basic-cable battle: round one

(An intented-to-be continuing series in which Annie and I take our love of television and beat it down, hard. Every week, we’ll each pick a program from the bowels of basic cable ... and make the other watch it. And provide written evidence of that fact. Death is not an option. You can find Annie's response here.)

This week: WWE Monday Night RAW (USA) vs. What's in the Bag? (The Golf Channel)

Now, I’d say that I’ve studied some moderately complicated subjects in my time: Chinese politics, French deconstructionism, The X-Files. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for this, my first foray into the labyrinthine world of professional wrestling. I had to watch this fucking thing twice and spend like an hour on google just to have the tiniest goddamn clue what the hell was going on.

So I apologize in advance for any factual errors that appear in this account. Of course, in the WWE “fact” and “fiction” are impossibly blurred, so it probably doesn’t matter anyway. James Frey and JT LeRoy should consider the possible career opportunities.

Like many of my favorite shows, WWE Monday Night RAW begins with a lengthy montage of previouslys, bringing us up to speed on past events and highlighting important moments that will play a role in tonight’s episode. We open on a guy in a tank top. And a guy in a suit. And some other guy. Everyone seems pretty angry.

WWE Rule #1: Everyone always seems pretty angry.

Tank-top guy turns out to be Vince McMahon, the owner of the WWE and spiritual leader of the newly created religion, McMahonism. Suit Guy is his son, Shane, who according to kayfabe kanon was responsible for the purchase of the rival WCW. (In actuality, I suspect that AOL Time Warner’s mercurial nature also played a role). Other Guy is Shawn “Michael Shawn Hickenbottom” Michaels, aka The Heartbreak Kid.

WWE Rule #2: Every wrestler has at least sixteen names.

HBK (as we wrestling fans like to call him) was a key player in the infamous “Montreal Screwjob”, an event that seems to be roughly on wrestling par with the Pete Rose gambling scandal. And roughly on narrative par with, I don’t know, Gravity’s Rainbow. That shit is complicated. My favorite part of the story is this: “After McMahon tried to apologize to [Bret “Hitman”] Hart, he was told to get out or get punched in the face. McMahon refused to leave and got punched in the face.”

WWE Rule #3: If a wrestler threatens to punch you in the face, you should probably take it seriously.

Anyway, HBK and McMahon are now involved in some kind of feud, which came to a literal head in last week’s match when McMahon dropped his pants – to reveal what looked suspiciously like a Body by Victoria high-leg brief – and The Kid grabbed Shane’s face … and shoved it into his father’s ass cheeks.

This was, apparently, payback for HBK having his own face shoved into the aforementioned ass back in February.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.

Question: Is this really the Vince McMahon who owns WWE, Inc.? Or is it a professional-wrestling actor, standing in for the real Vince McMahon? Because the thought of this man running a multi-million-dollar business by day and then having wrestler-face shoved in his ass by night ... well, is actually probably more common than I think. But still: what is real, here? Is any of it real? When two performers are in a “real-life” relationship, is that really real? Or is that some sort of mid-range real, between wrestling-real and actual-real? HELP.

Credits. Metal rock music. People hitting people. Sugar. Spice. Everything nice.

The show tonight comes to us all the way from London, England. The arena is filled to the brim with screaming, chest-thumping, barely-literate-sign-holding fans. I stock this information away for the next time an Anglophile friend claims that English taste is more refined than ours.

A spastic light cue heralds the arrival of our first performer of the night, Edge (not to be confused with The Edge), the “Rated-R Superstar”. He looks suspiciously like the love child of The Rock and Matthew Lillard, which makes me wonder: whatever happened to either of those guys?

The audience reaction to Edge is mixed, but I suspect he plays a villain. I may or may not be basing that entirely on the audience sign that reads “Edge = crap”. He is accompanied by his girlfriend Lita, who is classing up the joint in a barely-there zebra-print bustier. Edge jumps up into the ring and, after thrusting his pelvis into the mat a few times for Rated-R effect, licks Lita affectionately. Aww.

The commentators scare the shit out of me when they mention the possibility of “some of those live sex celebrations tonight”. Apparently Edge and Lita promised this a while back but have yet to do much more than arrange for Lita to have a wardrobe malfunction during one particularly raucous make-out session.

Question: Are there often live sex celebrations on Monday Night RAW? Or do they save that action for UPN?

Edge grandstands a bit over the PA about the upcoming “triple-threat championship match” between him, Triple H, and John Cena. It’s all pretty standard posturing until he has to get all nationalistic, entreating the audience to enjoy the show “whether you're British or American or - like myself - the clearly superior Canadian.”

