‘Total Divas’ Episode 8 Recap: Wait, There’s An Hour And A Half This Week?

Well friends, we’ve made it – the midseason finale of E!’s Total Divas. I honestly never thought I’d make it this far, between Vincent’s eyebrows, JoJo’s 19-year old naiveté and Nattie’s ignorant, inappropriate texting, but thanks to your amazing support I’ve been able to make it to this week’s hour-and-a-half long midseason finale, “No Longer the Bridesmaid,” and the Total Divas After Party, which featured all of the girls from this show recapping everything that we’ve already watched.

While the show won’t return until November, we still have plenty to talk about, so let’s get right into this week’s Total Divas Power Rankings and how I’m laying them out before watching this midseason finale.

1) Brie Bella
2) Trinity
3) Nattie
4) Nikki Bella and her breasts
5) Eva Marie
6) JoJo
7) Ariane

How will that change by the episode of this hour-and-a-half finale and after party? Probably not that much, but let’s go ahead and check anyway.

Poor, Poor Nattie Can’t Even Have The Perfect Wedding

For the first time in this series, Nattie’s dad, Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart, stops by to visit, and he was not, much to my disappointment, wearing his purple tights and stroking his goatee. I ask so little from this damn show and I receive even less in return.

Nattie’s original wedding dress looks like a renn faire reject, but her mom made it so she has to tell her nicely that she’s not wearing it. I was kind of torn on this because it’s kind of f*cked up to tell your mom that her hours of hard work and creative, heartfelt efforts were all for naught, but holy hell that dress was horrible.

And to top off all of the wedding week excitement, Nattie finally won a match thanks to Eva Marie’s unparalleled ringside advice. But more on Eva Marie’s new push shortly.

Hey, remember Jaret, the tanning guy whose name I’ve been misspelling this whole time and that Nattie was exchanging inappropriate texts with while she was on her bachelorette party and then told her on her birthday that he wants to be with her? He’s still invited to the wedding. As bad as I feel for Nattie the professional wrestler for all of her hard work and ambitions being routinely crapped all over, Nattie the person is DUMMMMMMMMB.

Jaret finally arrives to the wedding venue and tells TJ that he and Nattie had been talking a lot about everything and TJ is PISSED. Granted, this whole thing couldn’t be more scripted if the camera accidentally showed the cue card guy on the side, but it’s pretty stupid that Nattie waited until her wedding day to come clean. Even though it was just as stupid for Jaret to tell TJ about his secret texts in front of a room full of people. Again, Nattie is super dumb.

TJ then ruins the “traditional wedding” by seeing Nattie in her wedding dress because he’s “f*cking pissed” and he questions if they should even get married. Keep in mind that her dream beach wedding has already been moved indoors because of bad weather, so this thing is already all sorts of f*cked. But she fesses up that Jaret revealed his feelings to her and she was all, “TJ’s the only guy for me” even though Nattie totally led Jaret on.

Everything’s fine, of course, and they’re getting married. It’s so amazingly convenient how that all worked out after each episode built up to Nattie’s dipshittery catching up to her. Meanwhile, poor Jaret is just sitting there like, “Cool, the girl I’m in love with is getting married to the guy who won’t have sex with her right in front of me.” No chair shot, no Honky Tonk guitar. Nothing.

And I don’t want to be a dick, but even the wedding and reception looked like they were filmed backstage at a WWE event. But it was a sweet moment for all of us to be a part of. Even when Nattie danced with Jarret at the reception. Because why should anything make sense at this point?

By the way, I want Damien Sandow to officiate all of my weddings.

Eva Marie And JoJo Have Hit A Wall

Eva Marie and JoJo still aren’t getting along and now they’re competing for a valet spot. Of course Eva gets it and the big gig? Walking Nattie to the ring. Wow. What an honor. Basically, Eva Marie just stood there and clapped for Nattie while the announcers attributed the win to her ringside leadership. That would be awesome if Eva Marie could wrestle.

Meanwhile, JoJo’s jealousy is at an all-time high and she not only won’t talk to Eva Marie, but she’s being a total B-word when Eva asks her to be honest. JoJo claims she has personal issues and that’s why she’s being a B-word. Those personal issues are that she’s 19 and completely full of sh*t.

JoJo finally opens up to Eva Marie and admits that it’s always been a competition between them and she’s not there to support her, because she’s jealous. I don’t want to be too hard on JoJo, because she did support Eva Marie early on and even helped her cheat on her boyfriend with Fandango, but Eva Marie also let JoJo’s BS over Justin Gabriel ruin her whole time in Vegas, so it’s a wash.

Bottom line – both of these girls are awful.

Oh, and Eva Marie’s idea of a wedding dress is just…

What on Earth?

In The Toughest Time, The Funkadactyls Know What Matters Most

Ariane called Trinity in her hotel room freaking out because her stomach hurts, and if I thought she was a shrieking banshee of a woman when she’s not in horrible pain, she was at 11 by the time the paramedics arrived.

The problem ended up being something with her menstrual cycle, and I’m a bro’s bro, so I don’t know anything about that. But Ariane seems to be fine and all of the beef between her and Trinity from two episodes ago is squashed, even though they completely ignored it in the last episode. Whatever, these two are BFF again and that’s all that matters.

OF COURSE Ariane brought Vincent to the wedding, despite the fact that she dumped him and everyone hates Vincent. She tells them all they got back together and she’d “hate to lose someone like him” because he checked in on her after the stomach incident. All we could hope for was that he’d chug Patron and ruin the wedding. Sadly, he let us down.

