The Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony was wet and weird. Can we just get to the Games now?

PARIS — I hope it was better on TV.

In the midafternoon Friday, the skies were cloudy but bright enough, and the Eiffel Tower — the Olympic rings affixed to it halfway up like a gigantic refrigerator magnet — loomed over the Trocadero with the majesty that the designers of this Olympic opening ceremony certainly had hoped to amplify. The stage itself, in fact, was shaped like the tower. A few hours still had to pass before the ceremony would begin. Each country’s delegation would be carried to the Trocadero along the Seine River on a large boat. For the first time, an Olympics’ first-night festival would be held outdoors, and the Paris 2024 promotional material promised that “the traditional sequence of the ceremony” would be “turned on its head.”

Then, two things happened.

The rain started.

And the ceremony started.

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Ask any wedding planner. Anytime anyone would like to arrange an event to host and entertain a lot of people — and would like to hold that event outdoors — there’s always a big risk. The risk is rain. And rain came as the ceremony began and did not let up for a couple of hours. The sky darkened. The precipitation intensified to the point that one of the two huge video boards inside the Trocadero, each of which was showing the ceremony as it must have appeared to those watching live on television, went out.

In fairness, there isn’t much that can be done about weather conditions on a particular day. The chance you take, the luck of the draw, etc. But the ceremony itself …

Let me get the obvious stuff out of the way first. I’m well aware that I am not the target demographic for this kind of programming and event. The Olympic opening ceremony isn’t geared to me. It’s geared away from me. I’m interested in and fascinated by the competition and the details of the drama and the chance to bear witness to a moment of greatness or a triumph of the human spirit. The point of the ceremony’s pomp and pageantry is to reach a broader, more general audience. I was not eagerly waiting for Lady Gaga or Celine Dion to show up and start belting out a big burlesque number (which LG did and did well, though I’m more of a “Shallow” guy myself) or “My Heart Will Go On” (which Celine did not sing, though her performance was the most stirring part of the ceremony). And I lost interest in the secret identity of the Phantom (of the Opera) torchbearer right around the time that my feet, trapped inside my waterlogged sneakers, started to prune.

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That said, all those disclaimers offered up front: I’ll play theater critic if I have to, and the ceremony conjured the memory of being at the Magic Kingdom or EPCOT for the late-night parade or fireworks show. There was a tangible artificiality to it, as if the directors were trying to capture not the essence of Paris but the stereotypes and perceptions throughout distant popular culture of the essence of Paris. The only way the whole thing could have had a stronger 1980s vibe would have been if, as its Olympic contingent trundled down the Seine, Aruba had been followed by Jamaica and Ooh, I Wanna Take Ya.

Again, though, I realize this stuff isn’t for me. So Joel Embiid wore silly multicolored glasses, and the Eiffel Tower eventually blazed and sparkled in blue, and the Olympic flag was flown upside down. Details. Hey, at least we can get to the Games now. Once everyone’s socks dry out.