A few days ago, CNN and others reported a new law (not necessarily a bill yet) being considered after a serious accident in New Jersey. A man received a text on his phone while driving, and while he glanced at the phone, he wound up smashing into a motorcycle. The riders survived but both lost their left legs as a result of the collision.

Obviously, the victims are suing, and the case went to a civil trial. But instead of just the driver being held accountable, some politician is trying to push forward a bill that would make the text sender responsible too as an accessory. At first, I was going to rip on the idea of the law. But after thinking about it, I realized: it’s awesome!

Picture this: let’s say I’m standing in line at the grocery store. Because the cashier is taking forever and is bagging cold stuff with hot stuff like an idiot, I get bored and find myself with a little excess saliva in my mouth. The obvious solution to this problem is to spit on the floor and/or cashier; who hasn’t done that a million times?

Now, under current laws, that might be considered littering and/or assault. But look: the only reason I had that saliva built up is because the girl in the next aisle over was wearing one of those “The Best Thing You’ve Seen All Day” T-shirts and those too-small hot-pink sweatpants with the word “Juicy” on her ass. I haven’t been laid in two years; it’s not my fault I was staring at that probably-18-year-old girl!

So clearly, the new theoretical law would allow me to sue the other girl for wearing those clothes (and her parents for letting her leave the trailer park like that), and then I could deflect blame. It’s perfect! We wouldn’t need any personal responsibility whatsoever! And clearly, the politician in question has this in mind, for it is most likely a politician’s dream world to be one where personal responsibility and owning up to your own mistakes is a thing of the past. And who wouldn’t want to live in a politician’s dream world?

Segment 1: Eve hits the ring to start the show. I’ll give Eve major credit: I hated her limited move set in the ring, but hold shit does she play a bitch-in-power very, very well.

Among her announcements is that Johnny Ace isn’t around for SmackDown, but Eve herself in charge tonight. Ace will deal with John Cena personally on Monday, but tonight, she will deal with Sheamus, who so totally shoulder checked him during his run-out to save Cena in the opening. Among other things, she’s going to name his opponent for the next pay-per-view.

Before she gets to say anymore, Alberto Del Rio pops out of the back and hits on her, then volunteers himself to be Sheamus’s opponent, since he’s so totally awesome and the best at everything. Besides, he’s owed a shot at Sheamus since he lost in the Fatal Four-Way match at Over the Limit.

By the time he finishes his speech, he’s in the ring. Eve considers it and starts to buy his arguments, but then Randy Orton’s music fires up and the King of Douchebaggery hits the ring. Orton polls the audience, who clearly want Orton himself be Sheamus’s opponent instead.

Orton is sure that “in the name of People Power,” Eve has her answer. I’ll admit, that was a cute line… cute enough that it summons Kane to give his opinion on the proceedings. Kane is sure he deserves the shot because tonight’s SmackDown episode number is 666. Sure, that’s… that’s almost logical.

So Eve books a triple threat match between these three, and the winner gets Sheamus at No Way Out. And I’ve got to be honest: I actually had to back up the DVR here because I forgot what the PPV was called even though Eve has said it twice in the opening.

Segment 2 [Singles Match]: Christian defeats Hunico (w/ Camacho) by pin. Hunico didn’t get an entrance, so we knew who was winning this one. Still, it was competitive; the guys played will with each other. No super-noteworthy spots though. The finish was Camacho trying to distract Christian, which didn’t work. Christian hit the Killswitch on Hunico followed by his new top rope splash, and that was it.

Post-Segment 2: Cody Rhodes hits the stage and says that for the past eight months (while Christian was rehabbing), he’s been polishing the belt and restoring it to its former glory after so many awesome people have held it. But in one day, Christian ruined it; the belt is now meaningless because no one cares about Christian. But it’s fine, because Cody will get it back when he invokes his rematch clause, and it’ll take him only three seconds to get it: “1… 2… 3…”

I somehow want to think that means it’ll be a bizarre three-second challenge, but I know it was just a little awkwardly worded. Christian didn’t respond, and the promo doesn’t really mean anything, but it’s a good first (or second) chapter to the feud.

Pre-Segment 3: We get an “earlier today” segment where the Usos were talking shit with Titus O’Neil and Darren Young. I’d try to quote them, but if I did, you’d think I was having a stroke while I was typing dialogue. It was funny, but it’s the epitome of a conversation that will simply not translate to text.

Segment 3 [Tag Match]: Titus O’Neil & Darren Young defeat The Usos by pin. Nobody got entrances, which makes me sad because I love the Siva Tau. Standard formulaic match with Jay being the Face in Peril and Jimmy going House of Fire. But during the Pier Four Brawl, Jimmy couldn’t close down Titus, so the heels were able to recover and hit the Ghetto Blaster to end it. Decent match though, no complaints.

