wrestling / TV Reports

411’s Total Divas Report 7.28.15

August 5, 2015 | Posted by Ryan Byers
Total Divas Image Credit: WWE

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.

Last night, I watched Paige on Steve Austin’s podcast. By the end of it, I was begging to watch Total Divas instead.

We begin this week’s episode in Phoenix, where the Bella Twins and Bella Momma Kathy are hanging out at BriBry’s house sucking down some wine. They talk about last night, when Bryan taught the Bellas the word “abscond.” Then, he quizzes them on basic arithmetic and is generally confused by the fact that his wife cannot tell time. I’m amazed that the most consistent character trait that the Bella Twins have had on this show is that they have the same vocabulary as the slow reading group from your first grade class.

Would it kill them to have at least one female character on this show who is portrayed as being something approaching intelligent? The majority of the audience for this show consists of women. Why do they (apparently) like seeing all of the members of their gender being made out to be such dunderheads? What about young girls who see this show? Are they going to aspire to be dullards to this degree?

Ugh. We’re only thirty seconds in, and I’m already doing the gimmick where I get so frustrated that my mind breaks down and starts spewing out a stream of rhetorical questions. I apologize for that, but the godawful depiction of women on this show is my absolute least favorite thing about it . . . and think of the ground that covers.

In an unidentified city, Paige and Alicia Fox are walking on the beach. In a rarity for the program, Paige is subtitled due to her accent. The two women are moving in together on a temporary basis, and they talk about how they’re going to manage visits by Paige’s new boyfriend, Kevin Skaff, who is involved in some band that has sold its soul to the E! Network in exchange for exposure on this reality show. Your career might be able to survive working with E!, Skaff, but whatever you do don’t start providing theme songs to WWE pay per views outside of Wrestlemania. That’s a difficult one to recover from.

I will give the show some rare points for continuity, as before they move on to Kevin they do blow off Paige’s boyfriend from last season, Bradley, saying she dumped him during the break. (And, no, I didn’t mean “blow off” in that way, you pervs.)

Back in Phoenix, the Bellas and Bryan Danielson go out to dinner. For the 5,000th episode in a row, they talk about BriBry procreating and Nikki complains about how she’ll never have a child of her own. This is starting to approach Hornswoggle versus Chavo Guerrero in terms of angles that just won’t die. Bryan gets in some pretty good digs about how Nikki will die cold and alone, and in a confessional she complains about how he keeps picking on her. Aww, come on. That just means he likes you.

At Casa de Neidhart in Tampa, Nattie tells us that the cat rescue she works with has had an emergency and they need a place to house some kitties. Five nanoseconds later, there are EIGHTEEN SPARE CATS living on their screened-in porch. With this, we have reached an historical moment in the life of my Total Divas reviews. Nowhere in the history of the series has the program ever set me up so perfectly to make a tasteless, crass joke. Are you ready for it? Here goes:

There are EIGHTEEN SPARE CATS living on their screened-in porch. Yes, that’s right; the cats are in the enclosed pool area.

“Don’t you think this is a little much?” asks TJ Wilson. I’m sure that my readers feel the same.

Nattie’s rebuttal is, “If he wants to be my husband, this is the kind of stuff he’s going to have to put up with.” I wonder if he still has the number of that divorce lawyer from a couple of seasons ago.

Elswhere, Paige is at a music festival with her boyfriend Skaff, and she’s the one who is getting all of the fans’ attention. Then she burps. Oh my god, Paige is sooooo edgy and nonconformist, you guys! Eventually they meet up with Paige’s fat friend “Bing,” and she chops him. What in the world did that accomplish?

In Tampa, Jim and Ellie Neidhart come over to their daughter’s house and are promptly informed that they’re going to have to cat-sit for nineteen felines while Nattie and TJ depart on WWE’s European tour. Can you imagine being Natalya’s father? You go to visit her, and, on any given week, you don’t know whether she’s going to be in training with a deaf dominatrix, babysitting nearly twenty stray animals, or pissing her pants while simultaneously getting Icy Hot down her butt crack. Frankly, I would consider putting her up for adoption. Yes, I understand that she’s a grown woman . . . but there has to be a way to put her up for adoption.

