Tough Enough: The Burial

Hello! It's two posts in consecutive days, I know- I'm as shocked as you are. What with the Divas Division seemingly getting a push now with some of the right people involved, to put it simply- I need a new toy to bury deep beneath the Earth. Unfortunately for Tough Enough I've set my sights on it- and it'll NEVER EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVER BE THE SAME... AGAIN.

I think it's only fair I start my breaking down the Tough Enough Cast for this year and the Character they're portraying on the show.
Patrick- Smark, Instantly #1 Babyface, Weirdly reminds me of Jay Lethal
Sara Lee- Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph before she could Race
Mada- Big Massive Guy who thinks he's Yugi Moto
Josh- A Yeti with a Shit British Accent
Amanda- Stereotypical Blonde
Giorgia- Vanilla Midget
ZZ- Bray Wyatt if Bray Wyatt was a Goofy Babyface
Tanner- MMA Guy who doesn't give a fuck about Wrestling
Chelsea- Homewrecker

Gabi- Clueless Brazilian who's clearly married her Husband for the Money
Daria- Lesbian MMA Girl
Dianna- #1 Bitch
Alex- Philosopher
Hank- I can't remember anything about this bloke

It's pretty much the story of this series that Patrick is the "Wrestling Guy", it's funny because I saw his Audition Video on a Thread on Reddit when Tough Enough was first announced and I liked him, you might as well give him the 250k Contract on the Guys side already because there's no chance Patrick goes even if he ends up in the Bottom 3 (Unless Bryan Picks Him) and I think the Producers are basically acknowledging this by shifting the focus over to Sara Lee who'll be the big development story now. The problem with this Cast is; there's way too many of the same person in this. I don't personally like El Torito, but I understand that kids must love him because he's basically their size and he's flying around and killing the wrestlers. There isn't a good variety of people, there's ZZ who's Fat, Sara Lee who's Tiny and then the rest are all in great shape and in the Womens case Fitness Models. There's hardly any variety to engage the audience with because "X" is "just like me".

Then we get onto the actual format issues, Tough Enough is an Hour Long Show- let's say for the sake of argument that there's 15 Minutes of Adverts in the show that's 45 Minutes to feature Chris Jericho, Renee Young, Lita, Billy Gunn, Booker T, Paige, Hulk Hogan, Daniel Bryan, The Special Guest for the week and all of the contestants. In short- it's a complete clusterfuck, and what we end up with is nobody getting a significant spotlight- and the only person who's really stood out as far as Tough Enough as a standalone goes is Paige, and that's because she's been told be as bitchy as possible.

Now we get onto the biggest issue with the format I've had, this show is at it's core 14 people trying to get a Contract to be a Wrestler (or Sports Entertainer)- and before last night in 4 weeks we'd had 1 segment where we actually saw any kind of in-ring training, and it was them taking bumps (badly). The Austin Series left a lot to be desired, but the emphasis was definitely on the in-ring aspect without a shadow of a doubt- this Tough Enough has been anything but. Instead of watching Wrestling Training in a show about people wanting to become a Wrestler we've seen among other things- A Load of Arguments that don't even make sense, Tanner trying to chat up the Girls, Conversations about ZZ's Dick, Endless arguments about Fake Boobs and the list goes on.

All of this would be fine- and I'd gladly accept that it's me, were it not for the fact that this series Ratings Wise has completely flopped, especially when you compare it to the Austin Series. It's getting around a 0.3-0.4 and roughly 1-1.2 Million Viewers per episode. Granted the Austin Series came out directly after a Wrestlemania unless I remember that wrong but it's consistently doing about Half (if that) of the Austin Series. That simply put isn't good enough and is proof that I'm right in saying the format simply doesn't work or translate across on TV.

