‘Total Bellas’ Recap: Baby Pneumonia And The Performance Center Flu

Welcome back! This is our third Total Bellas recap of the season. If you want to find our other Total Bellas coverage, check out the tag page. And you can find all things Total Divas right over here. So without further ado, let’s get down to business and recap the latest episode of the greatest television franchise known to man. The Bellas and their fellas!

At Casa De Cena, Daniel Bryan is admiring John’s 32-gallon fish tank and being passive-aggressive about how the last time they were there, the fish didn’t look happy. Cena condescends to Bryan that Daniel would probably prefer they be in the ocean, then Cenasplains to him about how pure the water is.

Nikki thankfully interrupts this to make fun of Bryan and John for wearing the same shirt, and compares them to Arnold and Danny DeVito in Twins. Well, to be fair, it’s Nikki’s mom who completes the comparison.

Cena then repeatedly tells Kathy that it’s “f*cked up” to compare Daniel Bryan to Danny DeVito, which is insulting to Danny DeVito, at the very least. Daniel Bryan then does a pretty outstanding Danny DeVito posture impression.

Nailed it. And we’re finally at the opening credits! This is the first time I’ve paid attention to the opening credits really at all, and it features side-by-side video of the Bellas and their corresponding fellas while the theme song says “We finally made it.” What, just now? In retirement and injury, in the sixth season of reality television after being headlining wrestlers? Good call.

Out at the pool, Bryan and Brie have bought a life preserver for their adorable dog, Josie. They’re going to teach her to swim!

Yeah you go gurl dog. Brie is understandably nervous about winding her career down as they get close to her retirement match at WrestleMania, but she and Bryan still have a relaxing time swimming with their weird awkward dog. Living the dream.

Later, Nikki gets interrupted from her own dog eating its own poop by a call from John, who gives her an update on his schedule. He’s got Raw, and is hosting the Today show, and another awards show, so he and Nikki are going to be all over the place during the road to WrestleMania. Bryan doesn’t know yet whether he’s going to be part of WrestleMania, and he’s definitely getting introspective and frustrated that he’s so out of the loop and so uninvolved with everything.

The next day, Brie hits the road and leaves Bryan all alone to take care of Nicole for a while. This should go super well! The two of them watch Brie’s appearance and match against Summer Rae on Raw and share a moment when they realize Brie is wearing Nikki’s shorts and Bryan’s kickpads.

They emerge with a compromise, having opening doors that were previously closed. Bros.

Nikki applauds Brie for getting her entrance on TV, which is really something to think about when you see someone already in the ring when WWE comes back from commercial. It’s important to them, too. Sorry, Summer Rae! We remember when you were on this show! Nikki is happy for Brie, but is sad she can’t be there with her. Kathy asks Bryan if he’s sick of being around them all the time with Brie gone. Bryan says he misses Brie, but he’s less lonely here than he would be in Phoenix. That makes everyone happy!

It looks like this episode, we’re going to get to know Kathy a bit better! We find out about her company, JBN, which is an “executive search firm” and the initials stand for “JJ, Brianna and Nicole.” Awwwww. JJ is getting grumbly because he has joined the firm as Director of Business Development, but his mom treats him like an executive assistant. It’s almost like the guy has never been an employee of a company his mother runs before!

Outside at morning coffee, everyone is discussing Brie’s match from Raw, and Nikki once again brings up Bryan’s great mind for wrestling. She thinks he would be an outstanding trainer at NXT, and Johnny Ace agrees. Bryan isn’t convinced, because he doesn’t think he’ll ever be as passionate about anything as he was about actually wrestling. Nikki suggests they just go by the Performance Center today and see how it goes. JJ wants to tag along.

In the car, Brie calls and talks about how she’s the boss of Bryan, which is a completely natural segue for JJ to talk about how he’s the joke of the office because of how his mom bosses him around. Bro, that is literally how nepotism works. But he gets distracted in the middle of his own rant when he sees a road sign and just abruptly stops talking completely, like a magpie.

Dammit who dangled something shiny in front of JJ again? Now we gotta reboot him.

Luckily, Nikki barges right into the silence by talking about how her neck brace is “shafy” her and the two guys have to mansplain that the word is pronounced “chafing.” It still takes her like six tries to get it right.

They arrive at the Performance Center — it’s JJ’s first time being there! — and introduce themselves to everyone, then sit back and see how things operate. Sami Zayn stops by!

He starts talking to Nikki about neck injuries because he has the same “gimmick.” The gimmick of a horrific neck injury. Love you, you carny-ass wrestlers. Nikki talks about how she can never do the Rack Attack or any big power moves again. Daniel says that he was working on developing a new style where he would have to take very few bumps, because he would move like an animal, which he specifically had in mind for wrestling Brock Lesnar. He demonstrates.

God dammit, I can’t believe we all got robbed of that. Nikki tells him what a good job he’s doing putting on an impromptu seminar here, but Sami says Bryan even revealed in his autobiography he thinks he’d be a bad trainer. Bryan says he’s still having a lot of trouble adapting to not being a wrestler, because he was only told he would have to retire two days before he made his announcement, so it’s all just been sprung on him and he still feels perfectly capable of wrestling. He successfully bums everyone out.

