Fairy tale setup without expected ending

Figure skaters are not my weakness; I tend to think of them as sullen, arrogant swans hogging the middle of the rink during a free skate at the local mall, threatening to brain anyone whose sad misfortune or lack of skill it is to venture uncontrollably into their airspace. Excuse me for wanting to have my ninth birthday party at the Culver City ice rink.

But I did stay up until the un-godly figure skating hour of midnight Thursday to watch Irina Slutskaya, the 27-year-old Russian with the warm, open, oval face, battle it out for the gold medal with 21-year-old Sasha Cohen, whose oval face is slightly less warm, slightly less open.

NBC, which throughout these games has seen its ratings dented significantly by Fox’s “American Idol,” was, on Thursday night, going head-to-head with a whole network TV world that was suddenly twirling and judging for pride and country -- not only on Fox’s “Idol” (triumph over karaoke) but also Fox’s “Skating With Celebrities” (triumph over autograph shows) and “Dancing With the Stars” on ABC (triumph over the samba).

Cohen and Slutskaya and Japan’s Shizuka Arakawa, in essence, weren’t going to skate until Bruce Jenner and Jillian Barberie had done their routines on “Skating with Celebrities.” And Olympic commentator Scott Hamilton and Cohen’s coach John Nicks were pulling double duty, both live at the games and recorded spots for “Skating With Celebrities.”

Time was everybody paused to watch the Olympic Games as a national rite. But that was back when there was a Cold War on, when you feared the Russians and East Germans. Now the Russians play for the Clippers, and at the Olympics they reportedly throw the hottest parties. And yet, the Cohen/Slutskaya showdown shaped up as an ode to the days of old, an East versus West, Russia versus the U.S. battle for supremacy.

At least on the surface, that is; in close-up it is the American, Cohen, who comes off as the removed perfectionist beauty from the Russian hinterlands and Slutskaya as if she had been reared in sunny Corona del Mar. Both got the up-close-and-personal treatment from NBC, which stacked the deck and then, at the end of four hours, was forced to turn its camera on Japan’s Arakawa, the gold medal winner.

Her routine had been flawless -- or seemed it, anyway, if you had the sound down on the TV. “It was a good, quality performance. It is beatable,” NBC commentator Sandra Bezic said as Arakawa skated off the ice.

Minutes earlier Bezic -- in the role of haughty one, noting slight imperfections in routines as if they were betrayals of self and country -- had deemed the performance “cautious but clean.”

Because she’d only doubled where she could have tripled, you see.

“That’s a lady skating,” said the venerable Dick Button.

Still NBC wasn’t really rooting for Arakawa; she didn’t have the back story of Cohen (groin injury, triumph over pain and uncomfortable wrap) or Slutskaya (ill mother, triumph over turmoil).

“Everybody else skates to ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ she is Juliet,” decreed Bezic after Cohen’s marred routine.

When both fell and Arakawa took the gold, the expression of disbelief on the Japanese girl’s face punctured the entire melodrama NBC had been building throughout the night, teasing out the ladies figure skating through a thicket of competition.