My entire family cringes.

Suddenly, the lights go apeshit again and the cameras cut to a huge graphic of a floating skull. And in walks Triple H, to thunderous applause.

WWE Rule #4: 50% of any given program is devoted to extended entrance spectaculars.

Fun fact! Triple H was originally known as Hunter Helmsley Hearst, a rich-kid villain from Greenwich, CT with a fondness for proper etiquette.

Miss Manners is, apparently, long gone. Triple H immediately grabs the mike and starts in on the sass. “Edge, you've come a long way, you have - I mean, look at you, you look like a star. You walk like a champion, you talk like a champion, you act like a champion. Hell - you were a champion … for three weeks."

Whereas if he really were a spoiled brat from Greenwich, he’d just stomp his foot and scream “I went to Princeton!” and storm out.

Triple H continues: “That doesn’t mean anything. It means you can go … you just can’t go very long. Nothing to be ashamed about, a lot of guys have that problem. You know, they get going and just when it’s starting to get interesting … geughaagh. It’s over.” Yes, Triple H just onamotapoeticized premature ejaculation. One of my ovaries just shriveled up and died. “Hey I gotta way that may you can turn this whole thing around, maybe get yourself an endorsement deal, you know, it’s little, it’s blue …”

The audience reacts with an “Oh no, he didn’t” noise, which makes me wonder: Does Viagra look the same in the UK? Or is there perhaps a bit of cultural misunderstanding at work – is it possible that Triple H just suggested that Edge would be an excellent spokesman for, say, paracetamol?

Anyway, they snipe, they snipe, they snipe they snipe they snipe. Itchy has performance issues in the bedroom, but in the ring he beat Scratchy’s ass in three minutes! Whatever, dude, Scratchy doesn’t care that he lost to Itchy – he just wanted to send Poochie a message!

And, with an explosion of rap music, in swaggers Poochie himself: white rapper John Cena, in head-to-toe hip-hop wear and a shirt that reads “Hustle Loyalty Respect”. If it’s okay with everybody, I’m going to withhold my respect until I hear his album, “You Can’t See Me” (with Tha Trademarc). I’m sure it’s excellent, but I like to be cautious. He gets up to the ring and – FIGHT! They throw each other against the ropes and in, like, two seconds, Cena has his shirt off – and, oh, ew, Triple H’s shirt is off, too.

Edge just stands off to the side and grosses out with Lita.

But before anyone can get going – hold on, what’s this? A group of ... male cheerleaders? Called the Spirit Squad???

WWE Rule #5: The WWE defies logic.

The cheerleaders shout something perky and incomprehensible and the wrestlers look as confused as I feel. Apparently, McMahon has sent down word from above that the three boys will fight the Spirit Squad in a 5-on-3 match at the end of the night. The wrestlers stare down. The Spirit Squad cheers. I yawn. Exeunt.

Next up is the midcard 3-on-3 tag-team event, which means – you guessed it – six separate entrance spectaculars. First is Chris “The Masterpiece” Masters, he of the traditional body-builder physique. He appears to be wearing a diaper. He poses for the audience while images of his gleaming pectoral muscles flash on a screen behind him.

Second is Matt “Striker” Striker. He also appears to be wearing a diaper. And an argyle sweater vest, which alludes, I imagine, to his role as host of Matt Striker’s Classroom and his previous career as a Social Studies teacher in Queens. He was fired when he confused “sick days” with “wrestling in Japan days”.

Then we have Shelton Benjamin, Carlito, and Charlie Haas, none of whom particularly interest me. Mr. Haas, however, appears to have lost a bet: the man is dressed in hot pants (red with orange flames) and a black leather vest.

Fun fact! A closet champion is “a current titleholder (usually a heel [Ed note – “villain”]) who ducks top-flight competition, cheats to win (usually by managerial interference), and – when forced to wrestle good opponents – deliberately causes himself to be disqualified (since titles often do not change hands by disqualification) to retain his title.”

The last contestant is Rob Van Dam, “Mr. Money in the Bank”. He is the evening’s biggest sartorial freakshow thus far, dressed in thigh-high boots and a yellow-and-black striped singlet that reads “1 of a kind”.

For the love of Diana Vreeland, I hope that this is true.

