Serious Mozzarella
Special Victims Unit
These are a couple of issues I've been thinking about for a while.
Continuity
If every other show in the world can have a consistent continuity, then why can't the WWE? Or TNA? Or any wrestling show? Every time I think about this, I think of House, and the parallels any wrestling show can have with House, or any other show on TV.
House has been on for six seasons, and it managed to keep an extremely strong consistency with its characters and its storylines with its limited cast of what, 6 characters at first, and three new ones later on? The WWE's got a cast of about 120, with new people coming in all the time. So why isn't there any consistent continuity? Even if this has to be run like a soap opera, where the same characters are being introduced all the time.
People always complain that the character is getting stale, but I never thought of it like that. I always thought of the situation the character was in getting stale. I don't think there's a single story on any wrestling show that hasn't been done before. We have an invasion angle. We have tag teams breaking up because of in-ring accidents. We have divas being relentless ***** to each other because they all seem to have the mentality of early-middle school teenagers. We have people becoming growingly frustrated with "management." And we have people chasing the championship because of flat out determination (which actually works more than once). Every single one of these have been done before, in their respective companies.
But I digress. My main problem isn't with the storylines themselves (for right now, I'll get back to that later). My problem right now is with character continuity. If you have ever seen me on this forum, you'd know that I am the biggest Jericholic, along with a few others. But I recognize that creatively, his character has no continuity. He went from a fan-loving rockstar to a guy that walks around in suits and uses big words to insult the fans, when he's not being flat out deluded. It really doesn't make any sense from a realistic standpoint, as no rational person would do this, and it makes it rather hard to suspend by disbelief. When I look at Jericho, all I think about is how good he is as a performer, not how good or how into his character I am.
Randy Orton, on the other hand, seems to have the most consistency with his character that I can think of. When he debuted, he was just a guy no one really knew anything about, and then he joined Evolution, but you never really heard about what makes Randy Orton tick, except for the fact that he had some deep-seated hatred for WWE legends, which probably comes from daddy issues. Then one day, he absolutely exploded and became the guy you know today. It's good writing.
Examples of people who have kept close to their original character: Edge, John Cena (ish), The Big Show, The Miz, Kane (ish).
But what about people who regularly change their gimmick? HHH? Mick Foley? The Undertaker (who doesn't change a lot, but a few major changes, and I don't think of him in the same way anymore)? How come it was so hard to keep them in one direction?
HHH - went from prissy boy from the richest part of CT. Then he became some punk that vandalized shit and made penis and fart jokes (a total 180), then he became the cerebral assassin/"The Game".
Mick Foley - Mankind, Dude Love, Cactus Jack. He's done these all on one show.
The Undertaker - Dead Man, Biker Dude, Dead Man.
Did anyone who had watched wrestling forget that their previous gimmicks existed already? Am I supposed to believe that The Undertaker is supposed to be a dead guy, within the fictional world of the WWE where that kind of thing was possible, who turned into an ass-kicking biker dude, back into a dead guy? I understand that this is supposed to be WWE, and I'm not supposed to be thinking this hard, but I can't even keep a focus when I'm told that this fictional world is supposed to be one way, and it changes on you.
So the environment has changed a little bit since the late '80s, early '90s. It's gotten a little more realistic, and we get a little insight into how the characters think. But the Undertaker is still around. He might have been a little more realistic when he was just coming out to soft music, no one really mentioning how he was actually dead, but he's already drawing power from an urn, fighting with his mortal, alive brother who is suffering from wounds that have lasted since he was a child. All in the same couple of hours where other people are wrestling for more realistic reasons.
I was having a giant discussion with Ferbian over MSN about the Nexus, continuity being one of my biggest problems.
The Nexus came off, to me, as a group of guys who were more intelligent than most other wrestlers. They've scouted guys, watched every Raw, and made sure they didn't make the same mistakes as those other guys who have tried to "invade" in the past. WCW, NWO, the Outsiders, etc. They're not making those mistakes, and they know that they're rookies. They know that if they went up against any of the top dogs in the WWE one-on-one, they'd get their asses kicked, so they're going to stay in a group.
It was absolutely flawless. It was thought up beautifully and realistically. Until the pieces began falling apart, and they've been falling for the same exact shit other people have been falling for.
