2012 Summer OlympicsMedia MonsterVideo

Ryan Lochte Visits The Tonight Show, Assures Us He’s Not A Virgin

11-time Olympic medalist/possible secret genius Ryan Lochte is well-known for not being the best interview. Tonight Show host Jay Leno is well-known for being the comic equivalent of a bowl of generic off-brand vanilla pudding, perpetually not rocking the boat so he can appear inoffensive to enough viewers that NBC keeps putting him on television every night. On the surface, this does not sound like a recipe for an engaging interview.

And early on during Lochte’s (fully-clothed, sorry) appearance on that program last night, the surface looked right. Sure, you had Kristen Bell putting Lochte’s London medals on as eagerly as if they’d been sloths, but not a lot happening – and definitely not enough to add any weight to my “Lochte’s in on the joke!” idea:

But later on… things started picking up a bit. Not to “do movement” levels, but picked up all the same. Specifically, at the 1:20 mark below when Leno “asks” Lochte if he was the famous virgin at the Olympic everyone was talking about (of course, Leno had to know the real answer, since Lolo Jones was on his show):

Was it just me, or was there a touch of horror in Lochte’s eyes as he good-naturedly but firmly denied being a virgin? And his line about his dog – “We sit on the couch all the time and watch action-packed movies” – not Lochte’s absolute finest work, but fully worthy of a Ryan Lochte Says mention. Overall, though, score this one for the “Lochte is not, in fact, operating on a higher comedic level than anyone gave him credit for” crowd.