And tonight, what it is is SmackDown. Let's roll...

Opening: WWE has done that thing again where they do a montage of the Team Authority/Team Cena feud to music, and makes the whole thing like the teaser for the pay-per-view main event. It makes some sense on Sunday to catch up lapsed fans on the storyline, but for the opening of a weekly show? A waste of time. Too bad Hulu Plus doesn't really have a true fast-forward.

Also: I just recapped about a recap without recapping it, just like Rick did on Monday. One point for me, and the game is tied!

Segment 1: Here comes another game, specifically The Game, and hits the ring as Michael Cole introduces him. Trips apparently has refused to do the weekly sit-down interviews with Cole, but he's game (see what I did there?) for doing the interview between the ropes. Weird.

Blathering ensues, but the crux here is that Cole has the cantaloupes to tell Trips that the fans hate him, and we're all wanting to see him go down. Trips replies that he respects the audience insofar that without us, there's no WWE... but the thing is, without WWE, there is no us. So he doesn't give a shit about our opinions, so there.

The interview goes on for minutes after, though it feels like hours. Cole asks “tough questions,” Trips deflects them and exudes confidence. Trips parallels himself to Vince McMahon, that Trips and Vince outlasted all their peers because they were the smartest ever. And he assures Cole that Trips and Stephanie are the only two who could ever replace Vince as the mastermind. Trips gives the fans three months of the company without him and Steph at best before everyone starts begging them to come back.

More blathering, and then Team Cena (minus Cena himself) come out to the stage at Trips's demand. He tells them—Ryback, Erick Rowan, Dolph Ziggler, and Big Show—that when they lose to Team Authority, he's going to fire them all on Monday. Then there is a pregnant pause as if we're all supposed to be shocked and appalled at this, and then Rusev hits the ring for the first match.

So... that whole thing didn't really accomplish much. It was pretty obvious that's where Trips was going from the beginning, and—and maybe I'm just jaded here—I just don't get into the “You're fired!” threat with professional wrestling. It's on par with comic book deaths, and just about as meaningful.

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: Rusev (w/ Lana) defeats Dolph Ziggler by pin. It took us 20 minutes to get here, which is just insane, especially since the commentators just talked about the upcoming main event of Survivor Series for pretty much this entire match. Ugh.

Standard opening with Rusev getting the advantage early with his strength. Dolph got momentum when he dodged a Rusev charge, followed up by guillotining him on the top rope, then dropkicked him off the apron. Dolph went punchy-kicky from there outside the ring, but then Rusev flung him into the stairs, which took us to the break.

Back, and Rusev has Dolph in a rest hold. Dolph slips out and tricks Rusev into slamming himself into the corner, then tries a pin. Only a two. Rusev tries a series of attacks to follow up, but he can't close the deal; in fact, Dolph slips out of each and tries pins of his own, but only gets two-counts.

The fight goes to the corner, where Dolph hits a few punches. Rusev throws him off; after both guys hit the ropes, Rusev nails him with a leaping spinning back kick, which is insane to see. I mean, Rusev has done it before, but good lord is that move impressive, doubly so with a guy that size.

Rusev takes momentum from there, then signals for the Camel Clutch. He starts it, but Dolph slips out through Rusev's legs backwards and hits the Zig Zag out of nowhere. Dolph is slow on the cover though, and only gets the two.

After both guys tease their fatigue, they rise to their feet and Dolph tries the Famous-Er. Rusev slips it and counters with a huge kick to the jaw, which is enough to finish him.

After the match, Rusev beat the shit out of Dolph and locked in the Camel Clutch for a few seconds just to be a jerk.

Segment 3: Kane is chatting on the phone in the back. He stops talking and looks off stage right as someone comes in. He says, “Just the man I wanted to see. Yes, Paul?”

...and then the screen fades to black. Well that was weird.

Segment 4: Another viewing of Kofi Kingston's New Day vignette. I really dig the music for these bits.

Segment 5: We see Kane, still in the back, and meeting with Cesaro. Kane implies is that Cesaro is totally going to be rewarded for his loyalty after Team Authority wins. Then Kane gives an order to beat the shit out of Erick Rowan for being pro-active and joining the wrong side. Cesaro literally replies: “Yes. Long live the Authority. Cesaro... out.” If Cesaro wasn't a heel, I'd assume that whole thing was sarcasm.

