411’s Total Divas Report 7.14.15

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.

Yeah, we’re still a week behind. Just deal with it.

We pick up where we left off last week, with virtually the entire cast yelling at Eva Marie backstage at the Staples Center. In case you missed it, they’re mad at HER because the COMPANY decided that she needed personal wrestling lessons in Los Angeles instead of going to NXT. Again, why they are mad at HER and not the COMPANY THAT MADE THE DECISION is beyond me. And, yes, I realize there’s this little side issue of Eva apparently telling some of the girls she would be reporting to the Performance Center, but how in the world does her making that misstatement (which we still don’t know was intentional) affect any of their lives in any appreciable way?

God, we’re two minutes into this show and I’m already sweating, even though I already saw this scene as the end of last week’s episode. This does not bode well for the next hour.

Naomi/Trinity, the perpetual voice of reason, tells the group – particularly Alicia Fox – that they were out of line when they jumped down Eva’s throat. Yup. “Everybody is acting like a bunch of kids.” Accurate.

On Raw, Natalya is wrestling El Torito. I want to make it clear that I am in no way being sarcastic when I make this statement: These are probably the two most underrated in-ring talents on the entire WWE roster.

Back backstage, Creepy Talent Relations Mark talks to Natalya and Tyson Kidd to establish that we are mere days away from Wrestlemania. He has a big surprise for Nattie, namely that her father, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart is being brought in to Fan Axxess for the first ever father/daughter autograph signing. Nattie is over the moon because this will be the Anvil’s first WWE event in over a decade and also because it represents a return to form for him after making significant progress with his substance abuse issues.

Brie Bella and Paige are hanging out in the airport, which if you think about it is a totally underutilized location for this show given what these women do with the majority of their week. They discuss the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony and, specifically, what they will be wearing. (I thought the question was, “Who are you wearing?”) Paige pretends that she’s never worn or owned an evening gown before and seems to be taken aback by the fact that the dress code for this event is formal. Yes, because Paige, who just earlier on this show proudly mentioned that she has been in the wrestling business for ten years, never once watched a prior ceremony and observed how the wrestlers in attendance were dressed.

Elsewhere in LA, Eva Marie walks into Brian Kendrick’s dojo. She describes her confrontation with the girls the prior night at TV, and Kendrick (who in terms of tone of voice is starting to sound eerily like Kevin Sullivan) sums up the entire angle by saying, “Who cares?” We then see a clip of Eva landing a remarkable headlock takeover where she appears to be pulling Kendrick across the ring by his throat. I hope this man is getting hazard pay.

The Bella twins are driving in Arizona and want donuts. Brie drops the bombshell that she is two weeks late on her period, giving rise to speculation that she’s preggers. The speculation is aided by the fact that she and Bryan Danielson have unsheathed his American Dragon and “let things go” in terms of birth control. Remember last season when a revelation of that nature pissed Nikki off and resulted in a three episode long story arc? Now it’s blown off in a matter of seconds.

In Tampa, Nattie calls for her cat in a way that makes her sound like a velociraptor. She gets a phone call from her mother Ellie Hart, who reports that the Anvil had a meltdown at his rehab center and that he’s been kicked out into the streets. I know this is off topic, but I swear that Ellie looks and sounds more and more like Stu every time that I see her.

To kill any chance that we would start to feel an emotional connection to these women talking about their family member’s substance abuse, we immediately cut back to Arizona for the Bellas talking about Brie’s bowel movments. They quickly move from her back end to her front end, revealing that her period has arrived, apparently about fifteen minutes after she said it wasn’t there. I’m not a woman, but do those things really sneak up on you like that? Anyway, Brie is all mopey because she’s not pregnant.

After a commercial break, the Bellas go to brunch with Bella Momma Cathy. Because we’re still on the pregnancy kick, Brie asks whether Daniel Bryan’s impending neck surgery will affect his fertility. Let me repeat that for those of you who think it is so idiotic that I must have botched the sentence: Brie asks whether Daniel Bryan’s neck surgery will affect his fertility. She is clearly confused as to which shaft they’re operating on. Come on, it’s not like the guy balls hang off of his throat . . . though, come to think of it, if they did it would certainly explain the scraggily beard.

