The Steve Austin Show

[Patrick B.]

I am looking forward to the post-Cena era now

 

Which will be in, what, twenty years?

[Tromatagon]

I have a grad degree in screenwriting (MA) and finish my MFA next week, and no, that's not TV writing 101 at all, come on dude.

Watch Breaking Bad. Fuck.

[Technico Support]

LOL

 

If every episode was written with Gregg's idea of "TV 101" in mind, we'd have 5 minutes of real content after the 55 minute recap.

[Cobra Commander]

Surely I forgot some part of the show because I can't remember Vince mentioning HHH in the interview. He mentioned problems in a family business in regards to Shane and Linda. I don't remember if he mentioned HHH. But he did, right?

LOL

If every episode was written with Gregg's idea of "TV 101" in mind, we'd have 5 minutes of real content after the 55 minute recap.

It takes a lot to make a stew

[JohnnyJ]

WWE is the vision of one man. Cesaro is the perfect example. You can talk about missed opportunities and go nowhere storylines. You can talk about the times when he came out to no reaction and had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand minutes later. But at the end of the day, internally, the failure of a talent to get over is placed on the talent, not on creative. It's not the fact that Cesaro has no character and hasn't had any kind of angle in years. Cesaro isn't over because he doesn't have "it."

 

As companion pieces, the Punk and Vince interviews are so interesting. You hear Vince explain his dogma of what makes a top guy (i.e. ambition, work ethic, audience reaction, "it" factor, etc.) and on paper Punk possessed all of these things and the crowds reacted as if Punk possessed all of these things. Yet you can hear from the Punk interview his frustration about never being considered a truly top guy in the eyes of Vince.

 

Then you have Vince mentioning that the last guy to grab the brass ring was Cena. Say what you want about Punk but he achieved an awful lot, much of which through sheer force of will. If he's not mentioned in that sentence by Vince that pretty much tells you all you need to know. 

[Greggulator]

I have a grad degree in screenwriting (MA) and finish my MFA next week, and no, that's not TV writing 101 at all, come on dude.

Watch Breaking Bad. Fuck.

 

I haven't seen Breaking Bad. But when it was on the air, there's no way I could randomly put on AMC at like Season 4, Episode 6 of Breaking Bad and have any idea what the fuck was going on. And without the benefit of Netflix, there's no way I could go back and find out unless I was inclined to look up the history.

I like Mad Men but got out of watching it. My wife's addicted. I tried to watch some random episode she was raving about and had no clue as to why Duck and Don were fighting in an office and had no idea why Peggy was so bent out of shape about it. I read up on the show and had no idea.

I also did the same with The Wire, when everyone was raving about the show. I started with Season 4, Episode 1. I got to see the introduction of the schoolkids, which was great. I then knew I had to get caught up on everything else and tried to watch some random Season 3 episode. I had no idea what was going on. Thankfully, HBO let me go back and watch from Season 1.

If I miss Raw for a few weeks (it's holiday season and the NBA's on), I could catch up the primary storyline by 8:30. Or look at any PPV -- if I didn't watch wrestling but went out to a bar to watch Elimination Chamber, I'd completely understand the storyline and character motivations of Wyatts/Shield by the 3-minute video recap of the feud.

I watched one episode of TNA in my life. I actually reviewed it on here. I had absolutely no fucking clue what was happening. They didn't put any chyron or whatever its called to tell me who these people were. They didn't even bother to bring up the character's names in the exposition. That's why the WWE does all of the character intros and videos they do -- if you're tuning in for the first time, now you know the name Dean Ambrose and the tone of his character via his theme music and his logo.

[Ramsey]

I became a wrestling fan for life after my first taste...Georgia Championship Wrestling, 1981, in Idaho...in a vacuum.

[The Nature Boy]

Here's the thing to remember too, we don't actually know what happens backstage in WWE. Maybe a lot of guys aren't approaching Vince with ideas, we don't know. Maybe Vince sees a generation of wrestlers who are more passive than they were 15-20 years ago, we don't know. Vince has been working with talent for 40 years so maybe there IS merit to his idea that today's wrestlers aren't going for the brass ring. 

 

John Cena was very much a guy who was given a crap gimmick (Vanilla Ice in 2002?) and he turned it into one of the most over acts on the roster. People forget how terrible the early days of the Cena rap gimmick actually were. He was paired with Bull Buchanan as an after thought comedy act and even missed WrestleMania XIX. He got lucky, got put into a feud with Lesnar in April and RAN WITH IT. 

