Hopefully, I’ll actually TRY in this one, and not kill my grade in week #1 just because I blow off an assignment in favor of getting laid (which, ironically and sadly, did not happen anyway).

Did I get the past the ad box yet? Hope so, because we’re going Segment 1 now…

Segment 1: Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne are introduced immediately, the former sitting in a throne in the ring and the latter at his side. They get a bigger pop than I expected they’d get… maybe they’re just culturally lost on me. We get a bit of a montage of times when Ozzy was actually in WWE, not as a wrestler of course, just in random bits where he performed at WrestleMania and such.

Before they can say much more Miz hits the ring, which is a nice change from seeing Randy Orton interrupting every week. Miz is unhappy that he lost to Evan Bourne last week by countout, and wants them to retroactively make it a no contest. Sharon, after miming that was crying and actually cared about it.

Ozzy replies that he wants to know who he is… Miz hits his catchphrase, but here comes Generation Douche, but without Orton. GD bitches and complains about Kofi Kingston’s vandalizing of Orton’s hood-crotch last week, and that the Osbornes should do something about that. Miz tells them to shut up because the Osbornes are going to help him first!

And here comes Big Show to the ring, who is also pissed, this of course being that the whole of the RAW faces beat the shit out of him last week. Show: “And I demand an apology!!!” Ozzy, sincerely: “I’m so sorry…” Show, after rubbing his head, patronizing: “I didn’t mean from you, Ozzy.” Ozzy: “Oh.”

Show clarifies that he wants an apology from the faces or he’s going to beat them all up. As Ozzy tells him to shut up, DX hits the ring. After the prerequisite plug, Miz demands to know what Ozzy is going to do for them. Triple H puts a bug in Ozzy’s ear, and he announces that he’s going to fight “Evan Brawn” for the US Title. (Trips: “That’s close enough.”)

For Generation Douche, Shawn puts a bug in Sharon’s ear: we’re going to see Kofi Kingston vs. Randy Orton!

Now it’s Show’s turn, and he wants to head off the whole whispering thing off. He suggests we have a triple threat Survivor Series preview match of John Cena, Trips, and Shawn Michaels. Show starts to whisper it to Ozzy, but backs away after whispering Cena’s name. Trips goes ahead and finishes out the whispering, and Ozzy makes a match: Cena vs. Jericho vs. Big Show tonight!

Show begs Sharon to listen to what he meant to do, rather than to play DX’s game. Sharon replies that Ozzy’s decisions are final, and if he’s not down with that, she’s got two words for him! Damn, I love it when the hosts know (or at least pretend to know) about the product.

Segment 2 [Singles Match for the United States Title]: Miz defeats Evan Bourne by pin, and retains. Match was good, and the crowd was pretty damn hot, which helped things along. It wasn’t epic, but it was certainly good enough for a midcard pay-per-view match.

One cool spot early was a unique double-reversey spot. EB went for a basic hip toss that Miz blocked. Miz then tried to hip toss EB the other way, but as EB went up, his feet found the center of the top rope. Using that as a springboard, he changed direction and momentum, coming down to give a bulldog to Miz. Very slick.

No high spots after that other than some slick and smooth counters by EB. Match ending started with Miz dodging an attempted World’s Most Beautiful Shooting Star Press. Though EB landed on his feet, Miz recovered quickly enough to trap EB, then hit the reverse Russian Leg Sweep / Facebuster / whatever it is on him to make the pin. Geez, I really need to look up what that move is called.

Segment 3: Josh Mathews interviews Sheamus in the back, who says that Ozzy sucks, and that he’ll so totally destroy Jamie Noble tonight.

Segment 4 [Singles Match]: Sheamus squashes Jamie Noble by referee stoppage. I refuse to recap squashes.

After the match, Sheamus continued the assault, ending things with a high-angle powerbomb delivered at ringside. Refs and EMTs came down after that, having Jamie do the whole stretcher job thing.

Segment 5: Josh Mathews interviews Kofi in the back, who says that Orton is nothing but a bully and he wouldn’t stand up for it. He goes on that Orton is just being pissy because he wants to blame everyone and everything else for the fact that he lost his title to John Cena. Further, Kofi admitted that while he destroyed the car last week, he did leave the mirror intact: it was wholly because he wants Orton to take a good at the real reason he lost the title. (Unlike most wrestling promos, Kofi stops here, rather than doing finishing off the thought by saying “Himself!!!” because he assumes wrestling fans are idiots.)

