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What’s On Tonight: The ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’ Interactive Special Takes On The Reverend

If nothing below suits your sensibilities, check out our guide to What You Should Watch On Streaming Right Now.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend (Netflix stand-up special) — Kimmy Schmidt wraps up with her most spectacularly sunshiney adventure of all. Actually, things might get a little dark, considering that this is a pick-your-own-adventure style episode with viewers in the driver’s seat. Bandersnatch it ain’t, though. There will be Daniel Radcliffe and explosions and a dancing hamburger and Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne causing a heap of trouble before Kimmy’s wedding. Don’t worry, Jacqueline, Titus, and Lillian are all here to help fix and mess things up, too.

The Flash (CW, 8:00 p.m.) — Barry must forget and execute a successful plan to save Iris from Mirrorverse, while Ralph tries to prevent a mistake from Sue.

D.C.’s Legends Of Tomorrow (CW, 9:00 p.m.) — The team bizarrely ends up heading to college and starting a sorority in an effort to secure an ancient artifact. In the meantime, Nate falls under a spell, which spoils the group’s plan for success.

For Life (ABC, 10:00 p.m.) — Aaron’s pushed to a desperate move during his attempt at a retrial despite a powerful new adversary on the scene, whose wrath could blow the whole thing up. And Safiya’s attempting to warn Aaron about his marked-man status.

The Last O.G. (TBS, 10:30 p.m.) — Shay’s career finally sees a big break, while Tray and the family contemplate what this might mean for the rest of them.

Conan (TBS, 11:00 p.m.) — Chris Gethard

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Ellie Kemper, Christine Baranski

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Ethan Hawke, Elle Fanning, Kane Brown

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Jeff Goldblum, James Blake

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Paul Giamatti, Nicole Richie

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Dua Lipa And Lena Dunham Shared The Celebs They’ve DMed On Instagram


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Year None: Zion Williamson

The 2019-2020 NBA season came to an abrupt halt on March 11 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the season effectively three-quarters of the way through, many storylines, records-to-be, and developing comebacks were left in the lurch; all the bizarre, beautiful, and too-absorbing minutiae of the league halted. This is a look back at the most compelling of those suspended narratives in an attempt to figure out what could have been while reconciling, maybe wrenchingly, that however the season concludes, this will be a year in basketball that never fully happened. Welcome to Year None.

Zion Williamson’s professional basketball career has been interrupted, to no end, by acts of god. Natural and global disasters that ebb and flow around his high points, Achilles’ heel-style injuries around the low. Of all the overlarge hats handed to players on NBA Draft night, Williamson’s could not have sat awkwardly on his head fast enough for him, Adam Silver, or anyone watching, but since it did, the rookie is yet to play a continuous stretch of the game he was set to take over.

Summer League 2019, a Friday evening in early July. The parking lot of UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center fills and people appear to float across pavement flooded with lifting heat that eddies up to their knees, desert sun tumbling into the throbbing lights of the Las Vegas Strip three gargantuan blocks of sage scrub, airfield, and motels over. They are crackling as they enter the arena, the cold conditioned air sloughs the remnants of heat from their shoulders, but there’s another thing bearing down that won’t budge: the voltaic spark of anticipation. Zion, the name already shorthand for a kind of jolting hope, starts in whispers and ends with thousands chanting it at an empty court, conjuring up the smirking face they know is about to slip from the dark of the tunnel.

He played south of nine minutes before he bashed his right knee against Kadeem Allen’s. An impact, if you stretch it out right in the dramatic range of memory, that serves as the foreshock for what was coming — a 6.9 magnitude earthquake that rumbled right out of the Mojave and caused the scoreboard and speaker stacks to sway like pendulums. Williamson was watching from the bench, vibrations humming through the blood pooling in his bruising knee, as the court was cleared of players and all those people who had him on their lips seconds before, demanding We Want Zion, went streaming up the stairwells toward the exits.

In the days, and then remainder of summer that followed, it seemed less like Williamson had hurt himself than it took an earthquake to stop him. He was already something of a legend coming into the league and his false start of a debut only served to turn the narrative around him even more effusive. He was presented as Apollo in potential, but more surreptitiously accurate is how the deity ruled over prophecy, of which Williamson can’t seem to get clear from. A David and Goliath, him against his own reputation cast like a shadow on a wall, ten stories tall and growing.

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What happened in the desert came as an aftershock in the Pelicans preseason, not registering on the Richter scale but bound to bone and flinching muscle memory. Williamson eventually needed knee surgery and was sidelined until Jan. 22, when he finally made his NBA debut exactly three months from the 2019-20 season start. He did it against the Spurs, the team that saw him exit the preseason. Coincidence or prophecy, however you’d rule it, the parable of Zion continued to run interference.