1. Kicking people out of your group. Yeah, this might have worked if you're Evolution, or the Four Horseman. They're an elite group of wrestlers that could have dominated on their own. The Nexus? In this FICTIONAL world, they're a rookie group of guys who have been around for approximately six months. Kicking out members who lose singles matches against guys who have been around for years doesn't make any goddamned sense. There was nobody who was "dead weight" in that group for losing singles matches. In fact, that group needs every member it could get.
2. Trying to recruit John Cena. So I'm going to go ahead and assume that the fictional members of Nexus knew what the WWE was more than a couple of months before they were on WWE's fictional programming. I'm going to assume that they know what's going to happen when they force someone to join their stable. That person is either going to half-ass their efforts and do everything in their power to rip apart the stable from the inside. Keeping that in mind, why do they want John Cena so bad? If it was imperative that they keep him around, they should have been trying to convince him to stay, not force him to. So John Cena absolutely took out Tarver, and the explanation goes back to my first point: "I was looking for a reason to get rid of him anyway." So we all know what's going to happen. Cena is going to continue to half ass his membership, or he's just going to make it known that he doesn't want to be there, so something is going to happen that he'll be granted a match against Barrett, or he'll be "kicked out" of Nexus somehow.
Nexus has been doing all kinds of shit that subtly picks away at the show's continuity by being flat-out unintelligent. Continuity issues are one of the biggest problems with all wrestling shows in general, and the WWE and TNA respectively needs to find writers that can write compelling stories, instead of rehashing the same shit over and over again.
Disclaimer: I'm aware of the issues wrestling shows face with compelling writing, and I know it has a lot to do with being a year-long show with no breaks. I am a firm believer that lots of wrestlers should get breaks, so A) it keeps the character fresh, and B) it gives the guy a fucking break. I also think wrestling should be seasonal, like most shows, even if they only take one season off. I believe these would fix a lot of issues on the creative end. It's a constant reboot, it lengthens careers, and it keeps performers from becoming burnt out too quickly.
Anyway, this is officially my longest thread, and it's only half done. There's a part 2, but the subject matter is extremely different, and deserves its own thread.
Continuity
If every other show in the world can have a consistent continuity, then why can't the WWE? Or TNA? Or any wrestling show? Every time I think about this, I think of House, and the parallels any wrestling show can have with House, or any other show on TV.
House has been on for six seasons, and it managed to keep an extremely strong consistency with its characters and its storylines with its limited cast of what, 6 characters at first, and three new ones later on? The WWE's got a cast of about 120, with new people coming in all the time. So why isn't there any consistent continuity? Even if this has to be run like a soap opera, where the same characters are being introduced all the time.
People always complain that the character is getting stale, but I never thought of it like that. I always thought of the situation the character was in getting stale. I don't think there's a single story on any wrestling show that hasn't been done before. We have an invasion angle. We have tag teams breaking up because of in-ring accidents. We have divas being relentless ***** to each other because they all seem to have the mentality of early-middle school teenagers. We have people becoming growingly frustrated with "management." And we have people chasing the championship because of flat out determination (which actually works more than once). Every single one of these have been done before, in their respective companies.
But I digress. My main problem isn't with the storylines themselves (for right now, I'll get back to that later). My problem right now is with character continuity. If you have ever seen me on this forum, you'd know that I am the biggest Jericholic, along with a few others. But I recognize that creatively, his character has no continuity. He went from a fan-loving rockstar to a guy that walks around in suits and uses big words to insult the fans, when he's not being flat out deluded. It really doesn't make any sense from a realistic standpoint, as no rational person would do this, and it makes it rather hard to suspend by disbelief. When I look at Jericho, all I think about is how good he is as a performer, not how good or how into his character I am.
Randy Orton, on the other hand, seems to have the most consistency with his character that I can think of. When he debuted, he was just a guy no one really knew anything about, and then he joined Evolution, but you never really heard about what makes Randy Orton tick, except for the fact that he had some deep-seated hatred for WWE legends, which probably comes from daddy issues. Then one day, he absolutely exploded and became the guy you know today. It's good writing.
Examples of people who have kept close to their original character: Edge, John Cena (ish), The Big Show, The Miz, Kane (ish).