Ellie Neidhart, mistress of the obvious, observes, “That’s a lot of cats.”

There’s one other flaw in this kitty-wrangling scheme. A couple of episodes ago, Jim Neidhart was crippled by drug addiction and not even able to keep track of where his own necktie was. Now you’re trusting him to take care of twenty living, breathing animals? One of those cats is going to wind up in the microwave before Nattie gets back from the UK.

Nikki Bella is laying around her sister’s house in nothing but a towel. She can’t find her clothes, which she had hung up in Danielson’s closet. It turns out that he relocated them to the barn, because he didn’t appreciate being put out in his own home. Wait, they have a barn? Nikki is upset with her sister, because she should’ve stopped her husband from relocating her wardrobe.

Monday Night Raw is in Denver, and Skaff is backstage with Paige. (Note to WWE: Register “Backstage with Paige” as a trademark for a new Pipers Pit-esque interview segment.) They’re in catering and don’t understand what edamame is. Apparently Paige and the Skaff Infection have decided that they’re going to move in together, which means that she’s not going to be living with Alicia after all. By the way, Naomi/Trinity is hanging out with them too, even though she and Fox had a massive blowup a week ago. Paige is nervous about telling Fox about her change in plans. I’m not entirely sure why, because Paige is a grown woman who can live where she wants, and Fox should be mature enough to accept that.

Of course, she’s not. I don’t know why I’m surprised. Fox is pissed, but rather than being outwardly angry, she chooses to passively aggressively eat cereal.

Elsewhere backstage, the Bellas and Bryan are getting their makeup done and arguing about whether Danielson likes Nikki. In particular, they focus on her being overly materialistic. She claims she’s not. I note that this is the same woman who was shown to own a 3’x3’x3′ box fully of sex toys on a prior episode of the show. No materialism there.

Wade Barrett walks through the background of a shot, and we get a chyron identifying him as “Alicia’s Ex-Boyfriend.” Huh? I get that he is, in fact, Alicia’s ex-boyfriend and that it has been acknowledged on the show in the past, but what does that have to do with this episode?

Some undefined amount of time later, Paige and Skaff roll up for a housewarming party at Foxy’s new place in Jacksonville, Florida. There is a deer head on the wall . . . that or King Cuerno is at the party and needed a place to hang his hat. Everybody gets drunk, and Alicia starts comparing Skaff to Paige’s ex Bradley. Needless to say, Skaff gets uncomfortable quickly. Have I mentioned that Alicia Fox is damn near thirty years old? It would be one thing if her character were acting like this at nineteen, but geesh.

After a commercial break, we get told that we are at “WWE Main Event” in Cleveland, as though Main Event is a standalone show. Heath Slater, Titus O’Neil, and Adam Rose (what a crew) had a problem with their car, so they’ve asked for a ride from Nattie. She immediately says yes without clearing it with TJ. This for some reason upsets him. Whatever that reason is, it’s not fully explained until we get on the road, when Titus begins ripping some massive farts.

In more ride-related drama, the Bellas are on the road and talking about Nikki’s relationship with Danielson. Jon Uso and Naomi are having an odd bickering session of their own, while Alicia Fox, Paige, and Emma are sitting in a car and not doing much of anything. Nikki Bella wants a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Brie Bella wants truffle fries. Titus farts again. TJ admits that he’s never had sex with anybody other than Nattie. Emma claims to be a virgin. Forget Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, this is Wrestlers in Roadsters Getting Randy.

Leave it to Paige and Alicia Fox to spoil the fun, because their conversation goes from light to serious pretty quickly, as Paiger calls Fox out for her drunken verbal assault on Skaff the prior evening. Tension builds to the point that Paige actually calls Trinity and asks if her car is nearby so that they can do a Chinese fire drill and switch travel partners. There is a lot of screaming. Poor Emma is left in the passenger’s seat with a massively pissed off Alicia Fox.