There isn’t another player whose bad luck exists in such perfect counterbalance to the league’s own good. People tune in to watch the Pelicans when Williamson takes the floor. Late January in any regular season is a slog, the momentum that carried the season at its start has tapered along with the memories of twelve hours of languid, frantically festive Christmas Day basketball. But this year, Williamson’s return was something of a North Star. We all had a week to churn ourselves into a frenzy that felt even more heightened than the two times before, and whether you want to slice it along idioms or not, the third time was the charm.

Zion Williamson plays basketball very frankly. Other ways to describe his game include “frankly upsetting,” “frankly unbelievable,” and “frankly bending the known laws of physics, but bluntly, direct.” His cues — to his teammates, opposing players, the audience — are candid. In his regular season debut, he lay in wait until the start of the fourth. Then, extending and somehow extending himself once more while mid-air, clearing Jakob Poeltl’s 7-foot frame, Williamson windmilled the game toward himself by tipping a rebound down and out of the atmosphere level with the backboard. This, he seemed to say, is mine now.

He was always in plain sight. He is not a player who can slip into the paint unseen, who can weave his way open into an outside corner. He will simply put himself somewhere and understand the space his frame allows him to hold. One of the most misleading aspects of Williamson’s game, and frustrating for opposing players, is that it can appear slow in how straightforward it is. Like an insult that will drive to the quick of you in a breath, leveling you before you’ve realized you’re undone, Williamson is offensively explicit. He doesn’t feint, he doesn’t dance, he doesn’t tease out all the ways he could blow by a guy, he just moves. Even when he fumbles, like he does in his debut when Poeltl blocks his spin to the basket, he simply steps between Poeltl, Marco Belinelli, and Bryn Forbes, all converging on the ball, to take his rebound and lob it up over his shoulder, backwards.

To watch Williamson is to know that dunks that will pummel you breathless are coming. His dunks hold their own emphasis but are slow to register, maybe because the force of them punches holes through what you’re accustomed to seeing. He does’t gather up kinetic force in his drives toward the basket, he is his own fixed point of gravity. From that, he explodes outward and the game, caught in the lurch of a universe having been shifted. There are times when Williamson lifts himself into air and appears to hold, arms gone back to meet his feet kicked up. He waits, you swear you can see time dragging like he has it on a leash, and only then, both his arms slam forward, down, his legs piston up, you remember he hasn’t even landed yet. And when he eventually does, most often he just walks away.

Maybe that’s what makes it so jolting to watch, how accustomed he is to shifting the physics of what makes sense on the floor. He’ll snake a pass and turn, thunder in measured steps down the floor before the disrupted offensive play has registered with its players. He’ll move to what has become a signature underhanded layup with such floating care that it seems the ball is hesitant to leave his palm, scooping it skyward. He’ll pluck lobs from the air where his teammates have pitched them, so clear and so sure that no one else will reach up to impede because their eyes, like ours, are locked on him.

To watch Zion Williamson work is to reckon with a kind of terror you don’t mind being run down by, a joyful relinquishing of breath and body. That his professional career has been so marred by external crises that it had to be underscored, again, by a pandemic after only 19 games, that he was in the locker room Alvin Gentry refused to let his players out of upon learning a referee who was exposed to the COVID-19 virus was waiting for them on the floor, that he will likely miss out on Rookie of the Year this season, feels, tracing the prophetic cord that’s run through his last less than a year, perfectly and stupidly fitting. Not right, but in step with what will hopefully be the only mythic year he has to deal with.

He will have plenty of unbelievable ones, hopefully too many to narrow down when he’s facing scarcer seasons in front than behind. But that his inaugural year, where we saw him more as parable than player, has been once again abruptly upended could be the chisel Williamson can take to his own marble facade before getting on with the rest of his career, whenever it can start again, in peace.

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Charlize Theron Was ‘Worried’ About Furiosa’s Original Look In ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’

George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best movies of the 2010s (and, let’s face it, of all-time), came out five years ago this week. That’s five years of the Doof Warrior, five years of the “what a lovely day!” GIF, five years of Charlize Theron: action star. Without Fury Road, there would be no Atomic Blonde, and that would be a darn shame. Theron and co-star Tom Hardy notoriously did not get along on the set of the Oscar-winning film (you’d get annoyed with your co-workers, too, if you were “in the desert for so long”), but they only have nice things to say about each other now.

“Charlize arguably laid down the finest lead character in an action movie, and that credit is much deserved,” Hardy said in the New York Times‘ oral history of Mad Max: Fury Road. “Both to her as a phenomenal talent and also to George for recognizing from the very start that it was time to pass Mel’s shoes onto Furiosa.” It’s a great performance, obviously, but Theron also shaped the look and personality of Furiosa, including her hair.

“At first, Furiosa was this very ethereal character, with long hair and some African mud art on her face. It was a different costume designer back then, before Jenny Beavan, and the costume felt a little more Barbarella-y. I worried about it.”

