Saturday Night's Main Event thoughts

If I didn't come across loud and clear in my latest ITR, I was a HUGE fan of SNME growing up. The first half-dozen or so that aired, I was too young to stay up until 1 a.m., so my father would tape it (on Betamax!) and I would wake up early on Sunday morning to see how it all turned out. Although there weren't many surprises per se, it was always an interesting show because the matches were DIFFERENT than what you would normally see on the syndicated shows, and thus it was must-see television.

Last night's..... ehhhh. Part of it was because, we see basically the same caliber of matches every week. The set looked like a watered-down PPV stage, and otherwise, it was business as usual. I DID appreciate the synthesizer-themed opening and the way that the main event went on first, a nod to SNME's past, but honestly, that was about it.

HHH/Cena vs. Orton/Mysterio/Angle made no sense to me. If the goal was for dissention among the WM main event participants, why not just have HHH/Orton vs Cena/Angle/Mysterio? At least the Orton run-in on Monday would have made a bit more sense. These five clearly didn't care about the Raw vs SmackDown aspect, so why exploit that fact? I also understand why HHH would have interfered with Cena's pin - he's a heel and his main goal is to see Cena screw up - but why would you have Mysterio do the same thing to Orton? Sure, they have bad blood there, but they were obviously able to team up for the length of the match. So a terrible, terrible so-called "dream" match.

The other stuff wasn't much better. Sure, a few decent bumps in the Michaels-Shane O' Mac match, but you expected that. The JBL-Austin beer thingie could have been hilarious, but it just fell apart in a hurry. And this was the BEST way to turn Mickie James after six-plus months of buildup? Ugh.

Yes, it was "different" than the usual Raw and SmackDown fare, but not different enough. They may do okay in the ratings, but I'd be shocked if they'd do well at it again (barring an appearance by, say, The Rock). Ugh.