So you’ve watched “The Climb” and now are wondering “what is next?!?!?”, well rest easy because we’ve got your episode 7, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” promo for you right now.
Outside of everything else in that promo, I think we all know that the most important thing is… Daenerys!!! We go a week without her and the withdrawal symptoms are too much. Shaking, crying, wondering how you have wronged the universe and why the universe felt that a week without Khaleesi of the Dothraki is an appropriate punishment. Thankfully, that will all disappear next week with “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”.
In the meantime, let’s amuse ourselves with Game of Thrones re-imagined.
– as aired in the mid-90’s
– as popular 90’s sitcom, Seinfeld
– as an 16 bit RPG
– as the Simpsons opening
I love things like that. Almost as I love Zach Galifianakis in a dragon costume to play ‘Game of Game of Thrones’ on this week’s SNL!
Make sure to check out our review of season 3, episode 6 – “The Climb” and I’ll see you back here next week with a new promo and more Game of Thrones fun from around the internet!
The WWE has been around entertaining people for a long time, and since its foundation in the 50’s as a promotional territory, there have been countless moments that have amazed, shocked, and entertained millions. There are lots of lists that compile these moments, and the majority of them deserve listing, but to try to objectively determine what makes one famous moment more worthy than another, is nearly impossible. Everyone who is a fan of the WWE have moments that they personally believe are the most awe-inspiring, shocking, or touching. Looking back on our collection of memories, some of the smaller moments in the WWE have been the ones that have stuck with us the most, along with the bigger, death-defying, shock and awe moments the WWE does so well.
With that thought in mind, Godzark and I thought that rather than try to make another in a long series of “Top X OMG Moments”, much like the WWE themselves have done, we’d prefer to share the moments that stuck with us on a personal level. The moments that made our eyes pop open in disbelief, laughter, surprise, or sheer excitement. Sure, some of these may not be universally recognized as the biggest, baddest, most memorable moments in WWE history, but to us, they were.
10.) CM Punk’s Infamous “Pipebomb” Promo
Godzark: When you’re a kid and you watch wrestling, the lines between fiction and reality are blurred every time you tune in. It seems as though as you get older, the moments that really make you question what’s real and what’s fake are few and far in between, which is why I valued our tenth ranked most memorable moment so much. On June 25, 2011, CM Punk, just three weeks away from contract expiration, gave what will forever be remembered as one of the greatest promos in WWE history, and one that really made me and the entire WWE Universe go, “wait, was that scripted?” In the span of five to seven minutes, Punk managed to call out Dwayne Johnson for being an ass kisser, referenced Colt Cabana, said he has no hope of the company being better after Vince McMahon’s dead because his stupid family will take over it, claimed that the USA network has crappy shows, and called the current vice president of talent relations a, “glad handing, non-sensical, douchebag Yes-man.” I remember watching this moment and wondering just how many wrestlers in the back were happily nodding their heads, because Punk was describing their feelings exactly. I for one will never forget this promo and would gladly put this amongst a list of the best promos in wrestling history.
9.) Shane McMahon Jumps Off The Titan-Tron
Godzark: Every once in a great while there is a wrestling moment where I honestly can say I have no idea how they did it, Shane McMahon’s 50 foot jump from the top of the Titantron on top of the Big Show is one of those moments. Fans make a big deal about wrestlers falling off of a ladder, or falling from the top of a cage, but Shane-O-Mac makes all of that look like mere child’s play when he took this leap of faith. I remember watching this as a kid and as Shane was climbing the tron I kept waiting for him to come back down because I knew that there was no way in Hell he could pull off a jump like that. When he did the sign of the cross before the jump I knew this was for real, and remember holding my breath until I heard the crash landing. This moment still gives me goose-bumps even years later, which is why it belongs on this list.
8.) Owen Hart’s Death
Cheesebadger: I remember watching this very pay-per-view, more pumped at the time for whatever the main event match was at the time. I remember seeing the promos and content from the first video above, and wondering if what had happened was real or not, because everything in the (then) WWF was so larger than life, that the thought of one of them dying in such a tragic fashion was hard to believe. The grim details became unfortunately clear as time passed, and what at first was thought to be an accident that would have ended Owen Hart’s career, ended his life in turn. It was a surreal moment to say the least. I remember thinking that his new gimmick as the Blue Blazer was silly, but I liked that he was doing something new and different. When it came around time to viewing that second video, I remember hearing JR’s words, but not really processing them. It was almost like it couldn’t be real, that there was no way the WWF could let something like that happen. As it is in real life though, accidents happen, and life is unpredictable and sometimes very cruel. That night I finished watching the PPV, wondering and waiting for them to announce that everything would be okay, or that Owen had been revived or something. Only the next day on Raw did It finally sink in. The memorial episode they held for him I can barely remember, but confronting the topic of death so bluntly on a show that was meant to be escapism, affected me pretty deeply. I can only imagine how the people who attended that PPV felt, having had to witness it live, and the hundreds of children like me who were undoubtedly saddened by his unfortunate passing.
