The Best And Worst Of WWE Smackdown 11/20/18: Feast Or Famine

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live: Raw swept Smackdown at Survivor Series, unless you know how to count. Daniel Bryan did better than anyone expected against Brock Lesnar, and Smackdown women’s division interim representative Charlotte Flair took Ronda Rousey to school.

Remember that With Spandex is on Twitter, so follow it. Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter. BUY THE SHIRT.

One more thing: Hit those share buttons! Spread the word about the column on Facebook, Twitter and whatever else you use. Be sure to leave us a comment in our comment section below as well. I know we always ask this, and that this part is copy and pasted in every week, but we appreciate it every week.

Here’s this week’s Best and Worst of WWE Smackdown Live’s 1,005th episode for November 20, 2018.

Best: Flair And Present Danger

Coming out of a Survivor Series that (for whatever reason) firmly established Smackdown Live as the B-show, the most important narrative the show needed to carry forward was that Charlotte Flair has lost her goddamn sugar and will beat the hell out of you for little to no reason. Flair’s epic beatdown of Rousey has her in a particularly Flair-like mindset, so she opens the show throwing out challenges and making figurative wanking gestures at Paige’s $100,000 referee endangerment fine.

Her response is answered by a pair of precious treasures:

After Sunday, walking up to Charlotte Flair and making fun of her to her face is kinda like throwing yourself into an active volcano, so the interruption sets up not just Charlotte vs. Billie Kay, but Charlotte vs. both members of the IIconics in back-to-back 3-minute squashes.

While the fan in me is pretty disheartened to see them basically lose a handicap match, try to get their heat back with a post-matches 2-on-1 attack, then lose again, at least they got to be funny for a second. That’s better than The Revival gets. Peyton’s “I don’t know” face after Charlotte challenged her to keep the fight going was great, and I suppose if you need to feed two members of your women’s division to your new tall and muscular fury monster, you may as well send in the low-level social outcasts.

Charlotte as the Incredible Hulk is really only going to work if she ends up the muscle in a functional Four Horsewomen faction, and understands that right now she’s more the Arn Anderson than the Ric Flair. Sasha Banks is definitely the Tully Blanchard. Bayley’s Sting, as always, during that transition period between “not trusting the Four Horsemen” and “trusting them anyway against all logic and about to get turned on.”

Best/Worst: Thanksgrieving

If you ever wanted to see a match end with someone jamming their hand up a cooked turkey and knocking out their opponent with it, here’s the Thanksgiving Feast Fight featuring New Day and The Bar. Other highlights include Xavier Woods’ 6-1 shirt (never forget), Kofi Kingston catching a lobbed turkey carcass and using it as a weapon from the top rope to the floor, and Big E kicking the wrong rope to knock Big Show off the ring apron but it somehow working anyway.

I’d say that was Big Show’s most embarrassing fall ever, but I remember him falling off the roof of Cabo Hall after using an exploding monster truck sumo battle to set up Hulk Hogan getting butt-fucked by a Himalayan ice mummy. So, you know, turkey punches aren’t that big of a deal.

I’d also be more upset about the finish being Cesaro being hit in the face with food for five minutes and how embarrassing that feels for a guy who should be a multiple-time WWE Champion already, but I saw him lose to a 10-year old at WrestleMania, so again, shit could be worse. As always, I wish WWE did these kinds of matches for every holiday. I want to see Bray Wyatt defeat someone in an ARBORING VIOLENCE match.

The Miz Should Not Presume To Be As Good Of A Wrestler As Shane McMahon

In other tag team news, the Bryant Brothers,, “Wayne and Dane,” get a surprise tag team victory over the best wrestler in the world, Shane McMahon, and also The Miz. I can’t even assign an emotional response to this one, because its quality varies on how much you want to see Mike goddamn Mizanin stooge in the shadow of Shane McMahon and then get pinned by the world’s tiniest man to make him look even stupider.

If you’re wondering, the Bryants are Keita Murray (who you may have seen getting squashed by Lars Sullivan before NXT TakeOver: War Games, if you were in the crowd), and “The Fly” Eil Everfly. Eli usually tags with Delilah Doom, who you saw on Raw laughing at Drake Maverick for pissing himself, and with no disrespect meant to Murray I cannot BEGIN to explain how much I wish this was Doom Fly vs. Miz and Shane McMahon. I want to be able to say that match happened.

Fewer Shane McMahon plot lines, please. Can he and Stephanie go into hibernation for like five years? Also, the Bryant Brothers could go to Raw and dominate the tag team division right now.

Absolute Miscommunication

The Mandy Rose and Sonya Deville breakup continues moving at a glacial pace, as Mandy’s basically gotten in Sonya’s face and said “I WANT TO STOP TAGGING WITH YOU AND START FEUDING WITH YOU” like three times already and they’re still in “hapless miscommunication” mode. Here, they take a loss to Asuka and Naomi because they can’t co-exist. But can they co-exist??

I’m all for a Sonya Deville face turn, especially if it gets her into some good matches with Shayna Baszler on Smackdown at any point over the next year or so, but go ahead and pull the trigger on this, guys. Nobody’s clinging to that Absolution fandom.

