Chairshot CLASH! Faces, Heels, and Throwing Shades of Gray

Who’s the bad guy here? Is it both of them? Neither?

GREG:
A double turn for Charlotte and Becky makes sense, but you had to shoehorn in a Becky “heel turn” to get it done. Roman Reigns being a heel in 2016 could work, if he’s aligned with The Authority, but the route they went made so much more sense.

I will never understand the “Roman needs to turn heel” narrative, and I even got caught up in it myself. That’s because I lost sight of the truth. Roman IS a heel. He has been for a long time. I don’t think Braun Strowman turned heel, either. Is Becky Lynch really a heel, or is she just pissed off because Charlotte, the real-life heel, stole her spotlight?

I know what you’re thinking: How can Roman be a heel if Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose are faces? Because they’re friends and brothers. I always hated the old “we used to feud but not we can tag again since we’re on the same side of the face/heel alignment fence.” It’s stupid and defies the logic of human beings.

Do you have a friend who is kind of a jerk, maybe treated someone poorly, or made a bad decision that would make them a “heel?” And you’re more of a face because you’re a nice person and you can’t understand why they did what they did, but you’re their lifelong friend so you’re not abandoning them? But you’re still a face?

This is why the face/heel alignment is so dumb in 2018, and I think the WWE realized that long ago.

NICK:
I’d absolutely love to agree with you, but I can’t.

On shoehorning the double turn and whether or not Becky is a heel: WWE decided, moronically, to try to turn Becky heel. They wouldn’t have had the announcers talk about her “betraying” her best friend if that wasn’t the idea. The exact same result, if they want to have Becky be the cheered anti-hero and Charlotte the dominant, confident champion, could have been achieved in a much more straightforward manner. Becky is visibly upset at SummerSlam after Charlotte pins Carmella.

Charlotte shows no concern for her friend (and she shouldn’t) and you move on. Come SmackDown, Charlotte is boasting about being the best, just like she did during her original heel run. Becky comes out to begrudgingly congratulate her, and Charlotte barely accepts it, because she doesn’t need Becky’s support to validate being the best woman to ever step foot in a WWE ring. That’s when Becky goes full Stone Cold and beats the crap out of her, to the delight of the crowd. WWE has tried to go with the narrative that the crowd has turned on Becky. Note: not that Becky thinks the crowd has turned on her, but that the crowd actually has turned on her. That’s not shades of gray. That’s force-feeding horse manure. As I said, I would like to agree, but WWE isn’t actually trying to be realistic. They are pushing faces and heels on the people, whether the crowd reaction is there or not.

On the necessity of a Roman heel turn, and if he actually is a heel, and Braun is not: Again, I would love to agree with you. But WWE doesn’t employ real-life logic. Roman’s story, from the moment he won the 2015 Royal Rumble until the moment he pinned Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam, has been that of the underdog babyface. You could say (and this is a bad, not clever pun) that Michael Cole should be yelling THE UNDERDOG every time Roman walks out, not THE BIG DOG. This has, thankfully, become much less prevalent in 2018. He’s still being positioned as the guy fighting with the odds against his favor, but at least he isn’t roleplaying 2013 Daniel Bryan any longer. Seriously — Roman’s story from Survivor Series 2015 through WrestleMania 32 in 2016 is a truncated version of Daniel Bryan’s storyline from SummerSlam 2013 through WrestleMania XXX in 2014.

The route they went with Roman in 2016 would have definitely made more sense… if the crowd wasn’t actually CHEERING THE AUTHORITY. Try as they might, but the crowd chose Triple H over Roman. The only thing the crowd cheered Roman for in their WrestleMania match was when Stephanie, who the crowd does hate, was put through a table. Note the difference between this match and the Triple H vs. Seth Rollins storyline from the following year. The crowd liked Seth Rollins, so they cheered for him against Triple H, even though he was playing the exact same character they cheered for when he was up against Seth’s pal Roman.

And then along came Braun, and Roman was again portrayed as a guy who was overmatched by a monster who was bigger, better and more dominant in every way. This should have been the story of the Monster Among Men and The Big Dog equally kicking the crap out of each other, not Braun chasing Roman down and (almost) literally murdering him every week. It was fun, but all it accomplished was getting Braun over as a fan favorite and making the vocal majority even more frustrated that they were expected to cheer Roman as the good guy. This should have been the anti-hero vs. the superhero, but they played it as the supervillain vs. the superhero, and it looks like they’re about to start doing it again, except this time a bunch of villains are teaming up because the superhero brought backup.

I agree 100 million percent with your logic. 100 billion percent. What I disagree with is the notion that WWE is thinking that way. There’s zero proof of that in anything WWE has done. Braun was the closest as a singles act when it came to shades of gray, and mid-way through their feud with The New Day, it also happened with The Usos, who essentially turned face, but, importantly, didn’t change their behavior. With very, very few exceptions, it’s clear who the good guys are supposed to be and who the bad guys are supposed to be.

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