It hasn’t been the best of weeks for me.
I’ve been sick since Tuesday, with no end in sight. Which makes concentrating on writing a royal pain in the ass. All I really have wanted to do is kick back and relax with my newest dvd purchase: WWE’s The Best of Smackdown 10Th Anniversary 3 dvd set, which was a steal at 19.99.
A steal that I wish someone would now steal from me.
I don’t want to review the whole dvd, that’s not really what I do. But watching it, I found the headache that has come with my illness getting worse and worse. You see, rather than follow the same easy formula as the Raw 15th Anniversary dvd, where they *gasp* show the matches and the skits, whoever was in charge of the Smackdown dvd decided to get all topical, and copy the format of VH1’s endless I Love the… shows. A series of shows which peaked about 5 years ago. Yes, someone in the once stellar dvd department, came up with the genius idea of clipping everything, and inserting badly scripted talking head comedy segments at random intervals. For example, in the very first segment (on the debut of the Spinner belt), we get Candice Michelle singing Dead Or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)†in a spinning circle. This type of thing continues through the majority of segments on the 3 discs.
Now, I know Vince is supposed to be so inundated with the WWE Universe that he has no clue what is going on in the world of pop culture; we all have heard the stories of him pulling the plug on Pirate Paul Burchill because he didn’t think pirates were “inâ€, despite it being at the peak of Pirates of the Caribbean’s success. And I know that the WWE buck stops with him. But I find it hard to believe that Vince had the final say on the format of the Smackdown dvd. It’s far more likely that this falls on the head of someone in the dvd division of the company. Which might mean the out of touch tunnel vision so apparent with the McMahon commanded writing team is spreading. That’s troubling.
Also troubling is the lack of continuity on display on the dvd. There apparently was no common consensus as to whether or not to kayfabe the talking head segments, so it bounces back and forth. And minus at select handful of the matches (and most of the matches that survive intact are ones that didn‘t need to be presented in full, whereas the Lesnar/Angle Iron Man match, which in a Benoit free product could and should have been the crown jewel of the set, is hacked to pieces. And no, I don‘t consider two half second glimpses of Benoit inclusion), nearly every single segment is presented in rapid fire clip form, which makes it as head spinning a watch as any Russo written episode of Raw. Instead of Crash TV, it’s Crash DVD, and that’s not the quality I’ve come to expect from WWE dvds.
Even with the often revisionist history provided by their documentaries (something else that has gotten worse recently, I might add), the WWE dvd’s have always been a ray of shining light in a sea of hard to watch programming. The Rise and Fall of WCW dvd may have featured an underwhelming documentary, but it still featured many excellent matches. The Greatest Tag Teams dvd may have featured incredibly annoying Miz and Morrison vignettes between the Crash tv style team synopses, but once again, it featured so many excellent matches that it made the whole thing worthwhile. More and more often, it’s the matches that have been saving the dvd’s for me these days. Alas, the Smackdown dvd is almost devoid of memorable matches. Apparently, it’s more important for us to see how green Randy Orton and John Cena were in their debut matches than to see some actual classic Smackdown matches in their entirety. And the next major dvd set coming out? It’s not Chris Jericho’s, or even Jerry The King Lawler’s. It’s Batista’s.
Now, I’m not opposed to Batista having his own dvd. He is one of their major stars right now, so it’s understandable. But a three disc set with a documentary? Does the average Big Dave fan really care that much that they want to watch three discs of him? Would it sell any less if it was a 2 disc set ala the Jake the Snake or Road Warriors dvds? The WWE dvd buying audience is not necessarily the same as the WWE viewing audience, or even the live attendance audience. I’m not a statistician, but it stands to reason that the dvd’s attract a larger percentage of buyers that care about the history of wrestling and about match quality. Ignoring them is indicative of the type of out of touch tunnel vision that permeates the WWE; the type of tunnel vision that tries to force feed the audience what Vince thinks they want to see. Up until now, they have managed to produce dvd’s that appeal to both the casual fan AND the rabid fan. But I don’t see much coming up that appeals to me as a rabid fan, especially one who feels like the quality of the dvd product is dropping. Sure, there’s the History of the World Championship dvd coming up, but given the route they went with the Smackdown Anniversary dvd, why should I be looking forward to it?
Maybe it’s just the sickness making me cranky, but I’m expecting them to change the format to copy MTV’s True Life.
