The epitome of stupidity is the chef from the “CTRL + ALT + Delete” webcomic… and if you don’t know who I’m talking about, be thankful. Hell, as big of a fan of Family Guy that I am, some of the cutaways just fall flat when they’re TOO out there.

Moving on with my Billy Bob Thorton kick, the next movie on my Netflix queue is Bandits, which sounds intriguing. This one also comes to me from an OO reader whose name eludes me, but he gave me a winner in Sling Blade, so I see no reason to distrust him now. Hopefully, I’ll be able to check that one out before the week is over.

All right, enough of my esoteric Netflix blathering. I hope you’re settled in because we’ve got three hours of WWE TV coming up. And if My Melina doesn’t win the “Best Entrance Ever” Slammy, there shall be hell to pay. Hell, I tell you!

Oh, and as always, I will assume you have read Rick’s recap of TLC, so nothing here comes as a surprise.

Segment 1: Dennis Miller pops out immediately to start the show, and stands at the special Slammy podium at the edge of the stage. After a few (crappy) opening jokes—other than one that compares John Cena to Barack Obama and saying “One man just got put through a table, the other has yet to bring anything to one”—we get to business.

Our first Slammy is ready to be presented, with our presenters being Jillian (looking more like a Barbie Doll than ever, and that not a compliment) and R-Truth. After Jillian damages our hearing, she announces that our 2009 Tag Team of the Year is JeriShow. Kudos to that choice.

Jericho opens the acceptance speech by saying that he could feign surprise, but won’t do so; that it’s a totally obvious choice since they’re not just the best team of 2009, but for all time. He has two people thank for this: Edge, for being a pussy, and himself, for choosing Big Show as a replacement.

Show then adds to the acceptance that they will retain—“er, regain? Jericho’s the smart one…”—regain their belts in short order. Jericho clarifies that they’re invoking their rematch clause tonight, and it’ll prove that they are, indeed, the best team ever.

Pre-Pre-Segment 2: They announce that the Diva of the Year is being voted for on WWE.com. Shit, why didn’t anyone warn me? I would have gotten a bot here to stuff the virtual ballot box for you-know-who! Stupid WWE and its not revealing a goddamn thing about the Slammies ahead of time…

Pre-Segment 2: William Regal’s Roundtable is in the ring—didn’t realize it was a super show, but I’m not complaining—announces that they’re on the same page. Regal calls out Christian, who pops out in seconds, then tells him to call in two partners to help him out for a six-man tag match. Christian says he can barely walk, but what the hell: he’s got two guys who really want to beat the shit out these three nincompoops.

Pyros go off, it’s Kane and… Khali? Good god.

Segment 2 [6-Man Tag Match]: Khali, Kane, & Christian squash Roundtable by pin. I refuse to recap squashes, even tag squashes. And when Khali is one who makes the fall, you know you damn sure don’t need to care.

Segment 3: Miller gives us a stupid “joke” about Michael Moore in a Speedo at a premier for Twilight, again showing an example of when I hate randomness for randomness’s sake. He announces the presenters for our next award: Theodore Long and Tiffany. The winner for Breakout Star of the Year is Sheamus.

Our new WWE Champion pops out and says that we all take him seriously now, and that John Cena must do so too. He’s totally not a footnote, damnit! He says that he did something last night that Roddy Piper and others didn’t do, so he’s better than them all, which doesn’t make a goddamn bit of sense. I beat Borderlands by myself and Steve Austin never did that, so I’m totally better than the Rattlesnake at everything!

Anyway, that was it for his speech. The criminal thing with that whole award was that Kofi Kingston wasn’t even one of the nominees… it’s almost like this whole thing is fixed!

Pre-Segment 4 [Singles Match]: Kofi Kingston defeats Cody Rhodes by disqualification. Match was about 30 seconds long… as Kofi got on a tear, Ted DiBiase came down to beat on him a bit. Evan Bourne came out to make the save, and Miller made the obvious tag match.

At this point, Generation Douche was outside the ring. As soon as the bell rang to restart the match, the faces did twin suicide dives through the ropes to shoulder block the heels. Beautiful! …And then we go to commercial.

Segment 4 [Tag Match]: Generation Douche defeat Evan Bourne & Kofi Kingston by pin. Match was pure formula. Kofi was the Face in Peril, time-compressed. EB went House of Fire, and of course after a near-fall we had a Pier Four Brawl. During that, Kofi was chucked and landed on his left arm (injured and bandaged from last night), so EB fell quickly to a Cross Rhodes.

