Hm… perhaps it is. But at least I graduate very early 2011, so I’m way past the halfway point and only have to endure another 11 months of stupid crap before I can take some time off. Hey, I’ve gone 60 months without a full break… what’s another 11? And it’s not like I’m overworked or anything. This will all pay off… at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Segment 1: Starting off RAW… Edge! Looks like he did jump ship to RAW!

The crowd can’t decided whether to boo or cheer him, it’s about 50/50 to me. Edge says he’s not just back in WWE, but he’s back in the main event of WrestleMania! But before we go on more about that, let’s have a history lesson of when he got hurt. He heard the doctors’ recommendations that he’d never get back.

That is, until the Slammy episode seven weeks ago, when he heard Chris Jericho bitching him out and making light of his injury. He knew that he’s missed two WrestleManias, and he swore he wouldn’t miss a third. He promised himself that he’d get through rehab, move on to the Rumble, and win it to move on to WrestleMania. The rest is history. Recent history, of course, but still. He says that Jericho may have a Slammy and his face on TMZ (whatever that is), but now he is going to WrestleMania.

Edge posits about going after the Undertaker, as much as Shawn wouldn’t like that… but what’s smarter, going after the 17-0 Taker who he’s already lost to? Or go after Sheamus, who’s never been in a WrestleMania. He’s not going to decide quite yet, but he does know that whichever way he decides, he will main event WrestleMania!

Edge’s music plays him off for all of a nanosecond, but then Sheamus comes out to respond. Sheamus says a lot has changed since Edge has been gone. Edge replies: “Yes, I can see that RAW has been taken over by an evil Ronald McDonald!” Sheamus responds by running his resume, but Edge points out that he has beaten both Randy Orton and John Cena, so Sheamus is nothing special.

Sheamus reminds Edge that Edge has been injured, whereas Sheamus has been just rolling at maximum health, so Edge needs to just roll out of here to SD before he reinjures Edge permanently. Edge isn’t intimidated, but Sheamus smacks him with the mic. Sheamus readies his bicycle kick, but Edge dodges and nails him with a Spear. Good night, Irishman!

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: John Cena defeats Cody Rhodes by pin. We were told this was an Elimination Chamber qualifying match, so the result was a foregone conclusion. Rhodes did a pretty sweet high angle moonsault, but it still wasn’t enough to put Cena way. Match ended with an FU.

Segment 3: Josh Mathews stops Vince McMahon in the back. Josh asks if Vince has seen Bret Hart yet; Vince replies that he hasn’t, and doubts anyone will, because he thinks Bret will be too afraid to show up.

Vince continues to his office, in which he finds Bret’s fellow Canadian William Shatner. I never knew Shatner was Canadian. Shatner tells Vince that he can’t wait for Bret to embarrass him later, saying his line in ways only Shatner can.

Segment 4 [Singles Match]: Triple H defeats Jack Swagger by pin. Decent match but, like Segment 2, a foregone conclusion with the “EC Qualifier” label. Match ended with the Pedigree.

Segment 5: Shatner sing-talks to a few entrance themes. Seriously: you need to hear and see him do these. This is absolute comedy gold, especially when he does Cena’s song! They do it in the form of an ad for a new CD… if that’s a real product, I would totally buy it.

Segment 6: Trips and Shawn are talking in the locker room. Trips fucks with Shawn at first (“Hey, I wouldn’t have eliminated you from the Rumble! Oh wait, yes I would have.”), but Shawn isn’t playing back. He regrets not winning, and is absolutely forlorn.

Trips gives him a pep talk and tells him to let Taker go. He promises that if they get in the Elimination Chamber together, they can work together—ending in Trips’s win of course—and having the main event be Trips and Shawn. Shawn thanks him for his pep talk, but doesn’t seem too convinced.

Segment 7 [Singles Match]: Randy Orton defeats Shawn Michaels by pin. Meh. Match was alright but nothing special (especially with Orton doing his usual snail-paced offense), although the ending was pretty hot. There was a bunch of triple reversey stuff, with both guys’ finishers dodged. After a flying shoulder block by Shawn, both guys went down. Shawn did a kip up, but Orton was right beside him and pulled him into a school boy for a clean pin.

