 |
| Pictured: The reason I can't get into a good segment pointing a finger at Justin Roberts Photo Credit: WWE.com |
I'll cop to not caring whether the other big bad authority figure was Vince McMahon or otherwise; while I could do without Papa Bear's anti-Semitism and fat-shaming, I have a weakness for him as an evil authority figure, even if his intentions aren't as evil like they were last night. That being said, if he were replaced by someone else, like, I don't know, Brad Maddox (making his TRIUMPHANT return to RAW after a month or so away), I might have enjoyed it most.
Confirmation bias is a tough thing to conquer sometimes, even for folks who rail against it as much as I do. Try as I might, there are some Triple H stories that I just can't get into to the point where I decide as soon as his music hits that I mentally check out. Lord knows, I've tried to forgive him. I've even tried to live with him. But every time he's on the screen, things don't end well for my entertainment value. Some say "give him a chance," but he's had, what, thirteen years now since he originally broke away from dX to start the "Game" character arc now? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a billion times, and I'm no better than the sap who keeps ordering EVOLVE iPPVs with the hope that the stream won't be wonky for once.
But the real shame of it is that the opening segment actually had some entertainment value. It was deliciously absurd, like almost borrowing a gag from the Three Stooges or even Looney Tunes. There's an actual, tangible story involved here, one that is definitely worth telling with replacement level characters. Axel himself keeps getting this rub of being the most imperfect version of his father. Yeah, he's not being booked strongly, but I'm actually way more interested in seeing him now, as the ne'er do well beneficiary of a metaphorical trust fun. It's the story they should have told with Ted DiBiase, Jr., but all the same, I'm not complaining here.
And it's not like Triple H or Vince McMahon were bad in their execution of it. Stephanie McMahon is another story. Someone mentioned to me last night on Twitter that she's way better than Dixie Carter, and that's technically correct if we ignore how low a bar we set by making Carter, who is more than likely a Twitter spam account who has gained sentience than a human being, the benchmark. Stephanie isn't even soap opera bad at emoting and conveying concern. She's bad bad. But yeah, Trips and Vince both did their parts well enough.
But maybe it's just that I have the endgame in mind, that all this is going to do is put more and more focus on the McMahon family circus when they're the last people on the show who need it. There are a lot of complaints about how much shine Sheamus or John Cena get, but those two are on the road every day, holding up the fort. They have value week-to-week every week. What's going to happen when Trips wants to go back on hiatus? Does anyone reasonably expect him to put over Axel in a meaningful manner? The historical evidence suggests heavily that the probability of that happening is slim to none.
I am not going to begrudge anyone for liking the McMahon family pukefest last night at all. People like what people like, and I'm fine with that. But everyone has their own foibles, their own mental blocks. I don't care that the ideas behind the segment were good, that their story arc during the entire show and over the last three weeks of RAW has been solid in theory. I just can't get into anything that posits that Triple H is going to be the protagonist of a story that is going to bring anything but aggravation to me personally. I embrace my confirmation bias here, but when does it become futile to expect anything different from the absolute worst character in the last 20 years of WWE programming?