wrestling / TV Reports

411’s Total Divas Report 3.8.15 (Hour Two)

March 9, 2015 | Posted by Ryan Byers

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.

Welcome back to 411mania’s Total Divas report. If you’ve come across only this report, note that two episodes of the show aired tonight, and this is the review of part two. You can read all about part one here.

Because I already did my introduction in reviewing hour one, let’s head straight to the action.

This is the smallest nitpick of all possible small nitpicks, but I’m going to say it anyway: The producers of this show really like using the same stock footage of the sun rising and footage on every single damn episode of this show.

Alicia, Paige, and Fox are driving to their next show, and they announce that Paige is officially together with Bradley, the band leader from the last episode. I’ve learned that the name of Bradley’s band is “Emarosa,” which I had previously thought was the name of the lead heel on the first season of Donald Trump’s Apprentice show.

Here is another reason that I can’t stand this program. The narrative is completely stilted. Literally half an hour ago, they were airing an episode in which the storyline was that Paige and Bradley weren’t really a couple but they were going to try to work on their relationship to see if they could become a couple. Then, bam, just because it works with what they want to do for the next episode, they’re now magically a couple with no explanation or natural progression towards that end. What every happened to starting at the end of a story and working backwards?

Hey, guess who shows up at the evening’s WWE television taping! It’s Eva Marie! She says she’s finally back on the road after her surgery. This has literally not one thing to do with the rest of the episode. Have the people who produce this show ever heard of Chekhov’s gun?

The show is at Grand Rapids, and Paige wrestles Emma. She’s excited because it’s the first time that Bradley has seen her perform. They show some really awkward footage of Brad standing in the crowd, and it’s all edited together in such a way that I’m not completely convinced that his reaction shots were taken at the same show that Paige was wrestling on.

Backstage after the match, Talent Relations Mark walks up to the Bellas and hands them new three year contracts, which Nikki notes will keep them in the company past age 34. They have some reservations about signing the new deals, though they don’t say that to Mark’s face at this point.

In Los Angeles, Eva Marie, her husband Jonathan, and her hair stylist have a business meeting with a company called Bellami about the possibility of marketing a line of hair extension based on Eva’s locks. Eva says that Jonathan, who has an MBA, has been acting as her business manager. During a break in the meeting, Jonathan is critical of how Eva handled one aspect of the meeting, and she gets puppy dog eyes because she feels like he’s trying to cut her out of the conversation. Hey, they dude’s your manager. His role is to give you business advice.

In San Diego, the Bellas meet up with their pregnant friend Shawna. She reports that another friend of theirs has gone into labor. This starts Brie off on the topic of having children again, which she says plays in to her decision to re-sign with WWE. Again, I have no idea why they constantly play off “family vs. WWE” as an either/or proposition when there have been professional wrestlers who have raised families while on the road for literally decades. Granted, that’s complicated somewhat when both parents are performers and not just one, but it’s still not impossible. Heck, pawn the kid off on one of those 5,000 cousins you apparently have for some free child care.

Pagie and Bradley are horsing around in their hotel room, including her putting him in a headscissors. She stops the roughhousing to ask him a serious question, namely whether he wants to move in with her. She gets up when he doesn’t answer immediately, and he says it’s really quite soon and he would at least like to have Paige meet his mother first. Didn’t we just do the “meet the parents” angle last week? Also, though this isn’t mentioned in this scene, it is revealed later that Paige and Bradley have only been together “officially” for a month, and they haven’t even really seen each other for much of that period because they’re both on the road due to their respective careers. It seems like Paige popping the question is just the teeniest bit premature.

In Los Angeles, Nikki Bella is meeting with the producer of the television show Extra at the behest of her manager. She says it’s a closed door meeting and, in fact, we don’t get any footage from it. If it was a closed door meeting and we weren’t going to be able to see any of the real negotiations, why show Nikki traveling to it at all? Why don’t you just have her mention the opportunity in a confessional? Or, given the fact that we also have some later scenes of Nikki meeting with Hollywood bigwigs, why do we need a scene documenting this particular meeting at all?

