411’s Total Divas Report 1.4.15

Do you like Ryan’s exasperated ranting about Total Divas? If so, check out his exasperated ranting about numerous other wrestling-related topics on Twitter.

Well, we’re back. A year and a half ago, it was announced that Total Divas would be debuting on the E! Network, and I decided to review it on a lark because I had reviewed other lousy wrestling-themed reality shows for this website (Half-Pint Brawlers, we hardly knew ye) and because I had reviewed other lousy women’s wrestling shows for this website (I still miss Wrestlicious), so it seemed like a natural fit. At the time, I figured that the show would have absolutely no staying power, because I couldn’t see wrestling fans tuning in to a Kardashian-esque reality show and I couldn’t see E! fans caring about professional wrestling.

It turns out that I was wrong about the level of popularity the show would enjoy, as it’s been a modest success for E!, mainly because it appears to have attracted the show’s usual audience (and only a bare minimum of conventional wrestling fans) by pushing wrestling into the background and instead functioning as what I can only assume is a run of the mill Bunim Murray “reality” series. I say that I can only assume it’s a typical program from the company because I don’t watch anything else they produce . . . in large part because Total Divas has consistently been one of the least intelligent, least believable television programs that I have ever set my eyes upon.

Now here we are for what is either the premier of the fourth season or the second half of the third season, depending on which source you choose to believe. In the most recent run of the series, viewership slipped a bit, so now we are getting a bit of a retooling, with Trinity and her husband Jon Uso reportedly being written out of the show for the most part and Alicia Fox and Paige being written in after the two of them, particularly Alicia, showed up in some supporting roles in earlier episodes.

Regardless of the retooling, the show has consistently been trash since its inception, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. What’s worse is that my job to review this program is coming hot on the heels of what will no doubt hold up as one of the greatest wrestling shows of 2015, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 9, so I’m in all likelihood taking a dramatic nosedive in terms of quality here.

In order to keep myself from getting too depressed as Total Divas progresses and, in hopes that it may help expose some of you to a vastly superior product, I’m going to intersperse some reminders of last night’s Wrestle Kingdom action throughout the body of this review.

With all of that said, let’s get on with the show . . .

We pick up in Malibu John Cena’s beach house, where he is presumably breaking up with Nikki Bella, though it’s a SWERVE~! and he instead tells her that she needs to think about what she wants in terms of a marriage and children before deciding whether to continue their relationship. So, they’re taking a break. Yes, they suckered everybody in with the tease of a breakup at the end of last season, only to put the kibosh on that storyline as soon as possible once the hiatus was over.

Cut to Phoenix, Arizona where BriBry are sipping iced tea and discussing the separation of Nikki and Cena. Brie doesn’t understand why Cena didn’t mention to Nikki that she was involved in orchestrating the non-breakup, which viewers might recall occurred after Brie, the Bella’s mother Kathy, and the Bella Brother Dot had breakfast with Cena and told him that he was crushing Nicole’s dreams by refusing to wed or reproduce with her.

In Seattle, various cast members and their significant others arrive for a TV taping. Brie speaks with Joe Hickey, the WWE merchandise coordinator. I know that he’s Joe Hickey the WWE merchandise coordinator because the producers of the show labeled him with a chyron, even though he says nothing and has no role whatsoever in the remainder of the show. Good use of resources there. Anyway, Brie is met by John Cena. She asks him why he didn’t mention his meeting with the Bella family to Nikki when not breaking up with her. Cena, sensibly, says he’s not going to throw anybody under the bus. This sets the wheels in motion for Brie thinking that maybe John Cena isn’t such a bad guy after all.

We are treated to our first shot of Paige, as she’s walking around backstage in a hard hat for no apparent reason and freaking out at somebody’s pyro, Eric Young style. In a confessional, she puts over her nine years of pro wrestling experience at age 22 and we recap her post-Wrestlemania championship win. She also meets with Nattie Neidhart, and they insert some ham-fisted product placement for Stephanie McMahon’s new workout DVD. Sorry Steph, but despite your best efforts I’m sticking with DDP Yoga and recommending that everybody else reading this does as well. Anyway, Paige and Nattie decide that they’re going to hang out together to help keep Nattie’s mind off of her ongoing separation from TJ Wilson.

