411’s Total Divas Report 9.08.15

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Does anybody know when this season of Total Divas will be over?

In the cold open, John Cena (Remember him? Where has he bene this season?) and Nikki Bella are taking selfies in the back of a limousine. Nikki Bella asks if her face is red. I have zero clue what was supposed to be going on in this scene or how it was supposed even begin resembling entertainment.

Backstage at the Money in the Bank pay per view, Nikki is getting checked out by a trainer. She claims that she’s “physically weak” and has white spots on her tongue, but she still goes out and wrestles Paige. Nicole claims that, as WWE Women’s Champion, you don’t get days off. Wait a minute; I thought that was Darren Young’s gimmick. After the match, she feels like her head is exploding. Paige must have asked her to do a word problem while she had her in a rest hold.

Nikki walks by Trinity and Jon Uso backstage, and this transitions in to Trin sharing her vacation plans with the group. She’s loading up Jon and his kids, along with Tamina Snuka and a bunch of other family members, into an RV for a camping trip. Nattie, who otherwise lends nothing to the scene, leads the group in a round of “Kumbaya” to kick the trip off on the right foot.

In Los Angeles, Eva Maria meets up with her manager, Dany Garcia. She immediately mentions that Dany is also the Rock’s manager in a lame effort to get a Hollywood rub. What she fails to mention is that Dany is also the Rock’s ex-wife. Eva and Dany develop a plan that they refer to as “All Red Global Domination.” I’m pretty sure that I’ve heard of that plan before . . . though last I knew of it, it was backed by Chairman Mao and Joseph Stalin.

Monday Night Raw is in Cleveland, and the Bellas are driving around the arena while complaining about the grind that is Nikki’s schedule. In the parking lot, she gets nervous and says, “My body doesn’t want to go in.” Come on, Nikki. Think about how you would react if John Cena said that to you. Brie is concerned about her sister but convinces her to go into work regardless.

Back in LA, Eva returns to her apartment and blows off husband Jonathan when he asks her how her day was going. He wants to go get steaks, but she’s more interested in answering her e-mails. It’s like they’re for some reason prohibited from talking about sex on this episode and for some reason have decided to use “eating steak” as their go-to euphemism.

In Cleveland, the Bellas pull Creepy Talent Relations Mark into a side room and ask for a break from the road. He asks Nikki if she’s willing to relinquish the Women’s Championship. Didn’t they just do the storyline about whether the Bellas wanted to stay in WWE as the cliffhanger for the end of last season? How many times can we trot this out? Ultimately, they all agree that Nikki and Brie will get two days off of the road in order to take a vacation. There was a really weird escalation and immediate de-escalation of the stakes in that scene the conversation was essentially:

“Hey, Mark, we’re a little burned out from being on the road all the time.”

“Oh, really? Well then this might be the END OF YOUR CAREERS!”
DUN DUN DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

“Oh, well, could we just go on vacation or something?”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

Eva Marie meets up with her husband to “eat steaks,” but she’s an hour late due to some training with Brian Kendrick. The married couple has a conversation about balancing their work and personal lives, but I’m completely distracted by what’s on their plates. They’ve got some meat, but they both have these odd contraptions in front of them at are at least a foot tall and appear to be constructed out of some sort of fried wafers. Seriously, if anybody saw this episode, please tell me what the hell those things were. I need to figure out how they fit into the “steak = sex” allegory.

I feel like I’ve fallen into a time warp, because Brie Bella and Mama Bella Cathy are looking at locations for their new fitness studio, which is a storyline that I thought they’d give up on a month ago. Mama and Brie are frustrated with Nicole because she didn’t come to the viewing and didn’t even bother to Skype in. Brie continues to be concerned about her sister’s stress levels and wants to convince her to undergo therapy.

In Pensacola, Florida, a MASSIVE RV shows up at the Usos’ home. They pack ten family members into the thing, which Jon has to drive with no experience. He does surprisingly well. If he were twenty years older, he would have made a fine wheel man for the Lex Express.

The Bellas arrive at their rental property in Napa Valley. They’ve invited Renee Young to join them, which makes me 1,000 times more interested in the show.

The Uso RV has come to a stop . . . but they still haven’t gotten out of Pensacola. Everybody stocks up on groceries for their camping trip. Jon is concerned that, with all of the fancy stuff they’re buying, the kids aren’t going to have a real camping experience, which, in his words, should involve eating grubs off of a log. Don’t give into the Samoan stereotypes, man.

Eva Marie and Jonathan wake up and look forward to spending a day together. However, she keeps getting phone calls and finally feels she has to take one from Creepy Talent Relations Mark. He tells her that she’s going to be back on the road with WWE about two weeks earlier than expected, which freaks her out because she’s supposed to be getting new music and gear together. She decides that she has to put the brakes on what was supposed to be a romantic weekend with Jonathan. She’s nervous at first but gets swayed when Mark tells her that they’re accelerating her push, and there’s a possibility that she might be on Summerslam and defending the women’s title at Wrestlemania. Well, the first half of that plan really didn’t come to fruition, unless Eva was that idiot timekeeper who prematurely rang the bell at the end of Brock/Undertaker . . .

WAIT A MINUTE! That makes perfect sense!

