What to Watch: Olympic Coverage Edition

With the Olympics broadcasting nearly 24/7 on NBC, fans of The Tonight Show, Late Night with Conan O’Brien and Last Call with Carson Daly … not to mention any syndicated programs, like Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray and Ellen DeGeneres, will have to rely on the other half dozen or more talk shows to get their celebrity chat and infotainment fill.

And there’s lots to go around, trust me. In between Michael Phelps getting even more gold medals, I’ll be DVRing the following talk show moments:

• Comeback Kid: This week, the much bally-hooed comedy film Tropic Thunder opens, and it co-stars an actor who is already enjoying a successful summer: Robert Downey Jr.. If Tropic Thunder is a hit, I think we can officially call this Downey Jr.’s comeback year. He appears Monday on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. It’s possible the actor and talk show host will share addiction stories, which could prove to be both poignant and funny.

• This Sounds Like Fun: No, really, it does. Author Dick Meyer appears Wednesday on The Colbert Report to chat about his book, Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium. The publisher describes the book as a “compelling, wonderfully cranky and comic prose” in which “the author contends that the radical social changes of the 1960s and the recent technological revolution have drastically altered the pace of life, leaving Americans morally and existentially tired, disoriented, anchorless, and defensive.” Cool stuff.

• Why Did I Get Married?: On Thursday’s Oprah, the unmarried talk show host is talking about the realities of marriage. Then she turns the show over to Tyler Perry and Janet Jackson. Eclectic show? I’d say so.