14 Ups & 5 Downs For AEW In 2021
4. Slapdash Formatting
AEW is the promotion that viewers can usually invest in week-to-week.
It is a tight, well thought-out three hours of television that generates investment through its threads of traceable logic. Dynamite and Rampage are meant to be the shows that feel like broadcasts, and not the other way 'round.
Throughout 2021, lazy formatting and booking at times undermined the anti-WWE vibe set in 2019.
Ahead of the ballistic Falls Count Anywhere match at Full Gear, the Superkliq justified the stipulation in an angle in which they threw Jungle Boy off the ramp. Nobody made the save. His Jurassic Express stablemates were accounted for, but he had informally aligned with Best Friends and the Dark Order during the summer, leading to the Buy In opener and post-match angle at All Out. Neither stable helped him a month later. These lapses in continuity made a nonsense of what was already an over-used and redundant beat-down trope. Certain winks to an invisible camera don't excuse the contrived use of an invisible camera, either.
On the subject of over-used tropes: so many backstage interviews are interrupted that CM Punk has started taking the piss out of it on commentary. Peel the roof off any Dynamite venue and look down, and you'll see a wacky procession of wrestlers lurking in corridors waiting to pop out. It's all very contrived.
These are minor gripes that don't drastically affect the quality of the show, but the vibe is tainted when it feels so obviously fake.