Nothing magical or new in my Netflix life, that’s for sure. But tonight, it’s Bob Barker on RAW, and there’s no way that can possibly suck… right?

Segment 1: We’re opening hot with WWE giving us a Price Is Right-style opening of crazy camera pans and a Howard Finkel-delivered over-the-top introduction. And dear god, they gave Bob Barker the long slender mic… holy shit, this is going to be a 5.0 episode, I can feel it already.

Bob stands on the stage, which is slightly made up with a PIR stage (with the bidding game podiums), and the crowd gives him a bigger pop than I think even The Rock could generate. Once that subsides, he says he’s got a pricing game for us, and calls on Finkel to call down four contestants… who wind up being Santino Marella, Jillian Hall, Irwin R. Schyster (really?), and Chris Jericho… who doesn’t appear?

Eventually, CJ comes out of the back rather than through the crowd, but eventually plays ball by standing with the others at the PIR bidding podiums. They’re here to bid on… a The Best of SmackDown DVD set? Alrighty.

Santino opens the bidding by wanting to buy a vowel, and Bob takes him to task for it. Eventually, Santino bids over $1400; even Bob says he’s totally not going to win.

Our second bidder is Jillian, who sings a fan song for Bob’s, which hurts his ears at first… though he says that he loves her singing “because I’m tone deaf.” This makes her happy, and thankfully she shuts the hell up.

IRS is our third bidder, who asks if the bid should include taxes, and draws boos when he tells everyone that they need to think about taxes.

CJ is our fourth bidder, though he’s had enough of this silliness, and saunters up the ramp to get in Bob’s face. CJ opens his mouth, which immediately makes Bob say that it’s amazing he’s finally speaking. CJ then demands respect, which Bob says he’s “respectfully asking for his bid.” CJ doesn’t like that as much, demands to be called “Mr. Jericho,” and he starts to call himself “one-half of the tag team champions”; Bob says he hears the number one, and assigns Jericho that as his bid. Jericho sulks back to his podium, even as Bob threatens to take him over his knee for being naughty. This is the best episode of RAW ever.

Jericho’s bid sadly wins the bidding game, and Bob insists he goes to the ring. After Howard says that the winner of this next match is going on a trip to Hawaii, we see the opponent is MVP… who is about as over as anyone else has been. This is going to be a fucked up night!

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: MVP defeats Chris Jericho by pin. A clean win of MVP over Jericho? Are you serious? Wow, guess MVP is on his way up!

Decent match overall, with an impressive bit of chain wrestling near the end, when MVP went of the Ballin’ Elbow. Jericho, showing the intelligence of a first-grader not often seen in a WWE ring, simply gets up and puts MVP in the Walls of Jericho. MVP manages to twist and roll through this, getting Jericho in a pin.

Jericho kicks out, but MVP is ready for the Playmaker. No dice though; Jericho counters and flings MVP into the corner. Jericho runs up to follow up with the Codebreaker, but MVP grabs the top rope, making Jericho fall harmlessly to the ground. MVP quickly grabs Jericho’s legs and flips over him, and Jericho can’t escape the pin. Crowd went nuts… wow. Just, wow.

Ads Aside: You know that commercial advertising the price drop of the PlayStation 3, with the guy saying “You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. That’s how World War I got started”? The only way that line could be more awesome is if he ended it with, “Just check Wikipedia.”

Segment 3: Bob is with Kelly Kelly in the back, where Bob pimps his book and the charity its proceeds go to. DX arrives and asks which of Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase needs to be spayed and which one neutered, proving that DX reads Online Onslaught.

Bob insists that they won’t be fighting Rhodes and DiBiase tonight, but they get to spin a computerized wheel to find their opponents tonight. Shawn insists that they can’t be treating their lives and WWE careers like a game show, because their livelihoods are too serious. Bob responds: “Look, you made your point, and I’ve got two words for you: spin it.” I swear I just wet my pants.

Anyway, the spins result in DX drawing matches between Chris F. Masters and Randy Orton. I’m not sure if we’re doing two singles matches or a tag match, and I don’t think that even Bob can save that heel team of suck and apathy.

Pre-Segment 4: Chavo Guerrero is out for a match. Prior to the match, Bob promises that Chavo will win a Chevrolet Corvette if he wins his next match; Chavo himself is totally seeing himself pimpin’ it (whatever that means) in the car.