Theron credits Miller for “hearing me out,” for listening when she called him and said, “I don’t know how she’s getting by in the mechanics’ room with all this hair. I think we need to shave my head, and she needs to be a more androgynous, grounded character.” Weirdly, that’s what Elijah Wood said about his character in Happy Feet Two, also directed by Miller (what a wild career). Anyway, Theron had such a pleasant-in-retrospect experience with Miller that they’re reportedly working on a Furiosa spin-off.

The Doof Warrior is willing to reprise his role, but only if gets a hefty raise (three flame-throwing guitars).

(Via the New York Times)

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‘Battlestar Galactica’ Veteran Katee Sackhoff Reportedly Joins ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 2

In a move that will excite Star Wars fans still buzzing from the final season of The Clone Wars, Katee Sackhoff has reportedly been cast in season two of The Mandalorian. According to /Film, who was the first to break the news on Rosario Dawson playing a live-action version of Ahsoka Tano, Sackhoff will be reprising her role as Mandalorian warrior Bo-Katan Kryze, who the actress has voiced in both The Clone Wars and Rebels animated series.

The casting decision is not a total surprise, however, as Bo-Katan was featured prominently in the final season of The Clone Wars that recently aired on Disney+. In fact, Sackhoff was asked in early April if she hoped her character would make the jump to live-action, and in light of recent news, the answer she gave Discussing Film seems very telling:

I mean, who wouldn’t! I grew up watching Star Wars. I grew up obsessed with Star Wars. Part of what I loved about playing Starbuck was that she reminded me of Han. I absolutely love that world and it’s part of the reason why I took The Clone Wars and wanted to play Bo to begin with. That being said, of course, there are people that are going to jump to conclusions that Bo is going to be in The Mandalorian because on paper, it does make sense. But you know, we’ll just have to wait and see and cross all my fingers and toes. You never know.

Sackhoff’s casting also makes sense considering Bo-Katan was the last known person in Star Wars canon to possess the legendary Darksaber, which was somehow in the hands of Giancarlo Esposito’s Moff Gideon in the season one finale of The Mandalorian. Although, it should be noted that just like reports of Dawson and Temuera Morrison joining the hit bounty hunting series, there has been no official confirmation from Lucasfilm as of yet.

Season two of The Mandalorian premieres in October on Disney+

(Via /Film)

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Dr. Anthony Fauci Said Reopening The Country Early Could Lead To Avoidable “Suffering And Death”


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Nicki Minaj’s First No. 1 With ‘Say So’ Is A Result Of Her Finally Doing What She Does Best

It may have taken over 10 years, a fan streaming party, and an NSFW scam by her collaboration partner, but Nicki Minaj has finally accomplished the goal she’s been striving toward for seemingly her whole career. For the first time since she broke into the rap blog ecosystem over a decade ago, the rapper who dubbed herself the Queen and who has at times been both underdog and tyrant, has topped the Billboard Hot 100 alongside Doja Cat with her remix to Doja’s viral hit turned chart-climbing single, “Say So.”

And yes, her Barbz and Doja Cat’s “Kittens” staging a “streaming party” to juice their stats did help push them to No. 1, but the song they were most directly competing against this time, Megan’s “Savage” remix with Beyonce, received a similar push from the Hotties and Beyhive, making the race more-or-less even, for once. Nicki had other chances in the past. She came close in 2011 with “Super Bass,” which peaked at No. 3, again in 2012 with “Starships” (No. 5), and in 2014, she came as close as she ever got to No. 1 with “Anaconda,” which landed at No. 2 behind Taylor Swift and “Shake It Off.” Those past records were all massive hits, so why is Nicki only just now securing this accomplishment? And more importantly, where does she go from here?

In looking at why Nicki has always fallen just short of that coveted No. 1 spot, it’s probably worth noting that a lot of the songs that surpassed her were notable for being novelty tracks or for coming from one-hit wonders (Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” is in there, as is LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem“). They’re also shamelessly poppy — just like some of her attempts were. This is probably the main reason: ‘Til now, Nicki competed with pop stars for position at the top of the pop charts, trying to beat them at their own game. With the above-mentioned songs, she downplayed the very thing that shot her to prominence in the first place: Her top-tier rap skills.

It also bears examining Nicki’s own reasoning — that the industry is weighed against women, especially Black women. It’s certainly true that every artist who beat her to the top in the above examples was either Caucasian, male, or both. In the whole history of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Black women have been disproportionately represented; it was only recently, after Billboard changed its metrics to allow for streaming numbers, that this began to balance out (hip-hop has dominated the chart ever since, reflecting the genre’s popularity in modern times). And who is to say how Nicki’s songs would have faired if streaming numbers were tabulated into Hot 100 results back then?

