in the membrane?

What is this?

WWE attempting comedy.

Raw has been nearly unwatchable lately. Just terrible stories and bland matches.

I'm half watching waiting for a segment I'm actually interested in, but it just isn't coming.

I just find myself not caring through the entire show. I just watch out of habit.

If someone like me, who has been watching wrestling for almost twenty years, struggles to watch this stuff, how the hell are casual fans still watching?

Don't you know I'm loco????

They have either forgotten or don't know how face/heel dynamics and turns work. Bayley has had her turn, but they are going to try and get too cute by having her tease being better so they can turn her again and no one will care.

There are two answers to this:

1) They're not. The demographics reveal that it's older fans that still watch and keep this thing alive.

2) I think the idea is that younger generations are so used to gentrified and passionless wrestling without any sort of alternative that they accept it. They won't have any framework for what is good or interesting anymore, and they will be easy to cater to, because anything will do.

Sounds like Orton-Rollins all over again. Remember when Orton got curb stomped and then made his return like a one man wrecking crew to get revenge on Rollins and then he just... re-joined The Authority so he could turn face again? It's crazy how the simplest storytelling is like brain surgery to them.

It's like they wanna hotshot everything but also go with a mind-numblingly slow burn at the same time. It doesn't make sense.

That is exactly the example that kept creeping into my brain. In the world of wrestling, it makes perfect sense for Orton to come back as a total bad-ass looking for Seth's head to put in a spike. Instead they do that Freudian mind games shit that they apparently thought was so good they'd bring it back for his feud with Wyatt. It dilutes the fan reaction. They think that their stories are "complex," when they actually just diffuse all dramatic tension instead of blowing it up.

It's sad they've gotten Bayley to the point where they've had to turn her, anyway. I'm not her biggest fan, and there are obvious holes in her game (big ones, actually), but the goodwill with the niche live audiences was there. You book around her and try and tell a story of her needing to adjust to the main roster -- the sort of stuff they are giving to Ronda Rousey now to take away her bad-ass edge. She really should have been a babyface for YEARS until they get to the point where her heel turn is genuinely shocking and should have been comparable, if obviously not as big, to the Hulk Hogan heel turn. "Good Girl Gone Bad" should have been a teaser on magazine covers after she turned. Instead it's just another failed NXT gimmick switching allegiance. And then they try and throw a wet blanket over that the following week.

This is one of the problems with current WWE main roster writing. It's almost like they're trolling their paying customers - network OR live event - by making characters do shit they've already established they wouldn't or shouldn't do, ESPECIALLY if the person was in NXT. And only rarely does it work... but then you have to worry about them just abandoning it mid-stride.


How dare you keep watching our shit! We'll show you!

They think what they do is good storytelling. It isn't. It's bad.