Technico Support

The whole "changing their names" thing is punitive, petty and dumb. Business as usual for Vince, in other words. "Oh, he might take the name he made here and use it to make money elsewhere!" 1) Who cares? The guy made money for you while he was there 2) It's beyond arrogant to think that a guy is worthless until you rename him and put your machine behind him 3) So your solution is to hurt his ability to make money because he left? Fuck. That would be like my company having a policy that states that I can't list my experience here on a resume should I decide to quit.

Daaaamn

If any wrestler is looking more and more like Jonathan Banks, it's

While USA has demanded the McMahons be on TV, how they are presented and the content of McMahon storylines is on WWE. There are many stories you can write about these characters, not just "evil authority figure deux ex machina who is smarter and better than all the wrestlers," which is counterproductive and beyond stale.

I heard the ref really clearly as well. There's a point where he says "allright guys, what's next?" plain as day.

True. I kept waiting for the "I can't pick you, they'd think I'm a racist" line.

They spit in the face of people who don't use Miracle Grow, plenty of water and optimal sunlight?

They'd be great repackaged as hipsters but that would require somebody on the creative side of things to have knowledge of popular culture post 1998.

Are the Colons supposed to be Evil Tourism Ambassadors?

It was so obvious Vince and the writers were stressing about Reigns being booed and the general contrarian nature of the post-Mania Raw audience. TWICE I had to listen to the "this is a different crowd than normal but we LOVE their passion!" spiel. It really goes hand in hand with how obviously scripted this show is. NOBODY talks like a normal human being and they all overuse $5 words, making it so clear the show is driven by an insecure hick desperate to sound highfalutin.

Were they calling spots extra loud in the Taker/Shane match or was it just because I was watching the second half of the show Monday morning at work with headphones on?

Gangrel looks more and more like Sloth every year.

I always assumed Darryl to be a "sexual anorexic" (tm Ray Donovan) due to some past abuse.

AWESOME. It's PWG's fault that hearing 10 seconds of a Led Zep tribute band gets me absolutely pumped for good wrestling.

Well of course he is. Because in WWE, if you're a woman or a foreigner, you only get one name.

Oh and I really enjoyed Steven Ogg's (Trevor from GTA 5) character and hope he stays around a bit.

I'm not saying I liked the ending, I'm just saying it was the best they could have gone with, given what they had. Shit, I personally think that there was so much backlash to how Negan was debuted in the comic that they should have done it differently in the show. But since they committed to matching the scene from the comics, the decision was between: End the season with something that's going to really piss off fans of the show who may decide this is a good point to nope on out of here or Do a cop-out cliffhanger where at least people will come back for a resolution I think the second solution was better but definitely not great or anything. Writing-wise, this second half has been hit or miss for me. I enjoyed the "chasing Jesus" episode, the one where they killed all the saviors and the one where Maggie and Carol are kidnapped, but the last two before this one were just treading water until the finale, and that sucked. I'm curious as to where they're going to go with Rick. He showed traits of being a straight up bad person by preemptively killing the Saviors and also became an arrogant shit who got his comeuppance, but I don't think we were ever supposed to root against him -- this isn't Breaking Bad where the aim of the show was to turn the protagonist into someone you actively rooted against (which didn't really succeed because we're not wired to watch TV that way). So what now? Does Rick "regain his humanity" as Morgan was alluding to or do we just accept that Rick is always i the right? Subpar, aimless writing, to be sure.

Was that belt supposed to provoke memories of perusing Hustler in my youth?

Anybody watch the Banshee premier? Depressing episode with a two year time jump, which is kinda insane. Like most shows' first episode of the season, it was mostly table setting. I'm cautiously optimistic.

I'm thinking about the way it happened in the comics, where it was so over the top brutal and graphic, and the character so loved, that it apparently turned off a lot of people from reading it further than that. If you haven't read it, a main character got his head literally caved in and sat there stuttering the name of another character over and over through the brain damage, eye hanging out of his head, and then died in a disgusting pile of gore. I was wondering how they'd avoid the same senseless brutality and fan backlash on the TV show and this was a good enough way to handle it. To me, ending the season that way would have turned a lot of people off, so they did a cheat ending that, in their minds, I guess, did less damage.

Exactly. Rick's slow realization of just how NOT in charge he is was wonderful, especially with regard to how cocky he had been getting this season. I didn't mind the cliffhanger. I feel like they knew killing off a main character brutally would have caused a lot of people to stop watching, especially if you combine that with a natural stopping point like the end of a season. Avoiding that part at least means you can keep people watching. A cynical creative decision, to be sure, but here we are.

With the weird mix of WWE, NXT and indies going on here, I'd LOL and LOL hard if somehow Sami Callihan ended up booked on this.

Seriously. I caught about 15 minutes of Raw Monday and saw her for the first time in a while. My first thought was, "she looks like a ghost from a Japanese horror movie."

I just saw that Sami Callihan signed on for season 3. Should be good.

Dude has nipples the size of dinner plates