But Nicki’s insistence on trying to game the charts by making music that appealed to those sensibilities was a little like when Michael Jordan decided to play baseball for a year. It just wasn’t what her fans wanted her to do — and it wasn’t what she wanted to do, as she later admitted to regretting those songs and not sticking to her own style. Likewise, her collaborations with pop stars like Ariana Grande, Britney Spears, David Guetta, Jessie J, and Justin Bieber read as disingenuous to her natural sound, which would have grated alongside their perky tunes. She muted herself to accommodate the whims of a notoriously fickle audience, all while refusing to play to her strengths by collaborating with other female rappers.

It’s no surprise that when she finally started cooperating in sisterhood with younger rappers like Megan Thee Stallion and Doja Cat, she saw a return to the top ten for the first time since the surprise release of “Chun Li,” the lead single from Queen, which peaked at No. 10 due to her long absence from recording before its release. With “Say So,” Nicki showed that she could not only rap toe-to-toe with the men of rap, but also with the peers to whom she’d be compared to most often (whether fairly or not).

It’s poppy, but not in an overproduced, techno-drenched, manufactured way — its dance groove hails from the mid-70s R&B traditions of Black music, while both Doja and Nicki get some serious bars off. It’s the sort of song Nicki should have been making all along; not running from her roots but toward them. While fans read drama into the bars — as they’ll probably do forever — for once, she didn’t try to use beef with another female rapper for promotion and retired “bitches is my sons” from her vocabulary, at least temporarily. In fact, she even turned around a brewing feud that her fans started with Doja, for once, mobilizing them to promote a critic rather than bullying them. She became someone you want to root for again.

Call me naive, but I personally refuse to believe that anyone was actually gullible enough to think Doja Cat would really “show her boobs so hard” once the song reached No. 1, so the other explanation — the simplest one — is that Nicki finally made the music fans wanted from her, (mostly) free of gimmicks, of needless needling, goofy voices, or obvious pop radio reaches. We don’t know if she’ll stick to this newly winning formula, but given how badly she’s wanted this one accolade and how long it’s eluded her, don’t be surprised if her next album finds her firmly in a new mindset, putting the music first without the need to pursue the numbers.

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Tekashi 69 Continues Trolling By Only Following The NYPD On Instagram

Tekashi 69 has been called a snitch on multiple occasions, but it appears he’s not going to let that bother him. In fact, he’s really leaning into the descriptor. His first social media activity after being released from prison was a comment about snitching. Not long after that, he hopped on Tory Lanez’s Quarantine Radio and joked about snitching. He’s far from done with owning the “snitch” label, and has done so even more over the past 24 hours.

Yesterday afternoon, he shared an illustration of himself pointing the police and the FBI in somebody else’s direction and captioned it, “Stop playin wit me …. who made this?” Around the same time, he also posted a poll on his Instagram Story. He asked, “QUESTION: If they kidnapped you, stole from you, slept with your baby moms, threatened your mom, stole millions from you, caught on the phone trying to kill you. WOULD YOU,” with the options being “snitch” and “do jail time.”

On top of all of that, Tekashi also only follows one Instagram account now, and it’s the NYPD.

@6ix9ine/Instagram
@6ix9ine/Instagram

Tekashi certainly seems to be handling his post-prison career well so far: His first livestream since his release absolutely shattered the previous Instagram record for most viewers.

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Tom Hardy Shows Why You Never Go Fully Syphilitic In ‘Capone’

At this point, we moviegoers may be fully stocked on “emotional truth.” In the years since Steven Spielberg gave us that 20 minute POV-style depiction of the Normandy landing in Saving Private Ryan, filmmakers have used every trick in the book to convey their subject’s transitory inner state. Shakier camera work, jumpier editing, busier sound — you could draw a straight line from Private Ryan‘s POV sequence to Christopher Nolan’s famously muddled dialogue. “I wanted you to feel what they were feeling,” the filmmakers would surely say.

After 20-odd years of increasingly exhaustive subjectivity, I find myself crying out for context. So it was watching Capone, from Josh Trank (written, directed, and edited by), who began his career solidifying the found-footage conceit as the wunderkind director of Chronicle, and now finds himself in need of redemption after the high-profile debacle of Fantastic Four (something it’s fairly easy to believe wasn’t Trank’s fault).

Capone, originally called “Fonzo,” after what friends of Alphonse Capone actually called him, is an impressionistic take on the final year of the famous gangster’s life, when Capone was cooped up in his big Florida proto-McMansion dying of tertiary syphilis. Doctors had tried everything available at the time to cure Capone’s syphilis while he was still in prison, from tryparsamide to injecting him with malaria, in the hopes that the fevers would kill the disease, to eventually penicillin. But by then it was too late and the authorities simply released an increasingly insensate Capone to die at home.

