The best part is that the burger is spicy without being extreme. As much as I love spicy food, it tends to cause me all sorts of unpleasant symptoms the next day. It gets bad when I out-spice myself, of course, and I was a little worried. But I wound up downing two of the burgers and had absolutely no ill side-effects, unless you count the fact that I was craving a third despite gaining about 600 pounds just from the two I had. But still, it gets a massively glowing recommendation from me: if you love spice, you owe it to yourself to get a couple. 
  

I’m having a couple tonight, even, as I sit down here for NXT5. Let’s just hope WWE’s retarded challenges and other intelligence-destroying programming doesn’t make me want to vomit it all up.

Pre-Segment 1: William Regal is on commentary! Sweet! He joins Todd Grisham, and he implies he’s turned face for it. Awesome.

Segment 1: Matt Striker is in the ring, and he introduces us to our guest… uh… emcee, I guess. It’s going to be Maryse! Yummy! Any reason for me to ogle her an extra day a week is fantastic.

Okay, this season of NXT is nicknamed “NXT Redemption.” Unlike the father/son rumors going around, apparently this is a second chance for several rookie cast offs. We’ve got Darren Young, Conan O’Brian, Lucky Canon, Byron Saxton, Jason Novak, and Titus O’Neil. Huh.

After the rookies hit the ring, uh… wait a second… now I’m confused. It seems whoever wins this doesn’t get to be on the main rosters, but rather the winner gets a spot in NXT6. Weird. Another change is that there is technically no immunity points, but now they earn “Redemption Points” and if they are voted out, they can cash in their redemption points to avoid elimination. So, uh, they’re just renamed immunity points, I guess.

Okay, it’s time to meet the pros. Darren Young is up first and he gets Chavo, who insists that Darren can wrestle but needs to get noticed and run away from the pack. And he too apparently has turned face, since he’s all clean cut now and encouraging.

Second up is Conor’s pro, Vladimir Kozlov. Vlad just says that Conor spent last season trying to impress others… and now, he needs to just be himself. Cue cheesy smile.

Lucky is third, and he spends his four seconds in the ring getting uncomfortably close to Maryse. But his pro turns out to be Tyson Kidd, who basically just puts himself over rather than giving any sort of advice.

Byron is fourth, and his pro is… Yoshi Tatsu? Huh. Yoshi tells Byron—in somewhat heavily accented Japanglish—that he was overconfident last season and needs to relax. Striker adds that between Maryse, Yoshi, and Vlad, he’s not going to understand a goddamn thing this season.

It gets worse when JTG comes out as Jason’s pro, as he talks just about as nonsensically as ever.

Finally is Hornswoggle, who gets to be Titus’s pro, and blathers like an idiot too. So we’ve got a Canadian, an Irishman, a Russian, a Mexican, an Asian, and an American as pros, with a French guest host and a British commentator. Just about half the UN is represented here.

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: Darren Young (w/ Chavo Guerrero) defeats Jacob Novak (w/ JTG) by pin. Decent match, pure formula, nothing significant to note.

Segment 3: Maryse is WALKING~! (and JIGGLING~!), and Yoshi catches up to her. He says he’s totally psyched she’s going to be on NXT with him, and has something to tell her. But Byron arrives and wants some advice. Maryse excuses herself, and as soon as she’s out of earshot, Yoshi yells at him for having shitty timing, then storms away. I don’t blame you, buddy.

Segment 4: We’ve got our first challenge, the “Boot Camp Obstacle Course,” for which Maryse has changed into a ridiculously tight green tube top and camo pants. So hot.

As usual, I’m not recapping this in detail. Lucky decides to cut a heel promo, saying that he won most of the challenges last time and it didn’t do him any good, so he’s not going to be anyone’s “circus monkey.” So instead, his only “challenge” will be stealing Maryse away from Ted DiBiase, which so totally won’t be a problem. Maryse responds by looking annoyed and patronizing during the whole promo, then giving him that “talk to the hand” wrist flip that is all sorts of hot and awesome. Ha! Take that, douche!

As far as the obstacle course itself, Darren Young takes the win. Everyone who tried did decent… Titus is all sorts of crazy-strong looking. He’s definitely got “the look” more so than anyone else this time around.

Segment 5 [Singles Match]: Titus O’Neil (w/ Hornswoggle) defeats Lucky Canon (w/ Tyson Kidd) by pin. Power-vs.-speed, which worked well enough. Lucky held the offense for most of the match, and wanted to end things with a move from the top rope. However, Horny saw this, distracted the ref, and shoved Lucky off. Titus caught him, then hit him with a chokeslam-turned-spinebuster and made the pin. Strange to see Horny cheat to win.

After the match, Tyson got in the ring and wanted to put the Sharpshooter on Horny, but Titus put a quick stop to that. Horny and Titus celebrated their actual and moral victories, and we’re done.

Final Thoughts: I don’t know, man… This all seems so pointless, even more pointless than usual, if the winner is simply going to get a spot on NXT6. And poor Regal sounded really fucking bored during the matches, and his voice started to putting me to sleep. And there weren’t any spots or anything in any of the matches that really popped and made me take notice. I’m hoping it turns out okay though.

Well, it didn’t help that NXT is pulling a SmackDown and still showing a shit-ton of replays from RAW, although we offensively had an actual commercial during the show where WWE was pimping its Flex Force action figures. Them pimping DVDs and movies are bad enough, but the toys are where I sort of draw the line from “harmless” to “distracting.” Or maybe I’m just spoiled by the DVR.

But really, the inclusion of half the pros tells me that WWE isn’t taking this season too seriously; maybe about as seriously as they took Season 3, aka Girl NXT. I don’t really know how I feel about that. On the one hand, I wish they took it more seriously, but on the other, the show is a bit of a joke anyway since, like the Diva Search, half the losers wind up employed anyway. I mean, shit, Johnny Curtis wins NXT4, and yet the silver medalist gets on TV first? As Hurricane used to say, what’s up with that?

Whatever. As usual, I won’t do Pyro’s Picks until week 3 of this silliness. But I’ll be back next week for the next episode, apparently because I’m a masochist.

Must eat my other jalapeño and cheddar burger, that’ll make me feel better.