Post by Teemu on May 6, 2022 7:08:44 GMT -5
Pandemic boredom - as well as, you know, just not having friends in general lol - drove me to finally check out the Walking Dead. It's not that amazing, not worth the hype in my imo, but I'm on season 6 right now.
I'm not the biggest TV show watcher in general, but there's been a couple of shows that have grabbed my attention over the years. So I was wondering what it is that I think the show lacks. I'm a big zombie fan, so anything zombie I'll happily check out. And I like the Resident Evil games. Walking Dead is a post-apocalyptic zombie show, so I should be all over it. Moreso than I am. You get a bunch of zombie kills, which is generally my alley.
But it's felt like an obligation lately to keep watching Walking Dead. Why?
Because I'm not invested in the stories, so it never feels like appointment television. There's not that hook that makes me think, oh, I gotta check out the next episode. All characters - except for Eugene, and Daryl - are uninteresting, and basically heels. And all babyfaces get turned heel in what seems like two episodes. Daryl is also a heel in his own way, of course, but he's the Stone Cold type heel who you still root for. I don't care about any developments between the characters and their surroundings, so the zombie world is not enough to draw me in.
What on Earth does this have to do with wrestling?
The lack of stories and interesting characters. I can't, off the top of my head, name five stories currently going on in WWE and AEW. Kevin Owens wants to prove that Ezekiel is Elias. That's fun, harmless sports entertainment stuff, it's cool. MVP is mad at Lashley for ditching him, and is now using Omos to get back at him. That's nice. Other than that? Dude, I don't know. Reigns and McIntyre don't like each other. Oh, yea, Cody wants the WWE title. Not even a bad story, but it took the standard two weeks for big deal Cody to become another guy on the roster, so I legit forgot about him until a second ago.
In AEW, I can't name a single story going on. Bryan wants to team with Moxley and fight alongside with him because reasons. Punk is challenging Hangman for the title, but that's about it. At least up to now.
None of this is interesting, none of this is appointment television. If I check out a wrestling show, it's out of habit. I look forward to nothing. There's no interesting story arcs, no captivating characters, never a feeling of I can't wait to check out next week's show to see where this story goes.
I'd much rather watch Walking Dead, and it's not even that good - a lot of the stuff I'm critical of when it comes to WWE and AEW is the same stuff I complain about in the Walking Dead.
Sure, wrestling is more limited than a Hollywood production when it comes to captivating storytelling, but they could give us something.
Wrestling has ventured more and more into it being about the wrestling. And that, I guess, was never the main draw for me. Wrestling is just the culmination of the story, it shouldn't be the story. I always viewed wrestling not as a wrestling show on TV, but a TV show about wrestling. I wish Vince Russo wasn't such an idiot because he's the only booker/writer type of guy who seems to share my philosophy. I just never cared much for his actual content.
Just like cool zombie kills in Walking Dead start to taste like wood if you get them all the time and are not invested in the characters, pointless wrestling matches also get old extremely quick if you're not into the people involved.
Walking Dead, according to the original creator of the comics, was never about the zombies, but about the characters, and the zombies just created a framework for the stories. That's why it's not just 45 minutes of killing zombies, it's not the meat of the matter. Just that the culminations of the stories involve them.
If you check the match times on a given RAW, the matches don't even go that long. My signature trademark is to complain about every match on RAW going for half an hour, but it's always more like 10 minutes if you really check, hah. But man do they feel like one hour broadways every single time. And don't get me started on Dynamite.
Just guys doing moves and more moves, and eventually someone wins. Some people really dig this, of course, and more power to them. I've just never been that fascinated with the matches. I guess I've just come to realize I'm the dreaded "not a real wrestling fan" that the AEW hardcores keep talking about, hah. And that's fair.
I'd just like wrestling to be my male soap opera, honestly. The story of the show being about a sporting event company, and its competitors - as opposed to a sporting event company with some stories sprinkled in out of necessity.
Hardcore fans have their options now if they want pure in ring competition, and that's great, but I don't understand why the shift happened in WWE to move away from focusing on characters and stories. Clearly their ratings were astronomically higher when it was more story-based, and TV matches went on for 2 minutes to advance stories and get the hell out of there. As they should to prevent boredom.
Episode-long stories were you follow the protagonist for the entire episode, culminating in the main event segment. As opposed to each story getting one segment, and since it's usually only the main world title feud that's worth anything, you only ever have exactly 15 minutes of content per weekly episode worth watching. Check it out on YouTube and move on with your life.
And cliffhangers at the ends of episodes.