The fight begins, and after a few dull moments RVD takes control of the match, leaping up and grabbing Shelton Benjamin’s head between his thighs and then back-flipping him across the ring. Then, he jumps up, high-kicks the dude, and knocks him out of the ring. Hardly pausing to catch his breath, he balances himself on the ropes and dive-bombs Benjamin and a teammate.

From then on, the fight devolves into a crazily confusing brawl. Even the commentators “don’t know who the legal man is”. (Although this seems slightly disingenuous in that it implies that there are actual rules to this match.) In any case, everybody’s just jumping on everybody else. Eventually, RVD executes a “Rolling Thunder” (a combination of a somersault and a senton) and pins Carlito to win the match. Exeunt.

We return from commercial to what can only be described as a cut scene. Kane paces back and forth, mumbling furiously to himself. Rehearsing, presumably, his one-man Hamlet. (“To be or NOT to be, Kane. To be or NOT to be.”)

The Big Show approaches the budding thespian and they engage in the traditional wrestlers’ mating dance: the stare-down. Big Show gets in his face: “You and I have been friends. You and I have been partners. We’ve been tag-team champions together. But, as your friend, what’s going on, what’s the big deal?”

Kane grimaces and grits out “You ... said ... that ... date” in a nearly perfect imitation of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford.

Big Show, obviously an admirer of stagecraft himself, plays dumb. “What date? You talking about May 19th?” He’s good. Perhaps he could do a one-man Much Ado.

“Don’t say that.” Kane contorts his face until he looks like he’s passing a kidney stone. Unless he studied with Lee Strasberg, in which case he may actually be passing a kidney stone.

Fun fact! Beaver Face is a “term for making an odd face during a move, usually one of the wrestler’s signature moves. The term was coined off of Matt Hardy, who unintentionally made a face similar to a beaver multiple times during the Twist of Fate.”

“It’s jut a date, Kane, it’s just like any other day,” Big Show says, jovially.

But Kane doesn’t do jovial. “Don’t say that again,” he growls, “Or … ELSE.”

“Or else. Or else?” Big Show laughs. “May … nine … teenth”

Kane doesn’t hesitate. He pounds Big Show on his ear and then grabs his head and slams it into a corrugated metal door. He continues to wail on Big Show until about ten other guys show up and pull Kane off him. Big Show is holding his eye and appears to be bleeding. They call for a doctor.

Fun fact! The Muta scale is “a scale to measure the amount of blood lost by a wrestler in a match, from 0.0 to 1.0. A Muta rating of 0.0 corresponds to no blood loss, and a Muta rating of 1.0 corresponds to the amount of blood lost by The Great Muta during a 1992 match against Hiroshi Hase, during which Muta performed what is widely hailed as the most gruesome bladejob of all time.”

WWE Rule #6: Do not taunt the professional wrestlers.

Now it’s time for the WWE RAW Divas Bikini contest, in which four women with a combined age of about 340 strip down and shake their desiccated flesh for the audience. The highlight of the event comes at the beginning, when the first girl’s name (Candice Michelle) flashes on the screen. For one glorious, near-sighted moment, I thought her name was Candice Bushnelle and I was willing to forgive the WWE all its transgressions.

Fun fact! Going bush means “moving from a major league promotion to a regional or independent promotion”.

Candice wins based on absolutely nothing at all, at which point a tremendously large wrestler enters to the usual (and now irritating) histrionics and fanfare. The best way to describe this guy is like this: if you wanted to make foie gras out of Wesley Snipes’ character in Demolition Man, Viscera (not to be confused with viscera) would be your half-way point. Somewhere along the line, this man’s been subjected to some force-feeding.

Anyway, Viscera (aka The World’s Largest Love Machine) rolls into the ring and tosses the announcer around a bit before making out wetly with Miss Candice. She seems to enjoy it, in any case. Exeunt.

Question: Do professional wrestlers actually get laid? I find this hard to believe.

After the break, Vince McMahon enters, having sensibly replaced his black tank top and track pants with a suit. I still can’t imagine this man at a business meeting, though. Particularly not after he jumps into the ring, grabs the mike, and says these exact words: “Would you please give a warm, Great Britain welcome to my only begotten son, to the product of my omnipotent semen - here is Shane McMahon!” (Unnecessary emphasis mine.)

And my second ovary just shriveled up and died. No biological offspring for me.

Shane enters in a warm-up suit and shortly thereafter HBK comes in, wearing what looks to be a bib.

Question: Do the performers have any input into the costume design? If they don’t, do you think that their costume reveal is, like, the scariest part of their day? Like seeing yourself for the first time on What Not to Wear, but in hell?

