, earned a bronze medal, finishing behind Land of the Rising Sun Yang and South Africa’s Chad le Clos, who swam like an absolute madman in lane 1 – no one medals in lane 1! – and somehow managed to hang on after his bananas start:

https://youtu.be/jiylw-pKWo8

This le Clos fellow is fun to watch. I wonder what else he might do to stoke viewer interest on this eve. Whatever, his dad is awesome:

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You may recall le Clos’ father from London, where he gave this terrific interview after le Clos beat Michael Phelps and won Gold:

That’s a tearjerker, but there’s more. le Clos’ father and mother are battling cancer. From the Daily Mail:

Nearly five stone lighter since he lit up Stratford’s aquatic centre with an unbridled TV interview following Le Clos’ shock victory over Michael Phelps, Bert has fought prostate cancer to make it to the Rio re-match between the swimming rivals.

Bert is not the only one in Team Le Clos to have been stricken by the disease – the last time Le Clos saw his mother, Geraldine, she was recovering from a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer.

It will be hard not to root for le Clos. He’ll have to take an epic heel turn to change things.

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Next up is Kathleen Baker in the women’s 100m backstroke. She earns silver, finishing behind Katinka Hosszu, whose husband and coach is an absolute, potentially abusive madman. From the New York Times:

Jessica Hardy, an Olympic medalist who used to train with Hosszu in Los Angeles and wrote about being subjected to verbal and emotional abuse as a child, said, “I’ve seen a lot of inappropriate and not-O.K. behavior in Shane.”

She added: “I’ve seen coaches exhibit that kind of behavior in training, but this is another level. It’s scary.”

…

After the backstroke, Hosszu avoided making eye contact with Tusup, who upbraided her while swimmers from other teams stared. Tusup continued his critique in the warm-down area, where two people said they overheard him suggesting to Hosszu that she stay in the water and drown. The night ended with Tusup kissing Hosszu on the forehead and pulling her close in a long embrace on the deck.

No matter, Hosszu won a Gold Medal and it’s hearts all-around. Love you my cray cray:

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Ryan Murphy is next. He takes Gold and his American teammate David Plummer takes Bronze in the oh-by-the-way men’s 100m backstroke, notable for Murphy’s parents, who wore buttons with their son’s picture on them…

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… and for the book Murphy wrote when he was a kid*:

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Pretty sure this is the same sort of phrasing megalomaniacs use as children. Also, there’s some weird Oedipus thing going on with that drawing, because that’s only a “pool” if it’s meant to be an oversized tub used to collect the discarded remains of his fellow swimmers muhahahahahaha. Not but seriously I’m pretty sure it’s a vulva.

*Or, if you’re my icebox wife, he drew it last week for attention.”How do we know he didn’t just draw that and give it to NBC?” We don’t know that, wife. We don’t. 

Finally, we get to the main event: Lilly King vs. Ex-Machina. Good vs. Evil. America vs. Russia. NBC’s storytelling vs. a voice-less foreigner who has been reduced to menacing stares because we like our Cold War villains to be perfectly cast.

Meanwhile, it’s King, who will tell anyone who will listen that she’s not some happy go-lucky kid, that looks like she could cut a bitch:

https://twitter.com/erikmal/status/762830403564548096

NBC of course will post just about every other Olympic highlight on YouTube except for this one, but by now you know what happened. King walked the talk and beat that Russian science experiment, securing a win for America and, as it turns out, the world. We once again knocked Russia off their pedestal. Miracle On Ice. The Cold War. TJ Oshie. And now Lilly King and Efimova. USA! USA! I imagine Al Michaels was watching in his hotel room, pantsless, clutching onto a framed photo of Mike Eruzione. DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?

How’s it taste, bitch?

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My Nest Cam was indeed running for the big event, and I have perfected the sleeping wife, child and dog yell:

Back to my screen. As usual. King didn’t relent in her post-race interview as Efimova slithered behind her:

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Do it:

https://youtu.be/6ZcpRD-0A-s

And just as we think we’ve reached our prime time Olympic climax… well, think again! As King is enjoying the last pieces of Efimova’s toxic remains in front of the world, we have more UNEXPECTED WARM ROOM DRAMA as le Clos – our new favorite swimmer – does the most impressive heel turn you’ll ever see, somehow going from happy-go-lucky underdog with sick parents to THE MOST HATED MAN IN AMERICA over the course of 45 seconds as he warmed up for the 200m men’s butterfly, the same event he beat Phelps in (leading to that video of his father) in London in 2012:

https://youtu.be/BemrQOzMVWo

There is no way Phelps loses now. None. There are certain people you just can’t do that to. You become the prey. It’s like a vegetarian protesting with a meat necklace in front of the Hamburglar. You can only push him so far before he snaps. He’s going to eat… you.

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Look at this spit:

Phelps

Best Olympic spit since Mark Spitz.

Phelps would indeed beat le Clos in the semifinal, setting up yet another showdown tonight, in prime time, live.

NBC – which had videos of this exchange removed from Twitter because, God, they’re assholes – handled this perfectly. They had highlights of le Clos’ win in 2012 which led right into the warm room exchange. This was real-time reality TV. They couldn’t have scripted that better (they may have actually scripted it and nothing would surprise me).

After this, we went to the beach where Kerri Walsh Jennings once again dominated and showed that her swimsuit tailor deserves a medal. And then Bob Costas sent us back in time for the men’s gymnastics final. I’m not even sure how the US men did, but I’m guessing not well since Costas told us they’d show the conclusion in late-night with Ryan Seacrest. That’s code for “nope, not wasting prime time with this steaming pile of high-pitched garbage.”

We end the night in just the best way possible– with King’s medal ceremony:

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Idle thoughts and more:

Olympic security guards turned off X-ray machines to speed up lines.

You’ll be lucky just to get there, because Rio never tested the subway system:

https://twitter.com/A_W_Gordon/status/762730696133709824

https://twitter.com/A_W_Gordon/status/762731469395623936

https://twitter.com/A_W_Gordon/status/762732115251396608

Taking the bus might not be much better:

Time is a flat circle:

https://twitter.com/Rio2016_en/status/762841334222688258

A fencer’s phone fell out of his pocket.

An article on why there’s no longer those crazy swimsuits.