It’s April and for every wrestling fan, that means only one thing and that is Wrestlemania. The long storied tradition has been the mainstay and the biggest showcase of the immortals for the last 34 years.
This year, located in New Orleans at the Super dome, was a highly anticipated show with many wrestlers in dream matches and a card fully stacked with lots of talent and future hall of famers. The main problem with Wrestlemania this season is that the hype is all there but the end result usually leaves the fans (or in this case the universe) with a bitter taste or apathy at the end with us hoping that the Monday Night Raw giving us more to cheer for. So, with the show being over five hours long including the pre-show, I’ll be breaking down the matches (not move for move because you can write a novel with that) and giving overall opinions based on the end result and give an overall praises and disappointments from the show as well. So, we got five hours to get into a review, so, let’s roll up our sleeves, get those tights fitted and walk down that unnecessarily long ramp way as we delve down and review Wrestlemania.
First, as part of the pre-show festivities was the Andre the Giant memorial battle royal. The goal is for the wrestlers to throw others over the top rope and have them touch both feet on the ground. The match featured more veterans and no real surprises from NXT or indie darlings. The cluster of wrestlers felt very slow and the pacing was drawn out. The couple of highlights featured Goldust being in the match for a while and putting aside a feud with R-Truth before eliminating him. The shocker of the match, if you will insist on, was when “Woken” Matt Hardy was saved by Bray Wyatt as he helped Matt win the match and the two embraced with a handshake and a hug. The will continue the story line for what is going on with Bray and what will become of Matt’s brother Jeff.
The cruiser-weight title was the next match featuring Mustafa Ali vs Cedric Alexander. I was disappointed this was regulated to pre-show as I thought it could’ve been the first match to get the crowd going. With that being said, the match was fine featuring some good spots and some stiff hits along the way but the pacing was very reminiscent of the earlier 205 live days when Vince was at the helm. The new 205 they were showcasing for the last couple of weeks was fast, hard hitting and told a great story along the way and was fun. This match was slow, had some good story and some spots but was a little lackluster and with it being on the pre-show, probably fit it there too. The winner was Cedric Alexander when he hit the lumbar check on Mustafa.
The next match was the 1st womens’ battle royal. This battle royal had more of a story going along with the match with wrestlers like Bayley and Sasha Banks continuing their feud as well as the Riott Squad and Absolution trying to use their stable as a way to keep other wrestlers in check. I enjoyed it more than the mens royal and it featured some NXT wrestlers showcasing their skills and their ability to get the crowd cheering their name. It was quite fun and I think if WWE continue to push women more and more, then the following years to come with get better and better. The winner was Naomi eliminating Bayley when Bayley thought she won by throwing Sasha Banks over the rope.
The pre-show has officially ended and now we start the main show. The first match is for the Intercontinental Championship. We got a triple threat match with Finn Balor vs The Miz vs Seth Rollins. This was one of the best matches on the card. It was face paced, strong shots, false finishes and it told a great story. This had a lot going on that I knew this was a great way to kick off the show with getting the crowd invested. This was a potential show stealer. Seth Rollins won the match and became the new IC champion pinning the Miz after the stomp.
Charlotte Vs Asuka was the next match for the Smackdown Womens championship. I was quite surprised they started out with two huge matches with titles back to back on the line but I was not disappointed. This had lots of great moments with strong strikes by Asuka, Charlotte hitting a top rope Spanish fly on Asuka and Asuka, at the end of the match, having her undefeated streak (longer than Goldbergs) end with the figure 8 leg lock and Asuka tapping out and bowing down to the Queen. This and the IC title match were the best matches for the show and everything else, even though it might have had bigger names or dream scenarios, did not live up to the expectations and floundered.
The next match, we now take a deep breath and start to get our blood pressure to drop since it is now the fatal four way with Rusev vs Bobby Roode vs Jinder Mahal vs Randy Orton. Bathroom breaks and snack lines was for this match. It was slow, not really interesting and it seemed Randy just didn’t really care or bring any kind of investment into the match. The crowd was hot for Rusev and was hoping for his victory but it fell to Jinder Mahal winning the title. The match was forgettable and just was meh.
