Territorial

This is going to turn into one of those 1 vs. 100 discussions, isn't it? Like, would I prefer to see the Briscoes wrestle one giant chicken or 100 normal size chickens? (FWIW, I've heard the giant chicken wouldn't sell for Davey Richards in their match. And I'm pretty sure the Briscoes can work at least one superkick per chicken into a match with the 100, so I vote for the hundred).

So that's what happened to the Ding Dongs.. I'd been wondering....

I can't wait for the debut of Sin Mason Ryan.

I still remember browsing Meltzer's Wrestling Observer website on the day of the match and reading that Kobashi's reign would be coming to an end "that night". Oops.

Wait, was this supposed to be a secret? Oh noes! The WWE's booking strategy has been uncovered! To throw off the marks, the company is going to have to do something radical like.... I dunno.... consistently put contenders over so fans think they might win when they're put into title feuds.

Rich Johnson/Bleeding Cool predicted Talon would ship it's last issue in February. Tynion is apparently off the book regardless. Has Talon been any good? I'm kinda leaning towards picking it up at some point, but I'm completely unfamiliar with Tynion. I think the only thing I've read from him is the Batman Annual he co-scripted with Snyder (which was very good, imo, though I'm a little iffy on some of the retcons to Mr. Freeze's origin). What do people find anti-climatic about Death of the Family? That no one died? I thought the story was pretty damn effective. Did people really think editorial was going to let the Joker slice off faces of some of their more popular characters? I thought the story was fine if you accept the idea that the Joker has a weird "attraction" to Batman and is more interested in keeping the game going as is than he is learning Bat's secret identity/killing Bats/whatever The "Joker may have been in the Batcave" stuff was pretty much in keeping with Batman/Bruce's established personality and issues. I don't expect the Bats Family-turned-on-Bruce thing to stick, but, realistically, almost any change they make to the status quo isn't going to last. I could see them killing Tim Drake, but they've killed off two Robins in the past 20 years and Damien was written off less than a year ago, so future Robins are likely safe for quite a while.

Finally broke down and bought the Court of Owls Batman trades, I'm missing a couple of the early issues and it finally dawned on me that I'm not going to find the early issues cheaply and I'm not planning to pay the prices they can be had at on Ebay. Anyway, reading all of Snyder's run from the beginning. Really digging it. Gales of Gotham and Black Mirror are my favorites so far, but I'm in "prefer to read an average Snyder script than good almost-anyone-else" mode. I liked Death of the Family and the Owls storyline quite a bit, but both were kinda flawed (Owls moreso, I think). With the Owls storyline, I felt like Batman being trapped in the labyrinth and nearly broken was something that should have happened later, in the back half of the story. I also really didn't see a strong need for the Owls to abandon 100+ years of secrecy to suddenly attack Gotham en masse. Zero Year seems really strong so far. Rereading Johns' Aquaman run next.

I'm sensing that, if you're thinking of dropping SHIELD from the DVR before the new year rolls around, this isn't the episode that's going to save it?

I need you to ask him what the difference is between a yak and a squack. The difference is the fruit booty.

He could do twice as many jobs! Better yet, the head could be booked against the body in a ppv match. The contest would end in a draw (double pin/double dq/countout) so he could jiob twice in the same match.

Honestly, looking over Ennis' bibliography, I'd put Preacher middle of the road. I'm sure a lot of people rate it higher, but I enjoyed the Boys, Hellblazer, his Punisher run, The Demon, and Hitman a lot more than Preacher. It's a shame that people seem to overlook Hitman. I'm kinda curious how Hellblazer would hold up for me. I haven't reread it since it came out, but I loved it at the time. Whatever happened to Will Simpson anyway? I thought he'd go on to some high profile books. For my money, Ennis peaked really early. I think his best stuff (or, at least, my personal favorites) is Hitman and Troubled Souls, the slice of life gn he did with McCrea. I think Troubled Souls was his first published work, wasn't it? Was any of his Demon run collected?

I'd definitely pick the Boys over Preacher. I liked Preacher when it first came out, but was never the huge fan a lot of other people were/are. I reread the whole run about a year ago and it didn't work for me.

I'd guess Morena Baccarin was pregnant when they shot this season, so they probably wanted to limit her screen time. I'm not how far in advance they shoot cable series (for network shows, they start shooting in mid-summer and lead time is usually 6-8 weeks or so), but Baccarin gave birth in October, so she's been pregnant most of the year. I'm going to finish the season, but Homeland may not get DVR'ed next season.

Who was Sin Cara last night? I don't remember Hunico having the big arm tattoo. I'm assuming it wasn't the original Sin Cara/Mistico. Just read about Del Rio's concussion. Whoever was under the Cara mask, glad to see they're keeping up the tradition of botching stuff.

