On Wednesday night, E! will air the debut episode of Total Bellas, the spinoff to one of the most wonderful television programs ever to grace the airwaves, Total Divas. The spinoff will focus exclusively on the lives of the Bella Twins, their family and their significant others, while almost certainly retaining the ideologies and aesthetic that Total Divas has cultivated so perfectly over the past five seasons: taking a peek behind the curtain of WWE Superstars and their idiosyncratic private lives, lived mostly on the road.
Since the series bowed in 2013, it has turned a whole new audience on to pro wrestling simply by shining a spotlight on these endearingly weird women and their significant others. I can’t even tell you how many people have told me about becoming fans of WWE just because of Total Divas over the past few years. That’s exciting — almost as exciting as Total Bellas firing up this week.
To celebrate this wonderfully bizarre show that is now two shows, we wanted to celebrate the very best and most delightfully batsh*t moments in the history of Total Divas.
Nikki Bella Fails To Identify Even A Single World Leader In The Iconic ‘Yalta Conference’ Photograph
This moment. I believe this is the moment that Total Divas turned the corner for me from “inoffensive enough” to “indisputably art.” One of the most famous photos of all time, featuring three of the most recognizable world leaders in recorded history. Let’s not even get into the fact that John Cena has a framed photo of the Yalta Conference as one of the lone pieces of artwork in his bare-ass McMansion, let’s just embrace the delirium that comes with Nikki whiffing on naming any of the people in the photo. It’s just as wonderful to watch today as it was way back in 2013.
As Cena pointed out, after she got the first world leader wrong, she had a 50/50 shot at getting FDR right … and blew it. Her half-assed explanation that FDR looked different in this photo is probably the instant I fell hopelessly, irreversibly in love with this show and never let go.
The Bella Twins Argue About Whether A Seal Is A Fish
Anyone who has followed me in any form on the internet for the past three or four years knows how fond I am of this exchange. It was just a small part of a cold open to an episode, but it so perfectly encapsulates not only the dynamic between the Bellas, but the show as a whole. It’s the sort of inane conversation you’d have with your best friend or sibling … if you didn’t understand the difference between them.
Eva Marie Eats Dry Lettuce With Her Hands
The early seasons of Total Divas were all about how much everyone hated Eva Marie. Now Eva Marie is a national hero and America’s sweetheart. But there was a time when she was sitting alone backstage before the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony, shoveling dry lettuce leaves into her sad maw with her bare hands while her husband, Jonathan, sat next to her and ate two steaks.
It’s a metaphor for life, people. Sometimes we’re all eating sad lettuce while everyone around us is eating two steaks. But learn from Eva Marie and understand that you’re going to come out better and stronger on the other side.
Thank you, Eva Marie, for teaching us so much about life.
Big E Gets Familiar With Nattie’s Sister In A Hot Tub
Sometimes the supporting players stop in for brief arcs and capture our hearts and minds for eternity. Natalya’s sister was driving Tyson Kidd up the wall as a live-in houseguest, so Nattie thought the solution would be … getting her sister laid, basically. She chose Big E of all people to set up with her sister, and he unleashed the chest and tricep meat in Nattie and TJ’s hot tub while keeping his eyes firmly on the prize.
Basically, Big E’s interactions with Nattie’s sister were the most sex I’ve ever seen on television and I’m still a little flustered by it. No one man should have all that sexuality.
BRIE MODE
This is a combination post for all of the BRIE MODE moments over the entire run of Total Divas. For those who aren’t aware, “BRIE MODE” is the term that Brie Bella’s friends have given her state of consciousness when she drinks, because when she drinks, she tends to drink all the way to FULLY F*CKING CRUNK. Falling-off-barstools-in-London drunk. Barf-red-wine-onto-your-sister’s-boobs drunk.
Brie Bella has given us a lot of alcohol-induced merriment, is my point. Just remember this fondly the next time you see a toddler wearing a BRIE MODE shirt. And chuckle softly to yourself.
