EVA

It’s not the violence so much as the cruelty. Like, did we need 4 full episodes of Teonna being brutally physically and sexually abused by the Catholic clergy, when the general point that “the Indian boarding schools were very bad” was well made after two episodes, at the most? And the way the camera lingers on her injuries is almost pornographic at times. But at least that’s somewhat relevant to the story. It goes somewhere, even if that somewhere is a fairly juvenile revenge fantasy—Tarantino without the style or wit. What’s more difficult to reconcile is what the hell is going on with Timothy Dalton and the prostitutes by the end of the season. More lengthy torture fetish scenes that didn’t tell us anything new about that character. We already knew he was a bad guy who would pit people against each other for his own pleasure! It was not exactly subtext! We didn’t need two episodes of him violently degrading women to clarify that point. The psychodynamics of how Sheridan portrays violence against women vs. violence against men is fascinating to me. 1923 is by far the most explicit so far, but you can even see it on mainline YELLOWSTONE: The men almost always bounce back quickly from their injuries/losses with no discernible signs of damage, keep pushing forward, while the women are always left physically scarred and/or suffer mental breakdowns or attempt suicide because of the violence that befalls them. I mean, it’s almost a running joke at this point (I mean, if it were funny at all) that Beth Dutton collects a new disfigurement every season.

Bullock & Swearengen do change over the course of DEADWOOD. Even by the end of the first season (which I’m rewatching right now), they’re changing—not so much in who they are on a fundamental level, but in terms of how they’re willing to modify how they relate to other people in order to build a community in the camp. It’s what the whole show’s about!

Why did nobody warn me that YELLOWSTONE spin-off 1923 is basically torture porn? Yeesh.

Turning someone heel by having them join Bullet Club and immediately rocket strapping them into the heavyweight title scene is The Most Gedo Thing that could happen, so I wouldn’t count Finlay out.

He was in talks with WWE in 2021 when he was about to come off his ban from the US, but that was right around when HHH lost power and NXT changed directions to their “no Indie guys” policy and that fell apart. I think he’s locked in with Impact for another couple of years.

Turning Austin heel ultimately proved to be a very bad idea, but once he cleared the initial Brothers of Destruction feud, heel Austin vs. Benoit, Jericho, Angle over the summer felt like a breath of fresh air after some years of him having the same type of match every week. Austin taking the rolling Germans felt wild at the time.

I seemed to rub some people the wrong way with some really mild criticism of the Sami situation last week, so in the interest of equal play, I’d like to say that last night’s episode of Smackdown was really good on that front. They did a great job of threading that storyline throughout the night in order to prime the live crowd to feel like they really, really needed to see that hug. I still think the overall story is sliding towards a “solid B” conclusion, but it was an A episode. Only thing I could’ve lived without was that quick cutaway to smug Cody beaming at the monitor. That was laying it on a layer too thick, I think. Unintentional comedy.

Yeah, but he was distinctly positioned as “Cody’s friend” and ever a member of NF. Never wore Cody’s gimmicks, best I recall. And honestly, I can get where he was coming from, even it did torpedo his chances at an AEW run.

I think it’s worth remembering that there was a time in 2018-2019 when Elias was so hot that they had to turn him face (to disastrous results). I can definitely see the LA Knight comparison there.

I really enjoyed Wardlow/Hobbs until the finish. I like QT, but Hobbs does NOT need him, and the 10-count KO finish in a falls count anywhere match felt weird. It was just an awful lot to protect a guy who couldn’t even cut a fired up promo on whoever legit broke into his car.

So am I the only one who remembers it being reported, like, a year or two ago, that Roman and the Uso’s had made it clear backstage that they’re not interested in being booked against each other anymore? I remember that being a thing.

This is not the dunk you think it is. Where have I said the first two acts weren’t good? Like, May to the Rumble/EC was great for him. Where am I saying otherwise? That’s why he’s in the position for the bungling of the past month to be so dispiriting. We’ll #SeeWhereItGoes, but let’s check back on where Sami (and the show in general) is at in a few months, once the damage from the bungling has had time to settle in.

Fans cheering for something to happen because they’re emotionally invested in it now equals “fantasy booking” lol. Thinking back to 100,00* people in the Silver Dome fantasy booking Hogan to slam Andre…

Thanks for clarifying what you were getting at. To relate to it in those fundamental terms, my position would be that both the journey and the destination are equally important to a story. Bungling Sami in act 3 certainly doesn’t retroactively take away from all the fun we had in act 2, but it definitely diminishes the overall story, and especially whatever catharsis remains to be had.