7.) Scott Hall’s WCW “Invasion” Promo
Cheesebadger: Way back when, Scott Hall was one of my favorite wrestlers. To this day, he still is, as is evident by my review of a mini-documentary on him here at GB. I loved the guy’s gimmick, look, and his skills in the ring all with equal aplomb. I remember watching WCW with my grandpa, and being SHOCKED to see him show up there, not as Razor Ramon, but as Scott Hall. While couldn’t find a video of the actual event as I originally remembered it, Scott Hall showed up by walking in through the crowd, interrupting a match currently in progress. He grabbed a mic and began speaking in his slurred pseudo Cuban Razor Ramon voice, about a “war”, and how things were going to change. It was so shocking to see a guy showing up in plain clothes, interrupting a match to talk, that it all seemed entirely real. I remember speculating about what it meant, and formulating ideas about how Vince McMahon had “fired” Razor Ramon, so he could legally show up and interfere with the WCW. The whole thing carried a lot of gravitas, because at the time, those two worlds of wrestling did not mix, ever. Or so I thought.
Seeing Scott Hall show up again with Diesel, who I now learned was named Kevin Nash, lended even more credence to my theory that it was all real, and the whole thing planned. To my credit, it was, just not by Vince McMahon. The entire concept of the invasion, the formation of The Outsiders, of course led to The NWO, which is arguably the most famous wrestling stable of all time. None of it would have happened without this promo, or this moment, and it’s one I’ll never forget.
6.) Steve Austin buries Undertaker Alive
Godzark: As a kid, my biggest fear was being buried alive, and I literally cringed at the thought of that ever happening to me. With this in mind, it should be no surprise that one of the most memorable moments to me in wrestling was when Stone Cold Steve Austin took on the Undertaker in a buried alive match. As a kid I watched my hero, come out fearlessly to compete in a match against a monster as scary as the Undertaker, knowing full well that should he lose this battle, my biggest fear would become his reality. Steve Austin not only buried the Undertaker six feet under, but like a Badass, proceeded to drink beer over the Undertakers grave. There was really no doubt in my mind after this that the Texas Rattlesnake was truly the baddest S.O.B on the planet.
Here comes another noteworthy Fringe promo. They’re going full bore into preparing us for this whole flash forward thing they showed us last season, this time with a more viral video approach rather than a straight up preview. As we know, the Observers turned from an interesting story element of the mythology of the show, to the forefront of the threat to humanity as we know it. They have become the one, big bad, unifying thing that ties all of the “Fringe” events of Fringe all together in its entirety. The promo itself is fairly simple, with an Observer describing “Residency protocol”, which is just code for the installed curfews on us. He also frequently references “A scan”, which as we saw last season, is tantamount to a horrific psychically induced death, a la Scanners. In fact, assuming it’s intentional, I’m fairly positive it’s a reference to that film.
But of course they can’t show this on TV, but we all know that’s what they mean.
Here’s the promo:
I’m really antsy for this season to come already, as Fringe is a show that is truly unique. Never has a show gone from being truly awful, like it was in Season 1, to one of the best examples of Science Fiction in recent memory, and by far the best Sci-Fi show on television today. If you had asked me that the fifth season of this show would be as good as it is, and be where it is, in relation to the first season, I would have slapped you for trying to trick me into continuing to watch a terrible show. It took the coaxing of several friends repeatedly telling me “it gets better, it gets better, just watch it!”, to trudge all the way though the full first season. When I did, I got to that admittedly pretty clever and enticing last episode, which opened up the show in such a beautiful and revelatory way. It’s climb in quality since then has been exponential, and created some of the best hours of TV I’ve ever seen. Season 3’s “White Tulip“, featuring Peter Weller, also known as goddamned RoboCop, is an incredibly moving and brilliant time travel story that never manages to lose its emotional center, or get bogged down with technical minutiae. That episode alone puts Fringe up in the echelon of brilliant modern TV shows, alongside Battlestar Galactica, Lost, the first season of Heroes, Doctor Who, Carnivale, and even The X-Files.
The flash forward in this season isn’t exactly a new idea itself, as Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse employed the same tactic for its season finales, for both its seasons. Unfortunately, Dollhouse was a muddled, plodding, slow paced show that never found its footing, and meandered about for the whole first season until that decent finale. It’s a bummer that the finale, which might as well have been an entirely different show, was a much better show than Dollhouse ever was. Then Season 2 rolled around, and went back to the same boring, plodding pace, and that was enough for me. Fringe has taken the sudden flash forward concept and ran with it. What will happen to our Fringe team? What happened to Olivia in between now and then? And will the Observers be stopped? Will timelines be changed? Can they be changed? Is there truly no fate but what we make?
There’s even a few noticeable Easter eggs in the promo, that compelled me to grab screenshots for you to analyze and speculate further. Enjoy!
Grizzly Bomb 