Brie and Bryan are out at a restaurant and talking about Nikki exploring her opportunities in the entertainment industry. Brie says that, if Nikki is leaving wrestling, she feels like she may be ready to a mother. Bryan is on board, indicating that he’s actually been waiting on her to have kids, not the other way around. Brie says that she can’t take back bumps while she has a baby bump. Well, that may be true, but there’s nothing saying that you can’t modify your style and take some lucha-style rolling bumps instead. Surely you could work until you’re at least six months into your preganancy.

Eva is doing a “makeup and hair tutorial” with her stylist and makeup artist. Maybe this is just another example of me being out of touch with popular culture (add it to the list), but Jonathan is talking about “going live,” and there are video cameras everywhere, so I apparently have no goddamn clue what a hair and makeup tutorial is. Then, even though we were dealing with video cameras earlier, a few seconds later they start doing a photo shoot with Eva. So are they “going live” with some kind of broadcast, or are they just taking pictures of her? If it’s the latter, why is Jonathan so rushed?

Nikki heads out to another meeting, this time with casting director Susan Vash (formerly of the hit TNT Network series Franklin & Vash). Nikki says that her goal is to be the “first female Rock.” Get to work, then, because you’re going to need to increase your in-ring competence a thousand-fold and your charisma and promos ten thousand-fold. I don’t know if that’s possible in the current WWE training environment . . . at least not with Big Bill DeMott gone. Anyway, Vash says that the WWE schedule is such that Nikki’s options in Hollywood will be limited. In a confessional, Nikki tells us that she wishes that she could both wrestle and do movies at the same time. Yeah, if only there were some way that could happen . . . hey! I’ve got an idea! WWE has a lot of cash on hand. What if they established their own MOVIE STUDIO, through which they could book professional wrestlers into movie roles?! That just might help Nikki fulfill her dreams! Then they could even run a storyline on an episode of Total Divas about how one of the women was cast in one of the WWE Films! It would be perfect!

Back at the makeup and hair tutorial, Jonathan gets in Eva’s face about how her makeup is totally inappropriate for the sort of project that they’re doing. This makes zero sense and you can’t really tell who’s in the wrong and who’s in the right because they have done absolutely nothing to explain precisely what this project is. Maybe if you’re a Kardashian fan or something you know what’s going on, but I am completely in the dark. Jonathan was a little bit angry and they try to play it off as a problem with his tone more than anything else but, who knows, maybe there is a legitimate screw up here that he’s in the right to be upset with. He also does mention going live over the internet soon, so, in fact, there apparently is some video component to whatever the heck they’re doing.

Paige and Bradley are in Indianapolis to meet his mother. They arrive at a fairly modest suburban home, and Paige greets mother Jodie by jumping up on her with a huge bear hug and wrapping her legs around the mother’s waist. She does the same to sister Nicole. Everybody sits down in the living room while Bradley eats a banana. Small talk is made. It’s compelling television, as you can tell from my detailed analysis in this paragraph.

John Cena and Nikki Bella go out for coffee and discuss her contractual situation. Cena asks if she’s going to stay or go, and she is still very much on the fence. Cena tells her that, in his opinion, the Bella Twins are destined for success outside of the world of WWE. Yes, because if there is one half of that couple that has the potential for mainstream acceptance and a career outside of professional wrestling, it is John Cena and not Nikki Bella. Man, if only John Cena had some advice for Nikki Bella about how somebody could be a WWE performer and star in motion pictures at the same time. I guess he’s never done that, though, because he doesn’t say anything about how it could be possible.

We’re back to Jonathan and Eva Marie, who are doing a photo shoot to advertise her extension line. Talent Relations Mark calls Eva Marie in the middle of it all and says that the WWE legal department contacted him because they saw photos from the shoot on Eva’s Instagram account. He wants to know who approved the photos to go up, and he reminds Eva that everything she does needs to be cleared through him and WWE legal. Eva tries to explain that her husband, who is also her manager, has been making all of the arrangements. Interestingly, Mark says that he wasn’t even aware that Jonathan was Eva’s manager, so really that’s two strikes against her.