We’re in Phoenix again, where the Bellas are driving together. Nikki reports that she has been hitting the bottle because of her difficulties wit the Doctor of Thuganomics. (Don’t worry, Brie is the one behind the wheel.) In one of the less realistic scenes of the entire series, they eat a lot of donuts. I have no idea why this scene was left in the show, because it did absolutely nothing to to build up any of the characters or advance any of the angles, nor was it particularly entertaining. Sometimes, I wonder whether the people who put this show together took storytelling lessons from Vince Russo.

Kenny Omega: IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion and Better Than Vince Russo

In Tampa, Paige and Nattie are partying at some guy’s apartment. Sleazy Fandango is there, so maybe it’s his place? If you were really trying to build Total Divas storylines off of WWE storylines and vice versa, it should have been Adam Rose and the Rosebuds throwing the party. Nattie describes the party guests as a “motley crew of misfits, and not the band.” I have no idea whether she’s comparing the party-goers to Motley Crue or whether she’s comparing them to the Misfits, though presumably either is possible because Paige is wearing a Misfits baseball cap during the scene. Word is that she became a fan when Jerry Only was tag teaming with Vampiro against Dr. Death Steve Williams and Oklahoma sixteen years ago. Anyway, while at the house party, Ms. Neidhart chows down on a brownie, after which Paige tells her that it’s full of hashish. She spits up what she can, generally freaks out, and leaves the party very quickly.

Shinsuke Nakamura, perhaps the greatest active professional wrestler in the world, does not support marijuana usage.

After a commerical break, BriBry, Bella momma Kathy, and the Bella brother Dot go out for our first trademark Total Divas brunch of the season. Bryan Danielson briefly mentions the hardships of trying to eat a meal without half of it going into his beard. Brie fills Kathy and Dot in about the Nikki/Cena situation and mentions that Cena may be a good guy after all because he didn’t reveal their conversation to Nikki. Dot rightfully points out that it sounds as though Brie is turning away from their prior position that the Cena/Nikki romance should end, and he gets very, very angry with her about this for reasons that I can’t comprehend. They start bickering about whether they should tell Nikki that they were the impetus for Cena’s sidelining the relationship, and Kathy, always the voice of reason, says that secrets are only going to lead to more secrets and that everybody just needs to come clean.

Let me take a moment and break down just how stupid this whole storyline is. First of all, the Bella family meets with John Cena and has a conversation with him about Nicole, the only purpose of which can be pushing him towards ending their relationship, even though Cena and Nikki are both grown adults who are perfectly capable of making decisions about their own lives. Said conversation in fact does not end the couple’s relationship immediately, though it does cause some tension between them and theoretically could still lead to a breakup. Brie Bella, no matter how misguided her original plan was, essentially got the result that she was looking for. After getting that result, she starts to have second thoughts about whether she did the right thing. However, she doesn’t start to have second thoughts because she realizes that she was wrong for sabotaging her twin sister’s love life. She starts to have second thoughts because John Cena, who by all rights should be thoroughly pissed off by her meddling, was a decent human being and didn’t out her to her sister as being a conniving little sneak. So, Brie Bella doesn’t have a change of heart about her sister being involved with John Cena because of anything that John Cena did for or regarding her sister. Brie Bella has a change of heart about her sister being involved with John Cena because John Cena did something that Brie saw as being as being in Brie’s best interest, i.e. helping her cover up what a horrible human being she is.

This all might make sense if the idea were to build up Brie as a bitchy heel, but I don’t think that’s what’s happening, as the general tone of the show is that both Bellas are still faces, just faces who are momentarily having a disagreement. There is not a single storyline on this show that holds up under the slightest amount of scrutiny. AJ Styles, please provide me with a moment of respite from all of this.

Believe it or not, this is one of the recent Styles Clashes that DIDN’T break somebody’s neck.