Even if you can't do a superkick or the spear, you can still get signed. Question 3 is "Have you ever wanted to learn how to do the Overdrive or somesort of Flatliner/DDT?"

Double post. Board is acting weird.

So in a couple years, people will be discussing Jonn Kena on the 761st version of the DVDVR forums?

Hell on Wheels had a legit great episode this season when they were defending the hotel. But it's such a weird show right now. I get why people would not watch Once Upon a Time in Wonderland after a few weeks because it's not a very good show but I don't get why people didn't watch the first episode. It had a built in audience, maybe even two. Apparently it had terrible ratings from day one. I really liked Hell on Wheels but the finale of the last season was one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. Because its stupid to waste time watching a show with no proper ending. As opposed to watching something that gets picked up for multiple seasons and goes to shit or has a terrible ending? I get missing a few episodes and deciding to wait for the end of the season to watch it all at once (I'm going to do that with SLeepy Hollow) but not watching something that looks entertaining because it might be cancelled doesn't make sense to me. This. I guess I don't take TV shows that seriously. Sure, once in a while, I get annoyed with a show that wraps up without a resolution, but mostly I just chalk it up to the nature of the medium. Shows are renewed for one year at most and can be cancelled anytime. Most serialized shows (Lost, X-Files, Revenge) are set up to play out major plotlines for years. I don't really get why someone decides to watch season 2 of, say, Lost, just because it gets renewed for season 2. Chances are good there won't be any permanent resolution even at the end of season 2. Take Hannibal. Low rated, barely got picked up for season 2. Fuller has talked about his plans for seasons 3,4,5, so I don't expect any major resolutions until at least season 5. But.... given Hannibal's ratings last season, it won't surprise me if the show gets cancelled before the end of S2. I'll be astonished if there really is a season 5 or 6. But, it's a good show right now, so <shrug>. i think too much is made of finales. Sure, it's nice to have a proper wrap-up, but how many shows get satisfying finales anyway? A lot of timers, by the time they do a series finale, the creator has moved on, the writers have moved on, some of the cast is probably gone, the intended finale can't be done without resurrecting dead characters or retconning entire seasons, etc. X-Files is a decent example. Supernatural is an even better illustration. That show had it's intended series finale at the end of season 5. That was four seasons ago. The creator and pretty much everyone else involved with the show has moved on (aside from the two leads and the actor playing Castiel), but the show is still going on, with plotlines pretty much recycling what they did before. Whatever they end up doing at the end of the series will be a bad imitation of what the wrapup was meant to be. I always get a laugh when I hear J Michael Straczynski claim he had every bit of Babyon 5 planned out in advance. I guess he foresaw replacing his lead actor (due to mental illness, apparently), replacing one of the female leads due to a salary dispute, and having the show canceled prematurely.

I really don't get the "only watch shows that are going to be picked up for another season" line of thinking. I think Dracula is similar to Hannibal in that a large portion of the costs are being picked up by overseas investors, so that makes the odds of renewal a little better. But, yeah, I don't really expect a talky period drama about Dracula battling a secret society by bringing electricity to the masses to last very long.

Yeah this is pretty much my feelings on the show too. Orlando Jones' storyline seems like something they threw in to pad out a few minutes of each show when they could just as easily fill it with Ichabod going shopping in a Costco, learning to drive a car, etc. I'm surprised they haven't had a reaction shot of him finding out people live to be 70-80 years old now (wasn't the average lifespan around the revolutionary war considerably less?) Still one of my favorite moments: Can't find it on Youtube, but the episode that started with Crane waxing poetic about true love - while talking to the OnStar operator who unlocked the car for him - has been my favorite bit. But, yeah, the sales tax rant was quite funny. Sleepy Hollow is slowly winning me over. As genre shows go, Dracula is head and shoulders above it, though. Got caught up on it this week. People are really sleeping on it.

I might have bet money Ben would name Bunkhouse Buck or Meng as the mystery partner.

That's not a bad heel promo. It won't happen, of course, but ROH could hook me a bit with an Edwards-Hardy feud.

Yeah, Eddie had the book into '88. The DWB-Dr. Tom feud is really overlooked. Great stuff.

I liked #6, the rumor so hot that WCW execs wouldn't let him talk about it on the air. But they would let him talk about it on the company-run hotline, which was shilled on the company's television shows. Alrighty then.

Don't know for sure, but I've never heard that they offered him a job as an in-ring performer. He was on the wrong side of locker room politics when he was there, so that might have kept him out. Supposedly, the reason his agent/commentator stint was so short in '87 was that a lot of the wrestlers had worked for the AWA before jumping to the WWF and had heat with Verne, which they took out on Nick. Allegedly, the reason Nick quit was that a group of guys disliked him and made his life miserable. He worked mostly as an "agent in training" under Jay Strongbow, and Strongbow either felt threatened by Bockwinkel, or simply didn't want him around.