Capone picks up after that, when all is lost, Capone has the mind of a 12-year-old, and historical context is mostly unnecessary. The better for Trank to be able to focus solely on filmmaking tricks, like people who aren’t really there, sounds that only the protagonist can hear, close-ups of bloodshot eyes, etc. I think I might’ve liked to see a slightly earlier version of Capone’s life, with doctors torturing him with failed cures, rather than this version, where Capone rambles, talks to dead people, and has a recurring vision of a kid with a balloon. Who is this kid? Why does he matter? What does the balloon mean? It’s all up for interpretation, maaaaaan.

Tropic Thunder popularized the extremely accurate but problematically worded notion that an actor should “never go full retard.” Capone seems to suggest a corollary where maybe actors should never go fully convalescent or tertiary syphilitic (Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady and Cate Blanchett theatrically coughing as the old lady version of her character in Benjamin Button may have helped lead us here). Tom Hardy — who is normally one of my favorite actors to watch grunt, scowl, nod, and squint — pisses himself, shits himself, chews a carrot like Bugs Bunny, and blows holes in alligators in Capone, but broadly speaking, plays a character who is senile to the point of irrelevance. There’s theoretically a topical hook here, in the idea of being at the mercy of senile authority figures, but Trank never quite finds it.

The comedian Patton Oswalt used to have a bit about how The Passion of the Christ, a movie about just the final, most painful hours of Jesus’s life, would be like making a movie about Albert Einstein, but focusing only the 12 hours he spent on the toilet after eating some bad clams (something like that, I can’t video of it online). Capone comes disturbingly close to making that Albert Einstein shitting diarrhea clams biopic a reality.

As I watched Hardy (surely one of the most enjoyable actors of his generation, which even Venom proves) croak out an incomprehensible mix of English, Italian, and Caveman, I couldn’t help but think what a perfect comeback role this could’ve been for Val Kilmer. Kilmer hasn’t had a starring role since a tracheostomy robbed him of his natural speaking voice, and a comeback role as Capone, in which a post-cancer Kilmer proved he can still act by playing a gangster coming to grips with his own irrelevance would’ve offered some symbolic heft.

As it stands, the Capone played by the notably able-bodied Hardy spends a whole movie tilting at windmills we know will vanish after a jump cut while his family and the authorities pump him for information about a secret cache of money we know will never materialize. The score by El-P from Run The Jewels (his first) at least gives the proceedings some seasoning, but we hardly hear it until the last third of the movie.

Painstaking subjectivity maybe isn’t the prize it seems when the subject is syphilitic, incontinent, and senile. Context is not the enemy.

‘Capone’ hits VOD on Tuesday, May 12. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

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The Best And Worst of WWE Raw 5/11/20: Man Child

Previously on the Best and Worst of WWE Raw: Raw didn’t have much to do at Money in the Bank, so they did an R-Truth vs. Bobby Lashley match. On PAY-PER-VIEW. But Drew McIntyre got a handshake out of the deal, and Asuka won a briefcase by being the best at going upstairs.

Things to do: Follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter. BUY THE SHIRT.

One more thing: Hit those share buttons! Spread the word about the column on Facebook, Twitter and whatever else you use. Be sure to leave us a comment in our comment section below as well. I know we always ask this, and that this part is copy and pasted in every week, but we appreciate it every week. We’ve finally started the build for Backlash, the show where they bring back Lash LeRoux.

And now, the Best and Worst of WWE Raw for May 11, 2020.

Best: Becky Lynch Takes A Pregnant Pause

This week’s most important announcement is that Becky Lynch is pregnant in real life, taking time off to “go be a mother,” and relinquishing the Raw Women’s Championship to the Money in the Bank winner, Asuka. The only real “analysis” anyone needs to give this is a congratulations to the real people who play Lynch and Seth Rollins on TV.

From a fan standpoint, I’ll be sad to see Becky’s title reign end without any “closure” or whatever — in the Best and Worst of Money in the Bank from just yesterday I wrote that I wanted, “anything but Becky Lynch’s reign ending without someone beating her in a real match” — but when it comes to real life love and happiness, that shit is irrelevant. With pro wrestling it’s especially hard to differentiate the performers from the characters they play, considering they’re still technically “playing their characters” when you meet them in real life and the etiquette is to always call them by their wrestler names, but I think it’s valuable to spend moments like these remembering how theater in the round with stage combat isn’t the most important thing in the world, and what YOU get out of watching it is considerably less so.

The face of WWE being a woman is an unprecedented situation, as is that face taking time off to have a baby. It’s not a sad situation, though. It’s not really something to get upset and argue about on the Internet, like we do everything else in wrestling. To quote our own Emily Pratt, “getting pregnant is getting pregnant, it’s not an ACL tear.” And the only reasonable way to even equate it to what we’ve seen before in WWE is to compare it to the last time a female star got pregnant, which involved her sobbing in the middle of the ring while everyone stared at her, getting called fat by the Bella Twins, and being embarrassed out of the promotion forever. Sometimes it feels like WWE hasn’t actually made any progress, but … yeah, there’s been a little, thanks to people like Becky.

