The Problem With AEW That Nobody Wants To Talk About
This is all magnified by the ceaseless nature of social media discourse. In the heightened online space, a misstep is a disaster, an upward trend a paradigm shift. The problems are only problems for a week. There are more. They aren't the real, worrying issue, however.
On the subject of Game of Thrones, incidentally, can you imagine a super-fan keeping a tally of how many characters appeared in certain episodes in a bid to explain why interest was down? Did anybody, when a scene didn't quite hit in the early seasons or a major character was killed off, think the whole deal was f*cked? No. Because they understood the show to be written well in advance, secure in the knowledge that it drew from existing source material. AEW isn't, obviously, but that aforementioned established record is too often ignored in the hot-take rush.
A lot of people are talking about AEW's bloated roster because AEW, unlike WWE, is actually worth analysing and debating. There's a deep-rooted feeling that wrestling fans are stupid, and unable to "keep track" of the product, but so much of this is white noise that quietens whenever, for example, the company generates a massive pay-per-view buy or an unexpected (relative) monster of a Nielsen rating.
That is not the real problem, and the imminent third hour of proper angle-driven television, all going well, will correct the feeling that certain developments could register with more gravity. The "too many stables" problem isn't worth discussing because the take is unleashed in such ignorance and or bad faith. The narrative framework, of using connections to create a sense of immersion and ultimately preserve the big marquee matches, isn't just a success as measured by the consistent pay-per-view buy numbers.
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