I think you’re talking about something very different from what I am, but this is a very interesting thought nonetheless!

I think you hit on some important parts here regarding Sami’s story right now. Storytelling is about change. If nothing changes, you haven’t really told a story. Not a good one anyway. And when you look at where we’re at right now…As a protagonist, Sami has utterly failed to affect any change in his story. Couldn’t beat Roman and take his title. Couldn’t bring Jey over to his side. Functionally, the Bloodline is the exact same as it was before Sami ever started sniffing around. Nothing has changed as a result of his actions. As it stands, best case for Sami’s resolution looks to be him finally patching it up with Owens* and they win the tag titles. But, as you mentioned, this would be the umpteenth time those guys have reunited and broken up and reunited and broken up. And more than likely they’ll do it again before their careers are down. Sami and Owens reuniting, narratively, does not feel like meaningful change—it feels like them playing out the same old pattern. Which doesn’t feel like a great payoff to a year-long investment in a story. I hate that I feel like I have to put this disclaimer on any even slightly critical take on Sami/Bloodline, but I really enjoyed the 2nd act of this story. But they are REALLY struggling to bring it home in the 3rd act, IMO. Most likely due to a combination of 1) this being a supremely weird (in a good way) story that’s difficult to pay off in a manner that fits into a traditional pro wrestling box, and 2) the most fulfilling outcomes don’t fit into how WWE wants to present their company/Mania, nor how Roman and the Uso’s want to be booked. *And I love KO, but that poor guy has been booked like shit throughout this whole thing.

Why would anyone assume Theory is winning? The special attraction part-timers and celebrities almost always win these matches. Theory lost to McAfee last year. Give me the Cena money line.

Of course everyone was excited for ubermensch Cody to save ineffectual loser Sami. The obvious conclusion to this story all along.

I love how The Greatest Storyline Ever has not only bungled the outcome that fans wanted to see the most (Sami beating Roman), but has now also bungled the outcome that fans wanted to see the second most (Jey choosing Sami over Roman), and is now cruising towards the outcome that fans seem to care the least about (Sami and Kevin reuniting for the dozenth time to win the meaningless tag titles while nothing about the Bloodline changes). Masterful.

There are some funny stories out there about Charlie Strong’s first tenure as an analyst at Bama in 2020. During the two weeks that Saban was out on Covid protocol, he watched all the practices from a multi-cam setup at home. Strong was given an earpiece to wear so he could relay instructions from Saban, and Saban just spent all practice screaming into his ear like Vince McMahon at gorilla.

WB told them to make live service multiplayer looter shooter because that’s what was popular…like 5 years ago when they started making this game. They were forced to chase a trend and, now by the time they’re delivering the game, everybody is already sick of those types of games. I feel bad for them. 0% chance this is what they wanted to make.

At last they can all be free from Jeremy Strong’s method acting.

I certainly understand that you can read a lot into certain details of this situation, but Tuscaloosa PD has investigated the hell out of this case, and they have (among other things) Miller’s phone records and multiple videos of the shooting, including footage from Miller’s dash cam. If there was anything suggesting Miller was more than a witness to this event, his ass would be up on charges. This is not drug possession or disorderly conduct or any other kind of penny-ante charge that regularly gets swept up for college athletes. It’s not even an assault or a DUI. We’re talking about a capital murder jacket here. No police is turning a blind eye to that so a dude can play basketball. (Alabama doesn’t even care that much about basketball!) If he hasn’t been charged at this point, it’s because his story has checked out and there’s nothing to charge him with. BTW, Miller’s side of the story came out this afternoon via his lawyer, and he claims that his car was parked first, was not blocking the road, and the victims’ Jeep actually pulled up behind his vehicle. Again, the police have multiple videos of this, so it would seemingly be pretty easy to disprove that if it wasn’t true!

Yes, shockingly, when they stop trying to force people to cheer for the nepo baby doing Lucha spots at 1/5th speed and instead let people delight in seeing an obnoxious nepo baby be humiliated and get his ass kicked, the reactions got a lot better.

I think people should be careful about reading intent into this detail, which I see happening a lot. If the police believed Miller & Bradley were intentionally blocking the victims’ exit, they would 100% be up on charges as accessories right now. But the street where the shooting took place is a somewhat narrow side street between apartment complexes, where it would be very easy to unintentionally obstruct someone’s exit just by being in the road.