But, it turns out, he’s not fighting Hornswoggle. Here comes Evan Bourne!

Segment 4 [Singles Match]: Evan Bourne defeats Chavo Guerrero by pin. Match was lame, and an insult to both guys’ talents, at least the way the ending was booked.

But before we get to that… Bourne made my heart stop late. Chavo was sitting on the top rope, and Bourne went up as well. Bourne intended to jump and come down with a huracanrana, but Chavo dodged. Bourne flopped on the top rope, bounced up again, then came down and did a partial backflip to slam himself into the canvas. It looked fairly violent and scary, but on replays it was awfully controlled.

Shortly after that, Chavo hit the Three Amigos, then stood on the top rope for the Frog Splash. Hornswoggle materialized and shot Chavo with a squirt gun, which in my mind should actually draw a DQ simply because he interfered in the match. Regardless, the ref let it go, and Chavo got distracted. He slapped Horny, but Evan snuck up from behind and got him in a backslide to end the match.

Pre-Segment 5: Cody Rhodes hits the ring to talk before his match. He tells us all that he is still 100% committed to Generation Douche despite Orton RKOing his daddy last week. Cody also says that his father didn’t make him a main eventer… Orton did.

Cody then qualifies the next statement by saying that Dusty is indeed a great father, always has been… but when it comes to family or career, Cody chooses “career,” and he’ll prove that was the right choice when he makes DX tap out this weekend. He’ll prove that by making John Cena tap out right now.

Cody’s closing line is: “I think my father said, ‘There’s nothing a father wouldn’t do for his son.’ Well, there’s nothing this son… wouldn’t do for his career.” Wow, that wasn’t a bad punch line for a heel. Good job, Cody.

Segment 5 [Singles Match]: John Cena defeats Cody Rhodes by disqualification. Match was actually better than I thought it would be. It started off looking like a typical “Cena gets his ass kicked for 10 minutes before doing a Superwigger Comeback” match, but they did some decent chain- and submission-wrestling toward the end. At one point, we saw Rhodes lock on an arm bar; Cena tried rolling through it, but Rhodes rolled with him and kept it applied. The whole thing was pretty neat.

At the end, Rhodes tried a Figure Four. Cena blocked it and kinda twisted himself around to lock in his own SSTF. At that point, Randy Orton materialized and smacked Cena, then bailed.

Cena got up quickly to try to get to Orton, but Orton was already halfway back up the ramp at that point. Cody then tried smacking Cena, which totally didn’t work. Instead, Cena picked up Rhodes, then gave him an FU while staring into Orton.

Segment 6: Bob is out here to pick up where Segment 1 left off. Howard announces the new contestant as AJ Pierzynski, since, hey, we’re in Chicago and he’s part of the White Sox, though he gets the shit booed out of him as he gets to the podium. Pierzynski says he’s a bigger Bob Barker and Price is Right fan than a WWE fan; I’ve got a feeling that won’t make Vince McMahon too happy.

The players here are bidding on a WrestleMania 26 travel package. Santino tries to make a Jeopardy joke that falls flat, but wins the bidding contest. He grabs Jillian’s ass and hugs Bob to celebrate.

As Santino gets to the ring, they announce that the prize he can now win for winning his next match is a hot tub… though it’s just an excuse to display the Bella Twins in tiny bikinis, which would be much more fitting on Gail Kim and My Melina. (Seriously, Gail, why did you leave TNA before posing for Playboy?)

The “match” is a body slam contest between Santino and… Big Show? This lasts all of five seconds, though there is some awkwardness afterwards as Bob Barker clearly doesn’t know what a bodyslam even is, and has to keep asking the ref whether Santino lost after being slammed. The crowd died a bit as a result of this delay… sad, really.

Oh well. The punch line here is that Show’s got another opponent too for this bodyslam challenge, and here comes Mark Henry. If you didn’t see that coming, you really need to watch wrestling more.

Segment 7 [Bodyslam Contest]: Mark Henry defeats Big Show. The potentially future Mrs. Falkon reported that she got a hernia just looking at these two. I don’t see how either guy avoided getting one, but MH did manage to pull off the first slam. It was painful to watch… and the lead-up to the slam (the slow, shitty, punchy-kicky offense) was pretty painful too, for other reasons.