The Bella Twins Are Dealing With Life Outside The WWE

With Nikki and her breasts on crutches after her injury, the Bella Twins are still jealous of the newbies and think that they’re all trying to take their spots. They’re right, but it’ll be a long, long time before Eva Marie poses any kind of in-ring threat to anyone.

John Cena wants Nikki and her breasts to meet his entire family that is gathering for the first time in a long time, but they can only do it on the day of Nattie’s wedding, so Nikki and her breasts really need to think hard about it. It took Nikki and her breasts all of five minutes to make up her mind, and she obviously wants to meet John’s family because she thinks that he’s going to marry her, even though he said he won’t. Nattie’s super pissed because “she wouldn’t do that to anybody.” Whatever, she’d do the same damn thing. All women would.

Brie ends up being the voice of reason to Nattie when it comes to Nikki and her breasts choosing to go meet John’s family instead of going to the wedding and Nattie eventually gets over it.

Nikki and her breasts beg John’s older brother to do his Stewie impersonation, and if you had told me that John Cena had a brother who could talk like Stewie and Nikki and her breasts love Family Guy, I would have replied, “Yeah, so?”

As Nattie’s wedding reception is underway and she and TJ joke about not being able to dance because LOL weddings, Nikki and her breasts call Brie and demand to speak to Nattie, who forgives Nikki and her breasts and all is well again. If there’s one consistent theme of this midseason finale, it’s “wrap up all the loose ends so we can start a new bunch of bullsh*t when we come back in November.”

At the close of the finale, Nikki and her breasts are pushing the marriage thing yet again and it seems like John is caving in, so he asks her to move in with him. But Nikki and her breasts have a rule – they won’t move in with a guy unless they’re engaged. “Rules are meant to be broken,” she says while thinking about how she’s going to be living with the biggest star in the WWE universe.

After The Party, It’s The Total Divas After Party

There were maybe 50 people in the studio audience, and I think that’s being generous. So kudos to the show’s sound editors for making the after party sound like it was hosted in front of a full house at Madison Square Garden.

Loud-Talking Blonde Girl shouted a quick recap of the midseason finale and then yelled about a special surprise guest that will “stir the pot” later on. It’s obviously going to be Jaret because who else could it possibly be? In the meantime, let’s recap the feud between JoJo and Eva Marie:

– JoJo is 19. The end.

Eva Marie referred to herself as the mom in this situation and called JoJo a child, and JoJo had nothing to say because Eva’s basically right.

The Bella Twins loved every second of it, because they’re both terrified of Eva Marie, and every time that Nikki and her breasts talked, she’d fix her hair so it wasn’t covering her breasts, because she paid for them and she was going to show them off. Her words.

Nattie was asked about Jaret and subsequently grilled by everyone about how she wants to sleep with him. Then TJ came out and they kept talking about this meaningless, awkward BS, and Nattie really never fessed up to the fact that she was on TV talking about how she had feelings for Jaret.

Shouty McLoud Host brought up the Funkadactyls’ feud and Ariane said, “Bomb dot com” again because she hates me.

Nikki and her breasts dressed up like a naughty nurse to take care of John after he was injured. For some reason, this was a deleted scene from the first half of the season. Someone should lose their job over that.

Hey, remember Brie Mode? That’s what they called Brie when she drank. It was super-duper dumb, but it apparently trended well on Twitter so everyone is acting like it was such a hilarious and noteworthy moment in TV history. In another deleted scene, Brie was upset with Daniel Bryan right after he won the WWE title and Nikki and her breasts chalk that up to Brie “not getting laid.”

Trinity and Jon Uso are still the best couple in the world. They’re just normal. And their only fight was faker than Nikki’s breasts, so they should be celebrated as much as possible.

John Cena has been injured in between the last episode and the after party, but he couldn’t be happier with their new living arrangement. Someone then asked if he plans to pop the question and he hilariously and bluntly said, “No.” Cena then called these girls brave for what they’ve done with this show and said they’ve broken down a wall. Sure, dude.

The special guest was Jaret, of course, because why make it someone who can add a new element of suspense to the upcoming second half of the season when you can keep rehashing a stupid story?

The people in the audience booed Jaret because why? Because he told her how he felt when she was questioning whether or not TJ really loved her? Come on, people, if you’re going to boo anyone, boo Nattie for leading him on.

Trinity broke the awful tension by shouting, “Who wouldn’t want to bang Nattie?” but then Jaret brought it right back by calling TJ out to his face about how he doesn’t have sex with Nattie. How TJ didn’t punch him in his artificially-tanned mouth is beyond me.

Midseason Finale Total Divas Power Rankings

1) Trinity by a landslide
2) Brie Bella
3) Nikke Bella and her breasts
4) Nattie, even though she’s dumb
5) Eva Marie, even though she’s turning into a self-absorbed snob
6) JoJo, because she can’t be much lower on this list
100) Ariane, who I was going to cut a break because she was hurt, but then she showed up to the wedding with Vincent and that all went to hell

When the Show Resumes in November: John Cena has Nikki and her breasts sign a lease that refers to her as “guest,” Ariane freaks out and screams a lot, everyone’s jealous of and hates Eva Marie and, I assume, JoJo acts like a 19-year old.

And if you don’t think you’ll be able to live without these recaps until November, good news! I’ll be punishing myself further, starting on September 29, with weekly episode recaps of Eric and Jessie Game On, featuring Denver Broncos wide receiver Eric Decker and his new wife, for Kissing Suzy Kolber.

(Screen caps via here, here, here, here, here, here and banner via here)

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