Wrestling Wrap Up: HBK's Headed to SummerSlam!

So it seems as though the best part of last night’s RAW happened after the show went off the air and the entire arena was treated to "Shawn Michaels Appreciation Night!" Not that RAW was bad mind you, but I think we might have all liked to see an actual RAW dedicated to HBK – like the one they did for The Rock last year. Still, maybe it was too soon considering that we just saw Michaels two freakin’ weeks ago for a DX-nostalgiaballz segment. “I’m old and tired and can’t hop down to the ring like I used to” jokes included!

"Cuz I'm a (very very tired and weary) Sexy Boy..."

But after the cameras shut off last night, the “boys” tributized the hell out of HBK, breaking character and lettin’ loose with the huggery. CM Punk apparently got on the mic and told everyone how much HBK inspired him and how something Michaels autographed for him back when he was 15 is his most cherished possession. Which is funny considering how much bile Punk has spewed at autograph hounds.

HBK's milkshake brings all the boys to the yard.

Oh, and even Undertaker came out. And it will always be strange to think about the guys who show up to the arena, who are on the roster, and aren’t used on TV. We just went through this whole thing a little bit with Cena and Big Show a few months back when they’d skip the televised RAW (with the announcers saying they weren't there that week) but show up for the after-show dark match because they were advertised. But to just think that Taker was there, ready to do an actual entrance, and wasn’t used on TV is a funny, funny thing indeed. And sticking with this for a moment, I’m reminded of how "meta" I get when I start to wonder why anyone shows up at all for a show that’s supposedly, in-story, booked on the spot. Like, if Alberto Del Rio doesn’t want to have a match, why doesn’t he just stay home? And likewise, if Del Rio hadn’t showed up to try and not have a match, what would Christian have done that night? Sometimes I like to drive myself mealworm-mad trying to hyper-dissect the idea of “wrestlers supposedly don’t know what they’re going to do on a live show until they’re told on the air.”

So, back to HBK. Who did show up on TV for a segment with Triple H and Brock, telling everyone he’d be in the corner for the SummerSlam match. Which now means that he’ll either cause Triple H to win or lose. I dunno. I’m fine with the match. I think it’ll be good. But after every one of these in-ring scenes all I can think is...DAMN, PAUL HEYMAN IS GOOD ON THE MIC! I mean, he’s sold this entire story. He’s put this whole thing together. There’s just so much conviction in his words, but he also never comes off as phony. And, like all those old ‘90s-era guys, he’ll never cut off that damn skullytail that looks like it’s sprouted directly out of his cervical vertebrae. Hell, the DX guys came out for RAW 1000 and apparently none of them ever considered, you know, a trim or something. A snip. A little off the ears. They all still look like strip club owners. Obscenely long ponytails 4 life! Undertaker’s shown us that the only way to truly rid one’s self of out-dated retro coiffure is actual hair loss. Or some sort of targeted genetic blight.

Last night’s RAW was mostly a placeholder. Punk is still demanding respect. AJ is still “not crazy enough” as a GM and would be better off in a storyline. Daniel Bryan might not have been featured in tons of segments, but he was in the Main Event against Cena, eventually tapping to a completely horrible-looking STF. Was Cena afraid of touching Bryan’s beard with his arms? Randy Orton looked incredibly bored (his version of stoic intensity) facing The Big Show, Sandow attacked Brodus in mid-funkadance and - will you look at that! - there was even a Diva match. Which featured the return of Kelly Kelly. Who went...somewhere. Back to Xanadu most likely. To roller-skate and shoot lasers out of her eyes.

Meanwhile, Bryan (and this counts as part of my Smackdown discussion too btw) has become a ball of distracted rage due to the fact that he maybe, possibly will have to do something with Charlie Sheen to help promote Sheen’s Anger Management show at SummerSlam. But nothing’s settled yet, and so until then Bryan’s just going to be screaming “NO!” at everyone. Man, the absurdity of it. It’s…half-great. I mean, it’s bad because we want to see Bryan doing cooler things, but just the fact that, within a few months, you can actually have a spirited, informative debate in the WWE involving people screaming “YES!” and “NO!” at one another is fantastic.

Hopefully, after all the Anger Management plugging is over and done with, Bryan can move on and maybe even, you know, reclaim the “YES!” chant. He was a lot more fun when he was just obsessively and aggressively positive. I’m not sure what AJ’s going to do after Bryan’s SummerSlam match since she just seems to live to drive him crazy. Again, I appreciate that she now skips down to the ring in her petite power suit, but I want to see her doing more. The WWE, typically, jumped the gun by making her GM. Like they did with Punk last Summer after Pipe Bomb 3:16.