In the car ride back, Nikki apologizes for taking him to the PC, because she didn’t think about the possibility of it making him sad.

When Cena arrives home later, he sits down with JJ and talks about how cool it was to be at the Performance Center. He said he’s been thinking about getting in the ring himself and doesn’t think he could bring that up to his mom. He asks Cena to put in a word for him. Cena rightfully says, “Well you were just there.” Then he explains that the only thing he could possibly do for him is what JJ already did today: go to the Performance Center, shake hands, and start working. JJ calls his talk with John maybe the most awkward experience of his life, which is really saying something considering we’ve already seen the time he texted his sister a picture of his ding-dong.

Nikki, Bryan and Kathy come in and Cena says he and Nikki are going out for a very special cheat dinner, because of her dedication over the past month.

Hell yeah, Ruth’s Cris. (I’m assuming. It’s probably Outback. There are no rules there, but it’s just right.) Daniel says his visit to the Performance Center was “A total boner-crusher, because I can’t do any of it.” That would be a good wrestling name: Boner Crusher. Cena agrees that Bryan would be an amazing coach or producer. Then Nikki says she thinks Bryan would be a great onscreen host for something. Hmmmm. Bryan emphatically shakes his head no when Cena asks him if he wants to do host work, but Nikki and JJ insist he’d be great at a Tiny Homes show or a treehouse show or something.

Bryan reveals that when he did the standard WWE personality test when he got hired, he scored in the bottom one percentile for ambition. And that little boy … grew up to main event WrestleMania.

Kathy and JJ get in a fight because she keeps bossing him around and getting him to do piddly little things, like go print out a contract, bring it to her to sign, and then scan it back in. That’s just normal mom stuff, bruh.

Elsewhere, Nikki takes a different approach to living with Bryan by chilling out and taking him to high tea.

Hell yeah. Daniel has a good time, in part because he loves tea, although he would prefer if it were a more casual setting. He talks about how he’s excited to start a family and he’s looking forward to spending more time with Brie and is waiting for the whole WrestleMania madness to be over with.

Later, at family outdoor fire, Cena says he wouldn’t get a puppy again, but he’d definitely get another crate-trained rescue dog. Nikki says they could just have a kid, and she’ll potty-train and raise it while John is gone. John says it would take her 18 years, to which she replies, “It doesn’t take 18 years to potty-train someone or to have them talk English.” Once again: nailed it.

Brie finally gets back home! She’s exhausted and there’s so much to do, but all she wants to do is hang out with her husband. She can tell he’s in a bad place, but she just doesn’t have time to try to fix it right now.

JJ and Johnny Ace drive golf balls into one of Cena’s lakes, even though it bums Brie out because it’s literally just recreational littering. JJ once again talks about how he’s thinking about going into wrestling, and Johnny and Brie both basically tell JJ he’s dumb, because he’s set up to take over the family business and probably isn’t cut out for wrestling.

In Nikki’s room, Brie was trying on Nicole’s neck brace and discovered that she keeps a secret hidden photo of Cena hanging out with children.

Oh, girl. You got it BAD. Forget baby fever, I think you’ve got baby pneumonia. Brie talks to Nikki about how JJ is thinking about going into wrestling and Nicole says he’s just looking for ANYTHING that would make him happy, because he’s currently miserable at JBN.

The Bellas go out for mani-pedis and Brie reveals that Bryan has been dealing with anxiety and depression since he was 25. Nicole is shocked.

At a family lunch, Brie spills the beans that JJ is looking for a new opportunity. Kathy had no idea JJ was unhappy at JBN. She says if he’s unhappy, he should put in his two week notice. She says they’re a small company and everyone has to chip in and do stuff that isn’t in their job description. He wonders if that includes picking up laundry.

Once again, Cena becomes the voice of reason, saying that Brie shouldn’t have tossed JJ under the bus and that JJ is probably just taking stock of his life after visiting the Performance Center and seeing all the other things that are available out there in this big old world.

Later, Brie talks to her mom and says she is hard on JJ sometimes. Brie suggests they bring JJ on their walk with Josie. JJ says he is happy with what he does at JBN, but he wants to take on more responsibility and is tired of feeling like a punching bag. He wants to feel important and doesn’t want to feel like he’s working for his mom all the time. Fair!

Wednesday formal dinner time!

Three episodes in and we already know that Wednesday formal dinner will become the setting where all of the issues of the episode get resolved. And also where we find out that Nikki doesn’t know what a pronoun is!

Kathy proposes a toast to JJ, because she realized she can’t do the business without him, so she’s giving him 20 percent of the company and making him a partner. JJ is blown away by this development.

Well, maybe formal dinner won’t be where EVERYTHING gets resolved, because the next day, Bryan and Brie go on a manatee snorkel tour. Brie thinks Bryan might have been a manatee in another life. The boat goes out to a spot called “Jurassic” and Brie and Bryan swim with some chill-ass manatees.

Bryan loved it, and felt a lot more at ease being out in nature. Brie says she knows what he’s going through. She says he can’t let his wrestling brain go to waste, and he says his brain is already going to waste. Brie thinks he needs therapy and she wonders if she should just forget about WrestleMania and retire now to help him out. She has no idea what to do.

Next week: Bryan leaves Casa de Cena and Nikki questions her sister’s happiness. Neat!