Anyway, Kofi then expresses he doesn’t regret a thing from the decimation of Orton’s car last week, then turns and heads to the ring. Huh, I was 99.5% sure that Legacy was going to assault him here.

Segment 6 [Singles Match]: Kofi Kingston and Randy Orton wrestle to a no contest. Want proof that Orton has fallen to a temporary midcarder? He pretty much ran down the ramp to get in the ring for his entrance rather than taking two full minutes and making his song loop once.

Also of note: they’re now announcing that Kofi is from somewhere from West Africa, so I guess the whole Jamaican thing has been wholly dropped? I knew he lost the accent, now he’s lost his hometown… if he loses his music, I’m going to cry.

After about a minute, Generation Douche appeared and tried to fuck with Kofi. Kofi made a quick adjustment on the apron, pulling down the top rope, which sent Orton out. As Legacy helped him up, Kofi hit the opposite ropes, then did a suicide dive to take all three down.

Ozzy Osbourne then appeared on the Titantron, said he knew this would happen, and planned for a contingency: we’re turning this into a 6-Man tag match! Awesome, DX is out here to…

Wait, it’s MVP and Mark Henry? Goddamnit…

Segment 7 [6-Man Tag Match]: Mark Henry et al defeat Generation Douche by pin. Match was all right, but mostly thanks to the crowd, rather than any technical achievements. The opening move was fun: MVP did his stupid Ballin’ Elbow at the same time Kofi did his Boom Drop or whatever it’s called, which was neat to see.

After that, the match settled into pure formula, with MVP and MH both being separate Faces In Peril. MVP was the second one, making the hot tag to MH, who cleaned house until the numbers got the best of him. Orton, illegal at the time, went for an RKO, but Kofi came out of nowhere and gave him a front dropkick to break that up. Orton bailed, so MH hit Cody (legal) with the World’s Strongest Slam to end the match.

Segment 8: The Osbournes are in the ring to do a parody of America’s Got Talent called RAW’s Got Talent. The third special guest judge (as if this whole thing wasn’t a special guest whatever) is Khali, so you know how well this is going to go.

I was going to spare you the details to this, but I have to note that Chris F. Masters was actually entertaining by flexing his pecs to the tune of Ozzy’s “Crazy Train.” Well, entertaining in the same way as seeing a nuclear explosion go off in the Nevada desert. As Translator says for Khali: “He found it oddly mesmerizing.” Am I gay?

Segment 9 [6-Diva Battle Royal]: Alicia Fox defeats Kelly Kelly et al by ring elimination. This one was for #1 contendership to the Divas’ Title. I don’t know which is sadder: that Gail Kim was the first to lose, or that Fox won. Meh.

At least I got to see My Melina as she looked on from the back. She seemed rather pleased that Alicia won… maybe because she knows that’s a definite title defense?

MELLLIIINNNAAA!!!

Segment 10: Chris Jericho finds the Osbournes in the back, takes issue with them and the fact that they haven’t respected him at all. He feels betrayed because he idolized Ozzy when he was younger, he pandered for the cheers!

…Then remembered that the fans were hypocrites, and that he was better than them. Further, he is better than them, especially Ozzy. He threatens that they’ll never disrespect him again.

Segment 11: DX has hung Hornswoggle up on a hook, and are bitching him out for infringing their copyrights, and that he’s in serious trouble if he does it again. John Cena materializes to get him down (shit, I haven’t even thought about Cena yet tonight!), and says that they can’t be messing with leprechauns, especially since he was the whole reason these three are against each other. Horny does a few crotch chops then runs away.

Trips watches him run off, then says to Cena that he’s not really too worried with the triple threat match since just two weeks ago, Trips beat him clean. Shawn adds that next week, they’ll be in England, where Shawn beat him once before as well. Cena says that’s fine, because he beat Shawn before, and he’s beaten Trips before, and they all beat each other all the time! …which, naturally, makes them all pause to consider those words for a moment.

