10 Things Everybody Gets Wrong About AEW
1. "AEW Needs A Brand Identity"
Nope.
There is a lack of discipline on Dynamite. The Nightmare Collective is too close in aesthetic and premise to the Dark Order, and the mere existence of it mars the intricately built interior life Cody has fashioned to get himself over as the most authentic babyface in the game. What do they talk about at dinner, before Brandi kisses him on the cheek?
The two acts collectively undermine the promised sports-oriented presentation - it's more old-fashioned wrestling than "new sports league" - but this is a byproduct of the expressive freedom badly needed, for decades, on the mainstream wrestling stage. It's the nature of it; what hits will soar, what fails will plummet. Chris Jericho's awesome improvisational comedic skills have elevated him to a new pantheon of greatness, where Brandi has undermined her excellent babyface work on the Road To series with a bizarre and risible flex in amateur dramatics. There's a grandstanding ambition to it all, the sublime and the ridiculous, and the failures are noble. It isn't a clinical, the brand-is-the-star exercise, and some of it isn't working.
But the answer isn't a carefully orchestrated, regulated approach aligned to a single vision. There is enough of that in the competition, and moreover, the wins and losses framework underpins everything. There is a point to all of it, even if all of it isn't Elite. The vital expression of AEW is essentially pro wrestling's version of the White Album. Let them have Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, if it gives us Helter Skelter, because Helter Skelter f*cking slaps.
It's closer to the Attitude Era than even 1989 WCW, and isn't that what you've missed?