As a bonus, hey, Asuka is Raw Women’s Champion! That means she’s been Raw Women’s Champion, Smackdown Women’s Champion, NXT Women’s Champion, Women’s Tag Team Champion, a Royal Rumble winner, and a Money in the Bank winner. “First ballot Hall of Famer Asuka” has a nice ring to it. And oh man, if you didn’t get a lump in your throat watching Asuka react to the very real news that her friend and co-worker is going to be a mom, you might want to check your pulse. The genuine emotion between Becky and Asuka is the kind of heartwarming, graceful humanity it’s hard to find suck inside your house during a global pandemic. All my love to both of them.

So now that we’ve typed that out, let’s talk about the show that usually makes you feel the exact opposite of Asuka and Becky Lynch hugging about motherhood: Monday Night Raw.

Best: Seth Rollins Is Handling Fatherhood Well

If you’re wondering what Seth Rollins is up to following the announcement that he’s going to be a father, he’s handling it as well as he handles anything else: he’s becoming a VIOLENT SOCIOPATH.

Earlier in the show, Rollins hears his name and wanders into a Rey Mysterio promo. Mysterio, famously the father of NXT UK Champion WALTER, shoots on fatherhood and wishes Seth the best. Seth just stares at him with extreme “my life is over” energy and walks away.

Later, when Rollins is supposed to be teaming with Buddy Murphy against Mysterio and Aleister Black, Rollins just stands there on the apron all catatonic until Rey elbows him in the gut. Seth’s completely rational response to being attacked once during a wrestling match is to throw Mysterio on the floor, poke him in the eyes a couple of times, and then force his eyeball into the corner of the ring steps, Lucio Fulci’s Zombie-style. After the match, Rollins goes back to the trainer’s room to try to apologize to the man he just heinously blinded, apparently claiming temporary insanity. Aleister Black decides to beat up Murphy about it, presumably because he wants to keep both of his eyes.

For the record, having Seth Rollins kick the shit out of people and not talk is a great call. I’m all-in on the “I’m in the ZONE” Ken Shamrock version of Rollins who blacks out and destroys folks. Pretty cool that he was a fan favorite dipshit until he got humiliated by The Fiend, which sent him into a weird downward spiral of failure and unpopularity until he ended up being a fake cult leader who sometimes turns into a monster. Give me a Firefly Fun House match where Rollins turns Wyatt’s own shit against him and makes him disappear.

About Those Murders From Money In The Bank

WWE Network

Remember on Sunday night when King Corbin tried to win a wrestling match by throwing two of his opponents off the roof of a seven-story building? It turns out he didn’t actually kill them, they were saved by a “secondary roof” that was “only on that side of the building.” Having Rey Mysterio and Aleister Black be totally fine and completely unaffected by saying they fell six feet onto an additional roof has some real, “James Storm didn’t murder Mickie James with a train, he just emotionally distressed her with the train” energy. Although if they had AJ Styles get buried in an undisclosed location in the middle of the night and show up to work a couple of weeks later, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that they bait-and-swtiched a couple of falling deaths.

Seriously though, King Corbin’s supposed to be on next week’s show* to face Drew McIntyre, and if Mysterio and Black don’t jump him the second he walks through the door and beat him within an inch of his life for trying to actually kill them, they should’ve just rolled their weak asses off the secondary roof and died of shame.

*Survivor Series is the one time each year when Raw and Smackdown go head-to-head.

Speaking Of AJ Styles, He Pulls Up A Chair To Watch An Undetaker Commercial And Then Gets Pissed When It’s About The Undertaker

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Don’t be upset! You got to watch the commercial on that cool round TV!

Best: Shayna Baszler, Mother Of The Year

“How stupid do you have to be to get knocked up when you’re the champion? Here’s a fact, ten out of ten mothers will try to convince you that pregnancy didn’t ruin their careers. You’re trying to tell me Becky Lynch becomes the longest reigning Raw women’s champion and throws that all away just to house some miserable parasite? Imagine, The Man … barefoot, fat, on the couch eating bon-bons. That kid’s gonna suck. You know who the father is? I rest my case.”

Shayna just Britt Baker’d that kid and it’s not even born yet. Later, Natalya shows up to defend motherhood and not only gets shaded for never having kids and letter her family legacy die, but gets kneed in the face. Shayna Baszler’s out here like the Boogeyman smashing biological clocks on her head.

After the match, Natalya is upset and kicks the ropes. Sorry, Nattie, you lost, that means motherhood is meaningless. Way to ruin it for everybody.

Worst: NBA 1K AD

The Viking Raiders want to prove that anything the Street Profits can do, they can do better. They’re really good at basketball, so they [checks notes] intentionally lose a basketball game 74-2. Then, once the game’s over and nothing matters, Ivar hits a bunch of logo threes and a slow motion dunk to show how they could’ve won if they’d wanted, which I thought was the point?

