The thing that drives me the craziest about Total Divas is how far removed from the actual WWE timeline it is. Well, to be more accurate, the thing that drives me the craziest right now is how the locations and events are months behind today’s WWE storylines. Nattie’s about to start talking and that will immediately trump anything that I thought was driving me crazy, so all this talk about me losing my mind is simply temporary and constantly changing. Obviously, I don’t expect this week’s Total Divas to be in sync with the rest of the company, because then it would be an hour of watching the Bellas prepare to fight Nattie and Paige, and while that would be the best possible use of this series, it’s simply impossible.
However, one of this week’s main storylines is the time that Brie Bella and Daniel Bryan came home to find some guys robbing them, and Bryan immediately went into professional ass-kicker mode and subdued one idiot until police got him. We’re usually not supposed to call criminals “idiots,” but if you walk into a house and start taking things, and then see a picture of Daniel Bryan in a reclaimed wood frame on one of the many repurposed items in the house, run bro. Or else you’re an idiot. Anyway, that happened last July and it’s a topic of last night’s episode, “Insecurity Breach.” But at least the WWE has no problem allowing the series to influence current feuds. We don’t have to like it, and we also don’t have to make sense of it.
Pre-Episode Total Divas Power Rankings
1) Paige – She’s just fun, even by lousier reality TV series standards. If the series catered less to those standards and more to building up the Divas division by telling us, “These wrestlers don’t give a f*ck,” the world might be a better place.
2) Brie Bella – She’s sort of the constant. Not awful, but not the greatest.
3) Alicia Fox – If I ran this series and/or the Divas division, Foxy’s role would have been to come on the show as the 9-year veteran looking to put her foot down, take charge of the younger wrestlers and take what is hers. I definitely would not introduce her to the series for no reason other than to expose Rosa’s breast.
4) Nikki Bella – She’s a terribly arrogant creature with no grey area. Somehow that doesn’t make her the worst.
5) Cameron – Cameron’s role should be the Diva trying to create a new angle for herself, while training to be better in the ring. Right now, she and Foxy are sharing the duties of “sassy black friend.”
6) Rosa Mendes – Just thinking about what we’ve seen from her this season makes me…
7) Eva Marie – Somehow her role on this series became the Diva with all the health problems. It’s definitely better than when she tried to sleep with Fandango to get ahead, all while she was engaged, or her hating Summer Rae for not tagging her into a match, even though her poor training made her a detriment to her colleagues. But we also won’t forget those things.
8) Nattie – She’s traded hard work and a family legacy for being the bitter drama queen. I’d respect that if she was ever right in any scenario.
Heading into the sunset: Summer Rae and Naomi, or the background one-liners, as I call them now.
This Week in ‘We Have Nothing to Write About, so…’
As always, the Divas started their day by eating together at a restaurant in whichever town they’re in at that moment, and Nattie suddenly wondered for no reason other than it gets the episode’s worst segue out of the way, “Whatever happened to those guys who robbed you, Brie?” Again, this happened last July and as Brie quickly explains, the idiot that Daniel Bryan caught is in jail and his accomplices are “trying to get parole.” I assume that means they’re in jail, too, or they’re making their last stand in a desert ranch with the cops surrounding them, and Ted Nugent’s about to walk out the front door in a zebra-skin overcoat and blast the man down with some righteous shredding.
“This is the last thing I want to talk about,” Brie said after Nattie asked if she’s afraid that they’ll come back for revenge. I hate this so much because it’s manufactured bullshit, but good lord, someone needs to take this show’s writer – I still assume it’s Todd, the overworked bro who hasn’t seen his kids in months – and slap him while people shout terrible show ideas at him, so he’ll stop doing this crap. Instead, oh no Brie doesn’t want to talk about this so let’s devote an entire episode to it, almost six months to the day after it happened!
Quote of the Episode Runner-Up
“I wanna move from my house in Tampa, because people are going through my mailbox.” – Nattie
I hope people stop stealing her issues of Cat Fancy and “Almost Divorced, Always Right” feminist literature. Always remember: Nattie’s the victim.
Quote of the Episode
“My sister’s a little naïve.” – Nikki Bella and her breasts, regarding Brie not having the world’s greatest security system
Here’s a fun idea for a new Total Divas spin-off – let’s have Nikki and Brie Bella move into homes by themselves and then spend a week sending people to break into their homes and torment them. Ten bucks says that Brie would move out after the first day, while Nikki would spend the entire week screaming into her phone for John Cena to come rescue her and buy her a new home, while complaining to the camera that she’s a star and shouldn’t have to put up with this. But sure, Nikki, tell us how much smarter you are than Brie.
“If it was my man, my house, my dog, I’d be on top of that shit like no other.” Whatever you say, Nikki. Evildoers beware of the forearm of justice. What bothers me most about this isn’t the judgment or terrible segues. It’s the fact that Daniel and Brie waited, what? Four months to install a security system? Seems like it should have been a bigger priority in the immediate wake of the robbery. Brie’s solution: She doesn’t tell Daniel that she’s having “bob wire” (barbed wire to you and me and Daniel) installed around their house like they’re the bad guys in a low budget action film. And then she put up “BEWARE OF DOG” signs for Josie.
