Oh: and I’m probably up to about 95% health. I’m still tired, and still fighting the remnants of sinus congestion or something, but overall I’m doing great. Again, just in time for me to fly out there when I want to be 100%. The stars really are aligning for me; I’m going to remember this forever as one time I really did catch a great break. I’m excited for the trip, and can’t wait until Sunday!

But, better not get ahead of myself… Right now is SmackDown, which will more than likely be far more entertaining than RAW was this week.

Segment 1: Chris Jericho comes out to open the show, looking all cleaned up in his suit and everything else that makes Firewoman very happy. He blathers about his resume, saying that his latest bit of excellence was beating the Undertaker last week in the singles match also involving Edge’s Spear against the dead man. He says this weekend, he’ll “defy the odds again” and beat everyone in the Elimination Chamber for the World Heavyweight Title.

And here comes Edge to a huge pop to retort. Edge shows his own video package showing the Spear, and points out that that’s the only reason he beat Taker. “That’s the problem with you, Chris: you’re not as good as you think you are.”

Chris dismisses that, and repeats his promo from last week that Edge needs to stay away from him—including facing the RAW EC winner instead of himself since he’ll so totally win the SmackDown EC—because whenever Edge is around him, bad things happen.

Edge goes a little psycho for a moment, saying that his brain keeps repeating Jericho’s words, and they all make him want to beat the shit out of Jericho “for good.” He hopes Jericho does win the EC so Edge can face him at WrestleMania. But still, Edge says, “you need not be concerned about how much I’ll hurt you later, but how much I’ll hurt you now!”

They butt heads for a moment, then the lights flicker and fail with the buzz of an electrical problem. Both guys look up at the lights, but they restore themselves quickly enough. Jericho looks at Edge, but Edge doesn’t miss a beat and hits a Spear. Play out Edge’s music as Jericho leaves with his tail between his legs!

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: Kane defeats Dolph Ziggler by pin. Meh. Drew McIntyre came out to watch near the end, which distracted Kane long enough for Dolph to apply his jumping scissor sleeperhold, but it was for naught. Kane recovered, hit a chokeslam, and that was it. Whatever chemistry these guys had on their first match that impressed me weeks ago, they’ve lost completely. I’m starting to think that Kane/Dolph debut was just a fluke.

After the match, Drew came down and kicked Kane, and went for the Future Shock DDT. Kane slipped out of it and countered with a back body drop, which made Drew bail.

Segment 3: Rey Mysterio is in the locker room when Josh Mathews comes up. Rey says that he knows that the Elimination Chamber is brutal, but it’s no more brutal than what the Straightedge Society did to him last week. He said that the difference between the assault last week and the pay-per-view is that he will so totally win in the Elimination Chamber.

Segment 4 [Tag Match]: Cryme Tyme defeat Trent Barreta & Caylen Croft by pin. Uh... welcome to SD, you losers. Good to see I didn’t miss anything by not watching ECW. And seriously, are you morons really collectively called the “Dude Busters”?

Match was all right, I guess. It was technically sound, both teams have their chemistry working for them. But Cryme Tyme is underwhelming anymore, and the other two morons have negative charisma, so I wasn’t sure if I was watching SmackDown or if WWE NXT started five days early. The match ended with a Shad-delivered STO.

I wonder if JTG realized the irony of making fun of Caylen’s taunt two seconds before doing his own “dice roll” hand motion that no one gave a shit about.

Segment 5: Josh Mathews interviews John Morrison in the back, who says that he’s got an injured ankle, but it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than that for him to stay out of the Elimination Chamber, especially since he’s been waiting forever for a shot at the big title.

R-Truth comes along, dismisses Josh, and tells Morrison that he’s not afraid to go through Morrison this Sunday if he has to to get the title, but that they’re totally partners tonight. Morrison is fine with this, says a bunch of stupid shit, and we move on.

Segment 6: The Straightedge Society hits the ring for their match, and Punk talks. He doesn’t say anything new, but decent for all that. A bit long, but whatever… Punk gets pretty entertaining toward the end.

Segment 7 [Singles Match]: Straightedge Society (w/ Serena) defeats John Morrison & R-Truth by referee stoppage. Match was all right but nothing special, sorta like the last tag match. R-Truth was there for 97% of the match, finally tagged out, and Morrison almost instantly went down selling his ankle. The ref stopped the match since JM couldn’t go on.

Oh, halfway through the match, pyros blew for no reason up on the stage, with fire pulsing for a few seconds as they faded out to commercial. After they came back, the fire was gone, and nothing more was said about it, but I’m sure it’s got something to do with Undertaker’s Gay Spooky going in full force.

Post-Segment 7: Punk and Gallows continued to assault JM’s ankle anyway, which just summoned Truth to try to defend him. He got taken down from the two-on-one odds, so Rey came down to try to make the save. That got him to get his ass beat too, and the Society celebrated over the corpses of the three faces.

Segment 8: In the back, Theodore Long is watching the events from last week when Vickie Guerrero got covered with cottage cheese. The real Vickie is there, and they talk for five seconds about nothing special, and then Mickie James arrives. Mickie is there to apologize, saying she knows what it’s like to be humiliated, and didn’t do it on purpose.