But what about people who regularly change their gimmick? HHH? Mick Foley? The Undertaker (who doesn't change a lot, but a few major changes, and I don't think of him in the same way anymore)? How come it was so hard to keep them in one direction?
HHH - went from prissy boy from the richest part of CT. Then he became some punk that vandalized shit and made penis and fart jokes (a total 180), then he became the cerebral assassin/"The Game".
Mick Foley - Mankind, Dude Love, Cactus Jack. He's done these all on one show.
The Undertaker - Dead Man, Biker Dude, Dead Man.
Did anyone who had watched wrestling forget that their previous gimmicks existed already? Am I supposed to believe that The Undertaker is supposed to be a dead guy, within the fictional world of the WWE where that kind of thing was possible, who turned into an ass-kicking biker dude, back into a dead guy? I understand that this is supposed to be WWE, and I'm not supposed to be thinking this hard, but I can't even keep a focus when I'm told that this fictional world is supposed to be one way, and it changes on you.
So the environment has changed a little bit since the late '80s, early '90s. It's gotten a little more realistic, and we get a little insight into how the characters think. But the Undertaker is still around. He might have been a little more realistic when he was just coming out to soft music, no one really mentioning how he was actually dead, but he's already drawing power from an urn, fighting with his mortal, alive brother who is suffering from wounds that have lasted since he was a child. All in the same couple of hours where other people are wrestling for more realistic reasons.
I was having a giant discussion with Ferbian over MSN about the Nexus, continuity being one of my biggest problems.
The Nexus came off, to me, as a group of guys who were more intelligent than most other wrestlers. They've scouted guys, watched every Raw, and made sure they didn't make the same mistakes as those other guys who have tried to "invade" in the past. WCW, NWO, the Outsiders, etc. They're not making those mistakes, and they know that they're rookies. They know that if they went up against any of the top dogs in the WWE one-on-one, they'd get their asses kicked, so they're going to stay in a group.
It was absolutely flawless. It was thought up beautifully and realistically. Until the pieces began falling apart, and they've been falling for the same exact shit other people have been falling for.
1. Kicking people out of your group. Yeah, this might have worked if you're Evolution, or the Four Horseman. They're an elite group of wrestlers that could have dominated on their own. The Nexus? In this FICTIONAL world, they're a rookie group of guys who have been around for approximately six months. Kicking out members who lose singles matches against guys who have been around for years doesn't make any goddamned sense. There was nobody who was "dead weight" in that group for losing singles matches. In fact, that group needs every member it could get.
2. Trying to recruit John Cena. So I'm going to go ahead and assume that the fictional members of Nexus knew what the WWE was more than a couple of months before they were on WWE's fictional programming. I'm going to assume that they know what's going to happen when they force someone to join their stable. That person is either going to half-ass their efforts and do everything in their power to rip apart the stable from the inside. Keeping that in mind, why do they want John Cena so bad? If it was imperative that they keep him around, they should have been trying to convince him to stay, not force him to. So John Cena absolutely took out Tarver, and the explanation goes back to my first point: "I was looking for a reason to get rid of him anyway." So we all know what's going to happen. Cena is going to continue to half ass his membership, or he's just going to make it known that he doesn't want to be there, so something is going to happen that he'll be granted a match against Barrett, or he'll be "kicked out" of Nexus somehow.
Nexus has been doing all kinds of shit that subtly picks away at the show's continuity by being flat-out unintelligent. Continuity issues are one of the biggest problems with all wrestling shows in general, and the WWE and TNA respectively needs to find writers that can write compelling stories, instead of rehashing the same shit over and over again.
Disclaimer: I'm aware of the issues wrestling shows face with compelling writing, and I know it has a lot to do with being a year-long show with no breaks. I am a firm believer that lots of wrestlers should get breaks, so A) it keeps the character fresh, and B) it gives the guy a fucking break. I also think wrestling should be seasonal, like most shows, even if they only take one season off. I believe these would fix a lot of issues on the creative end. It's a constant reboot, it lengthens careers, and it keeps performers from becoming burnt out too quickly.
Anyway, this is officially my longest thread, and it's only half done. There's a part 2, but the subject matter is extremely different, and deserves its own thread.