411’s Total Divas Report 11.17.13

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.

We are LIVE (not really) at the PNC Bank Arena, and the Bella Twins are talking about a guest role that they received on the USA Network original series Psych, which I think is the one about the lawyer who hasn’t gone to law school who teams up with the sassy mediator to fight the white collar criminal who’s turned into a good guy by the lady sports psychologist. The twins give all of their various measurements to somebody from the Psych wardrobe department and fight over how much Nikki weighs. We need Art Donovan to clear up this controversy.

After the opening theme, we are at John Cena’s Floridian Fortress of Solitude on Nikki’s move-in day. Cena has a fish tank, and they discuss the fishes’ names, most of which are bleeped as being unsuitable for television . . . or maybe the fish have moved out and are now in the Witness Protection Program. Nikki says that, if there was a book on how to move in with a man, she would read it. I suspect she could probably write it. She also says that she feels like a queen. Don’t go stealing Adrian Adonis’ gimmick, now.

Cena is appalled by the sheer volume of boxes that Nikki has brought with her, and then they come across her sex toy collection. I mean . . . they don’t come across it. They pull the collection out of her box . . . I mean . . . oh, forget it.

We’re back at a TV taping. Mr. Belding is backstage and says hello to the Bellas. I vote that he replaces Talent Relations Jane as the show’s official authority figure.

After that meeting of the minds, Nikki tells Brie that Cena is severely injured and that she will be accompanying him for his surgery. Brie, as any normal human being would do, reacts not with concern for Cena but rather with concern that Nikki attending the surgery will prevent her from being on Psych. I hate to sound like a broken record in these reviews, but are any of these women likeable?

Eva Marie watches the Funkadactyls beat AJ Lee and Layla in a match. Backstage after the bell, Trinity and Nattie talk about their next opportunity to wrestle, and Naomi tells Nattie that she should be sure to wear her diaper for the rematch. Please don’t tell me this is going to become a season-long story arc. (If it is, the only logical payoff of the angle would be for Nattie to make Trinity piss herself in the rematch, perhaps at Wrestlemania.) Anyway, Talent Relations Jane’s creepy underboss, in a completely spontaneous and unscripted moment, tells Eva Marie that the company is going to try her out as a ring announcer. She explains that ring announcing (for presumably one match, mind you) requires that you memorize the entire roster’s weights and hometowns. I guess that’s how Howard Finkel got so good at WWE trivia.

We show John Cena officially announcing his injury on Raw and Brie putting over Bryan Danielson’s new role as a main eventer. Again, they show him being handed the WWE Title belt and being announced as champion, though they don’t acknowledge the fact that he immediately lost the title after winning it, so I’m guessing Total Divas now has its own continuity, separate from that of the rest of WWE’s programming, and Bryan Danielson is the WWE Champion in this new continuity. The talent relations underboss approaches him as well, and he says Bryan is going to have to be on the road doing more PR work, filling in gaps that are left in the absence of Cena.

After the show, Cena and Nikki are on a private plane, headed to his surgery. Nikki says something like this could be career ending. If her stress fracture during the last run of episodes was career ending as she originally claimed, Cena’s triceps tear is damn near fatal. Of course, with Nikki being a Total Moron, this devolves into a conversation in which she reveals that she has no idea what a scrotum is. Of all the body parts, you’d think that would be one she’d be fairly well acquainted with. Cena concludes the scene by saying, “I feel like the public education system as failed you.” Truer words have never been spoken.

We cut to Nikki watching Cena’s surgery through a window along with somebody who was not well-identified, though I think it’s a Cena brother. She screams a lot, but, ultimately, the surgery is declared a success after a lame attempt to tease something had gone wrong headed into commercial. (As though everybody watching this didn’t already realize that Cena came out of the surgery just fine.) We get a cameo from Dr. James Andrews, who is probably the single most-unsung hero of WWE over the course of the past decade and change. Seriously, this guy is WWE Hall of Fame-worthy, and I’m not even being sarcastic. He tells Nikki just how fine Cena is.