More from RAW, including "Stolen vs. Borrowed," on page 2...

Source : ign[dot]com

Last Resort: How The Shield's Creator is Bringing a "Monstrous Scope Show" to ABC

Shawn Ryan, the creator of The Shield, has brought us a lot of excellent television through the years. But speaking at the TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour yesterday, he said it was only now that he was ready for something on the scale of Last Resort, the exciting new series he's created alongside Karl Gajdusek (Dead Like Me).

Ryan remarked, “When we pitched this to [network president] Paul Lee and his cohorts at ABC last summer or fall, I described it as the show that I couldn't make five years ago because I didn't possess the skill set and that I felt like the shows I had done up to this point, the ongoing serialization of The Shield, combined with the production value of Chicago Code, combined with this buddy thing that we had done in Terriers, that all this stuff sort of got me to this place where I felt I could do something this ambitious.”

Last Resort tells the story of what happens when the commander of a nuclear submarine refuses orders to fire – in the midst of very suspicious and suspect circumstances – ultimately bringing the sub and its crew to a small island, where they maintain a very uneasy relationship with the locals, while trying to decide what their next move is – all while in a standoff with their own country.

Said Ryan, “It's not like I didn't want to do something of a huge scale like this before. But this is a really difficult show from a storytelling standpoint, from a production standpoint, to have the production in Hawaii and to manage that. It's a big budget, very huge, monstrous scope show that I don't think I would have been capable of doing before. So it's not like my ambitions have grown, but my feelings about my capability to live up to those ambitions has grown, I think.”

As for what to expect from Last Resort week to week, Ryan noted, “We go in a lot of different directions. You know, there's going to be a Tom Clancy aspect to this show, the way there was in the pilot, every episode. But TV is about relationships.”

Ryan elaborated, “TV is about character and so it will come characters first. We've described this, Karl and I, not as a show about war, but it's a show about people in a time of crisis. So in the same way that Casablanca and Gone with the Wind and Reds and Doctor Zhivago were personal character stories about people in the middle of crisis, that's what we're hoping to do in a weekly series.”

The sub’s commander, Marcus (Andre Braugher) is supported in his decision by second in command Sam (Scott Speedman), and Ryan revealed, “We're going to delve into what happens between Sam and Marcus. They're in lockstep at the beginning of this pilot. Will they stay in lockstep? Will they become opposed to each other?”

Then there’s the ship’s third in command, Grace (Daisy Betts), the daughter of an Admiral (Bruce Davison). Said Ryan, “Grace is a trailblazer. You know, only recently has the U.S. government allowed women on submarines, so her character is a trailblazer. Can she live up to that? Will she be viewed as a creature of nepotism, or will she prove herself amongst her crew? I could go on in eight, ten more of these storylines between these characters. So it will be a character piece.”

Ryan, who worked on series like Nash Bridges and Angel before creating The Shield stressed, “There's not going to be a ‘monster of the week’ kind of situation, but there will be high stakes. They find themselves in a very precarious situation. There will be three kinds of threat that we deal with, first from the outside world. America's not happy that the submarine is sitting parked with nuclear weapons aimed at it. Other countries are going to want to get involved in some way. So there will be external threats. There's threats on the island, as represented by Julian Serrat, our character who was the local strongman, who's not thrilled at the arrival of these people. And then probably most interesting to me is the internal threats.” When it comes to the crew of the sub, Ryan said, “They're not all going to think alike. Some of them are going to be solidly with Marcus and Sam. Some are not. What do they want to do? What threats will emerge from within that group? So we feel like we have lots of stories to tell, and any one episode is not going to be like another. This isn't going to be the kind of show where every episode feels the same.”

Speaking to the motivations of the main characters, co-creator Karl Gajdusk remarked, “We believe that our crew and our captain and XO are patriots, and are patriots to the end of the pilot. And they get this very questionable order and… You know, we talked to several commanders of submarines in preparing for this, and they do what should be done, which is question an order. Before you know it, they're on the run. This is only to say that it's not the United States as a whole that has chased them out. It is a portrait of an executive gone wrong, of what could happen if the checks and balances in our system went off the rails.”

Source : ign[dot]com