The latest original series on the WWE Network entitled “WWE Story Time” premiered after Survivor Series, but is it worth checking out or is it one of their weaker efforts?
This first episode featured four stories, but if you remove the padding, there’s less than 10 minutes of material, which is one of the major downsides to the program. It comes off more like watching a few short YouTube clips than an actual show, which should at least be 30 minutes long. Granted, some of these stories shouldn’t have been stretched out to add 20 more minutes of superfluous material, but since they’re so short, they feel too rushed to really resonate.
It’s always fun to hear about road stories and pranks and whatnot when people are doing shoot interviews, but that form of media gives them a chance to pepper that humor between other discussion, which makes it a welcome departure from all the serious talk. On its own and in such a truncated format, it’s almost like having everybody go around the table to try to tell a joke real fast.
If you’ve ever seen the television show Shorties Watching Shorties on Comedy Central, that’s the best parallel to equate this to. Both consist of people narrating stories which are then shown in animated format so the viewer’s visual isn’t just the speaker sitting in a chair like an interview would be. As far as the animation style goes, it’s thankfully not some crude, unkempt, cheap endeavor, although it could still use a little polishing as it isn’t perfect, but overall, it’s a success.
As far as the material goes, it’s somewhat hit or miss. Comedy is such a subjective thing that it’s impossible to tell someone whether or not something is funny, as everyone has their own tastes. None of the four stories made me laugh in any way or even crack a smile, but I can see some potential if they chose the right content to talk about. A story revolving around Ric Flair having sex with a few flight attendants isn’t funny, it’s just another Ric Flair getting laid tale. Ron Simmons was left out in the cold for an hour. Jake Roberts’ story is basically “some people opened up the bag with the snake and boy were they scared.” It’s nice to see that they didn’t shy away from some more mature themes, which means they’re not as limited in what stories they can tell, but I can see why that might bug some people, even though from my personal perspective, they could’ve gotten away with even less censoring. The best story of the four was Bubba Ray Dudley’s, but even that felt like it’s one of those things that was amazing for the people who experienced it and for the listener, it doesn’t have the same impact.
All in all, this is such a short thing that you might as well check it out. You could end up loving it, hating it, or going on a story-by-story basis, but if each episode only takes up 10 minutes, you’re not investing a lot of time in it, so give it a shot…just don’t go into it with high expectations, as you might be disappointed.
Did you check out WWE Story Time? What did you think? Tell us your first impressions in the comments below!
