Monday, November 19, 2012

Instant Feedback: A Tale of Two Stories

One story on RAW was campy in some respects. It had some cheesy moments and a few callbacks to prior moments, some that might have happened during a pay-per-view. However, it's generally satisfying, a story involving an established star, a rising star, and one of the most beloved NPC characters.

The other one was the stupid, shitty love triangle thing that they rammed down our throats.

I'm not one to hate on any feud that puts John Cena and Dolph Ziggler in the same ring. Those two going at it in a prolonged match, whether on free TV or on a more premium setting, is going to be goddamn awesome. I also think that people are looking at the angle from the wrong direction. It's not an angle where everyone's dumb because they're not calling Vickie Guerrero out on her hypocrisy. It's a theoretically great angle where they're all annoyed BECAUSE Guerrero is a hypocrite, but because she's the boss, diverting all the funds and attention away from stuff that matters and to this witch hunt, they can't do anything about it because she's in charge.

But "potentially" is the key word here. The execution of this angle has been pretty goddamn awful. Like, there's nothing about it other than the spectre of a Cena/Ziggler match that appeals to me. The acting is bad. Vickie Guerrero is insufferable when her attention is turned towards petty authority feuds. The "evidence" is laughably poorly put together. The use of fat-shaming on Guerrero and slut-shaming on AJ Lee is frustrating (although it's technically defensible in the latter case if Ziggler/Guerrero get their comeuppance for it... I still don't wanna see it though). Ugh, just let Ziggler challenge Cena because he's the showoff looking to take out the biggest dog in the yard, and then let Lee wrestle Tamina Snuka because I don't know, unicorns and corgis and wild turkeys shooting turkey hunters with muskets.

However, in the other main story, I'm picking up what they're laying down. Maybe I'm predisposed to it because I like everyone involved excepting Seth Rollins (and even he's won me over a little bit). I know it makes me a "bad Internet fan" but I like when CM Punk acts the part of a bully. I think they could do a better job of defining a character that is able to hang with the Cenas of the world in the ring and beat them decisively more often than not while still shitting their pants in fear at guys like Ryback or even Kane. That being said, I'll take what I can get, and what I got tonight was Punk, foot on Ryback's chest, shouting "BEST IN THE WORLD!" after the three guys who may or may not be in his employ did the dirty work. To me, that's what wrestling is all about - robust characters doing outrageous things with short-term conclusions that leave me breathless. It might be the optimist in me, but that was enough to wash the taste of the Cena/Ziggler/Lee/Guerrero stuff out of my mouth, even as strongly bitter as that whole story was tonight.