Welcome To Bummerville!
When we last left our heroes Nikki shamed Brie and Bryan into having sex but then got grossed out when she had to hear about it. Johnny Ace and Kathy were discussing the true meanings of the words “pre-nup” and “elope,” John Cena rehabbed all day, everyday, and JJ kept it cool, as per usual.
Winston’s condition: acceptable. Josie’s condition: unknown.
Today, Nikki and Brie discuss how they’re made of fire and trees and Bryan is a squirtgun because the only words they are comfortable with are “like” and “amazing.”
Then Kathy drops THE HOTTEST BURN POSSIBLE on Bryan, calling him the Danny Devito to John Cena’s Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins (ha!) and I gotta say, I respect the game. 80s movie referencing zings are my jam, so she won this episode, 2 minutes in.
Later, in The Pool Area (said in Vincent Price’s voice), Brie and Bryan rig Josie up with a little dog floaty because I’m guessing Cena has already attempted to drown her at least once.
Brie is also preparing to retire at Wrestlemania and her and Bryan have the first genuine display of love I’ve seen in the first three episodes. For a show all about family, that shouldn’t have been so jarring. So Winston ate his own poop because that’s what living with these people does to you.
Bryan is depressed because he was forced to retire from wrestling and live with his diva of a sister-in-law and her overbearing boyfriend who may or may not be a serial dog murderer. Everyone wants him to coach at NXT but he just wants to wrestle.
It’s at this point that Brie gets mad at Nikki for being white and needing bronzer so she leaves town and then Nikki said “preggers” and now I’m depressed, too.
Field trip to the PC
JJ complains about working at his mom’s flip-flop factory and how he wants a change in his life. So Nikki convinces Bry to go to the Performance Center to cheer him up because nothing says “I care about you as a person” more than bringing someone to a place where a bunch of people are doing the one thing you really want to do but can’t.
JJ tags along because he rightfully fears Bryan will murder Nikki’s neck if they spend anytime alone together. Nikki continues to struggle with boundaries and words and the jury is still out on whether or not Bryan has a suitable pair of shoes on, if any.
Best part of the episode by a mile is at the Performance Center, Bryan shows Sami Zayn a new wrestling style he was working on before he was forced to retire.
To protect his neck from constant bumps, he was gonna crawl around like an animal (much like he does around Cena’s house) and make single leg takedowns ultra cool. He was gonna use this style against a planned match against Brock.
He was positively glowing while showing these lost moves to Sami. This is all I want to see now and it will never happen.
Worst part of the episode is that by sharing his ideas and moving around with other wrestlers, Bryan is just reminded that he can’t do it at the level he wants and then he gets bummed out and then everybody else gets bummed out, including Sami.
JJ shakes it off in time to awkwardly ask John Cena to put in a good word for him at NXT cause yo, working for his mom suuuuucks. John hasn’t updated his “Human Interaction” app so nothing moves forward.
Tea can’t fix everything
The family continues to push Bryan to do SOMETHING, perhaps be the host of a little treehouse gardening show or whatever he likes, and Bryan’s all “YOU’RE NOT MY REAL MOMS!” and sinks deeper into the sadness sand.
Another weird part is when Bryan reveals he holds the record for the lowest score ever on WWE’s Ambition Test. The dude that spent 16 years punishing his body across the world only to become the WWE World Heavyweight Champion at Wrestlemania against all odds? Zero ambition.
Are the WWE bosses running things at the Stamford offices like Charlie and Mac did when they got jobs in a mailroom? Also, he’s been battling depression and anxiety since he was 25 years old and him and Brie have been hiding it from the rest of the family. Everything is terrible.
Trying to bond with Bryan, Nikki takes him to a girl tea party. It’s pleasant.
Nikki and John discuss language, conversing, and basic words. It’s excruciating.
Brie and Johnny Ace dump on JJ’s new dream of being a pro wrestler but surprisingly, Nikki’s is totally supportive because she knows he’s sick of working for mom.
And now that Brie is back she’s starting to see that Bryan’s one step away from being Michael Douglas in Falling Down so she’s finally on the same page as everyone else. Look, I started doing this because I thought it would be funny but seeing one of your favorite wrestlers legitimately spiral mentally is the worst. I hate this episode.
Now the whole family is crapping on JJ for being upset with his current job and being interested in pursuing other options. Non flip-flop options. So Kathy is mad at JJ, JJ is mad at Brie for not taking his side, John’s mad at Brie for throwing JJ under the bus, Johnny Ace is mad at family brunch for being a warzone, and Nikki just wants to get drunk, probably.
Wrestling with words and emotions, some Manatees
At family dinner we hear more discussion, and evidence, of the Twins’ lack of vocabulary and seriously how did they ever hold down any job ever? I’m starting to doubt their reading skills at this point, especially when John has to explain to Nikki what a pronoun is.
She thinks it’s a bigger noun than the others or maybe the word “better” is a pronoun (???). John, and I hesitate to say “sarcastically” because who knows, explains it’s obviously a “professional noun” that uses other nouns to make money or something and Nikki thinks that makes perfect sense.
Brie declares there are “too many words out there” and I declare this episode is the worst.
Right on time, Kathy fixes the JJ problem at dinner by giving him 20% of the company. Everyone seems happy but I don’t know what percentage he already owned, if any. If it was like 5% then that’s pretty dope but what if he owned like 19%?
That’s not much of a promotion, and it’d be even worse if yesterday he owned 25% of the filp-flops and this was just a cold business tactic because Kathy will not be crossed! It doesn’t matter because JJ admits he doesn’t even like wrestling and this was his plan all along, so it was probably a good thing. Smart dude, that JJ.
To close out this mood-deflating episode, Brie takes Bryan on a boat trip to swim with manatees because that’s safe to do in Florida, I guess. Bryan loves it so that just makes everything worse and he says his brain is already wasted away, twice, and now I wanna cry.
Since this show is called Total Bellas and not Saving Danielson, Brie makes his depression all about whether she should retire right there and help her husband or continue on the road to her last match at Wrestlemania because that’s what she’s worked so hard to do.
Every one of us, including Brie, knows that Bryan would never let her miss her match so this is basically a “look at me” moment during a dumb reality show named after her while her husband is emotionally dying right in front of her. Fun show, this Total Bellas.
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