I had high hopes for tonight's RAW, as the flagship program has been dealing heat since the New Year. You figure that they were due for a bump, but that it might come last week with Carl Edwards (who knew he was charismatic?) or next week with *shudder* Jewel and Ty Murray. But Jerry Springer? Yeah, then you remember that the WWE "writers" have TV backgrounds and not wrestling backgrounds, a fact tailor made for a situation like this. In retrospect, I should have known this was going to be a stinker, or at least have a stinker of a segment. And don't kid yourselves people, that segment was the worst segment in the last year and a half on any program. Even worse than the Osbourne suckfest (at least we got Chris Masters' dancing pecs out of that). And seriously, I don't think they should even put the pretense up that they're marketing to kids anymore. Put RAW back to TV-14 and concentrate on doing a Saturday morning show that PG-ifies everything. Awful.
It wasn't the only thing wrong with the show though. For one, too many recaps/pre-recorded segments. IS there a rule that the closer you get to WM, the more of that canned bullshit they show? Two, could the Bret Hart stuff have dragged any more slowly than it did tonight? I mean, did we have to have two cutaways to the booth for Lawler and Cole to banter about stuff in clear stall mode? Plus, the limo crash stuff felt so fake. Yeah, I know, it's fake, it's fake, but the point of good wrestling TV is that when you're in the moment, you almost forget that it's staged. Three, I can think of five worse nights that Hart had than tonight, Michael Cole. Four, Triple H looked like he wasn't even trying tonight, epitomized by that laughable single-leg crab he slapped on John Cena. If anything, it looked like mild discomfort of having to stand up on three of four appendages rather than a pain-inducing submission hold. Five, did I mention the recaps and how much I hate them? The only one that really served a purpose was the one before Cena's in-ring segment with Batista, just as a stark contrast to what Cena was about to address.
This was the first time all year that RAW really whiffed, and they whiffed hard. I guess the saving grace for next week is that we get the greatness of Douchebagtista live and in the arena (no lie... Batista'd be the best heel in the company right now if it weren't for CM Punk) and that Murray and Jewel don't play into the shitty formulaic television model that Springer did. There were a few good nuggets on the show (the end of Orton/Sheamus, Sheamus laying out everyone at the end of the night, everything up to the finish of the tag match... ps, note to bookers, there are other ways to try and set up a title program than having the Champ(s) lose in a non-title match - USE THEM), but it wasn't nearly enough to save a truly bad night of RAW action.
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