Segment 5: Our next award’s presenters are Vickie Guerrero and Santino Marella, here to present the Shocker (i.e., shocking moment) of the Year. The winner is CM Punk for his beating Jeff Hardy and forcing him to retire. Thankfully, he doesn’t get to make a speech.

Pre-Segment 6: Oh, that’s why he didn’t get to make a speech: because he’s doing it now, from inside the ring. He thanks himself for the award, runs down his resume, does his normal preaching routine, cuts a promo against Jeff Hardy, etc.

Now, we’re going to have a singles match here. Apparently, Superstar of the Year is a tournament deal, sorta like King of the Ring. My question: why didn’t they just fucking do King of the Ring earlier this year if they were going to bust this out? Because whoever is the Superstar of the Year isn’t going to be as good of a storyline point as a King of the ring would be.

Oh well, whatever… I should just keep my expectations low as usual.

Segment 6 [Singles Match, winner goes to the finals for Superstar of the Year]: John Cena defeats CM Punk by submission. Match lasted 90 seconds. Punk did the heel beatdown until he setup the Go To Sleep. Cena dropped and grabbed Punk’s raised knee, spinning around and locking in the SSTF. Punk tapped after about ten seconds. Lame, especially knowing that Punk can work with anyone and probably make it a million times better.

Post-Segment 6: Cena talks. He congratulates Sheamus, apologizes to the fans he let down, and gives an allegedly inspiring speech (with they hyper meter back to 11, not helped by some bitch in the crowd who’s shrieking like Melina does but more shrill) that you just need to overcome and adapt to a new situation. He tries rallying the crowd to keep their faith in him, which of course is responded to by male boos and female (or female-sounding) cheers.

His punch line here is that he’s not going to lose another match until he becomes WWE Champion again. So, uh, he’s going to win it but immediately lose it?

I think it’s usually a fun storyline device when you have a wrestler give a “I’m going to win out” promise, but it’s really not that big of a deal when it’s friggin’ Superwigger. He already wins basically every match he’s in, and he’s pretty much the defacto champion (or at least he’s treated as such) even when he doesn’t have the title, so I’m not that enthralled here.

Segment 7: Miller announces that our next presenter for our next award is Triple H, who Miller calls by his nickname, “The Show.” Awesome. (Triple H responds “I just want to thank Dennis Millburn for that great introduction.” Ha!) The award is for Match of the Year, but before we get to that, Trips says that he and Shawn have officially accepted JeriShow’s challenge earlier.

The winning match is Shawn Michaels/Undertaker at WrestleMania 25, which I completely agree with. And this explains why DX didn’t come out together, though Shawn comes out presently to accept his little trophy. Before Shawn makes his speech, Trips makes a nice little comment that if the fans haven’t seen the match, to definitely watch it. He plugs the WM25 DVD, but goes on that he knew it was awesome first-hand since he had to follow it at WrestleMania 25 and knew he didn’t have a chance at beating its quality.

Trips powders out, and Shawn takes the podium. Shawn makes a nice little speech, reminding us that he got the award last year too, for beating Flair. This year, he came up short against Taker, but he’s still proud of what they accomplished. So, thank you and good night.

…And then Shawn decides not to leave just yet. The camera zooms in as he says that he can beat Undertaker, that they both know it. He gives the direct challenge: Shawn vs. Taker at WrestleMania 26. Tingles, baby; tingles. Of course, that would necessitate some chicanery with Taker’s belt probably, but if the payoff is Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker II, I wouldn’t complain.

Segment 8 [Singles Match, winner goes to the finals for Superstar of the Year]: Randy Orton defeats Undertaker by countout. Match was decent at first; if Taker is hurting, he didn’t show many signs of it, though the match was short.

At the end, Legacy came down. Taker exited the ring to meet them. They backed off, but continued to be a minor distraction. By the time Taker decided to go after Orton again, Orton gave him an RKO OUT OF NOWHERE~!!! on the floor… although Taker took it like shit, though I wonder how much of that had to do with the fact that he didn’t want to crash into the floor outside the ring.

After the match, Legacy assaulted Taker. Taker managed to fend off the ninjas and shove them throat-first over the top rope, then gave a Chokeslam to Orton. So, uh, hooray?