Best: Vennern Storylines

You know what’s nice, in a world of sports-entertainment built around us falling in love with NXT stars and watching them succeed only to be gutted and reformed as placeholder jobbers on the main roster? Seeing a feud like Randy Orton vs. Jeff Hardy or Randy Orton vs. Rey Mysterio, where the issue is between veterans who have a problem with one another. It’s one of the only times where WWE’s main roster doesn’t feel like a weird stress evaluation test where you desperately want new characters to get over, and they’re always in the PROCESS of getting over, and they’re always getting PUT over, but nobody ever gets over. Does that make sense? It’s like you’re always on step 5 of a 10-step process to making someone a start. Braun Strowman’s gotten up to 7 or 8 only to immediately get knocked back to step 3 at least twice now.

What I’m getting at is while I don’t love Randy Orton matches, I like how he uses his presence to move feuds forward. He’s like the opposite of Cena in that way. Cena will shit all over the build with his goofy nonsense and impenetrably annoying character, then the blow off match will be surprisingly good. Orton will make the build exciting, and shit the bed in the match. So while I’m not looking forward to Orton vs. Mysterio really going anywhere or ending, it’s fun to see him be the king-shit of asshole mountain and drag the Little Big Man around by his face. Plus, we’re going to stop buying Rey Mysterio as an “underdog” if he can just cruise through every challenge.

They should do a luchas de apuestas at TLC where if Orton wins he gets Mysterio’s mask, and if Mysterio wins, Orton has to wear pants for the rest of his career.

Best: The Old Daniel Can’t Come To The Phone Right Now. Why? Oh, ‘Cause He’s Dead!

Finally we’re introduced to The New Daniel Bryan®, created via meditation in a hyberbaric chamber to fight for his dreams and kill the Yes Movement that you people™ loved so much. If you want to talk about long-term booking, it all started with a tweet from 2017:

This is a truly great promo, as Bryan’s new interpretation of himself is somewhere between Best in the World at What He Does Chris Jericho, and Dude Love heel turn Mick Foley. He doesn’t think the fans actually care about him, they just cared about the story and “the moment,” and weren’t there for him while he was struggling. It’s the psychosis of a workhorse who took forever and did every step of a recovery to get back what he wanted, only to realize he was the only one fighting. Nobody had his back. They just put him in new places, gave him TV shows, made him general manager. Nobody believed in him like he believed in him, so why should he go out of his way to rely on us?

My favorite Bryan has always been confident heel Bryan, where his incredible skill and elitist personality get to really shine. Ring of Honor World Champion Bryan Danielson was a guy who was so good at basic wrestling fundamentals he could take on the most impressive and threatening athletes in the world and beat them with arm bars and small packages. The original “Yes” movement came from this self-obsession, as Bryan started doing it after winning Money in the Bank, claiming he was going to wait and announce his cash-in like a respectable babyface, then saw and took a cheap opportunity to cash in anyway … only to constantly, loudly praise himself for making the right decision. That’s what’s so amazing about babyface Daniel Bryan; his character has never really been a “good person.” He’s a rage-fueled, casually-deluded wrestling master who got told he wasn’t good enough so many times he started internalizing it and channeling it through boastful displays of skill and tenacity. He’s not valiant, he’s stubborn. It’s not that he has “heart,” it’s that his brain is so singularly focused that it won’t let the rest of him give up.

It’s not that he was rewarded with a comeback because he’s a good person who worked hard; he’s back and WWE Champion because his indignant nature and need to be in control Weekend at Bernie’s‘d him out of that chamber and into the ring. Why do you think he was always screaming “yes” and “no,” and wouldn’t even give his tag team partner credit for being half of the Tag Team Champions? He wanted to be both halves.

All hail The New Daniel Bryan, the scumbag we all accidentally learned to love.

P.S. if the “yes movement is dead,” you might wanna get some sideplates that don’t say YES YES YES YES YES on them.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

AwkwardL0ser

Charlotte is the “Whoot, There it Is!” to Becky’s “Whoomp! (There It Is)“

Blade_222

Orton should get on the mic and remind everyone that Eddie is in Hell.

Mark Silletti

listen i dont know what your goal is here, vincent, but i have cried too many times over daniel bryan’s journey of injury and retirement and healing and returning and winning back the title he never lost. i am not gonna boo this man.

Clay Quartermain

I want to see a Talking Smack with this version of Daniel Bryan interviewing people

Harry Longabaugh

If they put McIntyre in this match, we could’ve had Scot Pilgrim. Come on, writers! Give me that!

AddMayne

So his motivation really is “You’re just jealous”

He’s spent too much time around the Bellas

LUNI_TUNZ

Bryan: “As these idiots chant AJ Styles.”
Idiots: “Daniel Bryan!”
Bryan: “Hmm, it appears I was wrong. My mistake.”

Martin Morrow

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 12 YEARS OUTSIDE OF 3 WEEKS AGO LIKE WE JUST SHOWED YOU, ORTON VS MYSTERIO LIVE!

Clay Quartermain

More commercials need a closed caption window of Peyton giving facial reactions

Beerguyrob

Just waiting for the Big Show to turn on The Bar if Sheamus tries tossing that stuffing.

That’s it for Smackdown. Thanks for reading, and for being here with us all week for Survivor Series. You helped make it one of our biggest weeks ever, and we appreciate that. Drop down into the comments to let us know what you thought of the show (and what you’re doing for American Thanksgiving), and share the column on social. We’ll give you thanks.