Even those people who look forward to the Olympics every other year can become bombarded by the sheer amount of coverage provided by the NBC family of channels. There’s not nearly enough time to watch everything and still live the semblance of a normal life.

So what we’ve done here is separate the most notable Winter Olympic sports into three categories: the events that you should make an effort to catch, the ones that can safely be skipped, and the sports where you might want to crank up your DVR and fast forward to the good parts, or U.S. medals.

Cross Country Skiing: You’re probably not going to see much of this on the tube unless hell freezes over and an American wins a medal, or unless you happen to be watching CNBC at 3:30 AM. These men and women are phenomenal athletes, but with staggered starts that make it impossible to track all the leaders at the same time, there just isn’t a lot of drama to it. I know this makes me superficial. Sorry. Skip it.

Snowboarding: Those dweebs in the IOC took away our national pastime (no more baseball in the Summer Games), but they made up for it by adding snowboarding in the 1990s. The U.S. invented the sport and always has plenty of medal contenders. Shaun White and the gorgeous Gretchen Bleiler are back for another Olympics, and Louie Vito will show exactly what he did to get on Dancing With the Stars in the first place. Watch it.

Curling: This is one of the newer Winter Olympic sports, and it’s attracted a cult following because it looks so … unathletic. A bunch of men and women who look like your neighbors (assuming you live in northern Minnesota), pushing a stone down the ice behind folks wielding brooms? Even though I have a strong belief that Olympic athletes should put more effort into their sport than I do watching them compete, I must admit there is a strange Zen appeal to curling. There are worse ways to kill a couple of hours. DVR it.

Biathlon: The sport which combines cross-country skiing with shooting. There’s no shortage of Americans who love their rifles, but we never seem to do well at this. The firearms factor elevates this event over mere cross-country, but unless you like watching icicles form on Norwegian dudes’ beards, it’s not all that riveting. Skip it.

Short Track Speed Skating: Now this is the perfect sport for television. The individual races take almost no time at all to finish, and since only four race at a time, it’s never too confusing to follow. The best thing about short track is that it’s the only contact sport in the Winter Games other than hockey. You could see more crashes near the finish line during Vancouver’s short track coverage than during the next five years of NASCAR combined. And yes, Apolo Anton Ohno is still competing. We’ll see if he can rumba his way out of the pack and back onto the medal stand. Watch it.

Long Track Speed Skating: Speed skaters have to be among the best athletes in the world. Unfortunately, their sport isn’t all that interesting to watch. It’s an endless succession of duos skating around an oval. The sport is like alpine skiing in the competitors don’t go head to head, but there’s not the sense of danger that the slopes provide. Americans usually win their share of medals here though, so the sport is worth giving a look to for that reason. DVR it.

Alpine Skiing: This is traditionally one of the TV favorites of the Winter Games — the millions of recreational skiers in the U.S. helps — and is easily the most exciting of its events. There’s the ever-present threat of a major crash, even from the best skiers, and the sport seems to attract more than its share of mercurial personalities. This is also the sport of Lindsay Vonn, who is odds-on favorite to be the breakout U.S. star in Vancouver. Watch it.

Skicross: This is a new Olympic sport, which seems to be an attempt to transfer the mayhem of short-track speedskating to the ski slopes. Does the notion of a pack of skiers fighting for position as they race down a mountain sound like fun to you? Me too. Watch it.

Bobsled: If you have to choose between the bobsled and the luge, this is the one to dispense with. For starters, the differences between the sleds are almost impossible to discern — unless someone makes a terrible steering mistake, everyone looks exactly the same. And it’s hard to relate to any sport where the winners are almost always the teams with the most technically perfect sleds. Skip it.

Hockey: With a few dozen NHL stars competing, this is the Winter Games sport with the most names recognizable to a casual sports fan. But even though there are some differences between the North American version of hockey and the international game that make the latter more fun to watch, the same issues that are blamed for why hockey has never been a big TV hit don’t go away just because it’s the Olympics. Outside of curling, which doesn’t really get the blood racing, this is the only national team sport in the Winter Olympics, so it will be a draw for those who like the jingoism aspect of the Games most of all. But those are also the viewers most likely to be disappointed by the total lack of fighting. DVR it.

Luge: I’ve always been amused by doubles luge, in which the sledders align themselves in a position that I believe is banned in much of the Bible Belt. This isn’t the most thrilling of Olympic sports, but it beats the bobsled because it’s stranger, and the solo element provides an added amount of risk. They will no doubt show at least one poor sap overcorrecting and wiping out. DVR it.

Figure Skating: The signature event of the Games, and the one that will no doubt get the highest ratings even though this is the rare Olympics without a major American female star in the sport. There’s a dramatic structure to skating that lends itself to TV storytelling, the costumes and music are always fun to either admire or snark on, and the skaters themselves seem vulnerable instead of being encased in uniforms. The big downside these days is that no one understands the scoring any longer, but that just means more controversy and tears. Watch it.