Luckily, WWE knew people would come back from bathroom and snack line to see the debut of Ronda Rousey. She teamed with Olympic gold medalist and WWE hall of famer Kurt Angle to face Mr and Mrs Stephanie McMahon (Stephanie and HHH). The tag team was a smart idea because you dont want to throw Ronda into a match without someone there to take some of the pressure off of her. Overall, she did very well. She showcased her striking abilities, she took some big bumps in the match and she got the win by hitting the arm bar on Stephanie. The funny thing is that Angle and HHH looked very rusty and I wonder if they did it to not steal Ronda’s moment. Overall, very good match, little on the longer than necessary side, but still a very good match and I’m happy for Ronda and she has done very well since her transition to pro wrestling.
Smackdown tag team match was sloppy and they just wanted to showcase the Bludgeon Brothers as the dominant strong force for Smackdown. They destroyed both the New Day and the Usos. It was a slobber knocker and it was just the Brothers manhandling the two teams. No surprise, they won the titles.
John Cena emerges from the back and we think he might wrestle the Undertaker. After some build up and some lightning and special effects, the dead man emerged from the back and in a weird twist of fate, it was a squash match. I think because Taker gave Cena a rub after his first match back in the early 2000’s, this was a way of Cena making the Taker look strong in probably his last match in the WWE. It was just nice to see the dead man but the match was nothing but Taker showcasing his classic moves before he won the match.
Since the last match had emotions with Undertaker, the WWE wanted more emotion and they used the return of Daniel Bryan next and it got everyone throwing their arms in the air kick starting the return of the “Yes” movement. With Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn facing Daniel Bryan and Shane McMahon, I was invested and hoping how a 3 year absence from the ring would plague Daniel. He hit all his moves, took bumps to show he can still take them and got the victory with his yes kicks, running knee and the yes lock. This was just a welcome back Daniel match and I was still very happy seeing it happen.
The Raw women’s championship was next with Alexa Bliss vs Nia Jax. Another bathroom break match. It was slow, had a couple of spots but the match itself was lackluster and I never thought that Alexa really stood a chance of even winning. Not the best and since it was almost 10 minutes, hopefully the lines at the restrooms were flowing. Nia won the title.
AJ Styles vs Nakamura was a match years in the making since their epic encounter back in NJPW years earlier and it was considered one of the best matches ever. In the WWE, it was another match. I’m not sure if AJ’s injury was hindering or if they were forced to wrestle a certain style but whatever emotional connection they had in Japan kind of fell in WWE. The match was fine and maybe my expectations were so high since they are considered some of the best in the world but something didn’t click as much as I hoped. These two deserved to showcase more than they were given. AJ won and the highlight came after the match with Nakamura giving AJ the low blow and kicking him out of the ring. I’m happy to see a heel Shinsuke and maybe a new stable of “Chaos” in WWE?
The Raw tag belts were next. Bathroom break part three. The Bar faced Braun Strowman and a child from the crowd. Always nice burying the tag team division. Braun beat both Sheamus and Cesaro on his own winning the tag team belts. Good for Braun doing a little comedy setup with the child and the Bar getting those hands.
Last match, Brock Lesnar vs Roman Reigns for the Universal title. When the crowd chant boring and are more interested in gigantic beach balls in the crowd, that shows that no one is quite interested in the match. Brock took Roman to suplex city and Roman was getting a beaten up similar to when Brock destroyed John Cena. Roman got busted open and did get some offense in the fight but, ultimately it took 5 F-5’s and one on the table and Brock shockingly retained his belt. The rumors were that Brock’s contract was due to expire by midnight. Him retaining makes the fan wonder when he will drop the belt and when he will just go away since fans are now sick of seeing German suplexes and F-5 boring matches.