Pre-Segment 4: Some Guy and Some Other Guy talk some stupid shit before the match. You know what’s going to happen.

Segment 4 [1-on-2 Handicap Match, Tornado Rules]: Ryback squashes Some Guy & Some Other Guy by pin. Ryback was accompanied by a huge shiner on his left eye, as well as a broken blood vessel. For some reason, the WWE director thought it would be a damn good idea to zoom in on it. My condolences to those of you with high-def.

The finish saw Ryback hitting his finisher (a fallaway slam basically, modified from his usual move that Rick told us all the name to and I’ve already forgotten) to both guys simultaneously, which was pretty damn impressive. I don’t question Ryback’s strength, but do we really need another monster on the roster, face or heel?

Segment 5 [Singles Match]: Santino Marella squashes Ricardo Rodriguez by pin. Yes, this happened. It was a comedy match, and it was actually damn good in that regard. RR plays a perfect stooge, and spent his time doing moves wrong and getting winded before eating a Cobra strike. Good stuff for what it was.

Pre-Segment 6: Sheamus hits the ring to talk. See, he’s been sent out to apologize for plowing over Ace on Monday, but Sheamus thinks that one shouldn’t have to apologize for accidents (which is, uh, backwards). And it was so totally an accident. He knows some people have suggested he did it on purpose, but if that’s true, it was accidently on purpose. Heh.

But Sheamus decides to apologize anyway: he apologizes for Ace being “a massive arse.” Sheamus follows that up with this:

And while we’re talking about Johnny’s arse, if you look hard enough, you’ll find his two assistants, Eve and David Otunga, so far up there they could probably tell you what he had for breakfast!

Quoth my entire apartment complex: “Ewww!!!” But hilarious.

Sheamus goes on that he apologizes for other people who kiss Ace’s ass, like Big Show. But beyond that, if he had his way, he’d want to fight Randy Orton at No Way Out.

Well, that’s as far as the promo goes, because Vickie Guerrero hits the stage to announce that Sheamus has to fight right the hell now… against Jack Swagger. Sheamus is unimpressed.

Segment 6 [Singles Match]: Sheamus defeats Jack Swagger (w/ Vickie Guerrero) by pin. Surprisingly solid match. I knew Jack was good in the ring, but he doesn’t get to show it very much. For once, he got to have a decent-length match, and Sheamus proves he can hang with a technical wrestler as well as the brawlers.

We had a standard match opening with Sheamus winning most of the tie-ups. Eventually Sheamus found himself on the east ropes, probably setting up for the vaulting shoulder block. However, Vickie jumped up on the apron to distract him. It gave Jack a chance to recover and do a diving shoulder charge onto Sheamus’s ankle, who oversold it the instant he hit the ground. I’ve learned my lesson from Beth: Sheamus is merely selling, and it’s not a legit injury! But it was enough that it took us into commercial.

Once we’re back, it’s all Jack doing ankle-targeted offense to soften him up for the ankle lock. And it works… for a while, but Sheamus’s strength soon is simply too much for Jack to deal with. Jack did get a heel hope spot (if there is such a thing) when Sheamus went for the White Noise, but Swagger wiggled down to turn it into a sunset flip. However, Jack rolled through and tried for the ankle lock.

Sheamus wiggled out and went for the Brogue Kick. Jack dodged, and the miss caused Sheamus to aggravate the joint. Jack did a thigh-level shoulder charge to put Sheamus down, and Jack followed up with his signature corner rebound splash.

But Sheamus kicked out at 2.999. Jack took a little too long in regret, then went for the gut wrench powerbomb as they rose. However, Sheamus slipped out, then hit a Brogue Kick out of nowhere and made the pin. Great performance all around, and I’m thinking it’ll be match of the night.

Pre-Segment 7: So Yoshi Tatsu is in the ring because he’s going to get to face Damien Sandow for-real after the no-contest last week. Sandow hits the stage and cuts a promo as he hits the ring, repeating that the whole reason why he refused to face Yoshi last week was that it would be “a bout that would serve only to further propel us all into the doldrums of our self-imposed ignorance.”

But Sandow is honorable, which is why be “abstained from such a mockery so that we all can continue to place him on that pedestal of enlightenment that we all so desperately clamor for,” and we all need to remain silent while he’s speaking, thank you.

Besides, Sandow was willing to leave, and it was all Yoshi’s fault for using “sophomoric” language to bait him to the ring, since he so totally didn’t get the lesson he was trying to teach. So now, he’s going to go ahead and beat the shit out of Yoshi for our benefit! We’re welcome.