Now we get onto one of the big issues I've got with this series- Jericho. I like Jericho as a Wrestler, he's come off as a bit of a dick as a person but as a wrestler he's great so I can stomach it to an extent. But Jericho hosting this series has been a complete abortion, Austin had this weird charisma (Shocker Stone Cold Steve Austin has Charisma) that pretty much became the glue of the show and to an extent covered for the complete lack of personality on show from pretty much everyone (apart from Luke). Jericho's got this weird game-show host type mentality that doesn't work at all and pretty much just get's very, very annoying. In short Jericho doesn't make a good TV host. You know who does make a good host and anchor for a show? Renee Young. Renee's misuse during this series of Tough Enough has infuriated me, because she's basically Jericho's sidekick and Jericho hardly get's any airtime as it is. You could make the argument that they want a Wrestler hosting the show- Ok then, Get Miz. Tough Enough is one of the low points of my TV viewing each week- up there with Total Divas and Masterchef Australia episodes that don't feature Reynold heavily. Tough Talk on the other hand is great. It's funny, and the competitors can actually get their personalities across because of the way Miz anchors the show and facilitates said personality getting across.

I don't claim to know the ins and outs of US TV- but is there a Female Anchor/Host of any Prime-Time widely accessible show in America? With WWE seemingly trying to go down the "Woman Empowerment" route as of late surely they would have had Renee in there because if nothing else it's something to shout about from a publicity point of view. Instead they've got Renee going down to the Performance Center every week for I'd guess about 30 Seconds of Airtime that could just as easily be recorded in a studio.

Then we get onto an issue I have just with "Reality" shows in general- they're not in any way reality. Bryan even called that out on one of the Tough Talk episodes, the prime example is the Paige/Sara Lee angle- because that's what it is, it's an angle designed to get Sara Lee over and it's working judging by the voting percentages. The Promo thing where Sara Lee had to cut a Promo on Paige was so obviously set-up to be Sara Lee's breakout moment- I was expecting the full Silent Rage moment where Sara Lee would just go from a little mouse to a lion who was having Paige piss herself- it wasn't quite that, but it was a pretty good Promo. That combined with the way they edited the Bodyslam type thing where they made it come off as everyone else did it first try and then Sara Lee was shit- if that was the case more power to them, but I highly doubt it. The whole deck stacked against "???" is such a played out concept I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if they told her to deliberately be bad and then one week she's amazing- I'm not saying she's going to be the next Shelton Benjamin (deserved more) athleticism wise but I just don't trust "Reality" TV to actually be up front with me about anything.

I was actually quite excited for this series of Tough Enough- the school of hard knocks type Network Prequel type thing they did had enthused me quite a lot, because I thought it'd be a very gritty reality show where there'd literally be blood, sweat and tears which would also feature characters you wanted to get behind like that bloke who lost his leg. In it's place we've gotten a very sterilised reality show which is just begging for people to turn off in some places and judging by the ratings many people have done just that. For the record I think Patrick'll win the Mens side and then it's between Sara Lee and Giorgia for the Girls side.

Like I've said constantly I always approach things with an open mind- and like I said going into it with the Network special I was actually pretty excited for it- but it's massively failed to live up to expectations and it'll probably be another 4 Years until we get another one. I know this isn't a unique idea, but I genuinely would have preferred them to either follow around new NXT recruits or WWE to simply get 14 Indy Wrestlers and put them in all of these wacky challenges because then you can use the excuse of they know the basics of how to wrestle already and you don't want to see that. Apart from Patrick, Josh and Sara Lee I don't think we've seen anyone get any feedback positive or negative when it comes to their in-ring performance so it's almost impossible for a Wrestling Fan who wants to see Wrestling to find someone to vote for in the Bottom Three week-to-week.

Thanks for reading as always, the Impact Reviews are back tomorrow so stay tuned for that- and I'd actually be interested to hear from anyone of you who's read this who disagrees with me. I'm always happy to hear opinions and I'm genuinely curious as to what a Tough Enough defender would hang their hats on. Thanks again for reading, and remember Knowledge means Nothing.