That was Wrestlemania 34. Overall, the show had its high moments and some low points. The highlights of the show were the IC title match and Charlotte vs Asuka. They both put on some stellar matches and showcased themselves in a great way with hard hitting, story telling and putting together some nice highlight reels for the network. The disappointing segments includes the Raw tag team match, which was just an elongated squash match, the Raw Womens title for the same reasons as the Raw tag team. The WTH moment was the return of the Undertaker. He squashed John Cena, which was awesome, but, it was kind of random and though I was happy seeing him, I wanted more Taker to do more post match.
Overall, Wrestlemania 34 was a decent pay per view with some highs and lows. The best matches seemed to have happened in the first half of the show and the last couple of hours had some lackluster matches and underwhelming championship defenses as well. It wasn’t one of the best but not the worst. It would be somewhere in the upper mids for Wrestlemania. I was happy to watch it but happier seeing NXT the night beforehand. If you like wrestling, watch NXT Take Over and then watch Wrestlemania and see what the difference between storytelling and wrestling is between the two different brands.
Until now, the Justice League has been a loose association of superpowered individuals. But when they are swept away to War World, a place of unending brutal gladiatorial combat, Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and the others must somehow unite to form an unbeatable resistance able to lead an entire planet to freedom.
Set as a sequel series of sorts to the original film, the vampire Louis du Pointe du Lac approaches reporter Daniel Molloy decades later to do an actual, honest exclusive of his life as a vampire.
As we all know, Rice’s original movie Interview with the Vampire is a classic and features some of the most gorgeous male performances around. Brad Pitt as Louis, Tom Cruise as a flippant blonde-haired Lestat, Antonio Banderas as the ravishing Armand, Christian Slater as the reporter, and even a quite young Kirsten Dunst as the tiny terror Claudia. Rice has a whole world of her making about vampires, witches, mummies, and other world-ending supernatural creatures, and they are all achingly beautiful, and usually quite melancholy about their beleaguered existence.
Before her passing, Anne Rice was directly involved with the new show, wrote the updated scripts herself, and was often on hand for consulting during filming. A whole bunch of revamps (sorry) were made to the original story, including but not limited to – Louis du Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) is now a black man in early 20th century New Orleans, no longer a slave plantation man but now the proud owner of several brothels on a certain street, with a very much still-alive family who presents Louis with lots of troubles, and oh yeah, he’s in the closet too.
At this point, I want to note something important about the gay elements of the show. Rice originally published her novel Interview way back in 1976, and every single last gay tendency, male or non-binary or whatever, got her a good deal of flack. Rice has long been known for characters, vampire or other, who transcend the notion of physical sexuality into more of a divine lust of the spirit. Sure, there are plenty of physical love scenes still, but homosexuality was never something Rice just threw in to be provocative, she made no defining lines on the way her supernatural creatures could love each other, and personally I think that’s stellar.
So all of Louis’ own issues aside, things are about to get remarkably more troubling, with the advent of a blonde-haired Adonis with ice-blue eyes and a razor-sharp jawline, and an even sharper set of fangs, Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). Initially, Lestat professes to admire Louis and his capability in running his various enterprises, seemingly satisfied with going along on brothel adventures (Lestat has long been known to bang anything that’ll hold still long enough) and verbally poking Louis to see where his “do not cross” lines are.
Not a single person who knows Anne Rice and her original novel, or even the first film, can deny the insane connection Louis and Lestat happen to have. Love and lust and envy and hatred are all tangled up in the relationship of these two vampires, made more complicated by the fact that Lestat is Louis’ Sire, or Maker if you prefer. This particular portrayal of the love story between two compelling characters, one inherently kind and desirous to do good (or at least not be bad) in an unfeeling world, the other an arrogant prince of the immortal kind with seemingly little regard for the pain he causes others (other than in an amusement capacity), how they push and pull at each other and cause each-other so much damage but simply find themselves both unable to give up the other entirely, can be an allegory for all the bad-for-you relationships, regardless of sexual orientation. And things are made so much more wretched when a third vampire is introduced to their little damned family.
