After many months of having to endure journalism that all follows the same emerging-superpower-showcases-development-with-Olympic-games-but- still-must-struggle-with-human-rights-and-environmental-issues line, the Olympics finally launched last night. It seems that, except for thousands of Western journalists who were defining their careers around the reporting line given above (what an angle!), just about everybody can finally let out a sigh of relief that it’s finally happened. Whew!

Let’s recap the Olympic run-up with a little photo album:

First of all, there was the official Beijing Olympic marketing campaign, put in place to inspire and strike fear into the hearts of Chinese children all across the country with its haunting panda ghosts. These color-themed monsters were named Beibei, Jingjing, Huanhuan, Yingying, and Nini–meant to replicate the sound, in Chinese, of “Beijing Welcomes You” but really coming out like “Beibei Jingjing Welwel Comescomes Youyou”. These critters even starred in their own line of “Olympic adventures” on VCD. Things did not appear to be off to a good start.

“Eat at official Olympic sponsor McDonald’s, or we’ll come haunt you in your sleep!”

Then there was the infamous torch relay around the world. To China, this was a time to show off just how far the country had come by lining the torch procession with a group of hand-picked thugs. To hundreds of disgruntled protesters, this became a moment to embarrass China on international television and show what a really good heart they have. It was a journalist’s dream showdown, spoiled only by the fact that, when the torch got to San Francisco, organizers made sure that it ran on a shortened route that nobody could find.

Stealing a torch from a one-legged girl in a wheelchair–what class!

This, of course, deeply offended the Chinese, who saw it as an attack on their country by Western powers bent on spoiling the fun. Suddenly, everybody started feeling to need to show how much they hate Western media and love the Olympics. Also, it led China–which had been excluded from the Olympics until 1980 because of politics, and was wagering an increase in political leverage on a successful Olympics–to claim that the Olympics is not political.

Actually, this is how people prepared for the Olympics in ancient Greece, too.

And then the advertisers went crazy. Everybody and anybody in business who had had a nighttime fantasy about one billion customers decided that they needed to throw some money at the Olympics to curry favor. “Official Sponsor of the 2008 Beijing Olympics” logos popped up so often in China that most people began assuming if a business didn’t have one it had been stolen by a young patriot. NBC sold over $1 billion in Olympic ad time. Every celebrity in China, from Jackie Chan to Zhang Yimou, became representatives of the Games. It was the beginning of the decent into chaos.

Mess with China and get hit by a dumb bell(e): Lucy Liu shows China’s fashion muscle in a feature in Bazaar.

But for those that thought the old China was disappearing forever, sighs of relief followed when nobody could get tickets through the bureaucracy set up to distribute them. An internet system designed to sell the tickets repeatedly crashed, overwhelmed by the “technical problem” of, uh, lots of people wanting to buy tickets. People waited days in long lines in the Beijing heat to buy at ticket counters. Riots began when some tried to jump the line. Men cried when they couldn’t get seats for their favorite sports. In the end, of course, a few simple adjustments to the bureaucratic process fixed all the chaos.

Ah… the China we all remember and love.

But now it’s finally all happened. The opening ceremony went off with a hitch, 17,000 Chinese were married, and, though there are two weeks of Olympics still ahead, it’s pretty much all a comedown from here. In fact, one begins to wonder whether, with this being the most political, most commercial and otherwise most generally hyped Olympics of all time, if the opening ceremony wasn’t just a climax for China’s modern history, but turn in the history of the Olympics as a whole.

Will the public begin to lose interest in the whole sporting event, after such an overwhelming Olympic run-up? With all the news coverage and advertising involved, this Olympics has become more of a reality TV show than an amateur sporting event aimed at fostering international cooperation. And–as we all know about television and reality–no matter how good it is, the public always loses interest in it, eventually.

A climax for Beijing–but also for the Olympics as a whole?