Thursday, September 15, 2016

Motherfuckin' Lucha Underground! (The Amulet)

Damn, son.
First, I'd like to thank Apple for removing the ability to screengrab purchased videos in iOS 10. That's going to make my life much more difficult, because the Internet and I rarely agree on what images should be grabbed from Lucha Underground.

OK, there is a shit-ton to unpack in this week's Lucha Underground, plus one amazing match, one necessary match, and one pointless match. Goddamn, though.

Basically, this episode is full of vignettes that both continue and tie together the Undercover Cops storyline from last year and the War of the Gods hints at a story from last year. These vignettes also fill in the logic gaps in Dario Cueto's arrest at Ultima Lucha Dos. Basically, Officeer Reyes (aka Cortez Castro) wants to bust Cueto for the murder of Mr. Cisco, but his boss knows there's a bigger game at play. Commissioner Lorenzo Lamas (not in the episode) finds out about what's happening and goes to arrest Cueto, knowing presumably that Cueto will get out of it. Vasquez (police chief) suspends Reyes for the entire between-season break, but now he's back and he wants to help her fight her side of the war.

Joey Ryan, on the other hand, feels diffferently, and sides with Cueto, turning double agent so that Dario's money can help pay his child support. So now Cueto knows that Cortez is a cop. Oh, and while all this is going on, they introduce the titular amulet, which conveys immortality to women. You know, that old pro wrestling trope.

OK. So first of all, 1,000 years ago, a dying Aztec leader bestows the immortality amulet to his daughter, who, and I mean this in the kindest possible way because she's a young child, cannot act. She has to fight the war against the gods, even if it takes a thousand years. In the present, we learn that Chief Vasquez has one half of the amulet, and CATRINA HAS THE OTHER. Or Vasquez has the broken amulet and gave it to Catrina. It's tough to tell, because it's probably one of those "amulet with one chain hole gets broken and somehow has two chain holes" things. I've looked at it a few times and am pretty sure it's supposed to be two parts of the amulet.

I do not know what the fuck any of this means, but it excites me.

Match-wise, Dr. Wagner Jr. squashes Mascarita Sagrada in like 90 seconds. At least this picks up their story from last season, but I don't know where it's going, or even if it's going anywhere. I appreciate that LU goes to the trouble of givving its undercard matches a narrative piece, but often those narratives are unsatisfying.

Mil Muertes returns to squash Argenis in about three minutes, but he's attacked by Puma after the match, so it seems Puma took Vampiro's advice at the end of Ep 1 to heart. Not sure when that's going to kick off, but it should be awesome when it does.

And then we have the WMD match between Marty the Moth and Killshot. What's a WMD match? Well, it's like a Boyle Heights Bar Fight except all the props and set decoration is military. That sounds derisive as I type it, but it's pretty awesome. Martinez is the purest heel in Lucha Underground, able to generate millions of degrees of heel heat from a Temple crowd that has a tough time booing Pentagon Dark and Mil Muertes. The match is first-rate hardcore, with Marty bleeding early and some great, great, vicious spots. And Killshot wins to regain his dogtags and put this feud to rest. Hell of a match, hell of a finish, and a hell of a show.

No comments:

Post a Comment