After the match, Shawn said “Son of a bitch!” and threw a little temper tantrum in the ring despite the crowd’s best efforts to cheer him up. Poor guy… Maybe he should jump shows and get in Taker’s face? He still can, what with his Unified Titles!

Segment 8: After commercials and a bunch of other stuff, we see Orton WALKING~! when he runs into Ted DiBiase. Ted tries to apologize for Orton’s DQ loss against Sheamus, but Orton cuts him off with a cold stare. After a few seconds, Orton just storms away. Ted looks after him and subtly gets a little… annoyed? Irritated? Angry? Something negative, whatever it was…

Segment 9 [Singles Match]: Ted DiBiase defeats Mark Henry by pin. Meh. We’ve got an interesting story context here with Ted and Orton both making it into the Elimination Chamber. As far as the match goes, excepted for Referee McDoucher screaming “Eight!” while holding up seven fingers, nothing significant happened here. Match ended with an armbreaker DDT.

Segment 10: Michael Cole and Jerry Lawler pass along the sad bit of news that Jack Brisco passed away. We get a short video package about him and Jerry when he was actually active. That’s rather surprising… I don’t know, he and Pat Patterson just seem immortal for some reason to me.

Rest in peace, Jack.

Segment 11: Gail Kim and Kelly Kelly are talking in the back, and Maryse appears. Maryse actually is nice and respectful, and says that she thinks the whole Michelle/Mickie feud is stupid and disrespectful. Well, that’s right, but this is too little, too late WWE writers.

Anyway, Maryse is sure that she and Gail will show the world what real women can do. Gail is wary but agrees. Maryse then speaks French and walks off. Hmm…

Segment 12: Miz and Big Show are in Shatner’s office when… uh… the Straight Edge Society breaks in. After a bit of arguing that each team deserves a shot against DX again for the Unified Tag Titles. So Shatner makes a triple threat tag match for next week on RAW involving all three teams.

Segment 13: Shawn is miserable in the locker room. Trips is trying to give him a pep talk again, culminating that Shawn is Mr. WrestleMania and doesn’t need Taker. There are plenty of other opponents, buddy!

Shawn: “Not for me.”

…And Shawn leaves as Trips helplessly looks on after him. Wow, that was pretty intense.

Segment 14 [Singles Match]: Kofi Kingston defeats Big Show by disqualification. Match was decent but nothing special. Miz was out on commentary but was jumped by MVP through the crowd near the end.

After that, Kofi tried to go on a tear, though he slipped off the rope when tried for a top rope move. Kofi readjusted himself but still fucked up a… uh… a missile dropkick, maybe, and landed weird. Show sold it anyway, but the sequence looked weak.

After that, Kofi got back on track and hit the Boom Drop. Show wound up in the corner soon after, but grabbed Kofi’s throat. Kofi flailed his arms trying to get free, accidentally thumbing Show’s eye. Show took a second to try to recover, and went for a Knockout Punch, but smashed the ref instead.

Kofi was soon flung over the top rope, but Show was concerned about the ref. He called for help, and a second ref came down… the immediately DQed Show. Show argued, to no avail. The original ref did a stretcher job as we faded out to commercials.

Segment 15: Jerry Lawler is in the ring and is finally introducing our guest host tonight, despite the fact that it’s 10:55pm already. Shatner hits the ring with the Bellas on his arms. Shatner is drunk or high as he prattles around, but finally gets around to introducing us to Bret Hart!

And the Hit Man indeed comes out to the ring, which Shatner and King have vacated. I can’t decide if I like his new remixed theme better or worse than his original. Anyway…

Bret says that it’s been about a month since he’s come to WWE to bury the hatchet. He said that he was warned that he was being naïve, but he truly believed he could put Montreal behind him forever. Clearly that didn’t happen… so tonight, Bret doesn’t want peace or closure, he wants to talk to Vince face-to-face right now. And if he doesn’t, he’s going to go find Vince with a camera crew, and they’re going to have it out.

