Monday Night Raw

A good show! Surprising. Even the McMillion Dollar Giveaway calls were quasi-funny and entertaining this time. :) Jericho's heel turn was furthered, with a surprise appearance by Ric Flair and a match with Triple H - one of the best Raw main events I've seen in a long time. Jericho is definitely the MVP of Raw right now. And way to begin the expected push of Lance Cade - albeit a bit out of nowhere and I'll be interested at the explanation of his involvement (Shawn trained him and he agrees with Y2J's assessment of his former mentor?).

They did a good job of making Triple H and Cena seem like a 'Big Time Match', which it is. We lose sight of the fact as this feud has been whispered about and even touched upon lightly for two or three years, but they've never REALLY locked horns for any protracted period of time, and it makes sense they would. Way to bring home the importance of this match.

The tag championship match was sadly forgettable and short - the wrestling action as a whole other than the main event was actually way too minimal and abysmal to care about - but it did build some intrigue going into Night of Champions - I'm sticking with my prediction of a Cody Rhodes heel turn on Bob Holly.

And WTF about the push on Charlie Haas? I mean, it's good - he gets some time with the divas (what does wife and baby mama Jacquie think?), and some time on the stick, and he's good at it - but like Cade, it's out of nowhere. Could WWE really be realizing finally they need to build some talent for the future? YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

This show, in short, was better by yards than last week. But then, that's what WWE does, isn't it? They create progressively lower and lower expectations, so that when they finally exceed them (which they inevitably do from time to time, so low are they), we are thrilled at whatever scraps they throw us. Am I being too harsh? Would I have enjoyed this show as much if it weren't so refreshing and such a big improvement on last week, while still *playing* on last week? I'm not sure. But hopefully they'll keep on THIS trend enough to find out. Either way, next week will be good (I hope!), as I'm looking forward to the draft - always a good time, tho I hope they're kinder to Smackdown this time than they were the last go-round. My one complaint: isn't it rendered kind of moot by coming before Night of Champions? I didn't realize that until yesterday! I figured NoC was a great way to tie up loose ends and leave anyone fair game for the draft. Either way, it should still be interesting.

One last kudos - to the announce team! I don't know whether it's been easier for them to do their job while Vince has been out onstage and not screaming in their ears, or whether they're just going with the ridiculous flow of the show figuring 'what the hell', but JR and the King have been relaxed, enjoying themselves, and in rare form for one-liners the last couple weeks. Good stuff!