Mikhail Shaidorov Celebrated Gold By Skating In A Panda Suit

The NBC Saturday primetime broadcast used the figure skating exhibition gala as a way to provide a curtain call for their appointed Olympic protagonists. Of the five segments they aired from the event, four of them put Americans in the spotlight. Amber Glenn gave a fierce performance that further emphasized her comeback from a disappointing short program. Alysa Liu skated a victory lap after her instantly iconic gold medal-winning free skate. And Ilia Malinin, who will be remembered for his poise in the aftermath of his shocking eighth-place finish, gave an earnest on-ice interpretation of how it feels to have all that pressure and attention so tightly focused on your ability to land a once-impossible jump.

This abridged version of the gala was a fine send-off to the figure skaters (I could have done without Chock and Bates's whole bedsheet act, to be honest), but NBC's primetime edit drastically undersold just how Eurovision the whole thing was in full: campy and silly and full of moments that make you ask "Why that?" The gala serves as a window into the very specific interests of some of the great skaters in the world, and it declares—triumphantly, I would say—that taste and athletic prowess have nothing to do with one another. The silver-winning pair from Georgia put on a tribute to Mortal Kombat, complete with the voice that shouts "Mortal Kombat!" Niina Petrõkina pantomined shooting Malinin during a theater-kid's dream of a skate to "Cell Block Tango." Italy's Sara Conti and Niccolò Macii performed to, in order, "Macarena," "YMCA," and "Cotton Eye Joe." And the gold-medal winning Mikhail Shaidorov topped them all by spinning around in a panda costume, making his own farewell to Milan an homage to the Jack Black animated franchise Kung Fu Panda.