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| The root of all Smackdown's evil Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Flames. On the Side of My Face. I hate Shane McMahon SO. MUCH. The second he appeared on screen I just wanted to turn the show off. If I didn't have a review to write, I would have. That's how much I am not enjoying Smackdown right now. I don't care about the build to Survivor Series, I don't want to wait and see where anything goes, I don't care about any of it. Why does WWE have to needlessly fuck with everything? Why couldn't Survivor Series just be a fun night of friendly competition? Why this brand competition that makes no sense and makes everyone on Smackdown look like an asshole, especially Shane McMahon? Pretending to do RAW a favour by letting AJ Styles fill in for Bray Wyatt but really sending him in as a mole?
Attacking the already sickness-depleted RAW roster? Creating a violent conflict where one did not already exist? Threatening Kurt Angle? Making sure that RAW can't retaliate? These are all total jerk moves. It might be different if we were supposed to think Smackdown was out of line and that McMahon was abusing his power, but we're not. Instead commentary was trying to justify everything with a “This is war, there are two sides, you gotta look out for number one” narrative, and it's bullshit. I'm so, so tired of watching shitty people do shitty things while I'm supposed to cheer for them because the shitty people in charge of this whole shebang have absolutely no concept of morality.
They can't even follow through on their own dumb ideas. If AJ Styles was sent to RAW to fill in for someone only to betray the people who thought he was doing them a favour, then shouldn't everyone on Smackdown be very suspicious of Michael Cole, who was once again filling in for Tom Phillips? Shouldn't he have been a little jumpy? Or are we pretending that the announce team has never taken an active role in show proceedings?
Daniel Bryan's disapproval might give me a tiny hope that someone will call McMahon on his bullshit, but I'm so tired of having to grasp for slivers of enjoyment in a giant pile of disappointment. I want more than that. And given the way things have shaken out lately, Bryan's judginess will probably be boiled down to a power grab on his part because Shane McMahon is great and don't you ever forget it. And his leather jacket makes him look cool and hip and not like a douchey try-hard.
Meanwhile Sami Zayn is still a bad person for saving his best friend from an attention hungry, power abusing boss, just so we're clear. And somehow it's his fault that Shane McMahon decided to jump off a thing, and he should feel really bad about that even though McMahon is apparently totally fine and has suffered zero consequences from losing the Hell in a Cell match. Look, I don't know. This show's logic does not resemble our Earth logic. Then again, the Milwaukee crowd seemed to love everything Shane McMahon was spewing, so what the fuck do I know?
Tag Time
The tag division is the only part of this show that still feels fresh and fun right now, which is pretty amazing given that New Day and the Usos have been the only featured teams for a while, but that's how consistently good they've been. On this episode Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods took on Chad Gable and Shelton Benjamin with the Usos sitting in on commentary. It makes sense for the next team facing the Usos to go through New Day first as a kind of proving ground, and I enjoyed the match a lot. New Day is out of contention for now, but they haven't let up the intensity of their matches, and Gable and Benjamin are working well together. I really appreciated their teamwork sequence at the end with Gable throwing Woods into the ropes for Benjamin to kick him straight back into a pin. We haven't gotten to know Gable and Benjamin as a team at all, so it's little things like that that help us to see them as a unit. I do not want to see Chad Gable fall victim to lacklustre audience reaction yet again because this stupid show refuses to invest in its characters.
I'm really looking forward to Gable and Benjamin facing the Usos for the titles. I just wish the rest of the division wasn't relegated to doing wasteland stuff in limbo.
A Whirlwind of Nothing
We got two quick, meaningless matches on this show. One had Baron Corbin lose via disqualification against Sin Cara for playing too hard. Last week he lost because Sin Cara was too much for him, but this week he lost because he was too much for Sin Cara. And both of these outcomes add up to absolutely nothing! I'm so glad he won the United States Championship for this!
Elsewhere, AJ Styles made short work of poor Sunil Singh. There's no reason why that match should have lasted longer, and I certainly don't begrudge Styles having a bit of a rest after wrestling on TLC and Raw, but it was yet another waste of time during an episode that frayed my patience to its absolute limits. This is what we're using AJ Styles for? I'm so glad he lost the United States Championship for this!
Recycling
Remember last year before Survivor Series when the women's division was fighting over who would be team captain? This year before Survivor Series the women's division is fighting over who will be team captain. There's still no point to being team captain other than getting to say that you're team captain for a team that's fighting for absolutely nothing at Survivor Series, but whatever. The artificial nonstakes provided yet another reason to just throw everyone in the ring and see what happened. And the match was...not good. Usually I can reconcile myself to these Everyone in the Pool matches by at least appreciating the wrestling but not this time. No one got a chance to stand out other than maybe Naomi, who took a hard knock into both a barricade and a ringpost. The action almost immediately spilled to the outside with only two people fighting while everyone else just lay around. Nothing of note happened, the pacing was poor, and the final face-off between Becky Lynch and Carmella was devoid of any kind of tension or intensity. I'm glad Becky Lynch won, and I guess I'll be interested to see if anything develops between her and Charlotte Flair, but on the whole this was a really disappointing match.
The only highlight was backstage when Daniel Bryan said that everyone other than Natalya would be on the Survivor Series team no matter what, Lana pointed out that there were six of them, and Bryan immediately responded with, “Not you, Lana.” I wasn't very nice about Daniel Bryan last week, but I think he's as over this show as I am. His line delivery was on point all episode.
Survival of the Snakest
Last week Sami Zayn won a tag match by delivering a low blow to Randy Orton, so this week Orton secured his Survivor Series spot by delivering a low blow to Zayn. See, it's not repetitive or predictable, it's thematic. I'd be annoyed at Zayn losing to Orton but frankly it made so little sense for Zayn and Owens to want to represent Smackdown that I'm glad. They should be thumbing their noses at the whole Survivor Series enterprise. Anyway, the match was actually pretty good. Randy Orton's performance is always elevated when he works with talented people because he is a parasite. Zayn is making an art form out of wrestling sarcastically. I didn't even know that could be a thing, but there you go. He's amazing and he deserves better.
These write-ups are going to be sporadic for the next couple of months, and I have to say that I've never been so glad that my for realsies work is going to prevent me from watching wrestling. I really need a break from this show. I've already got a spring in my step just knowing that I will not be watching Bobby Roode and Dolph Ziggler's two-out-of-three-falls match next week. I really hope things have improved by the time I can watch regularly again. I hate being such a downer.
