Often when we’re watching a show we’re reminded of common tropes that have been used time and time again. Its unavoidable, especially when watching what is, in all honesty, a men’s soap opera.
Yeah, someone somewhere will scream at the term “men’s soap opera,” but that only further proves the point. They lure us in with glimpses of awesome athleticism and pageantry reminiscent of other sport events like the Super Bowl, then keep us coming back to see what’s going to happen next. There’s no shame in saying or admitting this. It is what it is.
It is also circular storyline-wise.
It’s impossible to tell an original story, but putting a new spin on it or adding other elements to make it unique are a tried and true method. One of those is the idea of the wounded warrior.
In the 1980s, we had Hulk Hogan getting squashed by King Kong Bundy. In the 1990s, we had gang-like attacks on those refusing to bow to the New World Order (NOW) or Nation of Domination. The gang-like brawls continued into the 2000s with the Alliance Invasion angle where Vince McMahon refused to allow the ECW or WCW stars to win without cheating to prove, storyline side at least, that the WWE was superior.
Superstars were beaten bodily with chairs, sledgehammers, ring bells, belt, septors, crowns, you name it, it was used.
Today, not much has changes as the true bad guys cement themselves as heels by hitting a finisher on a woman (Baron Corbin and Becky Lynch) or by beating the hero to within an inch of his life (Lesner on Rollins).
This does two things. First, it cements the heel as the greatest threat to face our hero. Who else but a bad guy would do something like that, right?
Second, it taps into mythological stories where the champions rise from their sick beds to battle and often defeat their foe. Everyone loves an underdog, and what’s more of an underdog than a bruised and beaten hero rising up to battle evil once again?
Does it matter that it’s scripted?
Not at all. We sink our teeth into it like we do movies. Of course, not everyone sees it that way and bemoan such actions as unfitting for family entertainment purposes, and that’s fine. The question then becomes do we allow our children to watch the same type of action in movies, whether its comic book character or not and not ridicule the movies?
Once again, whether we bemoan it or not, they’ve got us talking about storylines that’ll have us coming back to see if our heroes prove themselves worthy.
