Well, OK. Make it a 9.8. That fifth snowflake didn’t bloom into a ring, early in the show. Mechanical malfunction of some sort.

But otherwise, the Russians did well tonight with Opening Ceremonies for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Which came as a bit of a surprise, given the battering (see @Sochiproblems) Sochi 2014 had taken at the hands of mostly western journalists for most of a week, much of it having to do with unfinished hotels.

It was a crisp, colorful, dynamic, swirling show, and I’ve seen nearly the whole of the three hours twice now, and I picked up a few things in the second viewing that only buttressed my notion of a very well-done show.

As the event unfolded, I had a couple of problems with it. Then I thought about it some more.

My main issue came during the historical stuff after the Parade of Nations. They started with Vikings entering what is now Russia, and then moving along with major events … right up to the start of the Russian Revolution, in 1917, mostly depicted by lots of people wearing red … and the next scene was … the 1950s.

Hey, wait! Didn’t some major, major events occur from, oh, 1920 through 1949?

Like a civil war? The installation of a communist government and the trampling of individual freedoms? A purge or three? The Great Patriotic War (aka World War II), more bad behavior by Joseph Stalin (gulags ‘n’ stuff), the Cold War and imprisonment of Eastern Europe …

And the show went from what appeared to be industrialization, after the revolution, and came back up the rabbit hole in the 1950s. And the consumer’s paradise that was (not) the Soviet Union.

I found that dishonest, while watching the opening as best I could, while helping put out The National’s sports section here in Abu Dhabi.

But the more I thought about this one annoying thing … the more I drifted towards … “and what should they have done?”

In theory, all Russians should be enthusiastic democrats by now, but clearly they are not. Their president, Vladimir Putin, year by year feels more like a dictator than an elected leader.

So, is his government going to sanction a show in which the previous regime was demonized? The same regime that nurtured the current president, who was a member of the feared KGB for 14 years?

If they are not going to say, “Hey, that communism thing … a really bad idea” … and they were not going to … then we perhaps should give the Russians credit that they didn’t try to sugarcoat Stalin’s nearly 30 years of killing his own people. Which they might have done by focusing on World War II, and their defeat of Nazi Germany. But bringing up a Germany thing would have been awkward at a peaceful event, and with the IOC president, Germany’s Thomas Bach, sitting next to Putin.

Realistically, they had nothing to gain, as entertainment or message, by plumbing those 35 years.

So, once we get past that 1920-1955 gap … then you have the rest of the show, and that was fine. More than fine. Quite good. Informational. Inspired. (Well, once we dealt with the “the whole of this is a girl’s dream” cliche.)

Singing and dancing and marching and gymnastics. The athletes coming in and having a grand time.

I’ve seen some several Winter openings in person. Sarajevo 1984, Albertville 1992, Salt Lake 2002, Turin 2006. And Sochi was far better. Sarajevo was just sad; a few people marching around a soccer stadium. Albertville opened in a temporary facility. Like, the sort of portable stands you bring in to increase capacity at your football field. Salt Lake did it in the University of Utah football stadium, and the whole of what I remember is sitting next to Steve Dilbeck in the corner of the stadium and nearly freezing.

This Russia show was good. In part because they spent the money to build a stadium specific to these games. At Winter Games, the stadium is used exactly twice — for opening and closing. (At least, they plan to use this stadium for the 2018 World Cup.)

Pretty much, the whole of this Olympics was built from scratch, which is why it cost $51 billion.

So, the show is over … and they have lots of challenges, still. The threat of terrorism, some venues that may be more than a little dangerous, demonstrating that spending all that money was a good idea …

But opening night went well.