Anyway, this means we’re going to see Cena vs. Orton for Superstar of the year, which is just so awesome that I’m going to call up all my friends right now and threaten them with car bombs to their houses if they don’t turn on USA Network to see this historic, once-in-a-lifetime match, because lord knows we don’t see epic matchups like this every week!

Segment 9: Vince McMahon is announced as the presenter for the Guest Host of the Year award. Vince rips on the audience for not laughing more at Miller’s jokes, though I refuse to feel guilty from a man who thinks Chris F. Masters is the answer to any question that may come up.

Anyway, the winner of Guest Host of the Year is Bob Barker… who unfortunately isn’t here, but was in a pre-taped segment to thank us for voting for him, even though nobody did since no one voted for this award. Oh, and Bob plugs his book and foundation too. So, uh, yeah.

Vince asks Dennis’s opinion on who should be the next guest host. Dennis replies: Bret Hart. Oh fuck yes, that pops the crowd. Vince says that he wouldn’t be interested; Miller asks us if we would be interested, which of course pops the crowd as well. Vince just leaves without another word. Heh.

Segment 10: Jericho appears in Miller’s office, and we start off the Thesaurus Throwdown that I was hoping for last week. Miller calls him an “energy black hole,” which I believe proves that even Dennis Miller reads Online Onslaught. Anyway, Miller says that he’s glad this match between JeriShow and DX is going on, because he hopes to make Jericho leave RAW for good, where his black holiness won’t bother it anymore. Jericho waves a finger of doom and walks off.

Man. That was a letdown.

Segment 11 [Tag Match for the Unified Tag Titles]: JeriShow defeat DX by disqualification, but DX retains. There was no match here, basically… the bell sounded, but before anyone engaged, Trips (legal) called the ref over to talk to him. Shawn snuck in the ring, then got down on all fours behind the ref. Trips shoved the ref, who of course took a tumble and fell on his ass. The ref popped up, asked rhetorically what the fuck Trips was doing, and DQed the faces. Jericho especially was upset by this.

Shawn pulls a mic out of nowhere, says aw shucks, why did Trips go ahead and do that? Geez, jerk… but then, we are still the champs, oh darn. Trips agrees, and says that that was his one rematch that Jericho got… so Jericho is out, and it’s back to SD.

Jericho looks like he’s about to cry, especially as HBK rubs it in that now, technically, Jericho isn’t legally allowed to be in a RAW ring. He’s so to totally trespassing! Trips posits that if only there was a group of superstars who hate Jericho just as much as DX does, and can help DX to eject him from the ring…

And here comes a motley crew of random faces from RAW and ECW to help things out. Jericho complains, but takes his eyes off Shawn long enough to eat a Superkick. As Jericho rolls out of the ring and into the waiting arms of the other guys, the fans sing the goodbye song. JTG from Cryme Tyme does about six crotch chops as the rest of them help him up the ramp.

Huh. Guess Jericho is out, baby. Rick and Firewoman are both crying. I don’t think I need to voice how frickin’ anti-climactic that was, do I?

Segment 12: Our presenters for the next award are Carlito, Eve, and Chris. F. Masters. Masters does his little trick while Carlito tries to make his presentation speech. He finally gets fed up and demands Masters to stop, then curiously asks if Eve can do that. “You know,” she replies, “that’s interesting… because you’ll never find out.” Heh.

Anyway, this award is for the Most Extreme Moment of the Year, and the winner is Jeff Hardy for his Swanton Bomb off the top of the ladder onto a table at SummerSlam. Matt Hardy pops up to accept the award for his brother. During his speech, Carlito asks why he’s accepting the award; Matt responds that because Jeff isn’t here, someone has to accept it, right? Matt keeps talking…

And then Carlito sucker punches him. He then accepts the award for himself, thanks Jesus and the Academy, then gets the Full Nelson of Doom slapped on him. CFM lets him go intentionally, so Matt can punch him in the face. And, uh, that ends the segment.

Segment 13 [Singles Match]: Yoshi Tatsu, John Morrison, & Mark Henry defeat Zack Ryder, Drew McIntyre, & Miz by pin. Match was incredibly disappointing, only because three (possibly four) of the six guys in the ring can actually be exciting or interesting to watch, and no one was given any time to shine. The saddest part was that Mark F. Henry drew the biggest pop during entrances.