At the WWE Performance Center in Florida, Alicia Fox and Eva Marie have a meeting of the minds about Eva’s upcoming announcing gig. They do a callback to Eva epically failing when she tried to become Fandango’s dancer, meaning Total Divas, in addition to having its own continuity, officially has better consistency in its storylines than the main WWE programming. Alicia gives Eva a pop quiz by asking her Mark Henry’s weight, as though Eva won’t know who she’s announcing for the match until he steps out through the curtain. Foxy also mentions that she nearly got fired once for a bad performance on the microphone. Based on the last two episodes, Alicia Fox’s gimmick appears to be that she is the troll of the women’s locker room in WWE. There would be worse things than her becoming a series regular with this gimmick.

The Bellas are in makeup for their Psych role. They describe themselves as being creatures that are look a combination of zombies or vampires . . . though perhaps Nikki just doesn’t know the diference between the two.

We cut to the Funkadactyls and Jon Uso. Jon farts as they’re driving around in an SUV. It smells bad. Again, I’m trying to figure out why this show is so horribly scatological. Ariane says she “literally just died.” Girl, (permanently) bye.

Eva Marie meets with Jane’s underboss, and she’s practicing her announcing. She botches it up by giving the wrong hometown for Randy Orton, despite the fact that she was shown reading the introduction off of her iPhone. The underboss buries her. I would too, given that this is apparently not an issue of her not knowing Randy Orton’s hometown but rather an issue of her NOT BEING ABLE TO READ.

After a commercial, we’re in Tampa, and Nikki is back from Vancouver, where the Psych taping took place. Interestingly, Cena is driving already, which I would not have guessed he would be able to do so quickly after surgery. As if driving quickly post-surgery wasn’t dangerous enough, Nikki starts leaning over into his seat and making out with him as the go down the freeway. She mentions in a confessional that his post-op instructions include no sweating or otherwise getting wet. That means ten days without sex which, according to her, she is not OK with. Why would she care whether she can screw the guy? We just saw her move a metric ton of vibrators into the house fifteen minutes ago. She can get by.

We’re at Trinity’s apartment, where Jon Uso has a badly bruised and bleeding toe. She demands that he visit a doctor, because she does not want him to wind up like her father, who . . . also does not like going to the doctor? That’s an odd statement. Normally when somebody says, “I don’t want him to wind up like my father,” something far more significant has happened to the father in question.

At Brie and Bryan’s place in Phoenix, they talk about their road schedule and their crossfit workout. Brie attempts to put Bryan into a guillotine, but it is ineffective. Apparently, he’s taught her everything she knows but not everything he knows.

We’re at another TV taping, and this is the one where Eva Marie is ready to make her announcing debut. She pulls a Spinal Tap and can’t find the entrance to the Gorilla Position. She mentions to Nattie that she will be announcing the Three Man Band, though she has difficulty pronouncing their names and says that she’s considering “cheating” to get through the evening.

The match that she’s announcing happens to be the Usos and Justin Gabriel vs. Three Man Band. First, she mentions that it is a “six man tag team match with a combined weight . . .” Pretty sure that matches don’t have weights. She also forgets to mention Jinder Mahal’s name, though she did it in such a way that it was clear it was a planned spot. In giving commentary on the situation, Nattie says that Eva, as a lump of coal, should turn into a diamond under pressure, but she instead has turned into “a lump of shit.” Given how Nattie’s story arc has been going on this run of episodes, I half expected her to say “a lump of shit . . . like the one that’s in my pants right now.”

Anyway, the Usos and Gabriel eventually win the match, but Jon starts selling his foot afterwards. In the back, he takes his boot off, to find the previously discussed toe quite bloody. He is immediately surrounded by the other Uso, Heath Slater, R-Truth, and, of all people, Jerry Lawler, who practically go into a huddle and stare at the man’s foot as though his toe had popped off of his body, grown its own arms and legs, and started singing “I’m Just Wild About Harry.” It’s a bloody toe, guys. Get over it.

