What does one get when good wrestling, awesome nostalgia with a milquetoast, lame ending? It's the Halloween edition of RAW, of course. Truth be told, it wasn't a bad show at all. In fact, it was one of the best flowing ones of the last couple of months. I loved all the Muppet segments to death. The best was when Sheamus and Beaker had a family reunion moment. For a second, WWE found a pop culture vein that was smart and made sense and struck it pitch-perfectly. Kermit the Frog getting bagged by Cody Rhodes and implying that Vickie Guerrero was Jack Swagger's mother was almost as great. Gonzo getting his arms all tied up was a nice, cartoon-violence-tinged visual. My one complaint would have to be that there wasn't enough Statler and Waldorf. I kinda wanted to see them get one match to call on their own rather than just getting a few cut-away segments. Nothing's perfect though.
While it took about 35 minutes for the wrestling to really get started, I really dug the matches on the show. Alberto del Rio/Big Show was a sneaky good match. I thought it could have been cut a bit shorter and it probably didn't need to span a commercial break. That being said, it was a very smartly booked match up until the finish, which I still am not crazy about. A guy has the strap, he shouldn't be losing willy nilly, but given the circumstances, I can live with it I guess. The post-match on that was great. For those complaining that CM Punk forcing a "yes" out of del Rio was bullying, consider the character. CM Punk is still a ruthless, amoral prick, just one that the fans cheer, just like Randy Orton is. I could see him (or Orton) doing something shitheel like that. The real problem is that WWE, a company based in the business of bullying and counterbullying, is so hard in on an anti-bullying campaign. The Dolph Ziggler/Zack Ryder match was really, really good too. Ryder got the loudest reactions from the crowd and held up his end of the bargain, but Ziggler busted his ass to make the match look worthy of a pay-per-view main event. Again, the finish was wonky for me here. Why have a Dusty-esque finish with a match restart only to have the same result, the Champion losing a non-title match? It's baffling.
But the biggest baffle of the night was the main event. They're trying to tell a story where John Cena is being harangued by this force of the Awesome Truth, right? Well, they were on their way to really hammering that point home, that The Rock needed to be in John Cena's corner when R-Truth in the Scream mask interfered from the crowd. But then that led into Cena summarily dispatching Miz and then taking out Truth like it was nothing? Why does Cena need The Rock again? And why does WWE insist on showing pretaped Rock promos? I just don't know, it's a morass.
But hey, at least the Muppets were cool and the wrestling was on point. Those are two big pluses for a show that is built traditionally on matches and for this night only on the nostalgia value of the former.
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