Nikki, solidifying her candidacy for sister of the year, immediately jumps to the conclusion that Brie is probably infertile. Brie agrees. I’m tempted to tweet this woman and tell her that the word “gullible” is not in the dictionary, just to see what happens. They briefly speculate as to what would happen if they had to borrow one of Nikki’s eggs for Danielson to inseminate. “Twin Magic,” indeed.

In Tampa, Nattie is loading the Anvil into her car. He is irritable and forgets that she gave him his medication five seconds earlier. I can’t make fun of this because, even though my default rule is that everything on a reality show is a work until proven otherwise, Jim Neidhart in this shot looks exactly like a man who is five minutes away from having a heart attack or other massive system failure and dropping dead.

Like most people on this site, I am a big Bryan Danielson fan and have been for years. I have not seen him on television in months due to his injury. Here, he breaks that streak by appearing on screen and immediately asking his wife, “Why are you making me go masturbate into a cup on the one day I have off?”

Best in the world. Best in the world.

As Bryan enters the whack off room for his fertility test, they play the opening line of the Bellas’ theme song, “You can look but you can’t touch.” Actually, that is the exact opposite of what is supposed happen in that room. In a confessional, Brie explains that after Bryan has done the deed, the doctors will take his cup of Canyon Ceman and count the number of sperm in it. Bryan is not impressed by the cameras being in his face when he is done.

Wait a minute, wasn’t the issue that his neck surgery might affect his sperm count? If that’s the case, why aren’t we doing this testing after the surgery?

In San Jose for Wrestlemania, Paige and Alicia Fox meet at the airport and do their impression of Dumb & Dumber’s most annoying sound in the world. After that, they dish on fashion, particularly Paige’s Hall of Fame dress. Foxy also suggests that she may get her a tan or a weave. Didn’t one of the Calrissian girls just get in trouble for doing that?

The women begin to converge on their Wrestlemania hotel. Nattie signs autographs for a group of wrestling fans that make me embarrassed to be a wrestling fan. Moments later, she calls the Anvil because she’s gotten word that he is refusing to come to Wrestlemania. Well, shit, they’d better just cancel the show. Nattie tries to entice her father to come to the show by telling him that Ric Flair is in town and excited to see him. Yes, Ric Flair, the absolute last man that anybody who has just gotten out of rehab should be hanging out with. What’s next, are you going to leave a recovering sex addict with the Godfather? Are you going to lock a dude with an anger management problem in a room with Jim Cornette? Ultimately, the Anvil hangs up on his daughter.

Elsewhere in the hotel, Alicia has hooked Paige up with a stylist. No, it is not Rico Constantino. The stylist has a variety of dresses for the Brit to try on. Because it’s a reality show, they put her in a bunch of ridiculous unflattering dresses for the LOLs. None of this would be happening if Stone Cold Seamstress Sandra were still on the WWE payroll . . . she knew how to dress a woman.

Paige is wearing unflattering dresses! Oh boy! dy/dr = r2. Solve for dy.

Backstage at somewhere other than Wrestlemania, Stephanie McMahon approaches BriBry and, in a completely unscripted and genuine moment that was not at all set up for the cameras, asks Bryan to induct Connor Michalek into the WWE Hall of Fame during Wrestlemania weekend. Yes, because that’s the kind of decision that is made the weekend of the show. Rather than having a nice moment and honoring the memory of a small child who died of brain cancer, Steph immediately segues the conversation into comments that play into the couple’s fertility storyline. Oh, fuck this show.

Jim and Ellie Neidhart arrive at Wrestlemania, and Nattie tells the Anvil that he’s got big video game and action figure opportunities this weekend. Nattie lays down the law about how he’s not supposed to be drinking this weekend. Again, RIC FLAIR.

Paige goes into Alicia Fox’s hotel room again. This time she’s got a spray tanning station set up for her, because that is something that real human beings do for their friends. Paige gives a bunch of wacky facial reactions to being sprayed with whatever the tanning goop is. For anybody wondering, Paige spray tanned essentially looks like transgender Bo Dallas.

