Comedy sequels rarely match the original. Anchorman 2, The Hangover 2 or 3, Major League 2—they’re all cheap facsimiles of their funnier forebears. This weekend, however, Olympic viewers were treated to one of the rare exceptions:
That’s Lynn and Rick Raisman back in 2012, parents of American gymnast and gold medal winner Aly Raisman, she of the “Hava Nagilah” floor routine. During the London Games, cameras caught Lynn and Rick watching Aly’s uneven bars routine, squirming away and showing everyone exactly how sports parenting was done. I had questions, though. Why doesn’t Rick blink? Is the little girl Lynn keeps leaning into their daughter? Why do they look like they’re practicing for a really slow roller coaster? I feared we’d seen the last of Lynn and Rick, and these questions would go unanswered.
How wrong I was.
How foolish to think that in 2016 Lynn and Rick wouldn’t be right where they should always be, watching Aly on the uneven bars, experiencing a lifetime’s worth of anxiety in less than a minute. And though this new round didn’t feature any of the accompanying audio of the original, it did have a celebratory fist-pump from (presumably) Aly’s younger brother at the end. Like a good comedy sequel, it retained the spirit of the original, but with a new wrinkle.
With her score, Raisman qualified for the finals of the all-around, which will air this Thursday night on NBC.
Jesse Bernstein is a former Intern at Tablet.
