411’s Total Divas Report 05.11.14

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.

The Bella Twins are trying to have a telephone conversation but have difficulty hearing one another. Then, out of nowhere, Nikki gets an unexpected delivery. In opening it, she says that packing popcorn makes her want to kill herself. She should probably talk to somebody about adjusting her medication if that’s the case. The package turns out to be a housewarming gift from Nattie Neidhart, namely a really weird, semi-abstract painting that may or may not have been done by Nattie herself, which depicts Cena and Nikki embracing and kissing. It actually looks like it was based on one of their kisses from this very television series. Nikki reads my mind when she says that her rendering in the painting makes it look like she’s “straight up wearing a diaper.”

Ariane and Vinny are driving, and Ariane starts singing the single that she’s releasing shortly. I immediately start wishing that there was auto-tuning built into Vinny’s car. They continue to dance and sing while blasting the single, and, honestly, this might be even more obnoxious than last week when Ariane was squealing at the top of her lungs while in the passenger seat. Ariane criticizes Vinny for being off key, which, again, is ridiculous when you consider the fact that the only reason Ariane is on key in her recording is because of digital sweetening.

WWE is having a show in San Diego, and Nattie wants to visit the Bella Twins at Nikki’s new home. Of course, that means the hideous painting has to be hung up during her visit. Nikki makes sure to point out the art, and Nattie fawns over it for a bit, though it sounds like even she doesn’t care for it that much, given the best compliment she can give her own artwork is “I definitely got his ears right.” Yes, the ears truly are the window to the soul.

Vinnie and Ariane are walking down the street actively looking for paparazzi to photograph Ariane so that she can get publicity for her single. You know that’s the exact opposite of how that’s supposed to work, right? In any event, some bottom feeders do pop up and start snapping pics of her. I think I recognize some of these guys from MNM’s entrances a few years back.

At a Smackdown taping, Trinity wrestles Tamina Snuka and pins her with a split-legged moonsault. This leads nowhere.

Backstage, Talent Relations Jane’s Creepy Underboss (who I should come up with a better name for since Jane isn’t around anymore) calls for a meeting with Eva Marie and Summer Rae. He claims that he wants to capitalize on their star power or some other such bullshit by making them into a tag team. Finally, my concept of Team Summer’s Eva is becoming a reality! Except it’s not actually becoming a reality because, if it ever had, I would have seen it on Raw or Smackdown by now.

Brie meets with Eva Marie and warns her about teaming with Summer, because according to Brie, Summer is all about herself and will take advantage of Eva to advance her career. Wasn’t a good portion of last season about a feud between the Bella Twins and Eva Marie based around the Bellas trying to hold Eva down even though Eva was sorta-kinda a heel herself? Why would Yoda Brie be giving Eva sage career advice now?

Summer Rae and Eva Marie meet up at a gym in Los Angeles with a ring built in the middle of it. Eva explains in a confessional that usually a WWE wrestler will spend two years in developmental before going on the road, but she has maybe spent four weeks in the Performance Center before going on the road full time, so she’s not as prepared for television as she should be. In other words, Eva Marie is the female equivalent of Sin Cara.

At lunch, Ariane feeds Vincent as though he were a baby bird. I can’t make things like this up. Ariane is upset because she can’t find any pictures of herself on the internet. Apparently there was a Kim Calrissian sighting in the same area where Ariane was trolling for photos, meaning Ari couldn’t get any headlines. Forget Kim, I think any celebrity down to and including Clint Howard would take precedence over a b-level member of the WWE women’s roster.

At her home in Florida, Natalya is painting. She claims to have inherited her mother’s artistic genes. Unfortunately, she also inherited her father’s facial hair gene. (Her Schick budget is out of control.) She’s doing a portrait of Brie Bella and Bryan Danielson to give to them as a wedding gift. It looks like the sort of painting that a junior high school student would churn out. After asking for his opinion, Nattie sends TJ Wilson away when he gives the opinion any sensible person would, namely that it stinks.

Ariane meets up with a man named Ray J. It is not Ray J. Johnson.

Anyway, Ariane and Ray go to the gym and do some play wrestling Ariane seems certain that, if she is seen in public with Ray J, paparazzi photos of her will be circulated. I don’t know why she thinks this. Eventually, the move into an MMA training area where they are shown a few moves. Ariane says the paparazzi love things that are “spicy.” What is “spicy” about two random people, one of whom is a d-level wrestling star and one of whom is some guy off the street going to the gym together?