Meanwhile, Eva Marie has to apologize to Three Man Band for her poor performance. Jinder asks if she even knows his name, and she calls him “Ginger Mahal,” which I’m sure is a rejected name for the Mahal/Heath Slater tag team. Eva says that she understands his anger, because having their names called is what WWE superstars live for. Yes, not the thrill of athletic competition or pleasing the fans, but having their fake name announced on television. Eva keeps going on and on about how proud of herself she is because she didn’t cheat (I would again like to know just how she could have “cheated”), as though that is some sort of accomplishment even though she failed miserably at what she was doing. Seriously, it comes off as though she is trolling for praise by constantly mentioning she didn’t cheat.

At John Cena’s home, Nikki Bella puts on a nurse Halloween costume for him. The scene lasts fifteen seconds.

Jon Uso and Trinity are visiting a podiatrist, who removes as much of Jon’s damaged toenail as possible. The doc notes that there was actually a fungal infection and prescribes some medicine that will clear it up. Apparently the fungus is also contagious, which Trinity is particularly upset about. She’s so angry that she asks the podiatrist to check her out as well, I guess because she wouldn’t be able to see herself if there was fungus growing on her foot. And, as soon as I make that joke, the storyline in fact becomes that she couldn’t see fungus growing on her own toe, because the doctor identifies some that she had missed previously.

Back in Phoenix, Brie Bella is video conferencing with Bryan Danielson, who notes that he would rather be wrestling matches than doing press conferences. Coming from him, I totally believe that. Brie talks about how difficult it is to be away from them, and their dog cries at the phone.

Down in Florida, Nikki is unpacking her shoes into a closet that is larger than my house, and she says she feels like Carrie from Sex and the City. You mean horse-faced? Cena shows up in the closet and gives her a “Cohabitation Agreement” that has been drawn up by his lawyers. Yay, lawyers! It essentially states that she is a guest of Cena and must leave within forty-eight hours upon his request, basically an attempt to keep her from legally being a tenant of the home that would have to be formally evicted. Cena request that she sign off on the document.

Nikki says that she needs time to think about the agreement before signing and drives away, noting that the relationship will probably not continue if she doesn’t sign . . . and the show ends with her driving down the highway and tearing up.

Overall: This show was . . . actually not too bad in the grand scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong, it was not a good TV show and not anything that I would watch of my own volition if I weren’t reviewing it for this site, but it was probably one of the least aggravating episodes of Total Divas to air to date. I think there are a few reasons for that. The first is that it didn’t seem as though they were cramming nearly as many storylines into the episode as they typically do. The show was primarily devoted to the Bella Twins’ relationships with their men, and the b-plots with Jon Uso’s toe and Eva Marie’s announcing didn’t get nearly the same amount of time, which made the show feel a lot less like it is edited for the ADD set, a definite positive. I also liked the fact that they turned the Cena/Nikki situation into a cliffhanger, because it shows some effort to build longer-term storylines, which this show has previously been godawful at, oftentimes dropping stories out of nowhere or building them or long periods of time and then resolving them in seconds in the least consequential manner possible.

Also, unlike a lot of the other episodes, the main storylines felt somewhat believable and relatable. I’m sure that the majority of it was still bullshit, but, when you’re talking about the Bellas’ stories, they were at least plausible enough that I did not think they were insulting to my intelligence. People really do have surgery and their significant others really do help them recover from it, and people really do have increased job responsibilities that can sometimes result in their significant others feeling left out. And, yes, sometimes people feel the need to lawyer up to protect their property interests from their romantic partners, and that can be the source of tension within the relationship. Again, the b-stories were far less believable, but they were not primary focuses of the show.

So, believe it or not, there was actually some improvement here. I walked away from this episode just feeling like I had wasted an hour of my time, not feeling as though all hope in humanity is lost if this is the kind of crap that they find entertaining.

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.