The Uso RV rolls up on the Adventures Unlimited campground in Milton, Florida (send me my check for the plug, AU), and they immediately have to bust out the bug spray due to “bat-sized mosquitos.” Unfortunately, we do not get footage of Trinity swatting at the bugs with her light-up shoes.

Back in Jonathan and Eva’s car, he’s annoyed with her continuing to text and e-mail people. They tease throwing their phones out the window, and Jonathan stops short while they’re doing it, causing Eva to actually drop her phone. Uh oh, he’s not going to be getting “steak” any time soon. (As an aside, by “actually drop her phone,” I mean there’s a cutaway to somebody else dropping a phone out of a similar car.) You’ll notice that Jonathan was perfectly willing to toss his phone out of a moving vehicle. Of course he was. It’s not his money. He’s a kept man.

There are more problems with the Griswold Uso family vacation, as the shower in the RV is backing up. Because Jon Uso is apparently the only semi-competent person on the trip, he has to address the situation. We never get any update on whether he managed to fix the dam thing.

The Bella Twins are driving around, and Nikki gets ridiculously defensive when Brie tells her that maybe she should talk to a therapist. I swear, this is the most nothing-happening episode in the history of this show.

Back at the campground, the Usos are supposed to go tubing, but it’s cancelled due to high waters and other dangerous conditions. Jon complains about the activity being cancelled, and Trinity snaps back at him, saying that she can’t control the weather. After a commercial break and thirty seconds, they make up. There’s even some horseplay, as Jon gives his wife a Samoan drop into the water. Oh, sure, he can do that, but if I play around by giving my little brother a Boston crab in a river, I’m a “monster” and a “murderer.”

Eva Marie walks into Brian Kendrick’s sex closet/dojo, and they’ve brought in some poor job guy who has to take GERMAN SUPLEXES and POWERBOMBS from Eva Marie. This dude needs to read up on the history of Brian Ong before he continues down this path. After the drills in the ring, Kendrick gives Eva some sage advice about the need to make some time for her husband as opposed to being totally dominated by her career. Kendrick would know . . . you don’t land a prime wife like Taylor Matheny without being good at this sort of thing.

The Bella Twins and Renee Young are out wine tasting. Brie tries to tell her sister that their trip is a great start for her stress reduction but that it’s not a substitute for talking to a professional. Nikki, perhaps trying to prove that she really does need her head shrunken, flips out and walks out on them. Truly, walking away from Renee Young when you don’t have to is the definition of mental illness. Ultimately, Brie caves and says that she’s not going to bring up the topic of therapy for the rest of the trip, allowing them to enjoy themselves for the next day or so.

We’ve got a campfire going in Florida, and Tamina fails at making smores. Everybody thanks Trinity for arranging the camping trip. That’s apparently a wrap on the RV plot. I think that they forgot to include the story in this storyline. It was just a line.

Speaking of trips that suddenly ended, Nikki Bella is no longer in Napa Valley. Instead, she’s at lunch with John Cena. Even Cena says that, if she’s having difficulty relaxing in her day-to-day life, she should consider therapy. However, Nikki claims that she’s had bad experiences with it in the past, citing the time that she went to a professional during her parents’ divorce and her family laughed at her when she broke down crying in a session. Don’t worry, Nikki, it’s a new day. You’ve got a new, more sensitive, more caring family now, one that won’t mock you in your time of need. You’ve got this guy in your corner now . . .

Cena explains therapy in the only terms that he can explain anything, comparing it to working out. Suddenly, all of his dirty talk dialogue from Trainwreck is pouring back into my mind. Because Cena was able to make a good metaphor about cleaning an jerking, Nikki decides that she’s going to go see a therapist after all.

Eva Marie and Jonathan are getting all dolled up to attend a movie premier. Specifically, it’s the premier of San Andreas, the movie in which the Rock fights an earthquake. As an aside, I regularly watch The Soup on E!, so I see commercials for upcoming episodes of Total Divas all the time. This week, every single promo talked about how THE ROCK would be a guest on TD this week. What did the Rock’s big, hyped up role consist of? He was in what was essentially archival footage, standing relatively close to the vicinity of Eva Marie while on the red carpet for this movie. People are often critical of professional wrestling for bait and switch booking, but reality television may have trumped them.

The Bellas are back at work in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Nikki tells Brie how great her therapist is. Brie suggests that she might need speech therapy next. Hell, you could say that about half the cast of this show. That is the boring, boring ending to a boring, boring show.

Overall: I was of two minds about this program. First of all, I give them credit for trying to create an episode in which all of the storylines followed the same general theme of wrestlers trying to balance their family lives and their work lives, but they failed to do it in a compelling manner, as it’s not as though there were parallels drawn between the stories or thematic elements other than, “everybody tries to have a life outside wrestling.” Despite the laudable attempt at having a deeper show (even if it did fail), the episode was still rough because almost nothing happened. There was the faintest hint of a plot in each of the three storylines, but they were basically just scenes of people doing things with no compelling tension or plot or character development. This felt like a mid-season show that was crafted together of bad footage that was left on the cutting room floor from more compelling episodes. Oh well, at least it wasn’t infuriatingly idiotic.

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.