Oh, poor Ariane. If only there was something that could happen to you that would guarantee the paparazzi would pay attention . . .

No, wait, let’s not go down that road again . . .

Back at Eva Marie and Summer Rae’s training session, Eva puts Summer into a camel clutch, and Eva asks her “what the next part” is. NOTHING. There is no next part! You’ve got her in the hold! I can only imagine what the Iron Sheik would say if he saw this miserable display.

Regardless of the Sheik’s opinion, I have to say that this scene is a goldmine for the subculture of pervs online who get off on women putting holds on one another. Summer is justifiably annoyed because Eva is not retaining any information. Eva gets defensive about Summer’s criticisms, and eventually Eva storms off. If I had a dollar for every scene on this show that ended with somebody walking off in a huff, I would be a Million Dollar Man.

TJ Wilson and Nattie are in the airport fumbling with the BrieBry painting, which is travelling with them to TV. TJ asks why they don’t just have it shipped to the recipients’ home, at which point Nattie says she worked hard on it and wants to give it to the couple in person. You mean like you gave Nikki and John Cena their portrait in person?

Eva Marie and Stone Cold Seamstress Sandra meet up briefly backstage to discuss Eva’s new gear, which involves some ridiculously short shorts. Sandra is critical, because she is seeing too much of “Miss Lucy.” Wasn’t that the name of Outlaw Ron Bass’ bullwhip?

This scene doesn’t lead anywhere, but it left me with a few questions. Is “Miss Lucy” a generic name that Sandra has for every woman’s external genitalia? Or does she have a unique nickname for every set of laydparts that she meets? If it’s the latter, what are the criteria that she uses in coming up with these nicknames? What are the nicknames that she applies to some of the more notable women of wrestling? Is AJ Lee’s named “Skippy?”

Nattie is still fiddling with her box. (The one with the painting in it, you pervert.) It is too large to fit into her rental car, so she straps the painting to the roof of the vehicle. Lacking proper equipment to do so, she uses PANTY HOSE and athletic tape in order to do the job. I wonder if those are the same panty hose TJ wore on his head during their sexual burglar roleplay a couple of weeks ago. Shockingly, Nattie’s jury-rigging does not work and the painting lands in the middle of the highway. It is retrieved without incident, which begs the question of why this scene was even shot in the first place.

BrieBry are backstage, with Bryan attempting to impose the Tom Cruise “no heels” rule on her. Nattie shows up with the painting, which nobody knows exactly how to react to. When the Neidharts walk away, Bryan Danielson says that there’s no way that they can put it up in their house, because it makes his nose look like a set of testicles. Keep in mind that Bryan Danielson of all people does not want this painting in his house, and his idea of decorating involves throwing some twigs and vintage axes up on the wall.

Elsewhere, Summer Rae meets up with Fandango. She manages to avoid dry humping him this week. She indicates that she is nervous about teaming with Eva Marie because, you know, Eva totally sucks. She also decides to tell this to the Creepy Underboss, who asks her for any alternative ideas she may have. She . . . fails to say anything productive.

We go to the match which was meant to be the test run of Summer’s Eva, but the Underboss apparently took Summer’s comments to heart and made it a six woman tag, adding Tamina to the red and gold team. Their opponents are the Bella Twins and Nattie. They edit things together so that the story of the match is Summer refusing to work with Eva and instead exclusively tagging in and out with Tamina. So, in other words, it’s worked like 99% of the other Eva Marie tag team matches that have been on television. Things are made even better by the expert commentary offered up backstage by Ariane, who adds absolutely nothing to the storyline.

After the match wraps up, Eva Marie is pissed off that she was never tagged in. Brie pulls Summer aside and asks why the tag was never made. Summer, completely honestly, says, “She just sucks.” CORRECT.

Tamina, deciding to grab some airtime, gets up in Eva’s face and says that she should have taken the initiative and made the tag herself, no matter what Summer was doing. Most of the cast assembles and stands around Eva, with Brie coming to the conclusion that Summer Rae clearly did not tag out to Eva Marie because she is threatened by her and wanted to have the match play out in such a way that Eva was “buried.”

Oh, let me unpack the things that make no sense about this storyline. See, it might work IF NOT FOR THE FACT THAT EVA MARIE REALLY, LEGITIMATELY DOES SUCK AT BEING A PROFESSIONAL WRESTLER. Much like the storyline with Natalya a few episodes ago, Summer Rae is being portrayed as the heel, but her position is more logical and relatable than any of the babyfaces. Also, Summer intentionally went out of her way to “bury” Eva because she sees her as a threat? Number one, how can Eva threaten anybody given how awful she is? Number two, HOW CAN YOU BE BURIED ON WWE SUPERSTARS, A SHOW THAT NOBODY WATCHES?!