I guess nothing says WWE like a team losing a match to prove they can win a match. The Viking Raiders pretending to be terrible so they can show off how good they are when they don’t have to pretend is so meta I think I just traveled through time.

Best: The Beat Down Clan

Bobby Lashley submits Humbert Carrillo to his new finisher, the LASHTERLOCK, in this week’s opening match. Full nelson submission wins are nice, but give me a wrestler who can win off dropkicks and hip-tosses, 1960s-style. But anyway, MVP approaches Lashley afterward and is rightfully like, “why are you even wrestling Humberto Carrillo, you are literally in the same spot you were in in this company 13 years ago, get your shit together.” He even drops some truth on Lana, who aimlessly screams about it.

“Who do you think yOU AAAAAARE! WHO-WUH! How dare YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-WUH! [long pause] DAAH!!!”

Is there something you can win for acting worse than a Razzie? Lana’s acting makes old school Maria Kanellis look like Frances McDormand. What a cursed world we live in where Rusev’s unemployed but Lana’s still shouting her way through Bobby Lashley romance segments?

Later in the episode, MVP teams up with his favorite NXT Live jobbers Shane Thorne and Brendan Vink to lose to Cedric Alexander, Ricochet, and R-Truth. Truth brings back his “Pretty Ricky” character this week, which you may remember from over a decade ago. It’s just Truth crossing his eyes and wearing fake hillbilly teeth you can get out of those quarter machines at the grocery store. If the name sounds familiar, please enjoy having ‘Grind With Me’ stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

Anyway, Lashley shows up after the match to turn Truth inside out with a spear. He wants to talk to MVP. I hope MVP’s response is, “hey I appreciate the spear but couldn’t you have done that like 30 seconds earlier? I’m out here tagging with fucking Brendan Vink.” Presumably Lana is backstage during this, scrolling Instagram and shaking her fists and screaming CUUUUUUUUUUTE-HUH! at every puppy she sees.

As a fun note, the pairing of MVP and Bobby Lashley brings back lots of sweet Beat Down Clan memories for anyone who watched TNA in the first half of the ’10s. They’re easily Impact Wrestling’s best faction to not include biker weddings, CM Punk slumming it as a cult fanboy, or AJ Styles in a feathery robe. I really hope this leads to them enlisting fellow former BDC member Samoa Joe to the team, as he could really use something in his life greater than being asked to get wrestlers over between dismissive Byron Saxton quips. Although that didn’t work out well for Bob the last time, so forget I said anything.

BEST: THE IICONICS HAVE PINNED THE WOMEN’S TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS

This week’s best news not revolving around the miracle of childbirth is the return of The Goddamn IIconics, who show up for the first time in months and months to randomly challenge for the Women’s Tag Team Championship. Well, to challenge for a non-title match they’re obviously going to win so they can then challenge for a match for the Women’s Tag Team Championship.

As much as I love seeing Billie Kay and Peyton Royce on my TV again, I have to give a quick supplemental Worst for being the fifth main roster show in a row (not counting the pay-per-view) to feature a challenger pinning the champion to get a championship match.

  • 4/27 Raw – Apollo Crews pinned the United States champion Andrade
  • 5/1 Smackdown – Forgotten Sons pinned the Smackdown Tag Team Champions The New Day
  • 5/4 Raw – The Viking Raiders pinned Raw Tag Team Champions The Street Profits
  • 5/8 Smackdown – Tamina pinned Smackdown Women’s Champion Bayley
  • 5/11 Raw – The IIconics pinned Women’s Tag Team Champions Alexa Bliss and Nikki Cross

As a quick side note, they need to write some better material for poor Nikki Cross. She’s great, but who knew the difference between being a feral rage monster and being NXT Bayley after she fell down and hit her head on the coffee table was, “having one friend?”

It’s so good to have these two true weirdos back on the show. A lot of people who review WWE shows hate them, but there’s no accounting for taste. They’ve got a new finisher — an inverted Magic Killer, because it’s not like the corpses of Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson are going to be using it any time soon — and Peyton’s wearing pre-Crisis Roman Reigns contact lenses, so you know they’re serious about staying on TV.

Please enjoy the above video, wherein Billie Kay shares her emotional thoughts on Becky Lynch’s announcement: “She’s preggers. Great. The IIconics are back, that’s what matters.”

Worst/Best: LIJ Central Florida Is Only Here To Job To The Stars

Firstly, I can’t believe they made Zelina Vega work so soon after the tragic death of her husband.

Secondly, Mr. Monday Night Akira Tozawa continues being brilliant on Wednesdays and the world’s easiest opponent on Raw with a loss to Angel Garza. Garza’s not even paying attention for most of the match because he’s arguing with Austin Theory about a tweet he didn’t like. Definitely worth the continued shit-canning of a guy in the middle of a title tournament on your other show.