After a long pregnant pause, Vince does indeed power walk his way out of the back. Oh wait, it’s more of a “power walk dance.” Whatever. Vince gets to ringside and stares down Bret…

Vince does indeed head up the stairs and gets in the ring after another pregnant pause. Vince starts by saying that he’s never regretted anything he’s done or said to Bret; Bret thanks him for finally being honest, since he’s the world’s greatest liar. Vince has lied to Bret 12 years ago in Montreal, and last month when he kicked him and said he was like a proud father of him. “You were like a father to me? You couldn’t lace up my father’s jock strap!”

Bret goes on that John Cena was absolutely right in calling Vince pathetic. Bret says that eight years ago, he was in a wheelchair after his stroke. He has recovered of course, but he remembers crying himself to sleep and feeling pathetic at the time. He also promised that he would get out of that wheelchair and recover, and would never feel pathetic for the rest of his life.

And yet, he comes back to WWE with the right intentions. But after Vince’s actions last month, as he rolled around after the kick, he felt pathetic again. Bret calls on the fact that he busted his ass for Vince for 14 years, and he thought Vince would eventually appreciate him… though that’s never happened. Bret repeats that Vince described him as a piece of chewing gum that lost its flavor… but Bret insists that “this piece of gum has just enough flavor to kick your ass right here.”

Vince responds by patronizing Bret’s legacy and catchphrases, then says that the whole “best there is” thing is a total crock. More than that, Vince retches when Bret is called a “Canadian Hero.” He’s not a hero at all, Vince insists, and that he’s never understood the appeal of Bret to anyone ever. Vince thinks Bret is pathetic: no personality at all, that it was always Bret’s opponents who had personalities, that Bret was just a midcarder without them. Vince continues the list: Bret has no charisma, no especial command over English, no good looks, bad hair, dressed “like a hobo”… Deep down, Vince insists, they both know that Bret deserves to be screwed.

Vince has one more thing he wants to say: he has changed his mind about nominating Stu Hart for the Hall of Fame. Why? Because he doesn’t deserve it.

And that’s enough for Bret, who kicks Vince in the gut. Bret flips Vince’s jacked over his head, does a few shots, then drags his ass to the middle of the ring and goes for the Sharpshooter!

…And then Batista appears. Batista? Really? Bats gets control of the situation, holds Bret still, and Vince flips out and screams in Bret’s face… then punctuates it with a spit in Bret’s eye as he did to Vince 12 years ago. The crowd screams for Cena to come down and make the save… but we fade out the show.

Final Thoughts: Wow… goddamn that last segment was hot. I’m very interested to know what the hell Bats was doing there, but regardless, this has obviously fed a tremendous amount of fuel on the fire of this Bret/Vince feud. Incredible, and definitely the best thing WWE has going on right now.

The rest of the night has introduced some intriguing possibilities. Taken by itself, the show wasn’t that special: five matches with foregone conclusions, no diva action, etc. Not the most exciting thing ever. There are some nice subtle stories going on, so it’s a good post-PPV reset and lead-up to the next PPV. We are definitely on the Road to WrestleMania, and things are off to a good start. “Sustainable episodic TV” indeed, especially with the random brand-hopping going on.

Meanwhile, we’ve seen the seeds planted for a Ted DiBiase face turn (though the initial seeds were planted months ago), and Edge as a face is intriguing. I sorta hope Edge hops between brands to just to screw with us for a bit more.

Shatner did a decent job, and was a bit more amusing than I may have written in text. It’s just the kind of thing you have to see: Shatner’s gimmick doesn’t translate well into writing. If you like him, you’ll be amused; if you hate him, you’ll be annoyed.

Next week’s guest host is a NASCAR driver. I don’t remember his name, but he’s the dude they always show on SportsCenter doing backflips off his car after wins. I have zero hope this’ll work out considering the disaster that took place the last time we had NASCAR drivers on RAW, but my best friend Mike insists he’ll fit in because he’s funny on commercials. I’ll have to give him the benefit of the doubt, I guess.

Anyway… without the Bret promo, the night was above average. With the Bret promo, the show becomes nearly a must-watch. Fun night, and a good follow-up to the Royal Rumble.

Rating (out of 5): 3.5