What a Fool

... I was to think that by airing the entire Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Paralympics games, (uninterrupted) that the German network ARD would also show, you know, actual competition of said games.

What a fool. I didn't see any coverage and I checked daily and I'm miffed. How can you just show the pageantry and then turn over the rest of your coverage to some stupid '90s cop drama. Please.

So here is what I have seen on German television - Ice Charade's Fans: you'll be happy to know I'm talking about figure skating again -

It's a German soap opera called "Alles was zählt" which means roughly Everything That Counts. Let's see if you can spot how many things are wrong with their depiction of figure skating ... you know, the ol' spotlights in competitions and more.

So, there's a main character, Katja, who is a former (more on why later) figure skating champion in Germany. Compared to the average size and shape of any European women's champion, she looks most like Katarina Witt, not during her first Olympic medal, nor her second Olympic medal, more like her Playboy spread.

Here she is, from her Facebook page, going to the German Soap Awards 2011.

So, how does she win the German championships? The episode I saw had her competing with spotlights, a panel of very scary looking judges and zero audience members. Yup, no one in the audience. Then when it was time to announce the results, a very dapper, Tim Gunn-lookalike walked over to a group of seven or eight competitors waiting by the door to get on the ice and told Katja, she had won.

Yup, only seven or eight competitors, no Kiss-N-Cry, no score, just spotlights. Now, Katja has a hard time accepting that she was the new German champion, because only hours before she killed someone in the dressing room with her skate. Yup, she stabbed someone (I think it was a mean ol' coach, but I didn't see that episode to know for sure) with the heel of her blade.

That's where the former comes in. Pretty hard to uphold your competition schedule when you're wanted for murder. But I think it takes a while before they have a clue who did it and there's something about how Katja might have been brainwashed, and therefore, not guilty, because whoever she killed (the coach probably) was such a meanie.

Not very realistic, I think. And don't even get me started on the clumsy "bait and switch" when they show a close up of the actor's face and then switch to a stand-in doing a triple toe loop. But they wouldn't have done that in the original episodes because the first actress to play the role of Katja (they are on the third actress to fulfill that role) was Tanja Szewczenko, the real German National Champ and 94 World Bronze Medalist. How 'bout that for some street cred.

So there you have it sports fans ... no Paralympics nothing, but "Alles was zählt."