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HITS & MISSES - TNA IMPACT 5/7: Star Trek theme, Intrigue with Jeff Jarrett, Build-up to Daniels reveal, TNA wastes a PPV main event
May 8, 2009 - 11:19:29 AM
By Hubert O'Hearn, Torch specialist
During a week when the Greatest Science Fiction Movie in the history of, um, Science Fiction Movies opens, would TNA Impact be another City on the Edge of Forever or were we looking at bad memories of Spock's Brain? Let's go to the Hits and Misses and see how it all adds up.
HITS
"Jim...your name is...Jim" Oh I almost choked on my Romulan Ale when I heard Mike Tenay ask Brother Ray about Jim Ross's comments on the sorry state of tag team wrestling. I'll bet you J.R. wasn't too thrilled either as Vince McMahon is bound to take it out on J.R. one way or the other. But, this was a very, very good thing. The strong TNA tag division, enhanced by the Team 3D Tournament shows that TNA maybe just maybe is growing up and being proud of its differences from WWE rather than just being the little kid in the back row waving his hand and yelling "Me too! Me too!"
Mirror, Mirror. Remember that episode with the parallel universe and there was Good Kirk and Bad Kirk and Good Spock and Bad Spock only Bad Spock had this really cool beatnik goatee thing and the Bad Spock kind of became a Good Spock and the whole dynamic of that parallel universe was changed and all the future Trek series revisited the parallel universe and ... what?...oh yeah right ... wrestling. Sorry. Ahem. Anyway, TNA is kinda sorta like that episode in that the audience is not force-fed any of the characters in a WWE style of "You WILL cheer John Cena whether you like it or not!" Impact is slowly developing into a character-driven show and that eventually will draw in a more intelligent and widespread audience. Thursday night was a perfect example. Jeff Jarrett (of all the unlikely suspects) was actually booked in an interesting manner. He knows that he and Foley have a common enemy in the Mafia, but he can't help but let his jealousy and frustration seep out. Nice writing - almost novel-like.
"Koooooonnnngggggg!!!" Well, Impact itself already used the phrase The Wrath of Kong so my best caption was stolen before I could steal it...or something. While I agree with Wade Keller that back-to-back beat downs of Beautiful People members places Awesome Kong way, way above the rest of the Knockout Division, we need to remember that the Knockouts's high water mark was the last time Kong seemed unbeatable. It makes the eventual loss all the greater. Would the Giants over the Patriots in the 2008 Super Bowl have been as great a game if the Pats had gone 14-2 during the regular season? Of course not. The push for Kong seems to inevitably lead to a Sacrifice title match with Angelina Love, but I wish TNA to wait at least another month. Keep feeding Kong cannon fodder - maybe even bring in some of the sadly under-utilized guest divas from that crappy WrestleMania women's Battle Royal. But not Kip James. Please not Kip James. I don't need to write a Miss that badly.
I am Not Spock. The beauty of the "Christopher Daniels - is he/isn't he Suicide?" plot is that four talented wrestlers, Daniels, Jay Lethal, and the Guns, have something to do. It also helps Consequences Creed by being in the mix with strong, developed promo men with Jay Lethal providing the comedy enhancement. Ultimately, we'll get either the Guns or Lethal Consequences challenging Daniels to a tag match and that I assume will be when Frankie Kazarian is healthy and - shock! Surprise! Wowzer! - it will be revealed that Daniels is not Suicide (even though we all know he has been since Kazarian was hurt). An excellent build to what will be a good program.
There were more Hits - Don West even had a good week - but we need to acknowledge the Misses as well as the Hits. You know, like that episode with the fake-looking Gorn. Hmmm...who could fit that bill? I wonder, I wonder...
Misses
Matt Morgan: Gorn Captain. There's this great slang phrase the Brits use. So-and-so is a Big Girl's Blouse. You have some big guy who's just a whiny whiner from Whineville and you look at him and just roll your eyes. I'm sure Matt Morgan's a hell of a nice guy and probably is the life of any party but ...ehhhh, yeah sure. Really, if you're the Main Event Mafia (and has anyone else noticed that you can't spell Memories without MEM?), would you want Matt Morgan? The Mafia is all multiple-time world champions. Matt Morgan...isn't. And that match against the Red Shirt Ensigns, or excuse me, the Mafia Security was a Wrestlecrap Jobber of the Week category waiting to be written. Sorry Matt. Too bad you wasted all that lube.
Space...the Final Frontier. Now sometimes having the same start to a show every week is good. Like Dennis Miller said, part of the fun of Star Trek was watching the opening credits and guessing which star the Enterprise was going to fly out of. But this felt like the umpteenth week in a row that started with the MEM marching out to the ring. There were also two other long MEM pieces (an interview with Mike "ratings killer" Tenay and yet another MEM history piece) that didn't advance any plotlines and filled time that could have been filled with oh, something like, maybe matches that go longer than four minutes? I'm just sayin'.
Enterprise. That last Star Trek series really was craptacular, as unfortunately was the main event of Thursday's show. The confrontation of the five MEMbers against the five Frontline Originals, or Foley Artists, or Impacted Wisdom Teeth or whatever they're called this week was really wasted. That really should be happening near the end of this storyline at a pay-per-view. Heck, even Kurt Angle said that during the opening segment. I mean, when you're writing lines for characters that make more sense than the overall show you're writing, doesn't that mean that in your heart you know better. The other hurting thing - and the match itself wasn't godawful or anything - was that all the build was for the MEM. Outside of J.B. going back and forth between Foley and Jarrett, there was scant or no attention paid to the issues within the Foley group. Like, why did Joe show up this week? Was A.J. Styles worried he wouldn't? Don't get me wrong. I love the Main Event Mafia. But you're only as good as your opponent and the writers missed that this week.
Okay, that's it. Hope you stomached all the Trek references, even you Star Wars freaks. Cazart!
Hubert O'Hearn is a new PWTorch Specialist covering TNA Impact with a weekly Hits & Misses column. You can read Hubert's Hits & Misses column and Chris Reed's new TNA Hits & Misses column weekly on PWTorch.com
•New for September 2010 - the Torch Today "Daily News at a Glance"... If you've got 25 seconds, we've boiled the news of the day down to 250 words. Check it out every day at 5 p.m. ET or bookmark the listing. Appointment reading for the wrestling fan who doesn't want to miss anything, but doesn't have much time.
