The Rock, The Ambulance, and The Problem



Wednesday, March 20, 2002

I've been meaning to write about this for a while now. I guess it's been almost a month since the wwf did the angle with the Rock and the ambulance attack. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so first, here's the picture, and then I'll give you the thousand words anyway.


Now, let's look back at some thoughts I wrote down the day after that angle, but never posted here:

The biggest problem with Raw was that they did a huge angle with the nwo attacking the rock, putting him in an ambulance, and then destoying the ambulance with a semi. That itself wasn't the biggest problem, the problem was the way they portrayed it afterwards. They took forever to move on, and when they did, they had everyone come out looking concerned, and not into their matches... and the BIGGEST problem is the way the annoucers handled it. I am not a big fan of when injury angles are taken that deathly seriously. It's the same problem from the royal rumble 2001, where they did an injury angle with chyna. I'm not dumb enough to believe that rock was actually in the damn ambulance when they destoyed it, so I feel it's insulting my intelligance when they try to portray what just happened as "real life" rather than just as part of the show. If it's part of the show, oh, they did an injury angle, rock'll be off tv for a week or two... get some vacation time in, whatever. I can deal with that, and buy into the storyline as much as I do any other storyline. But when they play it as "real" I have to say horseshit. There is a time and a place reserved to be that serious, and that time is when things really ARE that serious. Like the night Owen died. Heaven forbid it ever happens again, but if it did, I wouldn't want to think, oh, it's all just part of the show, JR and Lawler are acting just like they always do when they do a stunt like this. I wasn't watching the ppv the night Owen fell, but I was watching Thunder some three years ago the night Buff Bagwell was paralyzed in the ring, after Rick Steiner f'd up a bulldog. Buff really was hurt, he was temporaily paralyzed, and the show, live, stopped for about 45 minutes while they tended to him. Now we all know he eventually recovered, they used his injury as the basis for a couple angles, and he went on to be a mediocere wrestler. But it was serious when it happened, and if I'd seen the same basic thing happen a half dozen times before that, but they guy was back two weeks later, I might not have realized it was serious, and just figured it was another stunt. I don't want that to be the case. And that's why I don't like those angles to be taken that seriously.


And that's what I think about that. This is what was wrong with that angle. This is what was and in many ways still is wrong with the wwf. And what really blows the mind, is that three weeks later, Rock and Hogan are apparently friends, forgeting all about this vehicular assult/attempted murder. I really do wish the WWF would acknowledge that fans have a memory that streches more than a week back in time. Tie up your loose ends once in a while. Eh?


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