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| Why is Vince McMahon back in charge? Because it's WWE's MO, folks. Photo Credit: WWE.com |
For years, the rule of WWE's logic and power has always relied on whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. Whether it was coherent within the story or whether it was just a thing plucked out for McMahon and his creative staff to say "That's how it is, deal with it you peons," the company has had no problem rolling out deus ex machina like it was water in the lazy river.
Obviously, that's bad storytelling. Things have to make sense or else plotholes develop, and you theoretically run the risk of shooing people away from your shows. I say theoretically, because no one seemed to care about plotholes when they went to see Michael Bay's Transformers movies. High rated shows on television have raging inconsistencies within them. Sometimes, logic isn't present in things that are popular, and the device of deus ex machina is used heartily and happily by content producers.
I don't know the reasons why people consume and enjoy things that aren't exactly logical. Maybe it's something other than story that draws them in. Maybe they more readily accept things that they're told should be rather than thinking about it. I mean, 27% of people think God has a hand in sporting events. That's not to knock the religious, but it does shed light on the propensity of people to accept story tropes that might not hold water under scrutiny just because.
WWE is a company that famously caters to the lowest common denominator, and so it makes sense that they wouldn't really care if their product is at all adherent to things for a higher-brow crowd. Even those who don't fit into the obsessive fan category like myself aren't exactly as dumb as WWE would treat them, and I don't mean to come off as saying that anyone who doesn't care about plothole logic is an idiot. Sometimes, people don't want to think about the product they watch on TV, and even though I certainly don't agree with that mindset at all, I'm not beating myself up trying to wonder why people turn their brains off.
That being said, I wonder if it's best to accept that WWE is just going to do what it wants as a storyteller with no regard to context or continuity. It's not hubris if the methodology keeps people coming back. I'm not saying we have to accept it as good SOP, but maybe we do have to accept it as reality if we so choose to continue watching that company.
The movie Chinatown was famous because of its downer of an ending, where the bad guys get of scot-free because of corruption. Jack Nicholson's character wants to fight further, but Joe Mantell's character leans into him and says, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown," meaning that it'd be useless to fight further for justice. Well, I fear that in a quest for supreme attention to continuity and a shelving of the deus ex machina except when it would really be effective, my only reply to those who keep raging against this kind of thing in WWE is "Forget it, yo, it's Vince McMahon."