Later in the evening, several of the wrestlers are going out for dinner and drinks because they’ve actually got some time off for once in their lives. Trinity, Fox, Paige, and Emma are all out with their respective men. Emma is really stealing the scene (heh heh). Paige and Fox go after Trinity because Trin is the one who told Eva Marie that all of the other girls were talking shit about her. Yes, you were talking shit about her, and, yes, Naomi was in the right to let her know about it. Jon Uso butts in and tries to lay out the rational argument that it’s really the company who is giving Eva special treatment and not Eva herself, but Fox is drunk and won’t listen, instead repeatedly screaming something about how she’s not jealous. Yes, typically the person who screams the loudest about how they’re not jealous is the least jealous of all. That’s how that works. Also, I love the delicious irony of Fox, who was signed by WWE after Johnny Ace saw her picture while sitting in a bathroom stall ogling a swimsuit catalog, complaining about how Eva got her break in the company.

After some ads, everybody is stumbling down the street and Fox is telling Trinity how she looks like the bad guy in this situation. Not true. The argument goes in circles for minutes and is never resolved. I’m guessing that, for the remainder of this series, it will never be resolved.

The next morning, Paige and Brie Bella go for a walk so that Brie can be debriefed on last night’s arguing. Paige says that Brie has worked hard and can be proud of his career. Oooo, I bet that really burned the #DivasRevolution crowd. Nothing noteworthy happens in the scene.

That evening at dinner, Nattie goes out with her uncle, Bret Hart. Yes, my childhood idol Bret Hart, who was the bastion of credibility and athleticism in wrestling, is now on Total Divas. A little part of me just died. They discuss what it was like for the Hitman to be on the road with the Anvil, which sounds like it involved a lot of babysitting. Nattie gets a call from her mother, who reports that Ric Flair is really excited to get Jim Neidhart down to the bar. You don’t fucking say. Bret, upon hearing that Ric Flair is involved in this situation, looks at Nattie like she’s a drooling, pants pooping moron. After some reflection, the Hitman and his wife, Stephanie, tell Nattie that she can’t allow her father’s issues to control her life and that she should live for herself once in a while. And here I thought that the only Stephanie who was allowed to give out sage advice on WWE programming was named McMahon.

Paige and Alicia Fox are out shopping, and Paige runs across a young woman who begins crying as soon as she sees her, claiming that through watching Paige wrestle she was able to recover from her eating disorder. Part of me wants to ask how that is humanly possible, but, when you’re dealing with an issue like that, you have to use whatever you can. Paige, despite being a woman, manages to be a huge dick, caring about the girl’s condition for all of thirty seconds before making the conversation all about her and how hard it is for her to find a dress for the Hall of Fame. Man, Paige it didn’t take long for Paige to fall out of her role as one of the only likable characters on this show.

Back at the hotel, Eva Marie and Jonathan are reflecting on her visit to a children’s hospital earlier in the day. This helps Eva realize just how petty the drama in the women’s division is. We leave the scene on a cliffhanger, with Jonathan asking what Eva will do when she sees the rest of the girls together tomorrow.

The next day, Nattie and the Anvil make their autograph session. Not much happens, but it generally seems to go well.

The Bellas are driving, and Nikki decides that she’s going to try to broker peace between Eva Marie and the rest of the women’s division, but Brie wants no part of it.

Paige is at Axxess and tells a radio DJ that she’s going to wear a black dress and Doc Martens to the Hall of Fame ceremony, because she doesn’t want to ruin her image. O . . . k . . .

Eva Marie gets out of an elevator, and that’s where the show ends. Unfortunately, Paul Heyman is not with her.

For the record, I was not shortchanging those last four scenes. They all lasted right about fifteen seconds.

Overall: In the good news department, the show is now setting up storylines that span multiple episodes, as the saga of Paige’s dress as well as the Anvil at Wrestlemania and Brie Bella’s fertility troubles are all continuing and should last for at least one more installment of the show. The negative side of this is that virtually none of this crap is believable, aside from Jim Neidhart being in rough shape, which is only believable because there are multiple independent reports of him having problems. Honestly, at this point the show’s problems are so systemic and so ingrained that it feels silly for me to be listing them all here, because they’re no different than the ones that you’ve read me rambling about at the end of every episode.

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.