Anyway, the match ended when the final two were Zack and Yoshi. Zack did some stupid move, then said “Woo woo woo!!!,” and Yoshi responded with a roundhouse kick to his temple. He made the pin, the other heels didn’t bother trying to break it up, and we were done in under three minutes. It’s a shame, because for a random grouping of wrestlers, this match could have been quite fun to watch; and it just wound up being lame.

After the match, we get a cut scene of a bunch of face divas heading to the ring for a special 7-on-7 divas match next up after the commercial. And guess who was center-left? MELLLIIINNNAAA!!!

Segment 14 [14-Diva Tag Match]: Mickie James et al defeat Rosa Mendes et al by pin. The match was, literally, two moves long, ending with a spike DDT by Mickie. All the divas were wearing evening gowns, so I assume part of the reason the match was so short was as so no one ripped their dress? The winner of the evening gowns was Gail Kim, wearing an absolutely intoxicating white thing with a fantastic hairdo too.

So, uh…

Segment 15: Goldust and MVP hit the podium pop out immediately while all the faces stay in the ring and all the heels stay outside the ring. Goldust makes a lame sexist joke, then ejects himself from the proceedings.

Anyway, the winner of Diva of the Year is… Maria? What?

Whatever. The fans are idiots.

As Maria tries to make her speech, Batista comes out and shoos her out, saying he gets the award for “Screwjob of the Year Award,” and prattles that it’s all about him, and that he should be superstar of the year. That summons some cops for some reason, who escort him off the stage.

Segment 16: Abraham Washington, Tony Atlas, and… ugh… Big Dick Johnson are out here for the next award. Atlas is laughing like a lunatic over BDJ’s presence, which is sad on so many levels it’s unreal. Anyway, this is the “Oh My!” (formerly “Oh my god!”) Moment of the Year. The winner here is Michael Cole vomiting on Jericho at the SmackDown anniversary. He winds up humping Jerry Lawler as he rushes around the ring and up the ramp to accept the award. Please, kill me. Or, even better, kill him.

Hilariously, Cole just leaves at this point, leaving Lawler and Matt Striker to continue on the show. Yes, Striker was here for a three-man booth; his lack of impact is the very reason I haven’t mentioned this yet. Anyway, Miller says he has to go, mostly because after seeing BDJ, he has to gouge out his eyes with a power drill. I don’t blame him.

Miller wraps up and heads out, saying that the Superstar of the Year match is next. Joy.

…Wait, this is interesting. As we fade out to commercial and they hype Cena/Orton, Lawler reports that after Cena so totally wins, he’s going to challenge Sheamus for a rematch for the WWE Championship. Huh.

Segment 17: DX cuts a commercial which has an obvious, if still amusing, punch line… until everything goes to hell with the introduction of a DX-themed Snuggie (they call it a Snuggle). You know, the “blanket with sleeves.” Which, if we’re all honest with each other, is just a fucking bathrobe turned backwards. Sigh.

Oh, then Hornswoggle gets involved. Double sigh.

Segment 18 [No-DQ Singles Match, winner is Superstar of the Year]: John Cena defeats Randy Orton by pin. Nothing you haven’t seen before here, although these two guys have worked with each other ad nauseum that, at least, their moves and transitions were smooth. Move of the match was Orton giving Cena a hanging DDT whilst his feet were on the apron, and the impact hit ringside. It took two FUs, but Orton lose.

After the match, Sheamus popped out of the back and taunted Cena with the belt, but nothing came of it.

Final Thoughts: Well, no complaints, but rather than this episode being special, it was just an episode of RAW that happened to be three hours long. There were tons of missed opportunities, which was perhaps the saddest part of the whole thing. I will say that the intangible factor of “fun” or “entertainment” was there a bit stronger than it has been in previous weeks, but it still didn’t exactly make the show.

Next week’s guest host is Johnny Damon of the New York Yankees. I know the name but not the guy, so someone more versed in MLB than me will have to tell you the potential of whether this is good or bad. Next week is also the idiotic “little people’s court” or whatever with DX, so, yeah… good thing those tag titles are being put to good use.

Hopefully the rest of next week gets things going again with RAW’s stories and feuds. I understand that this week, not a tremendous amount of attention could be given to RAW due to all three brands mucking about, so I’m willing to give them a pass there, but I’m just hoping Things Happen next week. Sheamus holding the title intriguing, but as long as Cena and Orton are both in the hunt for it, nothing’s really changed, you know?

Rating (out of 5): 2.6