Am I the only one who feels this way?
Also, does the Walking Dead get better or worse? I'm a few episodes deep into Season 6.
I'm not the biggest TV show watcher in general, but there's been a couple of shows that have grabbed my attention over the years. So I was wondering what it is that I think the show lacks. I'm a big zombie fan, so anything zombie I'll happily check out. And I like the Resident Evil games. Walking Dead is a post-apocalyptic zombie show, so I should be all over it. Moreso than I am. You get a bunch of zombie kills, which is generally my alley.
But it's felt like an obligation lately to keep watching Walking Dead. Why?
Because I'm not invested in the stories, so it never feels like appointment television. There's not that hook that makes me think, oh, I gotta check out the next episode. All characters - except for Eugene, and Daryl - are uninteresting, and basically heels. And all babyfaces get turned heel in what seems like two episodes. Daryl is also a heel in his own way, of course, but he's the Stone Cold type heel who you still root for. I don't care about any developments between the characters and their surroundings, so the zombie world is not enough to draw me in.
What on Earth does this have to do with wrestling?
The lack of stories and interesting characters. I can't, off the top of my head, name five stories currently going on in WWE and AEW. Kevin Owens wants to prove that Ezekiel is Elias. That's fun, harmless sports entertainment stuff, it's cool. MVP is mad at Lashley for ditching him, and is now using Omos to get back at him. That's nice. Other than that? Dude, I don't know. Reigns and McIntyre don't like each other. Oh, yea, Cody wants the WWE title. Not even a bad story, but it took the standard two weeks for big deal Cody to become another guy on the roster, so I legit forgot about him until a second ago.
In AEW, I can't name a single story going on. Bryan wants to team with Moxley and fight alongside with him because reasons. Punk is challenging Hangman for the title, but that's about it. At least up to now.
None of this is interesting, none of this is appointment television. If I check out a wrestling show, it's out of habit. I look forward to nothing. There's no interesting story arcs, no captivating characters, never a feeling of I can't wait to check out next week's show to see where this story goes.
I'd much rather watch Walking Dead, and it's not even that good - a lot of the stuff I'm critical of when it comes to WWE and AEW is the same stuff I complain about in the Walking Dead.
Sure, wrestling is more limited than a Hollywood production when it comes to captivating storytelling, but they could give us something.
Wrestling has ventured more and more into it being about the wrestling. And that, I guess, was never the main draw for me. Wrestling is just the culmination of the story, it shouldn't be the story. I always viewed wrestling not as a wrestling show on TV, but a TV show about wrestling. I wish Vince Russo wasn't such an idiot because he's the only booker/writer type of guy who seems to share my philosophy. I just never cared much for his actual content.
Just like cool zombie kills in Walking Dead start to taste like wood if you get them all the time and are not invested in the characters, pointless wrestling matches also get old extremely quick if you're not into the people involved.
Walking Dead, according to the original creator of the comics, was never about the zombies, but about the characters, and the zombies just created a framework for the stories. That's why it's not just 45 minutes of killing zombies, it's not the meat of the matter. Just that the culminations of the stories involve them.
If you check the match times on a given RAW, the matches don't even go that long. My signature trademark is to complain about every match on RAW going for half an hour, but it's always more like 10 minutes if you really check, hah. But man do they feel like one hour broadways every single time. And don't get me started on Dynamite.
Just guys doing moves and more moves, and eventually someone wins. Some people really dig this, of course, and more power to them. I've just never been that fascinated with the matches. I guess I've just come to realize I'm the dreaded "not a real wrestling fan" that the AEW hardcores keep talking about, hah. And that's fair.
I'd just like wrestling to be my male soap opera, honestly. The story of the show being about a sporting event company, and its competitors - as opposed to a sporting event company with some stories sprinkled in out of necessity.
Hardcore fans have their options now if they want pure in ring competition, and that's great, but I don't understand why the shift happened in WWE to move away from focusing on characters and stories. Clearly their ratings were astronomically higher when it was more story-based, and TV matches went on for 2 minutes to advance stories and get the hell out of there. As they should to prevent boredom.
Episode-long stories were you follow the protagonist for the entire episode, culminating in the main event segment. As opposed to each story getting one segment, and since it's usually only the main world title feud that's worth anything, you only ever have exactly 15 minutes of content per weekly episode worth watching. Check it out on YouTube and move on with your life.
And cliffhangers at the ends of episodes.
Am I the only one who feels this way?
Also, does the Walking Dead get better or worse? I'm a few episodes deep into Season 6.
