by Erin Anderson
Exclusive to OnlineOnslaught.com

I know that I usually cover a Smackdown!-related topic, but my work schedule this week isn't very conducive to me sitting down and writing 1,200 words after I watch the show. Instead, I got a bit of inspiration from the much-maligned Eric Bischoff/Linda McMahon angle that I somehow managed to watch all the way through on Raw this Monday.

It was awful. It sucked more than anything in history of Things That Have Sucked, with the possible exception of Katie Vick. I know that an angle is horrible when it incites one of two reactions from me:

1. I leave the room. I don't just change the channel or turn off the TV, but I physically leave the room, as the angle is so bad that I feel the need to get the innocent and impartial television set out of my sight. This has happened only once.

2. I watch, crippled by my inability to look away from a car accident, while repeating, "This is the worst shit I've ever seen," to myself. This is a slightly more common occurrence, but still a rare one.

That's pretty damn bad, especially since I'm usually able to find some kind of redeeming quality even in a bad wrestling angle. And I realize that I'm preaching to the choir about the suckitude of the Bischoff/Linda skits, but it raises an interesting question: what elements make up a completely useless and unnecessary angle such as the one we were subjected to on Monday? What can make a storyline unequivocally suck? There are a few factors involved, and I have investigated the matter and broken it down for you here.

Total Lack of Entertainment Value

This seems like an absolute no-brainer for criteria. Yeah, it is, but it's also the most important. If an angle doesn't make you laugh, piss you off (in the way that it's supposed to, not piss you off because it's stupid, offensive, or boring), or make you want to tune in the next week to find out what happens, it's useless. Jeb may have panned the Rosey/Hurricane/cat-beating incident yesterday, but I was amused by the sheer campiness of the skit. It had a purpose: to make the crowd laugh. Eric assaulting Linda served no purpose other than to piss off Shane (something which could have been done in a much better way, which I'll get to later) and establish Bischoff as a disgusting SOB (something we already knew).

I've compiled a short list of things, people, and events that are not entertaining under any circumstances, and thus should never be utilized in wrestling angles:

• rape

• necrophilia

• death

• Torrie Wilson (she just can't catch a break from the creative team, can she?)

• old, non-wrestlers marrying WWE divas, and

• the French.

There you have it. The only reason that I don't include Al Wilson in my list of the worst angles in wrestling history is that it did provide some pretty good entertainment in the form of some of the funniest commentary from Tazz and Michael Cole that I've ever heard. An angle can be completely pointless, but I'll forgive it if it makes me laugh.

So already, there's one strike against the Eric/Linda storyline. Rape is neither funny nor entertaining, and although we didn't see the actual act, it was implied well enough to turn my stomach.

Involvement of Non-Wrestlers

This one is a little tricky; not all angles or matches involving non-wrestlers have to suck. A quick look at the Austin-Vince feud, one of the best and most entertaining in wrestling history, is proof enough of that. There's also the brutal streetfight between non-wrestler Shane McMahon and Kurt Angle at King of the Ring 2001. Hell, putting Stacy Kiebler with Test last year was the only way to get the guy a decent pop.

But more often than not, throwing non-wrestlers into a storyline can add a feeling of "Why should I even care?" to an angle. If the only participants in the storyline aren't in-ring performers, it makes matters worse. Remember the little feud between Torrie and Sable when she first returned to WWE? I barely do, either. They're not wrestlers, and there was no real payoff to the tension between the two other than a bikini contest. Whoop-de-doo. Wrestling angles need an in-ring conclusion before they can satisfactorily be considered finished, and for that reason, HLA, Torrie/Sable, and the more recent Torrie/Jamie Noble debacle just didn't work.

It's exactly the same way with the crap we were force-fed on Raw. Eric and Linda don't wrestle. Throw in the fact that Linda isn't even so much a babyface as she is a neutral character, and you've got instant crowd apathy! Strike two for Bischoff and Linda.

Involvement of Irrelevant Characters

Does this ever work?

Not usually, and I have seven words to illustrate my point: Lucy the dog and Stephanie McMahon-Helmsley.

Becoming the first man to win the Undisputed Championship in late 2001 should have been the crowning achievement in Chris Jericho's career, but his title reign was marred by bulldogs and ex-wives. Not even a brief feud with the Rock in January 2002 could save it. Triple H, as a face, needed to be rid of Stephanie, who had been brought back on television as a heel for no apparent reason in the first place. Instead of simply leaving Stephanie out of the picture, she and Triple H had a very public divorce after she faked a pregnancy.

Wow. It looks even worse when you look back on it in print, doesn't it?

Instead of dropping the whole ordeal (which shouldn't have even been onscreen in the first place) at the end of that January, we had to endure it for another three months, going through and after Wrestlemania X-8. There should have been a heated battle between Triple H and Jericho for the title, but instead we got to see our champion acting as Stephanie's errand boy while the former lovebirds squabbled over cars and puppy dogs. The title match at Wrestlemania was underwhelming, to say the least.

I had almost completely forgotten that the whole Bischoff/Linda skit had anything to do with Bischoff's match with Shane at Summerslam. Eric touched on the issue briefly, then went right back to making unwanted sexual advances on his boss. Bringing in Linda to be tombstoned by Kane was very useful in developing Kane's new psychotic character; throwing her into the Bischoff/Shane mix was not -- that's the worst part about it. Linda didn't have to be involved in the first place. A face-to-face promo between Bischoff and Shane would have advanced the feud nicely, and we might have actually wanted to watch it!

Strike three. The Bischoff/Linda fiasco already officially and scientifically sucks, but there's more!

Glaring Holes in Logic

Wrestling fans are amazingly forgiving when it comes to holes in a storyline. Remember when almost nobody raised an eyebrow when Stephanie returned as Smackdown!'s GM after she lost a match that would supposedly ban her from the company for life? It's wrestling, for chrissakes. We don't expect Shakespeare from the writers, but sometimes the stupidity of certain angles is simply too much for us to willingly suspend our disbelief.

The court would like to present Exhibit A: Katie Vick. Not only did it violate all of the rules listed above, but any wrestling fan with half a brain knew that it was the biggest piece of bullshit served up by WWE in recent memory. Not only did it defy all logic of basic law, but it also undermined everything we had ever learned about Kane's character. It could be argued that the "new" Kane does the same, but it is presented in an entertaining fashion, along with an acceptable (by wrestling standards, anyway) explanation as to why Kane is not physically scarred.

Exhibit B: Kane's explanation for not burning Rob on Monday. Jeb already covered this yesterday.

And so we come back to Bischoff and Linda. Not only did the cameraman not bother to step in and stop Bischoff's advances (which were obviously leading to a rape attempt), but nobody thought to call the police in Greenwich? And isn't it apparent that Bischoff would be fired for his actions and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law? Why didn't Linda, you know, actually move, rather than act like a deer in headlights? Why did Linda even agree to go along with this pathetic, insulting, offensive, and unentertaining angle in the first place? Going through all these questions makes my head hurt, as does the notion that they weren't obvious to the creative team that thought this shit up in the first place.

So that makes strike four -- I guess Eric and Linda are just overachievers that way. Or maybe they just suck.

E-MAIL ERIN
BROWSE THE BROAD'S ARCHIVES

Erin Anderson is an Atlanta native and a student at Georgia State University. Since writing about wrestling didn't go over too well with her English professors, she vents here at Online Onslaught.

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