They start fighting and I lose interest pretty fast. It’s stunningly unrealistic and you can only sit through the three-count fake-out so many times. Furthermore, Shane appears to be more of a boxer than a wrestler, which is, as it turns out, significantly harder to fake convincingly. So they go about throwing each other into the ropes and into the posts and I think about maybe checking to see if What’s in the Bag? is still on.

I really do want to know what’s in that bag.

But wait! Vince intervenes and pins HBK on the announcers’ table, which is about five feet from the side of the ring. Shane climbs up to the ring post and leaps spectacularly out into the air to land hard on HBK, breaking the table in the process. The two men lie prone on the floor as Vince attends to his son and babbles hallelujahs.

Admittedly, that was not an uncool stunt. The match is declared a draw.

WWE Rule #7: When in doubt, add acrobatics. When still in doubt, add props.

And now, the thoughtful WWE provides us with the answer to the pressing question posed in the earlier Kane/Big Show brawl: “What is Kane’s eerie obsession with the date? The premiere of his movie, See No Evil.”

Ohhhhhh, he’s that Kane.

And See No Evil is his new movie. I totally get it now. And, why, would you look at that, WWE got their hands on a “very, very graphic” making-of featurette! Let’s see what excitement theatergoers have to look forward to:

Blood, gore, blood, boob, blood, gore, gore - “There’s a story, there’s depth” - blood, blood, blood, a big fucking hook coated with blood, blood, blood, to the slinging and the wringing of the blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood, blood.

Well, it is his first movie. And we all have to start somewhere right? We can’t just expect to jump into a rich and layered family epic with Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep now, can we? Although, a suggestion: I would have been infinitely more likely to see this movie had they stuck with their working title, “Eye Scream Man”.

Now, finally, we get a series of cut scenes to set up the last, climatic match of the night, between the WWE Superstars and the Spirit Squad.

Edge and Lita lecture Cena about the importance of teamwork. Cena is less than excited: “You’re going down [Edge] … quicker than your girlfriend.” That’s a back-handed compliment if ever I heard one.

Edge and Lita canoodle. Disgustingly.

Some dude named Umaga (not to be confused with umago) briefly appears to kick the union-jack-clad ass of British wrestler Steve Lewington.

Lita conspires with Triple H. He thanks her for her help: “I know you have a lot of experience taking on five guys at once.”

The top female wrestlers, who appear to be embroiled in a bit of a Single White Female situation, have a bit of a spat. Steven Weber, however, is not involved, so this is of no interest to us.

And then, finally, after 105 minutes: The Fight.

The Spirit Squad enters ahead of Edge, Triple H, and Cena, each of whom are, remember, on their second entrance spectacular of the night.

The announcers clarify that Edge is from Toronto. My entire family sighs in relief.

Fun fact! International Object is “an alternate term for ‘foreign object.’ In the late 1980's, Ted Turner had a policy on his news networks that all commentators were to not use the word ‘foreign,’ but instead use the word ‘international.’ Wrestling announcers on TBS picked up on this, and a foreign object is still occasionally, jokingly called the ‘international object.’”

Meanwhile, Triple H spits water into the air and Cena continues to out-tool Vanilla Ice.

They mill about in the ring for a few minutes before commencing with the most unremittingly boring portion of the evening. I don’t know if I ran out of stamina at this point of if the match genuinely sucked, but I’m willing to bet the latter. Particularly given the fact that WWE’s pay-per-view event – Backlash – is airing this Sunday. They don’t want to blow their load. It’s like the Buffy filler episodes that always aired in January: after the holidays, before February sweeps ... hey, have we done anything with Dawn lately?

Anyway, the match goes like this: Edge fights. He tags in Triple H. Triple H glares. Triple H fights. He tags in Cena. Cena fights. Cena fights some more. Cena keeps on fighting while Edge and Triple H watch from afar.

Apparently, this is supposed to be suspenseful.

Triple H tags back in and Cena joins him in tossing the Spirit Squad out of the ring. At this point, he and Cena turn on each other while Edge walks off into the distance with Lita in tow.

And we are out. Watch Backlash to find out what happens next, because I’m sure as hell not sitting through that again. Not because it sucked – it didn’t, not entirely – and not because I hate wrestling – I don’t, not really – but because I am too fucking dumb to follow along. I’m already struggling to keep up with Veronica Mars and Lost, here. Any more WWE and my brain might just explode.

Again, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that.

And it could have been worse.

After all, it could have been golf. (More)