At a gym that is presumably somewhere in Florida, Nattie and Paige are hitting the treadmills with Emma. Nattie is concerned about her brownie and describes in a confessional the stringent drug testing policy that WWE has its talent under. She doesn’t want her employers to think that she’s a drug addict and wonders whether she’s still experiencing side effects from the pot. Well, she does seem pretty goddamn paranoid. She starts drinking water to try to flush the marijuana out of her system. She took one bite of one small pot brownie, meaning that she probably ingested something less than one gram of the drug, so there should be no way that it’s affecting her and I sincerely doubt that it would even begin to show up on a drug test. Even if it did, the WWE Wellness Policy doesn’t even count failures for pot as a “strike” and instead just subjects users to a monetary fine – and I’m not even sure that marijuana failures are publicly announced as they would be for “harder” drugs. Also, on top of all of that, Nattie is a member of the Hart family. She may not be a drug user herself but, as a member of that family, I refuse to believe that she doesn’t know how drugs and drug testing work.

There’s also a certain irony in Nattie having this freakout in front of Emma, somebody who legitimately was fired from the company for a brief period of time for an (alleged) relatively minor infraction of the law and company policy, so she has to be thinking that Ms. Neidhart is completely blowing this out of proportion. Don’t worry, though, she takes the blowing out of proportion to ridiculous new levels later in the episode.

Okada, take the wheel.

Backstage at TV, Creepy Talent Relations Guy Mark has gathered the women’s division to tell them that they will have two matches on Summerslam, AJ Lee vs. Paige and Brie Bella vs. Stephanie McMahon. Brie says the match will be the biggest moment of her career, and she’s probably not exaggerating when she says that. Legitimately, that was the semi-main event of the show, and it had a pretty damn good build . . . much better than anything on this show. (I guess that statement somehow constitutes praise.)

Once more we go to Phoenix, where the family Bella is together for a home cooked meal. The conversation quickly turns to John Cena, at which point Kathy finds an excuse to pull Brie away and push her to reveal the truth about the family’s earlier Cena-tervention. Brie immediately complies with mother’s orders. Nikki has the predictable reaction, i.e., “Why would you do that?” Brie does not help matters when she corrects Nikki’s statement that the conversation occurred over lunch with a catty, “Breakfast!” In fact, she does it twice. Way to focus on the important details, Brie . . . and she’s supposed to be the smarter half of the zygote. Kathy attempts to smooth things over by saying the conversation between Cena and the Bellas was not nearly as bad as Brie is making it sound, which is really odd because Brie would presumably want to make it sound as benign as possible. THEN EVERYBODY STARTS YELLING OVER THE TOP OF EACH OTHER AND NOBODY CAN UNDERSTAND WHAT ANYBODY ELSE IS SAYING BECAUSE FOUR BELLAS ARE YELLING AT ONE TIME AND I SWEAR TO GOD THIS IS GOING ON FOR FIVE MINUTES, JESUS CHRIST SOMEBODY PLEASE DRAMATICALLY STORM OUT OF THE ROOM SO THAT WE CAN MERCIFULLY UNLOAD THE CHAMBER OF A REVOLVER INTO THIS SCENE’S HEAD.

. . . and Nikki walks out in the middle of the “conversation” . . . phew . . .

Oh, crap, they go right back to the Bella bickering after the commercial. Everybody follows Nikki outside and the yelling continues until Kathy sends the two more petulant of her children (and in this situation I mean Brie and Dot) back into the house. She tries to have a calmer heart-to-heart with Nikki, but Nikki is just as mad at Kathy as she is at everybody else. Indoors, Brie and Dot continue to battle and we’re cutting back and forth between the arguments of the two sets of Bellas. This is where, on a show with quality writing and/or editing, there would be parallels drawn between the two conversations that shed light on the moral being communicated by the program, but this show is trash, so it’s just a sad attempt to shoehorn in as much screaming as possible, like a Girl Talk mashup if Girl Talk mashed up episodes of Maury and Jerry Springer.

Then Kathy goes back into the house and yells at Brie and Dot. Then Brie walks out of the house and yells at Nikki. Nikki flips her off and has her driver take off, even though in the scene prior to the commercial break Brie said that she was the one who drove the twins to their mother’s house. Did Nikki have time to order a separate driver in between all of that shouting?

The driver delivers Nikki to Casa de Cena, so their cliffhanger breakup that was supposed to be the big hook to get us to come back to season four could not even last for one half of one episode. It’s the reality TV version of the Authority being brought back to Raw four weeks after one of their biggest pay per views of the year was built around the stipulation that banished them from the promotion. I don’t think that anybody had to threaten to break Edge’s neck in order to bring about the blowoff of the Nikki Bella relationship storyline, though.