 

Austin always puts over the importance of not being afraid to approach Vince with ideas. Maybe that's what more guys need to do. We don't know that guys like Ziggler aren't approaching Vince. I can almost bet that if Punk were still on good terms, Vince would've put him over as a guy who reached out. Vince did hint however that Punk had communication skills issues so maybe Punk didn't go to Vince directly with constructive ideas but just complained about his lot in the company. 

 

My sense from Vince is that he respects you if you take his shit and throw it back at him. I can see where he'd be an intimidating guy and a lot of people wouldn't do that. Working for Vince McMahon has to be one of the most unique and frustrating experiences and you can't really approach him like you would an average employer. 

[Tromatagon]

Every show you mentioned other than TNA is a lot more popular than Raw.

So who is doing what wrong?

On the interview: Vince's giant old man ears freak me out

[Greggulator]

LOL

 

If every episode was written with Gregg's idea of "TV 101" in mind, we'd have 5 minutes of real content after the 55 minute recap.

 

No. It'd look pretty much how Raw looks right now.

They can certainly write/deliver a lot of the set-ups and promos tighter. And -- gasp -- that's why they have writers, who know how to format stuff for TV shows. Which -- gasp -- Raw is. They have to focus ending bits on time for sponsors so they don't go over, how to keep you watching the A-plot from the start to the end, etc. For all the criticisms people have for the writers, shouldn't that at least be a consideration? You need people who know how to write for a patterned TV show.

I love -- LOVE -- CM Punk but do you think he had absolutely any consideration of that stuff when he was busy discarding scripts? Isn't there a really good chance that was some of the reason he probably irritated people who produce the shows? CM Punk goes off script and takes up 2-3 more minutes than he should, which means shit later on in the show either had to get cut or moved around or ETC.

That's not to say the writing is perfect. It's not. There's so much stuff that could be tighter. But a lot of that is the nature of wrestling -- it's the only form of media where the crowd is a character that gets to interact with the performance, and you can only anticipate crowd reactions but not script it. But, yeah, things could be tightly written.

[nofuture]

WWE is the vision of one man. Cesaro is the perfect example. You can talk about missed opportunities and go nowhere storylines. You can talk about the times when he came out to no reaction and had the crowd eating out of the palm of his hand minutes later. But at the end of the day, internally, the failure of a talent to get over is placed on the talent, not on creative. It's not the fact that Cesaro has no character and hasn't had any kind of angle in years. Cesaro isn't over because he doesn't have "it."

 

As companion pieces, the Punk and Vince interviews are so interesting. You hear Vince explain his dogma of what makes a top guy (i.e. ambition, work ethic, audience reaction, "it" factor, etc.) and on paper Punk possessed all of these things and the crowds reacted as if Punk possessed all of these things. Yet you can hear from the Punk interview his frustration about never being considered a truly top guy in the eyes of Vince.

 

Then you have Vince mentioning that the last guy to grab the brass ring was Cena. Say what you want about Punk but he achieved an awful lot, much of which through sheer force of will. If he's not mentioned in that sentence by Vince that pretty much tells you all you need to know. 

 

When it comes down to it, Punk wants to be in Cena's spot which was not going to happen, not while Cena's still profitable.

[Greggulator]

I became a wrestling fan for life after my first taste...Georgia Championship Wrestling, 1981, in Idaho...in a vacuum.

 

Yeah, and all those shows had plenty of recaps and replays and mentions on-air of what happened previously.

[The Nature Boy]

Don't most serial TV shows start with a "previously........." bit where they recap the points of previous episodes that are important to know for the current episode's plot line? 

 

Maybe WWE should try that. It literally took 30 seconds each time and with good editing (which we KNOW WWE has) could catch the viewers up on what is going on. 

[Tromatagon]

Or they could have their fucking announcers do it instead of trying to get themselves over and talking about twitter

As for the "previously" the writers don't have anything to do with that stuff, the showrunner sits down with an editor and puts it together

[Zheroen]

I've never seen an episode of Television 101, but based on the description in this thread it sounds like a really shitty program for ADHD retards with a serious contempt for its audience.

[Greggulator]

Every show you mentioned other than TNA is a lot more popular than Raw.

So who is doing what wrong?

 

 

They're also for a mainstream audience. Raw's for a niche crowd. Wrestling has, and always have, a stigma for it. My parents and a lot of my friends will absolutely never, ever watch wrestling. But they'll try out Breaking Bad, Mad Men, other serials, etc.

