The third installment of TNA’s new reality show sees the contestants jetting off to the United States, to see Bound for Glory live.
The show opens with the foursome taking part in a promotional shoot for the show. Everyone was smiles and happiness, with Rockstar Spud in particular acting like he loved every second of this.
Wasting little time, we then cut to a quick montage of airport shots as the gang set their sights on Phoenix, Arizona for TNA’s biggest event of the year; Bound for Glory. The highlight of this was Spud doing a shot of Jagermeister, which he identified as his “breakfast.” His jovial mood was quickly derailed though, as the handle on his luggage broke and we were treated to footage him throwing a temper tantrum in an airport, smacking around his own baggage like a disgruntled six year old, much to the amusement of everyone’s favourite troll Marty Scurll.
They had footage of the contestants at TNA fanfest. In this week’s first blatantly manufactured scene, the guys and gals met with TNA ring announcer Christy Hemme, and Spud immediately said Scurll had a picture of her that he wanked to on a regular basis. She “acted” “shocked” upon hearing this and Scurll was “annoyed.” This was cringeworthy, and not because of the actual story they were trying to tell, but because of how fake the execution was.
Jeremy Borash introduced the contestants to the crowd at fanfest, which looked surprisingly big. They had nothing of note to say except Scurll who said he would inject some life into the X-Division. Way to set the bar high for yourself, lad. There was another gratingly fake segment, within 120 seconds of the last, as Spud got frustrated by everyone wanting a picture with the girls or Party Marty and not him. I think these are made worse by the fact that Spud has one tone and that’s “generic heel promo” mode. Nothing he says has anything closely resembling sincerity, but as we saw with him “stealing the mic” from the girls in episode two – everything on this show is played up as real, and as you see it, so what you end up getting is blatantly fake pro wrestling pantomime, passed off as reality TV.
Hall of Fame time! Marty and the twins looked very stylish, and the girls talked about how friendly and gentlemanly the party boy was being. What a charmer. Kurt Angle say with the contestants for the ceremony. In a moment I can 100% believe was candid because Angle comes off as such a weirdo on his twitter, he said; “Yes, yes, I am an Olympic Gold Medalist from the United States, and I’m sitting here with the Brits.” I have no clue why, but I laughed. He didn’t even say it in a mean or insulting way, he just stated what was factually happening at this very moment. It was very awkward small talk. Angle and the contestants then started swapping IMPACT WRESTLING TRADING CARDS~! The party never stops at an Impact shindig. Angle put over the contestants as being respectful and cool people.
They showed Sting’s induction and some shots of the other wrestlers there.
Carter introduced herself, Sting and Hogan to Spud, Scurll and The Blossom Twins. Nothing of note was said here, but obviously that wasn’t the point. Everyone put over how amazing it was meeting these icons of the business and this woman who has some money.
Dixie then told the guys to buck their ideas up in a weird moment. I don’t know what that was based on or what kind of criteria there is for this contest. Again they still have yet to clarify what the tasks or goals are here.
Back from commercial it was TNA photoshoot time. TNA took a page from WWE’s book and put the girls in a hugely excessive amount of make up. Spud mooned during one of Scurll’s photos. Then he shouted at the girl’s for taking forever to do their shoot.
Carter called the group into her dressing room and talked about why she wanted them at the Hall of Fame last night. She did a Steve Austin on Tough Enough style promo about seeing what you can get from this business after 25 years and all that jazz. Yeah, Dixie Carter. Then, after patronising the hell out of every Englishman watching this by saying Bound for Glory was “like your FA Cup finals” she told the contestants that they would be shown on camera during the pay-per-view.
Scurll talked about being used to seeing five or ten people working backstage at a show usually, but TNA was such a huge production. They played some ominous, very fake slow motion footage of everyone walking down the ramp and looking around the empty arena. They had soundbites of Spud saying things like “it was empty but I could hear the people chanting my name.” This was vomit inducing stuff.
Then we got footage of them being ushered to their seats. Then there was footage of the opening of Bound for Glory. There is five minutes left in this show and absolutely nothing of note has happened. There was a montage of moments from the show and then we got the moment they were shown on TV. I don’t remember this at the time but Spud looked like a jackass overacting for the camera.
Suddenly, we immediately jump to Tennessee. The team are meeting with Dixie at TNA headquarters for… reasons that were not explained right away.
AND SO CONCLUDES EPISODE THREE! (?)
We close with a teaser for next week; Dixie will evaluate the first on screen appearance of each participant. No, not a separate appearance to this – she is going to critique them on the five second cameo they had on the PPV. This looks like must see TV, as Dixie goes into full on Steve Austin on Tough Enough mode yet again talking about how things like chewing gum make you not a star. What a bad joke. They also showed Marty sticking his tongue in one of the twins’ mouths.
This was a dire half hour of TV. These people got a free ticket to a wrestling show, and filmed a bunch of home movies while on the trip. That’s not interesting. Also not interesting; people like Dixie Carter lecturing you on respecting the business.