12 Ups & 0 Downs From AEW Dynamite (Nov 6)
7 - The Brandi Rhodes Angle Strips Everything Back
Last week’s voodoo ceremony vignette was not good.
Well-produced for what it was, what it was was sub-Lucha Underground, Akeem-adjacent theatre, in entirely the wrong context, that felt, jarringly, like a platform for Brandi’s acting talent.
This was a more traditional, less pretentious vignette, and all the better for it. It explained the connection, if not Brandi’s sudden turn, which still comes off as something we should automatically accept because AEW flirts with blurred dynamics. This isn’t blurred. It’s very stark and difficult to take seriously.
But the promise of all this is cause for optimism. Awesome Kong isn’t the physical force she was once, and was never the same menacing threat she was on the ring in the mic.
The jump cut jump scares in this vignette should foreshadow the way she’s used going forward—in harmony with and put over big by a deeply underrated talker.