Segment 8: Josh Mathews is in the back to interview Bob, who pimps his book again (which I probably should pick up). Josh asks what the most unusual thing that ever happened on Price Is Right, and Bob retells the story of the infamous tube top entrance when a contestant came on down. Bob also tells a couple stories of some of his injuries due to contestants getting a little over-excited, all to pimp his book a bit further.

Segment 9: Bob is reading his own book, and Chavo appears to bitch about being cheated out of his car earlier. Bob warns him to relax, but Chavo expresses that he will not leave without his car; and just because Bob is trained in kung fu (really!), he’s not cool, and he can’t stop Chavo from taking his car!

So Bob punches Chavo in the stomach, karate chops his neck (which floors him), and smiles as he says how wonderful of a time he’s having tonight. Me too, Bob!

Pre-Segment 10: DX is out here (guess it’s a tag match, especially since it’s a quarter-till 11). DX goes through their usual pre-game speech, with Trips adding that Cody and Ted are like Siegfried and Roy, “and you’re looking at the two white tigers who’ll be hanging from your jugulars.” Nice!

Segment 10 [Tag Match]: DX defeats Chris F. Masters & Randy Orton by submission. Match was all right, but a formulaic match. CFM had a good three moves in his set, which is a good 50% more than his first excursion in WWE.

Shawn was Face In Peril, with Trips getting the hot tag… though, then, Trips became a mini-FIP, and Shawn got a second hot tag. He hit his Macho Man Elbow Drop, but Orton decided to try to stop further damage from happening. Trips cut that off, and Shawn eventually hit his Superkick.

However, rather than end it with a pin, Shawn slapped on the Figure Four to CFM while Trips put the Sharpshooter on Orton. CFM tapped, and it was over.

Post-Segment 10: Generation Douche hit ringside to pull Orton to safety. DX then proceeded to brawl with them around the arena as Orton got back to the ring. DX pretty much held the advantage against GD, but at their first opening, GD bailed the arena and carjacked someone, escaping with their bodies mostly intact.

Orton, still in the ring, gets a mic and says that the disappointment on DX’s faces mirrors the disappointment sure to be on Cena’s after Sunday. Cena himself hits the ring at this, but after a short little brawl, Orton does his rope-assisted DDT. Orton then gets a chair, sets it up, and does a shitty RKO on it to lay Cena out.

Orton continues to trash talk Cena’s corpse as we fade out to commercial.

Final Thoughts: Damn good night, a must-watch for everyone, though I clearly admit I’m biased to Bob. They made good use of him, and short of seeing him do a DX chop, there really wasn’t anything he could have done to better his appearance.

Objectively, the matches weren’t exactly blow-away, although MVP/Jericho was better than I thought it would be. Workrate-wise, the show was mediocre aside from those two, but story-wise, everything got accomplished as it needed to be. A decent episode, even without Bob, though I tend to forgive “decent” matches just before a PPV since they don’t want to blow their loads on a five-star memory on free TV, you know?

We got an announcement at one point that Batista is back next week with “a career-altering announcement.” Hmm… Well, I’m not exactly a huge Bats fan anymore, but my curiosity is piqued. I’m definitely tuning in next week.

Also, it was announced that Trish Stratus is going to be next week’s guest host. Hey Rick! Are you going to be the guest recapper (let’s ignore the fact that this is actually your site for a moment) next week just for that? Come on, we got Erin Anderson to come back for One Night Only when Chris Jericho came back, and you’ve said how much Trish plumpens your wang, a fact that I’ll never express in my recaps. Can you resist? [Ed. Note: Can I? Yes. Typing with a plumpened wang is hard. But WILL I? Tune in and find out! Or maybe I'll somehow twist this all around into a swervejob where Anderson comes back AGAIN, as OO's Exclusive Throwback Pundit for all things Love Rhombus. Except I know she'd just spend Trish's comeback insisting that Rafael Nadal is so totally KEWT and NOT a chinless, be-snouted ratface. Partly to remind us of the OTHER Good Ol' Days, back when RAW used to get preempted for tennis this time of year. But mostly just because she knows it upsets me. That strumpet.]

Well, regardless of whether I’ll be typing while watching RAW next week, or just chilling with a few beers while I watch it, I’ll be figuratively in the front seat for next week’s episode. Remember to help control the pest population: have your Ortons spayed and neutered. (Hey, if I wasn’t going to say it, Rick would have put it up on the front page.)

Goodbye everybody!

RATING: 3.5