We cut to . . . somewhere . . . for Raw “one week later,” and Paige, Emma, and Rosa share cookies with Titus O’ Neil in catering. Titus makes it clear that he doesn’t want Rosa touching him. Me either. A face-blurred woman who looks suspiciously like Nidia Guenard of Tough Enough fame pulls Emma away to drug test her. The drug testing attendant also telephones Ariane, who is driving with Nattie, asking when they will be at the arena for the evening. Nattie is trying to find some way to get out of attending the show, while Ariane tries to tell her to calm down and face the music. Natalya goes as far as saying that she needs to MANUFACTURE A CAR ACCIDENT to avoid taking the drug test, and that statement quickly transitions from batshit insane hypothetical to batshit insane reality, as she drives their SUV into the side of a dumpster. She literally, no kidding, intentionally drives the SUV into the side of a dumpster. Somewhere in Brazil, Wanderlei Silva is watching this and thinking, “Damn, why didn’t I come up with that one?”

There is a confused old man who was standing in the general vicinity of the dumpster, and the women trade some faux apologies with him. Looking at the guy, he may be the same fellow who played Hugh Morrus’ grandfather back in the Misfits in Action days. Nattie’s scheme, by the way, isn’t even really that brilliant of one, because they’re driving a massive vehicle, the damage consists of nothing more than scratches to the paint, and the SUV can still be driven to the arena. After fifteen seconds of convincing by Ariane, Nattie decides that they’re going to go to Raw after all. THEN WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ANY OF THAT?!

Speaking of Raw, Nikki arrives and confronts Brie, telling her that she’s pissed off at her and won’t be speaking to her, though she will be professional and cooperate with her as a coworker to the extent necessary. Makes sense to me.

Nattie and Ariane arrive at the show and Nattie heads to the drug testing area, acting as guilty as possible, giving not-Nidia a half dozen excuses about why it might take her a while to pee. She finishes the test, but the results aren’t coming back for two more weeks. Ariane immediately blabs to other members of the roster that Nattie intentionally drove into the dumspter, which of course the Queen of Harts is none to happy about. Remember the Nattie/Summer Rae feud from this show and my argument that Nattie was clearly the heel even though they were trying to portray her as the babyface? Yeah, it’s this sort of behavior that lead me to that conclusion.

Some undefined time later, Nattie is at home wrangling her cats when Pagie shows up to talk to her about “something.” Careful, Paiger, the last time somebody did that on this show, Nattie flew off the handle and tried to fight them. The Brit tries to butter up Nattie with cat toys and nasal spray (no, seriously) before making the big reveal that there were never any drugs at the brownies at the party. Nattie is upset, Paige tries to play with the cats, and Nattie kicks her out in short order. As soon as Pagie is out the door, Natalya informs her kitty that Paige is a bitch. Well, I guess that’s our new feud for the season.

Flash forward to Summerslam, where Nikki has just learned that she’s “turning on Brie tonight.” We get footage of the Stephanie/Brie match, interspersed with the awful, unnatural footage of the rest of the women’s division standing in a straight line and watching backstage. When the Nikki Bella turn happens, all of the ladies act like they’re shocked, even though it was set up in the prior segment that the angle was known about backstage.

. . . and that’s the show.

Overall: This was rough. Quite rough. As I think I outlined pretty thoroughly in the body of the review, our two main storylines this week, the Bella drama and Nattie Neidhart’s Reefer Madness, made absolutely no sense for a variety of reasons. That alone made this an episode of the show that made the vein in the side of my forehead bulge out in a way that it hasn’t bulged since probably the second season. However, I will give some credit where credit is due and say that this is one of the few episodes of the series where the pacing did not drive me up a wall. There were still some scenes that should’ve remained on the cutting room floor and some jumps back and forth between locales that were too abrupt, but focusing on only two stories in the hour long show allowed us to lose the normal feel that the producers of the series are under the impression that the entire audience suffers from severe ADD.

If you’re watching this show, knock it off. If you’re not watching this show, don’t start . . . not even if you’re looking for something so bad it’s good . . . it’s just not worth it.

Play me out, Tanahashi.

Do you like Ryan’s exasperated ranting about Total Divas? If so, check out his exasperated ranting about numerous other wrestling-related topics on Twitter.