Overall Rating: ★★★●★☆☆
Most of this show was pretty good, even despite the fact that I wasn't particularly interested in any of the storylines. The women's Rumble was fun (although not a standout over all), but the men's Rumble was pretty disappointing. I'm never going to dislike a battle royale, but these weren't the best.
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I asked for someone to recommend me an Ursula Le Guin book that's a stand-alone story (as opposed to a series or trilogy or whatever, because I know what fantasy authors are like) and they told me that this one, despite technically being part of a series, is entirely self-contained. And it is. I don't know that it was a good recommendation though, because now I don't know if I just didn't like it much or if I'd have gotten more out of it if I read them in order. It wasn't bad. It's certainly well-written. There are some engaging ideas in there. It's just that not much happens and then it just kind of ends. It's not like it leaves things unresolved or tries to bait you into reading the next one, it's just that it's a sort of naturalistic story so there's not really a clear "everything is resolved and he lived happily ever after (or didn't)" type ending. Shevek just continues to live his life, I guess. |
...it's that Dungeons & Dragons isn't what you think it is.
Let me back up for a second and start by contradicting myself a little bit. D&D sucks. There are a lot of problems with D&D. I don't know that I'll ever play it again. But the vast majority of the complaints I hear about D&D are... wrong. The people making them are aware that they aren't enjoying the game (or at least not as much as they want to) but rather than identifying an underlying cause they just keep treating the symptoms.
Overall Rating: ★★★●☆☆☆
The low score here is not actually reflective of the show I saw; the problem is that they insist on featuring people I refuse to watch on moral grounds. Two matches I have to skip out of seven really drags the score down. The ones I watched were very good though.
The ROH invasion was cool, but I'm not sure it makes sense. Maria Kenellis, Mike Bennet and Matt Taven, sure. But why are Vincent and PCO teaming up with them? And if it's a full-on ROH invasion, seems weird to do the show of friendship with the championship match in the same show. And then Rok-C was present for the women's championship match, but just to watch?
Overall rating: ★★★●☆☆☆
If this is the "battle of the belts", why are only two legitimate and one official championships being contested? No TBS championship, no men's championship, no tag championship. The Danielson/Page rematch should have been on this show. The inaugural TBS championship match should have been on this show. The Jurassic Express vs. Lucha Bros. match should have been on this show. Sure, it would have been twice as long (a whole two hours, even) but it would have justified the name. They could even have introduced a women's tag title if they wanted to go completely crazy with it.
I tried putting a Twitch streamer on on one screen while trying out video games on the other. Didn't work. At all. Couldn't pay enough attention to either. Oh well, games.
Overall rating: ★★★○☆☆☆
I'm very tried today, so not in the best state of mind to watch this, but there was nothing I was actually looking forward to or even cared about the outcome of - except Big E's championship, but I didn't have high hopes for that even before Lesnar showed up.