The portrayal of Claudia (Bailey Bass) in this version of the story, a teenage black female with a sickeningly sweet Southern accent, has some rather different origin scenes too. Most of Claudia’s arc, while moving the story right along at a healthy clip, is full of complaints at the odd restraints of her existence – Louis cautions for temperance, while Lestat gives that wicked grin and encourages Claudia to revel in her bloody existence as a vampire. Jealousy rears its inevitable head, whether its Lestat’s envy of the brother-sister father-daughter relationship Louis has with Claudia, or Claudia’s own jealousy of the rather obvious romantic relationship between Louis and Lestat, or even the jealousy of seasoned vampires watching a fledgling getting to experience many supernatural firsts – vampires are immortal and unchanging, after all, so anything new and surprising is zealously sought after and treasured almost as much as blood. So when Claudia inevitably starts acting out, things are made so much worse with the realization that she’s actually far more terrible than Lestat when it comes to restraint, as in, she has none.
Then there’s what’s happening with the present – a ridiculously expensive high-rise and high-res environmentally-controlled apartment in Dubai, an accent-less and increasingly begrudging Louis, insistent on following a proper timeline to his stories but still attempting to conceal things from Molloy, even after he swore he wouldn’t, his assistant Rashid (Assad Zaman) is also getting more and more protective of his Master, and Molloy himself, who never had a bullsh*t tolerance in the first place, getting more strident as the interview rages on in his search for the raw, honest truth. Because redemption can come from honesty in this interview, even for the reporter conducting it, if only Molloy would allow it.
Full of gorgeous scenery, familial ties that bind and gag, revelations about the nature of love and how it can twist when used as a weapon, and absolutely stellar performances from every single actor involved, Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire can be devoured on AMC now!
Created by Brett Goldstein, Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel
Season 1
Number of Episodes 10
Runtime: 33 minutes
Starring Jason Segel, Jessica Williams, Harrison Ford
Streaming on Apple TV
Jason Segel plays Jimmy, (How I Met Your Mother) a grieving therapist who lost his wife due to a terminal illness. He is coping with her death but gives little care to their teenage daughter, Grace played by Lukita Maxwell.
He works at a practice with his mentor Paul, played by Harrison Ford, and Gaby played by Jessica Williams. Jimmy’s work is less than inspiring because he has seen several patients over the years with no real breakthroughs. Finally, he is assigned a new patient who his co-worker couldn’t take on. This particular patient was court-ordered to see a therapist to avoid certain jail time. Sean, played by Luke Tennie, is an honored war vet with severe anger issues and has been arrested several times for starting fights in bars. Jimmy also has some frustrations at home as his next-door neighbor Liz, played by Christa Miller, has taken over as Alice’s parent. Without his wife and daughter, Jimmy is a mess and just drinks himself into a deep depression. His friends have become estranged and worst of all, his daughter has no respect for him.
During one session, Sean is reluctant to give Jimmy a chance as he was just pathetic in his eyes. Jimmy forgoes traditional therapy practices and goes for something a little extra. He takes Sean to a boxing club and has him work out his frustrations with a sparring partner. Sean and Jimmy have a breakthrough and then things start turning around for Jimmy/ The only problem is that Paul doesn’t approve of these new practices and warns him that this will lead to trouble.
Jimmy tries these new practices with his other patients and slowly makes breakthroughs but still seeks the constant praise and mentorship of Paul. Jimmy starts to try new things at home to reclaim parenthood over his daughter. Unknowingly Paul has been secretly counseling Jimmy’s daughter to help her with her issues with her father as well as being a father figure that he never was.
Things start going upside down when one of his patients tries to kiss him, another patient is lying about leaving her husband, and even worse, Sean sees Jimmy as a friend and not a therapist. The final straw is when Liz and Gaby find out that their daughter has fallen in love with Sean.
The show starts off slow at first, establishing the characters and giving the audience an inside view of the main protagonist’s world not unlike Lawrences’ other shows like Ted Lasso and Scrubs. This really allows the audience to get attached to their favorite characters and builds a world that we would all love to live in. The real problems addressed in this show are not sugar-coated and always highlight human qualities we would soon forget sometimes. It’s a real gem after Ted Lasso and you’ll just need to be a little patient in the beginning, but the payoff is well worth it in the end.
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