This is the dumbest angle that this show has run in a looooong time.

After the taping has wrapped up, Eva wants a heart-to-heart with Summer. The heart-to-heart consists of Eva telling her to go fuck herself and walking away. Summer – again, rightfully – calls her out for walking away when it is the cheapest and easiest thing to do. Eva’s big comeback to this . . . is to continue to walk away. Again, there is no way that Summer is not the babyface here.

Ariane is doing a photo shoot for Rolling Out magazine. Wait a minute; are we going back in time? Isn’t this the same magazine that she was on the cover of back during the erection-free bus episode? Vinnie gets upset and interrupts the shoot because he’s playing around on the internet and sees the photographs of Ariane and Ray J everywhere, with some comments appended to them in which people are speculating that this could spell the end of Ariane and Vinnie’s relationship.

Okay, Vinnie. You’re new to this whole internet thing, but I’ve been writing for 411mania for almost exactly ten years now. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: You never pay attention to the comments section. They never know what they’re talking about, unless they’re complimenting you. Then they’re geniuses and your best friends.

After a commercial, we are at the release party for Ariane’s single “Bye Bye.” I think that the marketing strategy for the song is based exclusively on people clicking the wrong link in iTunes while trying to get their *NSYNC nostalgia fix.

Eva and her husband Jonathan are at the party, and Ariane actually references the history between the two of them, stating that they’ve been able to move on from the photo incident from earlier in the season. Eva and Ari have a conversation, and apparently Vinnie is still sulking about the Ray J photographs. Eva notes that Ariane would be upset if Vinnie were rolling around with another woman on the internet, and, in a completely uncharacteristic move, Ariane admits that she may have done something wrong and apologizes to Vinnie. Everybody parties, because it is a rare day when a storyline is allowed to last for more than one episode on this show.

Now we are in Omaha for Monday Night Raw, and Aksana breaks Trinity’s face, which you should all be very familiar with. Trinity finishes the match and walks to the back under her own power, but, as one of the Bellas astutely notes, “Doc is like all by her and stuff,” so we have a cliffhanger based on Trinity’s condition.

Overall: Over the last few weeks, I’ve been giving Total Divas episodes relatively positive reviews, indicating that, though it was not something that I would choose to watch on my own, it was becoming mostly inoffensive programming.

This is the episode that breaks the streak, though. THIS episode was a complete mess. The main focus of the show was the Eva Marie/Summer Rae storyline, and I pointed out the problems with it during the body of the review. I think that it bears repeating, though, that there is no way anybody who actually follows WWE could fall into the story as the Total Divas producers wanted them to, because it’s readily apparent to any wrestling fan that Eva actually DOES suck (whether it’s her fault or not is another debate for another time) and therefore Summer appears to have been in the right.

Our other storylines were Vinnie/Ariane and the Nattie painting scenario. As a story, Ariane’s arc wasn’t necessarily awful, and the one thing that I like more than anything else on the show was that we got some real character growth, no matter how minor it might be, in Ari and Eva’s relationship becoming more positive. However, no matter how worthwhile the story might be, the character of Ariane becomes more grating on a weekly basis, as she screams and gyrates like an eight year old girl hyped up on pixie sticks and Kool-Aid Cool Bursts. No matter how physically beautiful a woman may be, that sort of behavior makes her completely intolerable.

Finally, the bit with Nattie and her paintings was just . . . odd. It did continue a trend of plots for Total Divas being stolen from 1970s sitcoms, which I generally don’t mind because old school sitcom plots are usually fully realized stories. However, this one just petered out in the middle. There was an attempt to get some comedy out of Nattie and TJ transporting the painting, but it didn’t last nearly long enough to get real mileage. There was an attempt to tell a story about the Bellas not knowing what to do with the paintings, but it just petered out in the middle and never got to the natural resolution, which would be one of the twins coming clean about the quality of the artwork. Theoretically the story could carry over to next week, but that seems unlikely.

Fortunately, the saving grace may be the Trinity storyline. Even though it felt like it was hastily slapped on to the end of this episode, I’m interested in seeing where they go with it, because the best parts of this show have been those that are in some way rooted in reality as opposed to having been created out of whole clothing, and this is obviously something that really did happen with some genuine emotion attached to it.

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.