Segment 6 [Tag Match]: Los Matadores (w/ El Torito) defeat The Miz & Damien Sandow by pin. The Usos and Gold & Stardust are out here, turning it into a seven-man commentating booth. Jesus. Also, just for a visual, the Usos are sitting to the commentators' left, and Gold & Stardust are sitting to the commentators' right. Possibly to your surprise, this will actually matter in a moment.

The commentary is naturally a total clusterfuck, especially since this Sunday, all four of these teams will be in a fatal four-way tag match for the titles, which will be interesting. Gold & Stardust's commentary is fairly face-based, or at least “we're so insane that you can't be mad at us”-based, which pretty much amounts to the same thing.

The match starts with minor chain wrestling between Diego and Miz. Fernando winds up tagging it at one point, and Miz and Fernando bounce off opposite ropes about a hundred times before anything happens. Also weird. They exchange blows with neither man getting an advantage. Miz gets shoved into his corner, so Sandow tags himself in and hits the first half-decent move. During his celebration, Miz tags himself back in, to boos.

Fernando tags out to Diego, who goes house of fire without a proper heel beatdown sequence. The fight spills outside, and in the process, Diego flings Miz into the Usos. Sandow decides to mimic this by flinging himself into Gold & Stardust. Heh.

Back in the ring, Diego hits Miz with a top rope cross body into a pin, and gets the three. The Usos and Gold & Stardust bitch at each other, but no blows are exchanged, and Los Matadores run off before anything untoward happens to them.

Segment 7: Dean Ambrose hits the ring for a promo where he tells us about his “survival kit” against Bray Wyatt. It's basically just a setup so he can explain that he'll use anything to fight Bray, and that he's a survivor against all odds. I mean, it's entertaining, but it's nothing noteworthy; he didn't even have props this time!

And then Bray appears on the Titantron in a prison cell. Bray parallels the image to Ambrose's father: “I gave you life, and then I left you to be caged!” Bray then says that the apple doesn't fall from the tree, and Ambrose is going to just be trapped like this too. Ambrose could have been so much more and ruled the world with him! But instead, Bray is just going to kick his ass and “leave him drowning,” a point punctuated by a second cell door clicking closed behind the first but still in front of Bray. Bray says, through both sets of bars, that “it will never end” in a cell like that.

And even with whatever literary prowess I have (which I admit isn't much, if my shitty books are any indication), I know I can't do that bit any justice. If you're a Bray fan, you may want to check it out since it was sufficiently creepy as hell.

That's the end of the bit too, and we go to commercials without a response from Ambrose.

Pre-Segment 8: Since turnabout is fair play, AJ hits the ring dressed as Nikki Bell for the next match. She's stuffing the back of her shorts and using Wonderbra Technology to appear a bit more endowed (though still not even close to Nikki's fakies). Brie finds this hilarious.

Segment 8 [Singles Match]: AJ defeat Brie Bella (w/ Nikki Bella) by flash pin. A minor exchange of holds to start, and Brie gets a little advantage by slamming AJ's face into the turnbuckle a few times, which AJ has to oversell. Then AJ winds up slamming Brie's face into her, uh, fake fakies, which Brie oversells as well since that's just ridiculous. Then, just because it's literally the first time it's ever been done in WWE, AJ mounts Brie, pulls out one of her silicone boob inserts (which I didn't realize she was wearing), then starts beating Brie in the face with it. Given how 90% of the diva roster has fakies, it's no surprise this doesn't count as a foreign object.

Still, it's not doing much damage despite the oversell, so she slipped out of the mount and applied a single leg crab. AJ crawled to the edge and forced a rope break, then countered with a standing scissored sleeper. Exchange of blows from there, and the crowd is dead, so it's not all that interesting.

The crowd wakes up when Brie screams to hulk up, and she hits a top rope dropkick. It looked great, but only got two. Brie wanted to follow up, but then Nikki jumped on the apron to talk some shit. Brie punched Nikki, which seems stupid, and is doubly stupid when AJ rolls her up. After the match, Nikki shoved Brie (to which no one gave a shit), and then made eyes as AJ went up the ramp.

