Total Divas discussion thread.

[Maverick]

Boom http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x12hf77_t...s?search_algo=2

[King Pitcos]

Watched the second one. That Eva-Marie girl is awful. The Fandango thing was obviously a big set-up (he's never had a "dancer of the week" has he? Just the real dancer and Summer Rae), but in her talking heads, she's just got these horrible dead eyes. Fandango was alright. There's a right geek behind the sleazy facade though, he's got a nerd's face. His tracksuit top he was wearing backstage looked like it had a Fandango logo on it, but that seems pointless when it wouldn't be shown on TV apart from this.

 

Cameron is funny the same way she was on Tough Enough. Proper trashy idiot. Naomi's sound.

 

I like Daniel Bryan. He's the same in this as in interviews, just comes across happy and laughing at everything. Seems really laid-back and good-natured.

[JLM]

Not as good as the first episode for me, mostly because it had so much Eva Marie happening. When she was pottering about backstage before the dance with Fandango she looked a little bit like Jessica Rabbit and I still didn't want her on my screen. She has both the delivery and the lines of a shit Blind Date contestant and I find it difficult not to tune out before she gets to the end of each monotone sentence. Her whole episode long storyline about dancing with Fandango was a big old pile of shit. I didn't think the first episode ever got quite as excruciatingly contrived as this, though it didn't help that neither Eva Marie nor Fandango were convincing in their roles.

 

By contrast , I found the Cameron and Naomi outfit stuff quite amusing. Cameron seems like her portrayal on this show might only be a slight exaggeration of her real personality and Naomi seems very down to Earth and likeable.

 

Road Dogg doing a bit of road aggentingg was nice to see.

 

Brie Bella cemented her position as the superior Bella in every single regard. Nikki surely can't really be as horrible as she appears to be on this show though. Although I can certainly believe that Brie is a genuinely a more pleasant human being than her sister, I have to believe that it's been decided that the narrative of the series will have Nikki as the horrible one and we won't be shown any deviation from that. I'm also definitely struggling not to be extra biased in favour of Brie because the show has made me realise how pretty she is. When they're both in full on Bella Twins gear they look about the same, but during the bits in this show where they're not quite as made up there's a whole world of difference.

 

Lastly, D-Bry is clearly the most excellent of men. Good for him.

[WeeAl]

So is it Brie or Nikki that is the skinny one?

[JLM]

I personally think they're both too skinny.

[Statto]

Fandango lives the gimmick, man.

 

The Johnny Curtis creepy gimmick, that is.

[hallicks]

She has both the delivery and the lines of a shit Blind Date contestant and I find it difficult not to tune out before she gets to the end of each monotone sentence. Her whole episode long storyline about dancing with Fandango was a big old pile of shit.

 

Agreed. And she comes across as a complete dick to the point where you think she might not be acting, but actually a complete dick. She's not that pretty, and there's a noticeable vacuity in her eyes when she smiles. Summat not right, there.

[DCW]

That Jo one that Eva knocks about with has (or has been made to look and act like) she has no personality whatsoever,she also looks about 12.Pity they didn't use Paige or Summer Rae instead.

 

The non mental funk girl seems sound,so does the Uso lad she's going out with.

[ShortOrderCook]

I pretty much agree with all of my boy JLMs sentiments as usual. The Eva Marie segments certainly feel like the most blatantly scripted elements of the show each week. I don't at all believe they ever wanted her to have red hair, all just designed to paint her as a bitch 'troublemaker'. Show seems to be mainly a vehicle to launch her career. The other one must be there to make not that not so obvious I guess. Strangely though the final segment with Steph did feel 100% believable. I thought the Fandango story was a decent idea, as the idea they wanted their own employed personality as a regular with him rather then that lovely professional dancer (who I miss terribly) as there is some truth to that as thats exactly what happened with Summer Rae. So maybe there was some genuineness to the story.

