End justifies the means on TNA Impact
I won’t sugarcoat it. For the first 1 hour and 45 minutes of Thursday’s TNA Impact, I was bored. There weren’t any particularly good matches or angles, and watching Jeff Jarrett’s home movies was about as exciting as watching your neighbor’s home movies (unless, of course, you happen to live on the same street as Paris Hilton).
I hung in until the closing segment, however, and I was glad I did. The final installment of several “Day in the Life with Jeff Jarrett” vignettes that were played throughout the show saw a maniacal Mick Foley choking out Jarrett with an electrical chord as part of a violent attack on the TNA founder.
The angle was set up nicely at the beginning of the show with Foley holding up a DVD, which he said had some disturbing footage on it. He promised to play the DVD before the end of the program.
Video clips of Jarrett interacting with his young daughters and having a night out in Nashville were then woven into the show. They portrayed Jarrett as a likable single father and were intentionally mundane. When those scenes are juxtaposed with the final segment, the attack comes off as all the more brutal, Jarrett is all the more sympathetic and Foley all the more unlikable.
While effective, this type of angle is somewhat of a gamble because there’s no guarantee that viewers will sit through the “Day in the Life” stuff to get to the payoff. It will be interesting to see the quarter-hour breakdown when the ratings come out.
Other thoughts on Thursday’s show:
I’ve started to warm up to Don West since he has become a subtle heel commentator. This may have been his best performance, as his comments after the Jarrett clips were pretty funny. The best was when he said, “That was like water boarding.” ...
Scott Steiner also turned in one of his finer efforts as a character, as he played the “modifier” in the Sharmell-Jenna Morasca feud. Becoming less intense and injecting some humor into his persona have made him more entertaining and less one-dimensional.
The ominous music playing during Sting’s promo was hokey and took away from what he was saying. I don’t think promos need a soundtrack. ...
Brother Ray told a fib when he said that Team 3D left “that other company” because they were tired of wrestling the same tag teams all the time. That’s funny, because I recall WWE choosing not to renew their contracts during a roster purge. By the way, that was an odd jump-cut during The British Invasion’s attack on Team 3D. I not sure what purpose it served. ...
I’m on record as being a fan of Jeremy Borash’s participation in skits, but he may have been a little overexposed here. Speaking of which, is there really such as thing as nude karaoke in Nashville? ...
I’m also on record as being a Daffney fan – and I especially like her more violent psycho character – but the restaurant scene with her, Taylor Wilde and Lauren was pretty bad. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Lauren say, “I’ll cut you” as she holds up a broken shard of glass. ...
The Foley-Samoa Joe-Eric Young deal was weird. Young and Joe are both babyfaces but they were acting like heels. Young was complaining about not getting opportunities, so Foley put him in a match with the ultra-violent Joe, who destroyed Young. Young came off as a whiner and a wimp, and Joe came off as a nasty bully. So who was I supposed to be rooting for?
Hey, Cute Kip, thanks for coming.
Comments
Daffney is so hot. I also love her character. That see-through top is a nice look for her. I want to see her feud with Velvet Skye.
Posted by: Andy | May 15, 2009 6:49 PM
I agree not the best Impact of late.But Mick's facial takes in the Jarrett beatdown sequence at the end were truly amazing,like he hadnt been there when it happened and it was just captivating in its perfection.
Posted by: Bill | May 15, 2009 7:09 PM
well Mick was right i saw something really shocking and upsetting but not what anyone would think of but the fact is in the video's Jeff and his children where not wearing their seat belts while they were driving i know that they were only going about 5 to 10 miles an hour but that is a bad example to set because my kids watch TNA with me but being a famous star u would think jeff should show more safety for his kids spot or not. on to other thing i loved kong squashing Kip so i guess we will not see him for a long while. they need to give Steiner more mic time he is so hilarious i enjoyed him taking angles role 4 a week and i can't to see who wins the finals match between the brits & BM.
Posted by: frank | May 15, 2009 7:31 PM
Being a fan of TNA , my quandary is that I'm not necessarily a Mick Foley fan . I too kind of like Don West as a heel , call me crazy .
Kevin - regarding your question as to whether or not there is nude karaoke in Nashville , I can't answer that , but there's nude karaoke here at my house in Hebron every Saturday nite :)
Posted by: the artist formerly known as jack in hebron | May 15, 2009 8:07 PM
Wow.
I haven’t watched iMPACT in probably about a year and after watching last night’s show I’m happy I haven’t been wasting my time. I used to hold out hope that with such a talented roster TNA might give Vince a run for his (large sums of) money. Boy, was I wrong. Not only was it terribly written and boring but to watch all that talent go to waste was downright painful…
Samoa Joe needed a makeover but the tacky “jungle shorts” somehow just make him look fatter and slower and Eric Young is going to have a tough time getting over as a heel.
I may be crazy but I could see Jethro Holliday making something of himself in TNA with the right angle. Maybe a Dusty Rhodes-esque, blue-collar, everyman type thing given his physique. I also like the idea of him doing something with his tights like Kurt Angle or Curt Hennig did. Except that instead of pulling the straps down from his arms like Angle and Perfect he could pull his tights down a little bit so they sit below his belly. Let the belly flop out to signify a good-ole-asswhuppin’ is comin’ somebody’s way.
However, Holliday, nor any other young up-and-comer, will get ahead losing pointless “I Quit” matches to dudes who clearly don’t need clean victories to keep their spot. Why book Holliday to look so weak as to verbally quit in a non-PPV match. Dumb-da-dumb-dumb.
Daniels? Suicide? Kaz? Who cares? Daniels has always been a boring character and since I’m not 8 years old Suicide doesn’t do much for me either. The best part about this whole thing was when “Black Machismo” Jay Lethal referred to the MotorCIty MachineGuns as “The Rockers”.
If they are going to drop the “Gladiator” gimmick for Brutus Magnus shouldn’t they change his name too? Now it’s just weird..
I’m happy to see tag-team wrestling is still valued somewhere.
Tenay-West is unlistenable. I’d rather hear Tazz for sure.
Finally, and this goes for wrestling in general not just TNA: enough with the vignettes filmed outside the arena. Personally, I’m not even one for tons of backstage action: it always looks terrible and the crowd is paying hard-earned money to do the same thing that they could be doing for free at home. To take it step further and put outlandish characters in outlandish situations in real-world scenarios doesn’t jive and it breaks up continuity. For example, there was no underlying context as to why the camera was following Jarrett around in the first place. Sometimes I really hate that we live in a post-kayfabe world.
Posted by: JGavin | May 15, 2009 8:49 PM
I don't know if I would call Foley's attack on Jarrett disturbing.
If Foley had attacked Jarrett in front of his kids now that would have been disturbing.
Posted by: Aaron Goldstein | May 16, 2009 12:35 PM
All the problems with TNA trace back to a lack of clarity with the heel/face situation.
Nash, Sting, and Foley are supposed to be heels. Nobody is ever going to boo Foley, and Sting and Nash still posture to the crowd a ton and work like faces.
AJ and Joe are supposed to be faces, but AJ whines the whole time and comes across as permanently befuddled and Joe is just a fat guy with a knife. Why would fans want to to cheer for those people?
Posted by: Elevation | May 17, 2009 12:00 AM
Please keep the belt on Mick for several more months. This statement is coming from someone who never liked him after he joined the Rock N Sock Connection. I hated his spamming of his stupid kids books. But seeing him now as a demented heel is awesome! He's why I keep watching TNA.
Posted by: Bad News | May 17, 2009 11:05 AM