So... the whole thing was subpar, missed the boat on the story and the match, and wasn't all that fun other than the Fake Fakie Beating of Doom.

Segment 9 [Singles Match]: Erick Rowan defeats Cesaro by submission. Punchy-kicky roughneck offense from both guys, which works for Rowan as long as he doesn't have to do it long. And he doesn't, since Cesaro is able to hit a few moves of his own and sells like a champ. It's a pretty even match... until Rowan hits Rick's favorite move of all time, the Bear Hug of Doom. Thankfully, Rowan holds it for only like ten seconds before they start doing something actually interesting.

Cesaro is able to break out and guillotines Rowan's head on the top rope, then tries a rear scissored sleeper. That only lasts a few seconds as well as Rowan powers out and starts flinging Cesaro around like a toddler's broken Barbie. Rowan gets in a stiff backbreaker and slaps on the Torture Rack. Cesaro apparently tapped out instantly, and it was over.

Huh. For a three-minute match, it was actually pretty decent, especially since it gives Rowan a shred of credibility... though, of course, at the expense of Cesaro, whose star has been on a freefall for half the year. Still, it told enough of the story, so whatever.

Post-Segment 9: After the match, Luke Harper hit the ring. He just stared at Rowan a bit, then walked off with his title without doing anything more. Rowan talked shit as Harper walked away, which actually seemed odd; I know Rowan is basically monosyllabic, so doesn't shit-talking sort of run counter to that? Or are we just assuming that Rowan is usually monosyllabic by choice, rather than by insanity?

Segment 10: Buy WWE 2K15! Which is something I'm not going to do for the first time in like over a decade since the IGN review scared me off!

Segment 11: Replay of Big E's New Day promo we first saw on Monday.

Segment 12: Renee Young interviews Team Cena, who say that they don't give a shit about Trips's threats, so they're not worried about being fired. Meanwhile, Erick Rowan attempts to solve a Rubik's Cube.

Segment 13 [Tag Match]:

Basic opening as Ryback gets in a couple light hits, and Rollins bails to play the chickenshit. Quick tags to Big Show keep Rollins contained as they cut the ring in half. The domination is so complete that Team Authority hits ringside to just... hang out. Oh, and Dolph and Rowan were banned from ringside, so this is now basically a 6-on-2 situation. Joy cookies. We go to break.

Back, and Show is in control over Kane, but Kane counters a back body drop into a DDT, which gives the heels control. Rollins tags in and goes stompy-stompy on Show's carcass. Kane comes back in and slaps on a side sleeper to kill some time.

Show eventually powers out. Double tags from there, Ryback goes house of fire and hits a huge high angle back body drop that may have made Rollins clip the rafters. Ryback then signaled the Meathook, but then Team Authority beat the shit out of Show, drawing the DQ.

Post-Segment 13: The New Stoogies joined in and managed to keep Ryback contained. Dolph then hit the ring but ate Harper's boot, which put a quick end to that. Erick Rowan hit the ring to help to, and he wanted to engage with Harper, but Kane cut him off at the pass. Everyone hit their finishers to everyone, and when it was over, the heels were standing tall. Stompy-stompy to the heels, except Big Show had a moment to recover. He cleaned house... until Trips slid in the ring with a chair and beat the shit out of Show. Rollins followed up with a Curb Stomp to keep Show down.

Then Trips just started beating the piss out of all of Team Cena with his chair, and that was that. No one gets up from chair shots! Ryback took a few extra and even ate a Pedigree. We fade out with the heels staring angrily at the camera, like it called their moms fat or something.

Final Thoughts: And so ends the show. For the main event, fuel was added to the fire, and it worked out pretty well. Given that it's a literal free-per-view at this point, Survivor Series was already pretty sold, though this night wasn't wasted for the big match.

The undercard though? Raspberry sound. It didn't fail on every level, but it didn't succeed on any level (except maybe the fatal four-way tag match, but even the match to promote it wasn't really useful), so... meh. Just, meh.

Just go watch Survivor Series and enjoy it, and then come back here to read Rick's recap of it and enjoy it further! Meanwhile, I'm going to go back to Dragon Age: Inquisition while simultaneously loving my job and hating life. See you next week!

Episode Grade: C-