3 Ups & 5 Downs From Last Night's WWE SmackDown (Aug 8)

3. Poorly Scripted, Poorly Acted

Wrestlers aren't professionally trained actors, but they’re regularly expected to perform admirably in this department, delivering skits and segments that may not win an Emmy, but will at least keep their stories moving forward without breaking immersion.

This is fine most of the time, and fans quickly learn to forgive the performers for their ham-fisted acting displays so long as the scene accomplishes what it’s supposed to. Sometimes, however, the performances are so bad that it completely breaks the audience's connection to the drama, and that’s what happened in last night’s Carmella/Natalya/James Ellsworth segment.

It was mercifully short, but the trio were absolutely rancid. Nattie’s delivery came off particularly forced and over the top, but Ellsworth and Carmella weren’t much better, even though they only had a handful of lines. It naturally devolved into a cluster of chin jokes, with Natalya bumbling through the kind of lines that no human being would ever say in a natural conversation, before it reached a merciful end.

If SmackDown was still a pre-taped show, this would’ve almost certainly been cut from the broadcast. As poorly scripted as it was performed, it was the kind of segment that exposes the wrestlers’ total lack of acting chops.