After the match, Drew McIntyre shows up and knocks out both Theory and Garza with Claymore Kicks to remind them what the pecking order is, and to make sure NOBODY in that match came out looking good.

That leads into another Drew McIntyre vs. Andrade match, which is pretty good as always but basically the same match they had last month. It still ends with Andrade losing to the full countdown taunt version of the Claymore, and the United States Champion (and the posse he runs with) looking like glorified extras. If Sami Zayn’s not going to come to work, I guess somebody has to be the Sami Zayn.

This is the downside to watching WWE every week. If you only watched every now and then and didn’t see them repeat stuff over and over, or do five non-title match losses for champions in a row, you’d probably have a much brighter outlook on how they’re doing and where they’re going. Please remember that it’s not that I’ve “soured” on WWE or need a break from it, it’s that I actually watch it, and have to pay attention.

Don’t Hinder Jinder 2K20

Jinder Mahal is happy for the championship successes of his former 3MB bandmates Drew McIntyre and Heath Slater, and wants to earn respect as a former champion as he plans a “hero’s journey” back to the top of the promotion. I’ll be honest with you, I think we’re ready for babyface hero champion Jinder Mahal. He’s no great shakes in the ring, but he’s got a good wrestling mind, and a body that could give a Bowflex an eating disorder. There’s a real spot for him on these shows beyond Singh Brothers run-ins and contrarian Twitter threads about how good his bad title reign actually was. Plus, I want at least the backup members of 3MB to be friends again. I don’t see Jinder as Denzel, but I could see him as Denzel’s friend, is what I’m saying.

Hilarious Worst: Randy Orton Dreams The Impossible Dream

Finally, here’s Randy Orton challenging Edge to a regular match at Backlash. I hope they’ve got something really clever planned for that, because if not, they’re doing the feud backwards. You don’t start with a 40 minute emotional street fight at WrestleMania that ends with a con-chair-to on top of a production truck and a man crying about the terrible things he’s done to his former friend and then do a NORMAL MATCH. It’s the creative equivalent of downhill skiing. You started at the top, and you’re just letting gravity take you to the bottom.

Charly Caruso ends the segment with maybe the least true line of dialogue ever spoken on Raw, a show that in just the past month has ret-conned a literal burial and two “secondary roof” murders:

Hulu

“If this does happen it may just be the greatest wrestling match ever.”

Yeah Charly, it’s Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat 2-out-of-3 falls at Clash 6, Kandori and Hokuto from Dream Slam, and then Edge vs. RANDY ORTON in a Regular Match at the WWE Performance Center. This shit’s only happening because Orton had to wrestle for 40 minutes at WrestleMania and wasn’t allowed to do any slow-ass chinlocks. Who watched that and was like, “this is good, but it would be better if Randy could do more ‘methodical stomps.’” I hope this DOES turn out to be the greatest wrestling match ever, only to be topped by Jinder Mahal vs. King Corbin in a best 0.5 Falls Out Of 1 Match at 25% Capacity SummerSlam.

Best: Top 10 Comments Of The Week

Bobski58

Wow. Becky is now 2-0 against Ronda.

Harry Longabaugh

If Seth was truly Plan B, this pregnancy doesn’t happen.

AddMayne

Brandon tomorrow

SuedeGuy

If the Viking Raiders play Street Profits in Basketball they really should play a game of NORSE

Baron Von Raschke

Dana is watching this at home thinking, “If I had won the match last night, I would have been pregnant? Is that right?”

Redshirt

Becky: “I’ll fight anyone who wins.”
TV: “The winner of the Miss Money in the Bank, Asuka”
Becky: “Welp, I’m pregnant.”

Million Dollar Dan

Natalya: From one mother to another…
Becky: What.
Natalya: BEING A CAT MOM IS TOTALLY THE SAME THING.

AJ Dusman

“Oh my God! Congratulations Becky!” -The entire roster
“Once agaaaaaaain….yoooooooooou try to steal myyyyyyyyyyyy spotlight, Becks.” -Charlotte Flair

FeltLuke

Missed opportunity to have Dominic show up wearing Rey’s mask and no one commenting on how Rey is suddenly 2 feet taller.

Jae-Su

WWE Proudly announces more Baron Corbin.

Uproxx Thread:

WWE

same

That does it for another episode of The Best and Worst of Quarantine Raw. Writing about it today I found that I liked more about it than I disliked, but watching it I felt like I’d been sitting in my chair for a day and a half. Some of the content is there, but the presentation is still wack.

Anyway, as always you can help us out tremendously right now by sharing the column on social media, as well as dropping down into our comments section to let us know what you thought of the show. I will keep trying to watch these and say something constructive about them, but if I fall into existential, nihilistic despair waiting for real episodes with fans to return, try to laugh at my thinly-veiled cries for help.

See you next week for Baron Corbin’s triumphant return to the show he ruined, and the IIconics not winning the Women’s Tag Team Championship!