In the Uso car, Paige explains that she’s a level-headed person. “Hmm” is Jon Uso’s apt response.

The Neidhart car pulls over at a gas station, where Nattie apologizes to her husband for loading up their rental car with jobbers. TJ pretends he’s not bothered in a manner that makes it perfectly transparent that he is bothered.

Elsewhere on the interstate, the Bella Twins call Bryan Danielson so that he can tell Nikki that he doesn’t hate her. He does it and agrees to stop making fun of her if it makes her uncomfortable. She doesn’t seem to be buying it.

TJ and company make another stop, this time at an establishment that is supposedly a restaurant owned by Heath Slater’s friend. In reality, it’s a strip club. This isn’t Wilson’s scene, and he’s frustrated to the point that he storms out in a huff. He’d better be careful doing that . . . the Bella Twins might claim gimmick infringement. Nattie tries to apologize to him, but he (figuratively) tells her to fuck off. She heads back into the club to try to convince the rest of the crew to get back on the road, but they won’t listen to her and seconds later have convinced her to get up on to the stage to start dancing with the strippers like she’s Marisa Tomei and Mickey Rouke all rolled up into one. What a great, loyal wife she turned out to be.

And did I mention this is essentially the saddest strip club ever? I mean, they’re all said in their own way, but the wrestlers are quite literally the only people not there to work a pole.

Eventually everybody does pile back into the car, and Nattie smooths things over with her husband by promising to fuck his brains out later. Well, problem solved.

In more storyline resolution, Brie reminds Nikki of sweet things that Danielson has done for her over the years, and she decides that she’s going to put up with his crap after all. Oh, also it appears that Brie got her truffle fries. There is no Blizzard, though. I guess Dairy Queen didn’t pay enough for the product placement.

The next morning in Nattie and TJ’s hotel room, the couple has a heart-to-heart about how Nattie cannot say no. By the way, even though she’s wearing a robe and towel like she just got out of the shower, she still has seven perfect layers of makeup on her face and ridiculous fake eyebrows. Eventually, she realizes that her inability to turn people down doesn’t just make Tyson unhappy, it also makes her unhappy.

Backstage at the next day’s taping, Trinity lays down some real talk with Fox, telling her that both she and Paige are in the wrong in their fight and need to apologize with one another. Eventually Alicia breaks down and admits that part of her problem is jealousy, as she still hasn’t gotten over Wade Barrett. Well, I guess that explains his chyron from earlier in the show.

The two friends meet up backstage, and, rather than an apology, we get Fox telling Paige that she still loves Barrett. Paige, quite literally and with the bare minimum of bleeping, tells her to shut the fuck up. Based on the preview for the next episode, it looks like we’re headed to a longer-term storyline about the friction between Alicia and Bad News.

That’s pretty much the end of the show.

Overall: By the standards of Total Divas, this episode was actually . . . not that bad. Seriously. It still had its negative aspects, including the continued portrayal of the Bellas and Fox as immature morons and the Nattie/cats storyline which is yet another plot that Bunim Murray has ripped straight out of a sitcom. However, the second half of the show featuring the four different crews of wrestlers travelling between towns dealing with their respective storylines was, in my opinion, something different that actually worked. It was one of the few times that quick, back and forth editing between different scenes felt like it helped the story instead of detracting from it, and focusing on the fact that pretty much the entire cast of the show was on the road at the same time travelling between shows made the show feel organic, as that is in fact what professional wrestlers do with a large portion of their time. Plus, there were some legitimately funny lines among the non sequiturs that were interlaced with the storyline bits. This episode of the show is still far from something that I would watch of my own volition if I were not recapping it for this website, but it was probably one of the more legitimately entertaining installments of Total Divas that I’ve seen since the run began.

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.

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Total Divas, Ryan Byers