In beautiful LaPorte, Indiana, Bradley’s family shows off their horses to Paige. There’s further conversation, and Paige really wants Bradley to tell his mother that they’re going to move in together. Wait, when did he actually agree that was going to be happening?

Eva tells Jonathan about the call from WWE Talent Relations and says that they need to shut the shoot down so as to not run afoul of the company. Jonathan says that they’re not shutting it down, because WWE is only “a quarter of [their] income” and the hair extension line is their plan for the future. They bicker about how to handle her career. Normally in Eva/Jonathan disputes, Jonathan is 100% in the right and Eva looks like a numbskull, but this is a rare instance in which Eva probably has the better of things, because if Jonathan was any sort of business manager he would know that, even if it’s not the majority of their income, Eva’s WWE job is what opens most of the doors that are opened for her, and he should be familiar with her contractual commitments with the company and know what has to be run through them and what does not have to be run through them. (Spoiler alert based on everything I’ve ever read about WWE contracts: Everything has to be run through them.) Also, arguing that a line of hair extneions is “your future” is pretty dope.

Once more in lovely downtown LaPorte, Paige and Bradley’s family are going out to dinner. As they drive, Bradley’s sister drops the bombshell that he has been married once before, back when he was twenty-one. (He is now approaching thirty.) Paige, because she’s Paige, immediately starts needling her beaux about it. His response is, “We’ve been dating for a month, I’m not going to tell you my life story.” But you are going to move in with her? That’s smart. Either the dinner they were planning was edited off the show or everybody decided at some point that they weren’t hungry because, next thing you know, we’re back at Bradley’s mother’s home. Paige is on him again about telling his mother that they’re moving in together and also angry about not being told about his prior marriage, at which he says maybe they shouldn’t live together after all.

Bradley rips off his microphone pack and runs out of the room, the camera starts shooting reality show equipment, and Paige starts having a conversation with somebody who closed captioning refers to as “Producer.” IT’S A SHOOT, BROTHER~! Seriously, this plays so much like one of those ridiculous Vince Russo angles from the dying days of WCW when he tried so hard to convince you that you were seeing something that you weren’t supposed to see when, in reality, any fan who had been following wrestling for more than a month knew that it was just another part of the show. The only thing missing was Bradley referring to Paige as “Saraya Jade.”

After a commercial break, Paige hunts down Bradley and has a conversation with him, which is shot from a distance. Before she had this big, dramatic conversation with him, she apparently also convinced him to put his microphone back on, because everything he says is picked up with crystal clarity. It sounds kinda sorta like they’ve broken up, though it’s hedged enough that they could still bring them back as a couple for next season if that’s the direction they want to head in.

Now we’re at the Survivor Series in St. Louis, where Nikki says that she’s wrestling AJ Lee for the women’s title and further says that she’s going to put “her heart, her sole, her everything” into the match. For those of you who don’t remember how this match unfolded (and I wouldn’t blame you – the championship is meaningless), it lasted all of about fifteen seconds after Brie kissed AJ. For the reality show, things are edited in such a way that you don’t necessarily know how short the match went, particularly in light of the fact that you only see about fifteen seconds of any given wrestling match when in-ring action is portrayed on this show. That said, the “my heart, my sole, my everything” speech seems so ridiculous for those of us who remember how the title change actually unfolded.

Nikki and Brie come backstage with the belt, and the entire cast of the show congratulates them as though they actually accomplished something. The first thing the sisters do is have an argument about whether Nikki getting off on Brie kissing AJ Lee constitutes incest. Yes, that is the FIRST thing they discuss. After they get that important topic off of the table, they talk about whether they will sign their new WWE deals. “You’re such an athlete,” Brie says to Nikki. Again, EIGHTEEN SECONDS. In a really interesting bit, Nikki waivers on whether or not she will re-sign, noting that the company just put a lot of faith in her by making her champion (which technically speaking is not true since, as I said before, the title is meaningless . . . but work with me here). The interesting part is that, over the years, I’ve heard many stories of championships being put on departing wrestlers for the sole purpose of trying to convince them they are important and should re-sign, so this actually feels like Nikki being worked by WWE’s own negotiation tactic.