 

As mentioned echo JLM, particularly on the Bellas front. I may well fall in love with Brie by the time this show is up. It seems clear why they've opted for this lot on the show rather than Layla, Kaitlyn, AJ etc. There's obvious decent story dynamics there to work this sort of show around. WWE could do with more of these shows from their insane amount of TV time available. It's incredible just how much personality it's given to the Bellas individually and the Funkadactyls in 2 episodes than loads of normal WWE tv time ever would. This sort of show is totally spawned from pro-wrestling in its nature anyway. I remember when NXT was to first debut I for some reason anticipated it being something akin to this, interspliced with an actual wrestling show. Like the original reality side of Tough Enough but with guys already as wrestlers and having matches too. I still think that sort of show could work, kinda similar to TUF I guess. Anyway, I always thought we'd see Bryan's house with no TV back then, so it was fun for me to see it here.

 

Speaking of which, easily my favourite aspect of the show and what will keep me watching - the fascinating dynamic of mate boyfriends and potential developing bromance between Johnny C and Danny B. Both guys are absolute champions. Bryan comes across as you'd hope and expect and Cena comes across a thousand times cooler than he does on usual WWE TV.

[King Pitcos]

It's incredible just how much personality it's given to the Bellas individually and the Funkadactyls in 2 episodes than loads of normal WWE tv time ever would.

Yeah but it's not necessarily anything that carries over to their wrestling characters and it can be counterproductive and confusing. The Funkadactyls don't even use their wrestling names on Total Divas, and on Raw/Smackdown, there isn't a cunty one and a nice one. They're both nice. Same issue but on the other side of the coin for the Bellas.

[ShortOrderCook]

Yes, that's true. You misinterpret my point though. I'm saying they could use their ample TV time to produce a show like this to get over their wrestling characters. This show is presented as a separate entity, the reality behind the Divas we see on TV. But scripted reality lends itself wonderfully to pro-wrestling. Other shows /TV time could be used in a similar fashion and be an incredibly efficient tool to get characters over in today's age I'd say.

[King Pitcos]

You mean to use that style but stick to the wrestling characters? I'd love to see that, but it'd be tough to fit it into an existing WWE show. Plus the production costs of following people about and putting stuff like that together are probably too big for a WWE in-house team to do and script, particularly for WWE's priorities. In terms of character development, there are lots of shades between sending a camera crew with Kofi for a week and just sending Kofi out there for a match, and some are cheaper than others. Mind you, saying that, they do/did send camera crews round to people's houses to look at their Samurai swords and basketball shoe collections for Youtube shows.

[ShortOrderCook]

That's precisely what I mean and precisely the sort of format I thought they were initially going to use for the original NXT. I thought that format was going to be used specifically to introduce us to Daniel Bryan and get him over to be honest. I think it would have worked great with him too. Luckily it worked out pretty well for him anyway. That's the style I think it would work best with. They've got so many hours of television they fill with pointless matches and endless recaps, id welcome an hour dedicated to getting to know them better. I was going to say obviously you couldn't use that format for everyone, like your Bray Wyatts but as I thought to type that I thought, actually...those debut promos with the reporter lend themselves to a show with a different feel too. They used to have shit like Tuesday Night Titans. I'd love a more character promoting show today. Obviously matches is the bread and butter but they have so much TV time and have so many matches because of that TV time that are often meaningless and wasteful as a result.

 

Maybe cost would be an issue, but I get the impression WWE have the resources there if it was dedicated towards that rather than a load of the stuff they're already doing, like the stuff you mentioned. I'm sure there was talk of a Santino sitcom a few years back, that would surely work out similar.

[King Pitcos]

Yeah, they have the TV time for it (and way too much of their TV time is wasteful matches), but the problem is how do you fit a reality TV doc into a live Raw without it being jarring? Especially for the audience in the arena, if you're doing big chunks at a time. If you're mixing two-minute clips of it throughout the show, it's a very different tone and style to the traditional backstage segments and interviews, which are mostly just pop one camera down and block out one contrived setup. Quick and simple. Do you nix those backstage bits or have both?

 

I think as a test run they could do it for Main Event, if they hadn't lost interest in Main Event ages ago. You could have a reality-style buildup for the first half of the show, then the match. It's not that different to how Main Event started out actually.

[PowerButchi]

Total Divas is a DRAW, completely punishing impact.

 

Total Divas audience

 

 

 

Total Divas was up 14% from last week's debut on E! doing 1.53 million viewers. The Kardashians lead-in was essentally the same as the week before, so a combination of the first show and the airing on Raw exposing more of the wrestling audience to the show led to a healthy increase.