411’s Half-Pint Brawlers Report 06.16.10

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It’s week three, and, believe it or not, Half-Pint Brawlers has actually made a little bit of mainstream news since last we recapped an episode of the show. Apparently the Little People of America, an organization consisting of, well, little people, has taken a stance against the show because of the cast’s repeated use of the word “midget” to describe one another. A brief article on the subject is here.

I’m of two minds on this subject. On one hand, I generally have no problem with the idea that minority groups should have the ability to control their own identities and come up with the terms that they would like used to refer to them. As such, if the organization wants to campaign to make the word socially unacceptable, I say more power to them. On the other hand, I can’t help but find the LPA’s stance just a tad bit hypocritical. According to the article and various comments by members, one of their big problems with the use of the word “midget” is that it harkens back to an era when those who were exceptionally short in stature were seen as only being good for sideshow acts and other low brow forms of entertainment. Yet, on the other hand, the LPA has been featured in numerous current reality shows focusing on the lives of little people, almost all of which involve a contemporary twist on the “these people will entertain us just because they are short” mentality. (See, for example, Little People Big World, The Little Chocolatiers, etc.) That would seem to reinforce a negative stereotype of little people as offbeat entertainers far more than the use of any specific word would.

On an unrelated note, my fifth place vote for Turtle in this week’s Wrestler of the Week polling didn’t go over too well. Do these readers not understand the importance to the wrestling world of this Half-Pint Brawler rookie successfully drinking his own urine? Oh well, at least it made Chungles laugh.

Anyway, on to the third episode of HPB.

This week, the show opens with bowling, as various members of the HPB troupe are placed on a skateboard and shoved down an alley to knock down pins. It all culminates in the continued humiliation of Turtle, who has a ball whipped at him and takes it in the shoulder.

After our standard video package, Puppet explains that we are in New Orleans this week to do one show on Bourbon Street and one show in a prison. Because wrestler Super Mexx was unable to make the trip, Puppet decided to “rehire” his old running buddy Teo, who he claims to have fired several years ago because he didn’t fit in with the rest of the group. Specifically, he doesn’t like the HPB veteran Kato, which Kato explains is because Teo hit on his wife in the past. We’ve even got video footage of the two getting into a fairly heated verbal exchange with one another, supposedly from two years ago.

Cue Teo, who walks into the hotel room that the Brawlers are sharing and seems rather humble, like a guy who wants to make amends. In case Teo looks familiar to anybody, he, along with Puppet, was involved in TNA in the promotion’s early days.

The next day, Puppet decides that he’s going to pull off one of the group’s wacky stunts. This time, he’s turning Turtle into a street performer by covering him in silver paint and having him stand perfectly still until he jumps out at unsuspecting tourists. Didn’t one of the Bond girls die that way? Anyhow, we get a couple of decent reaction shots of people who come across our tiny prankster, but there’s nothing to write home about.

We’re back from a commercial, and Puppet explains that their show on Bourbon Street will literally be ON Bourbon Street, i.e. they’re setting up a ring right in the middle of the road. Well, that’s one way to do it. Prior to the show, Puppet books Kato against his brother Beautiful Bobby as the one and only match of the evening, telling Teo that he doesn’t want him to wrestle just yet so that he can make sure he still remembers everything. How are they going to tell if he can still work without putting him in the ring?

We’ve got a few highlights of the in-ring action at this point, including Bobby doing a pretty nice flip bump off of a Kato clothesline and then snapping off a decent pair of ranas. Puppet claims that he knows Teo is ready to get back into the ring because, as he was watching the match, he called all of the spots. Well, I guess that’s somewhat of an indication that he remembers what he’s doing.

Flash forward to the next morning, and the brawlers are having a contest to see who can carry Turtle on their back for the longest period of time. There’s no clear-cut winner.

After another ad break, Puppet is getting ready for the aforementioned prison show. But, before we get there, the group happens upon a pile of horse feces left in the road by a carriage. Teo picks it up with his bare hands and starts throwing it at people, which Puppet somehow construes as a sign that he’s starting to bond with the group. I would construe it was a sign that he’s a bit of a dick, myself. What a charming addition to the cast.

En route to the prison show, Puppet mentions that he wants the troupe to provide a positive example for the inmates, showing them that they can be something when they get out of lockup. “We’re going to show them they can be midget wrestlers?” asks Teo. Touche, Teo, touche. Oh, and Puppet now compares what they’re doing today to JOHNNY CASH AND FOLSOM PRISON. If Puppet can get away with that, I would like to go ahead and mention my writing here on 411mania is very similar to the works of Ernest Hemingway.

Now we’re backstage thirty minutes before the show, and Puppet drops the bombshell that Kato and Teo will be working against one another this evening. Kato says that he doesn’t appreciate what Teo has done outside of the ring but respects his work as a wrestler. It seems like everybody is willing to be professional in between the ropes. We’ve got some highlights of the two doing some fairly standard professional wrestling spots with what is either a very loud crowd or some piped in noise. Eventually Kato throws Teo out to the floor over the bottom rope, though Teo has a trash can lid with him when he returns to the ring and uses it to his advantage. Eventually Teo hits his version of a 619 and a swanton bomb and gets the three count. Kato says that they picked the winner based on who the crowd got behind and gives Teo a big hug in the back, apparently putting their differences behind them once and for all.

Overall

Of the three episodes of the show to date, this was probably my favorite installment of Half-Pint Brawlers. They toned down the juvenile stunts significantly and focused a lot more on a logical storyline that built throughout the show and came to a believable resolution. The show as a whole would probably be a little bit more entertaining if they came up with story arcs that carried through from episode to episode as opposed to relying on self-contained plots for each episode as they appear to be doing, but I suppose the current approach is better than simply relying on a bunch of unrelated skits and sight gags involving bodily fluids. Thumbs up to the HPB this week, and hopefully this is the direction in which the show continues.