Wrestling's more like General Hospital or other soap operas. And they almost always have a recap at the beginning of the show to catch you up on what happened previously in case you don't know who Luke and Laura or The Quartermaines are. It's done differently, obviously, but soap operas aren't live, quasi-athletic events.

[Playa Shunna Ver 3.0]

"Maybe WWE should try that. It literally took 30 seconds each time and with good editing (which we KNOW WWE has) could catch the viewers up on what is going on. "

 

They do that every episode of every show.  There is like a 2 minute recap video.  Then one of the participants in that video comes out and we have 30 minutes of talking.  I worked last night, came home and fast forwarded through a 30 minute interview.  I read a recap of that segment, and it all could have been summed up in about 3 minutes. 

[Greggulator]

Or they could have their fucking announcers do it instead of trying to get themselves over and talking about twitter

 

Do you watch the show? Yeah, the announcers get really annoying. I hate Lawler. But they reference the story a lot. I wish they'd go into the deep backstory -- Ambrose and Wyatt were already major parts of an epic feud, which they don't touch on. And that's a glaring missed opportunity. But they'll talk about what happened before, or remind viewers Seth Rollins has the Money In The Bank, or Lesnar squashed Cena previously or etc.

[Cobra Commander]

Let me add another element to the "WWE Perfect Utopia" thing: they almost never have a main event planned as the show begins but the main event almost always gets set within 20 minutes.

Random note: ever notice how most current superstars are billed from their place of birth? Larger than life guys whose home towns may or may not have anything to do with their characters.

[Tromatagon]

I watch, I just don't think they do it right but it's hard to explain.

It's like Lucha Underground has fucking Matt Stryker and Vampiro on commentary and they manage to do that stuff way better than the Raw team- the rest of the announcing not so much

[JohnnyJ]

 

Or they could have their fucking announcers do it instead of trying to get themselves over and talking about twitter

 

Do you watch the show? Yeah, the announcers get really annoying. I hate Lawler. But they reference the story a lot. I wish they'd go into the deep backstory -- Ambrose and Wyatt were already major parts of an epic feud, which they don't touch on. And that's a glaring missed opportunity. But they'll talk about what happened before, or remind viewers Seth Rollins has the Money In The Bank, or Lesnar squashed Cena previously or etc.

 

 

We should start keeping count of how many times the commentators remind us of the same things over and over again. How many times do we need to know Seth Rollins turned on the shield, now has the money in the bank briefcase and that entitles him to a title shot at any time. It's the art of insulting 99% of your audience with the hope of catching the eye of that the mysterious uninformed casual viewer. 

 

 

[Tromatagon]

There's like ten things they can mention to illustrate Seth Rollins being a slimy piece of shit but they always go back to the same one over and over.

[Greggulator]

I watch, I just don't think they do it enough.

It's like Lucha Underground has fucking Matt Stryker and Vampiro on commentary and they manage to do that stuff way better than the Raw team- the rest of the announcing not so much

 

I haven't seen Lucha Underground yet.

 

But I love the hell out of NXT. NXT is my favorite wrestling show in years.

But comparing NXT to Raw is completely dumb. NXT is taped like six episodes at once, isn't live, and is one hour. It has a total safety net for a niche audience. They're completely different structures for completely different audiences and serve completely different purposes.

[Greggulator]

 

 

Or they could have their fucking announcers do it instead of trying to get themselves over and talking about twitter

 

Do you watch the show? Yeah, the announcers get really annoying. I hate Lawler. But they reference the story a lot. I wish they'd go into the deep backstory -- Ambrose and Wyatt were already major parts of an epic feud, which they don't touch on. And that's a glaring missed opportunity. But they'll talk about what happened before, or remind viewers Seth Rollins has the Money In The Bank, or Lesnar squashed Cena previously or etc.

 

 

We should start keeping count of how many times the commentators remind us of the same things over and over again. How many times do we need to know Seth Rollins turned on the shield, now has the money in the bank briefcase and that entitles him to a title shot at any time. It's the art of insulting 99% of your audience with the hope of catching the eye of that the mysterious uninformed casual viewer. 

 

 

 

 

The uninformed casual viewer is more important than me. They want the ratings to grow. They already have me hooked.

[Tromatagon]

Lucha Underground just beat NXT in the Observers "best wrestling show this week" poll, which is pretty cool. It was super super close though, like less than 1% between them, I think.