Nattie Doesn’t Know What A Butt Plug Is
For nearly the entire run of Total Divas to date, Natalya was the undisputed villain. She has mellowed out in recent seasons — a bit. But in the early days she was just the wooooorst. The other defining characteristic of Natalya was that she was extremely underexperienced at the sex compared to her contemporaries.
Please note: I am not trying to shame Natalya in any way regarding the have-sex. Her naïveté regarding sex stuff was the subject of multiple storylines over the course of the season. She revealed that TJ is the only sexual partner she’s ever had; that as of the first season she had only had missionary sex; and that her first attempt at role playing was a “home invasion” fantasy where TJ almost accidentally killed himself.
So with all this in mind, Natalya decided to reinvent her WWE character as a dominatrix in season four. This, despite not actually knowing what a dominatrix is or does. So she hired a dominatrix to come to her house and spank her in front of her mom, then took a trip to a sex shop, where she thought a tail butt plug was a cat toy. This, despite being shaped like a butt plug and being a butt plug in a sex shop.
Nattie’s sex stuff is weird and I hope it never stops being a plot point, is my general feeling on the matter.
Titus O’Neil Saves The Day
This one is sort of a catch-all for all Titus moments, as he began popping up after the first season and every single one of his appearances was must-watch dynamite. He never had a shortage of compelling real talk for everyone … like when he told Eva Marie her potential scantily-clad “Save the Date” photos were woefully inappropriate for the situation.
Thank you for keeping everyone honest with your real talk, Titus. And for wearing a Napoleon costume for no reason that one time. Why can’t your WWE persona be a third as engaging as the actual person you are on Total Divas?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSwVeSTv7Y
Jonathan, The Best In The World At Reactions
Remember earlier, when I mentioned Eva Marie’s husband, Jonathan? He’s an absolute gem, lowkey one of the best parts of the show. He sports shirts with the deepest Vs known to mankind and is constantly eating ridiculous portions of food and having inexplicable reactions to things.
That all comes to a delightful head early in season four, when he and Eva Marie are at a restaurant eating AN ENTIRE CHICKEN AND LIKE EIGHT SIDE DISHES. Eva goes to the bathroom and a woman who had been eating at the table next to them notices Eva’s bruises from her wrestling training. Eva tries to explain it, but the woman only kinda believes her.
Eva Marie returns to her table and explains that someone just thought she was in a domestic abuse situation. It takes Jonathan like a solid three seconds to process it, and then he makes this face:
Never change, Jonathan. Especially never change your shirts. The world needs deeper Vs on average.
Nikki Receives A Picture Of Her Brother’s Penis
Sometimes some things are easy to explain. Like when Nikki is at a get-together with some friends and gets texted a photo of her brother’s hog (which was meant to go to his fiancée). The brother to which said hog was attached is JJ, who will be a cast member on Total Bellas, as will said fiancée. We hope they bring up this dick pic, or perhaps talk about other dick pics.
Either way, judging by the size of that blur, well done, JJ.
John Cena Channels His Inner Frat Boy
In a show filled with human revelations, John Cena may well be the most revelatory. As wrestling fans, what we’ve observed for the past decade is that the man appears to dedicate every waking moment of his life to being John Cena, full stop. Since he’s ditched his rapping persona and become the meatiest of white meat babyfaces, the most the guy ever gets to cut loose is when he’s playing a character in a movie. In WWE, he’s John Cena. In interviews, he’s John Cena. At the Make-A-Wish event, he’s John G.D. Cena.
So imagine our glee when we got a couple seasons into Total Divas and realized that occasionally, in his personal life, he will stop being “John Cena” and really cut loose as a human, (surprisingly) sexual being. He’s cracking wise, he’s goofing on people, he’s giving his girlfriend the business, he’s single- and double-entendre-ing all over the place. He’s pulling faces like this:
And he’s just a deliriously doofy goofball. He’s still uptight a lot of the time, but when he’s putting on a wrestling mask and singlet just to get his girlfriend to laugh, or playing a succession of increasingly-more-obnoxious characters just to trounce Nikki at games of skill, we understand why this guy is the guy. And we understand why he and Nikki are the perfect couple.
Here’s looking forward to even more of our One True Pairing on Total Bellas. Nena forever.