In their home, Eva Marie confronts Jonathan about his recent actions as her manager. She says that she’s not been a fan of certain behavior of his while they’re on set. He points out that he has “quadrupled” their income over the course of the past year, and she says that, regardless of that, if a manager spoke to her the way that he has been speaking to her, she would drop that manager. They go back and forth about whether the results of Jonathan’s hard work or Eva Marie’s feelings are what really matters, and eventually Jonathan blows up and says that he’s sick of his wife’s habit of constantly dropping bombs on the people that are close to her (not just him, but also his parents) which relate to how they should completely reorganize their lives in order to make her more comfortable. He points out several perfect examples of her being completely irrational and/or inconsiderate from throughout the course of the series, including her wavering on whether to have children without ever discussing it with him and her asinine efforts to avoid addressing her leaking breast implants so that WWE would not “forget” her. Eva says that she doesn’t want to do this anymore. Jonathan says fine, they won’t do it anymore. Then he dramatically puts his shoes on and walks out the door.

My reaction to this dispute between Eva and Jonathan was essentially this . . .

Seriously, Jonathan’s rant was essentially everything negative that I have said about the Eva Marie character encapsulated into thirty seconds. I think that the show’s producers are positioning Eva as the babyface here, but this scene was the closest that Total Divas has ever come to getting from a legitimate emotional reaction from me, and I was on team Jonathan all the way.

We’re at Monday Night Raw, and the Bella Twins once again meet up with Talent Relations Mark. Brie babbles and babbles without getting to the point, so Mark cuts her off and says, “It sounds like somebody wants to start a family.” Nikki is much more direct, saying that she has some other opportunities lined up. Mark lays it all out on the line and asks them if they’re willing to say that they will no longer be WWE Divas, and both women say “yes.” That’s where the show comes to an end.

ALL RIGHT! The Bellas are gone, Jonathan and Eva Marie are divorcing, and the show is . . . wait a minute . . . did that on screen graphic just say that this show is returning on July 7?

Fuck me.

Overall: I will give this episode some credit. As a season finale, it did set up three cliffhangers involving three different sets of primary characters that will presumably pay off next season, those being the Paige/Bradley and Eva/Jonathan relationship issues in addition to the Bellas’ contractual status. I’m honestly not a big fan of the show, but these are all stories that I can see fans of the show caring about and wanting to tune in for the resolution of. Unfortunately, having watched this program enough, I suspect what will happen is that we’ll get to the first episode of season four and all of these cliffhangers will be cleared up in the first three minutes of the show, after which we will charge headlong into whatever new concepts the creative team has come up with for the new batch of episodes. Oh well, at least they’re not using the tired cliffhanger of whether John Cena and Nikki Bella’s relationship will continue, which I think has been the cliffhanger for both prior season breaks to date and perhaps even one of the mid-season breaks.

Of course, one of those cliffhangers is undercut quite a bit if you follow mainstream WWE programming, because Nikki and Brie Bella are clearly still with the company in March 2015 despite this episode taking place in November 2014 – plus they have already been confirmed as cast members for Total Divas Season 4. So, we all pretty much know how that one is going to work itself out.

Otherwise, this episode was par for the course with all of the other episodes that have aired to date. They’ve got their format, their format is inexplicably (to me, at last) working, and they’re clearly not going to change their format. I’ve been through two hours of this dreck tonight and am too tired to ramble about everything I dislike about the format and the characters yet again.

Wish me luck in finding some other gullible louse to take over the recapping duties for Total Divas. If I don’t have any success, I guess I’ll see you all in July.

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.

article topics :

Total Divas, WWE, Ryan Byers