Once they back on track, Cena mentions that anything can happen in a triple threat match, which he’ll prove tonight, as he’ll get Show and Jericho to smack each other around. Cena posits that maybe DX will turn on itself. “And when that happens, I won’t have two words for you, I’ll have four words for you…” Cena turns to the camera, flashes a shit-eating grin, quotes “The champ is here!,” then runs away. Shawn throws his hat to the ground in disgust, begging the WWE locker room to get their own material.

Pre-Segment 12: DX is out here for guest commentary to the main event, and are instantly classic by basically making the riffing on themselves and commentating in general. (Shawn: “I don’t know how you guys do it, trying to talk with people screaming in your ear the whole time. I’ve had street fights easier than this.” Trips: “Vintage DX! Maybe we just say ‘vintage’ a lot, it’ll be easier. Vintage! Vintage!”)

Segment 12 [Triple Threat Match]: Chris Jericho defeats John Cena by pin and outlasts Big Show. Match was good, though DX’s commentary work was, in my opinion, the best part of the whole thing.

It was basically a two-on-one affair for awhile, until Jericho got a little pissy and slapped Show, who slammed him back. Still, they didn’t do too much in-fighting. When Cena got ready for his standard Superwigger comeback at the end, he was able to dispatch Show, then hit Jericho with a series of moves. Cena put Jericho in the FU position, but that’s when Show recovered and gave Cena the Knockout Punch. Cena fell, Jericho fell on top of him, and Show didn’t care enough (seeing as there was no title on the line) to really stop the pin. Jericho takes the win officially, though Show did most of the work. Perfect!

Post-Segment 12: After the match, JeriShow decided to keep up the assault on Cena. DX decided that the time for playing around was over, so they hopped in the ring to make the save… or, attempted to, though they were put down in short order.

Final Thoughts: I am a fan of two minds: I am a mark first and tend to get wrapped up in the silliness of pro wrestling, but I’m a wrestling analyst (as it were) second where the silliness can or should take backseat to the in-ring action. I’ve noticed for awhile now (we’re talking six months, maybe more) where WWE tends to tread this bizarre middle line and puts me in a position where giving a rating is difficult.

As a mark, this episode was above average. Even Chris F. Masters finally did something amusing… certainly nothing that will get him pushed, but hey, he was a blind squirrel who found his nut today, or something. (Steroid jokes just write themselves!) And while it’s not exactly “good” for the main event of the next pay-per-view being hyped indirectly by a midget and gay entendres, it was rather amusing: Cena may have been a cartoon, but he actually pulls it off if he doesn’t go overboard with it like he does 90% of the time. This happened to be one of those 10% nights, I guess. And DX’s commentary during the main event, the ridiculously self-aware attitude and frequent fourth-wall breaks, dear god I was chuckling more often tonight than I have since the Seth Green episode.

Still, switching to my analyst hat… well, stories advanced, even if MVP/Mark Henry have no business playing with Generation Douche. (It was a matter of continuity from last week, when Legacy beat them, but that doesn’t mean MVP/MH have a reason to exist that high on the card.) Kofi didn’t do anything completely off the wall but he was his normal self, and the crowd really responded to him, so I’m sure he’s just as hot today as he was last week.

The only real holes were in the undercard. Alicia Fox is the #1 contender? Really? This is what Gail Kim came back to WWE for? She’s shown nothing in the ring; I’ll concede she’s shown more than Maria or Eve, but given that RAW has even the frickin’ Bella Twins, I’m amazed Fox will have been given the call. First thing she needs is a personality.

Finally, there is Jamie Noble. I find it amusing as always that he was destroyed by Sheamus, did a stretcher job and everything, then was completely forgotten about after the first “medical update” (which amounted to “he’s hurt and has some injuries!”) because the upper-midcard was starting. I’m a little annoyed by Sheamus, but really, I have no right to be: he’s doing the exact same thing as Drew McIntyre is doing on SD, and I dig Drew. I really don’t know what the difference is… though my patience for Drew is starting to wear thin as well. Meh; maybe Sheamus will show something else soon other than squashes.

I guess that’s it for me. Next week’s guest host is some boxer I’ve already forgotten the name of. Ozzy and Sharon did a good job today, though I’ll eat one of Rick’s trusty bugs if the former was 50% sober at any point during the show; I’ve got a feeling next week won’t be as entertaining from that front, but we’ll see. Take care, all!

RATING (out of 5): 3.2