Brie: “Crazy or safe, Bryan?”
Daniel: “This is crazy.”
Daniel is correct. “I knew Bryan wouldn’t be ecstatic about the bob wire.” Nobody would, unless Daniel suddenly became a Northern Florida meth cook. Daniel’s sane and rational solution was to start a neighborhood watch, and now I want his new in-ring gimmick to be an overly concerned neighbor who asks the other wrestlers if they’re sure their homes are protected. If only he could have been around when DDP was stalking the Undertaker’s wife, maybe he could have saved us from that angle.
Eva Marie is a Pioneer in the Divas Division
Health problems be damned, because Eva Marie continues to rise to the top without ever actually doing anything. She’s going to be the first WWE Diva to ever appear on the cover of Muscle and Fitness magazine, which is an incredible accomplishment, given her lack of effort in actually becoming a wrestling star. She’s like the elected government official of the Divas division. However, this cover is coming at a price to Eva Marie, because she’s busting her ass too much to get back into shape. She’s turning into Jessie Spano before our eyes, and if she suddenly shouts, “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so… scared!” I will make her the Top Diva for the rest of eternity.
In reality, Eva Marie is being turned into some sort of walking, talking afterschool special, and Cameron was concerned about her because she’s developing an eating disorder. Naturally, when faced with such a dilemma, you ask a man to step in and rank the female on the trusted “Bomb Dot Com” scale. In this case, though, that man was Titus O’Neill, and he gave us possibly the greatest moment of this series by explaining to Cameron that every time she talks, her Bomb Dot Com-iness plummets. Titus is the absolute best.
Cameron ended up meeting with Jonathan and they organized an intervention of sorts for Eva Marie, because she thinks she’s fat and ugly and won’t work out because of it. I don’t even know how to describe what they put her through, so you can just watch it and then give me the same confused look that I have right now…
The biggest question I have about this – that I’m afraid to ask because I know what door I’m opening – what’s wrong with the sketch on the left…
I guess it’s just not the right image for the cover of the prestigious Muscle and Fitness magazine, but you guys will never believe what happened… it worked and Eva Marie knows she’s beautiful now!
Rosa has a Crush on Paige Now, Because this Show is Basically Softcore Porn
“Paige is, like, gorgeous. I don’t know, there’s something about her that really turns me on.” First off, I feel really bad for the random store employees that are always standing around and watching this nonsense go down. Like the poor retail clerk in the changing room scene must have been watching Rosa and Paige try new clothes on and thinking that the camera was there to shoot girl-on-girl porn foreplay scenes. I’m not trying to be a scumbag here, but Rosa talks like a porn actress doing a scene AT ALL TIMES. And it really sucks that she’s doing it in a scene with Paige, because it’s demeaning to her as a wrestler and human. Hell, it’s demeaning to all of us.
Meanwhile, Rosa wants new Botox injections for her mouth wrinkles and ass injections because she thinks her butt should be bigger. We are either watching the world’s greatest meltdown (both figurative and eventually physical) or a truly convincing and manipulative master thespian who has suckered me into her con for the sake of her art. Guess which way I’m leaning.
After Paige revealed that she has been with a girl before, Rosa told Alicia Fox that she wants to “explore” her relationship with Paige even more. This is troublesome to Foxy, because Paige, Rosa and Foxy are the “Three Amigas,” out of nowhere, and this could really hurt their group dynamic, even though we never knew until now that they’re the three best friends that have ever been friends. Guess what… Rosa made it incredibly awkward by kissing Paige on the lips. “I don’t get it, the way you look at me, the way you’re there for me.” This is porn without the sex. Plain and simple. And it’s stupid. Stop it.
And yet that wasn’t the most amazing thing about this awful story. Nattie finally weighed in on it after Rosa blew Paige off in a public setting for the second time in this episode, and somehow this is all Paige’s fault for sending out the wrong signals. This is hilariously stupid. Just mind-blowing bullshit being thrown at us in this episode, and you’ll never guess how it played out…
Post-Episode Total Divas Power Rankings
1) Paige – I can’t be mad at her for being involved in this story, but it’s really disappointing that the WWE is doing this to her.
2) Alicia Fox – She was actually an assertive, entertaining presence in this episode. This makes me very happy.
3) Brie Bella – Sure, she was hella crazy this week, but the show was so desperate for a pointless story and she played her role well.
4) Nikki Bella – As arrogant as ever, but not all that terrible. I assume next week’s episode will be all about her.
5) Cameron – Titus making fun of her might already be my favorite TV moment of 2015. But next week we’re getting a feud between her and Foxy, and the potential of this feud for awful TV really worries me.
6) Eva Marie – Her photo shoot at the end left me speechless, because it was basically a victory dance to celebrate how hot people think she is.
7) Rosa Mendes – I would love to watch this week’s episode with her and then ask her if she’s happy with how it presents her. Hell, any episode that she’s had a featured story in.
8) Nattie – Her only real role this week was telling Paige it was her fault that Rosa kissed her. Nattie’s the worst.