Segment 7 [Singles Match]: Damien Sandow squashes Yoshi Tatsu by pin. Sandow must have practiced backward somersaults, because he showed two damn good roll-throughs. First he rolled through a Russian leg sweep (which I didn’t even realize was physically possible) to get back to a standing base instantly. And he was able to roll through his finisher (the cross-armed neckbreaker that doesn’t currently have a name) into a pin.

Except, uh… well… between the fact that Sandow wears those electric pink briefs and did what can only be described as a missionary pin on Yoshi... Which diva used to do that? Maryse, right? Except when Maryse did missionary pins to other divas, it was hot; when Sandow is doing a missionary pin to Yoshi, it’s kinda gay. Hey, I never claimed to be an equal opportunity insulter around here.

Sandow finally dismounted by being a jerk and patting Yoshi’s unconscious face. Then, Sandow did a perfect, slow cartwheel in the ring for reasons I’m still trying to figure out.

Anyway, if Sandow is capable of more, we didn’t see it, because the rest was just punchy-kicky, and the whole match lasted like 45 seconds. So… meh. But I still like the guy, and I make no apologies for that, even if he’s this year’s MVP: the guy I like but everyone else considers him underwhelming.

Segment 8: Here comes Big Show, who has apparently (but logically) stripped of his pyros. He hits the ring to solid boos, then takes a seat on a stool that might have been made out of an entire redwood tree. Show proceeds to rationalize his actions, that he begged for his job because he loves it, and we wouldn’t understand it because our jobs are just… jobs. That we hate.

So no, he wasn’t too proud to beg. And by the way, we and the wrestlers weren’t sympathetic at all nor came to his defense, so he doesn’t feel any regret. He absorbs (and even riffs off) a “You sold out!” chant, then says that when he was fired, he finally realized that he has no friends in the world, in or out of the ring.

“Then I got the phone call. When you’re drowning, do you care about where the light is coming from?” Uh… yes. But Show goes on that he agreed to interfere with the match to get his new contract with a big bonus too.

Show goes on to ssslllooowwwlllyyy recap the main event of Over the Limit, promising to use the same WMD to put Cena down for the three-count at No Way Out. And Show would have been awesome if that’s where he ended it, but he added at Orton speed, “You people don’t care about me, and I damn sure don’t care about you.” It’s effective cheap heat, but I liked his anti-Cena line better as a punch line.

Show gets up to leave without music, and at the foot of the ramp, BOOM!

Post-Segment 8: Here comes Kane. Face turn already? Eh… maybe. They glare at each other, but nothing more happens between them. Kane hits the ring for his part of the triple threat match, and starts to blow his corner pyros.

But then Daniel Bryan appears out of nowhere and beats the fuck out of Kane with a chair, then poses over the body as we go to commercial. Nice!

I love it when WWE manages to link their segments together in such a way that it feels organic. Hell, I had trouble figuring out where to split that to put my “Post-Segment” header, or whether the header was appropriate at all. Good stuff, but we won’t see how it shakes out until after the commercial.

Segment 9 [Triple Threat Match for the #1 Contendership of the World Heavyweight Title]: Alberto Del Rio (w/ Ricardo Rodriguez) defeats Kane by pin and outlasts Randy Orton. Solid match with a quick pace that didn’t overstay its welcome. Good effort, though Sheamus/Swagger is still match of the night.

No noteworthy spots, but everything was pretty crisp and well executed, and we got to see a little of all wrestling styles with few rest holds. It’s worth a watch on the YouTubes, if nothing else.

Kane started to get on a roll late, but that was broken up by DB, who came back down to the ring with his chair. There wasn’t contact, but ADR was down due to a chokeslam, and Orton was out of position. But Kane went ahead and left the ring to kinda chase DB, who quickly ran up the ramp.

Well, Kane finally decided to get back in the ring… and immediately ate an RKO. Orton for the pin, but ADR popped up and booted Orton in the head, a taste of his own medicine. So then ADR made the pin, and it was done. DB was laughing at first to see Kane lose, but then he started looking a little… serious? I’m not sure at what, exactly.

After replays, ADR celebrates his way to the stage… where he’s attacked from behind by Sheamus, who then poses over the body with the belt. Nice punctuation mark.

Final Thoughts: Above-average night, but nothing you need to plan your night around. I’ve said basically everything I need to say, so I’m going to close quickly here.

Oh, except for one note: they announced twice that Sin Cara will make his return to SmackDown next week. I’m stoked for that, so I’ll be tuning in next week for sure (as if I wasn’t going to otherwise). You might want to do the same if you’re a fan of ol’ No Face.

See you on the other side of the weekend, guys.

Episode Grade: B-