Vickie replies that she is the one who is sorry… because Michelle has invoked her rematch clause for next week, and oh, by the way, Vickie will be the guest ref. Mickie leaves in a huff without a word. I don’t blame her at all.

Pre-Segment 9: I have to mention that Matt Hardy and Maria hit the ring for an upcoming match with Khali, to Khali’s music. While they all do a retarded dance in the ring, I find it amusing that Maria’s primary dance move is to shake her ass, and Matt’s primary dance move is to stare at the aforementioned ass. I don’t blame him, really; there’s pretty much no situation I can think of where I wouldn’t be staring at My Melina in a similar situation, you know?

Psst… Don’t tell the possibly future Mrs. Falkon I said that. It might put a damper on the New York vacation.

Segment 9 [6-Person Mixed Tag Match]: The Hart Dynasty defeats Maria, Matt Hardy, & Khali (w/ Translator) by pin. Match was all right, but too short to be much of anything. Matt was the Face in Peril, but went for a desperation hot tag to Khali… but DH shoved Matt, who went through the ropes and tagged Maria on his way out.

Maria didn’t notice this and instead turned her back on the ring to watch Matt hit the mats at ringside. Natalya ran up, flung Maria over the top rope, then hit a tornado clothesline to finish her. Natalya is my #5, I think… those pink streaks in her blond hair really make me happy for some reason.

Psst… don’t tell the possibly future Mrs. Falkon that either.

After the match, Matt helped Maria to her feet. She accepted his help but still angrily flailed her arms and left the ring. I’m not sure if that has any story meaning, but I figured I mention it just in case.

Segment 10: We’re back from a commercial, and Maria is ranting in the back to Matt. Matt’s trying to make her feel better, and then, uh, gets romantic. They might go for a kiss…

And here comes Michelle McCool and Layla. The heels continue their childish shtick, including saying that Matt shouldn’t kiss Maria because she has cooties. Really.

So, what, this is WWE’s way of saving face with the character assassinations they did to Michelle and Layla? “Oh, they only acted like five-year-olds to Mickie because that’s they’re new character hook! That they act like idiots on the playground! And we’re self-aware of it so that it makes it okay! Since we so totally decided to do this before the fallout from the shitty ‘fat’ storyline struck us!” God, I hate WWE sometimes.

Of course, as much as I hate whatever the hell direction Michelle and Layla are going, I am juvenile enough to point out that Matt and his main squeeze being on the same show with Edge may just be asking history to repeat itself, like the kid who keeps sticking his finger in the electrical outlet because he’s too stupid to realize he keeps getting shocked, except that the electrical outlet is Maria.

Segment 11 [Singles Match]: Edge and Batista wrestle to a no contest, I guess, although I would call it a DQ-win for Edge. Match was all right with nothing massively noteworthy. Bats teased doing a Batista Bomb aiming to plant Edge on the stairs outside, but Edge reverse and back body dropped Bats onto the stairs instead. So, yeah, whatever.

The match came to a head when Bats was going to do a Spear, but Edge was up a split-second faster and did a Spear of his own. Then the lights went out, and when they go back on, Taker is in the ring with his hand around Edge’s throat and chokeslammed him. Bats bailed, and Taker was happy with the damage.

Taker left, got to the stage, and did his fist raise of total taunting. Edge recovered… and ate a Codebreaker from Jericho, who came through the crowd. It just wasn’t Edge’s night, was it?

Jericho did a taunt to Taker as well a Broad gesture of “I’m going to take your belt.” This offended Taker, who did his throat slash to show that he wasn’t really concerned.

Final Thoughts: And there you have it. This doesn’t feel like the last week before a PPV, just a pile of random segments and storyline setups that no one cares about. Well, the majority doesn’t care about, anyway. I mean, we’re heading into a PPV, and they focus a chunk of the show on Trent Barreta and Clyde Whoever? I would seriously have rather watched Olympic curling… god the Denmark women’s team is comprised of hotties. Er, don’t tell you-know-who that, either.

Jericho was pure gold, both his promo and his main event actions, and Edge was definitely playing the victim and can’t do a damn thing about it on Sunday since he’s not involved, which is a nice dichotomy. If I wasn’t leaving, I’d consider getting the PPV, since I’ve never seen an Elimination Chamber match… I may just download it next week instead. But make no mistake: other than what’s directly connected to the Elimination Chamber, there was nothing going on in this episode that you need to see.

Starting with next week’s episodes, we’ll be in the final run-up to WrestleMania. Usually, this is when WWE actually gets some degree of attempted storyline balls to do something unique and fun. They’ve phoned it in the last couple years, but I’m hoping this year they return to some truly entertaining television. And if nothing else, we can look forward to what Shawn Michaels (who was conspicuously absent from RAW this week) is going to do, which is clearly the second-best thing they’ve got going on right now.

I’m done for now, guys. Have a good couple weeks!

Rating (out of 5): 2.0