WWE RAW's Storyline Was Predictable But Cohesive

The show-length storyline of this week’s Monday Night RAW wound its way from the opening moment of the show all the way until the closing visual of John Cena and Dean Ambrose laid out by Seth Rollins and The Club. While it became very predictable that the triple threat between the former members of The Shield was not going to change as soon as Cena was pinned by Rollins, there was still that sense of possibility in the air before and during the match.

I am actually impressed that the writing team was able to incorporate the untimeliness of Roman Reigns’ suspension into a coherent story instead of panicking and writing the show by throwing money at whomever they could find because Vince McMahon isn’t confident in the talent he currently has. It made the WWE Championship look more important, as two men currently embroiled in a feud with each other went after the opportunity to edge into a title shot.

Of course, each man ended up screwing the other over to keep him from getting into the match, but that plays up both the importance of the title as well as their escalating rivalry. Indeed, WWE was able to weave two different stories together over the course of one night. Both stories were advanced, we got two strong matches out of it and it was overall very entertaining.

Sometimes predictable is good, because it allows there to be structure. This is refreshing for a show that usually tries so hard to have a structure that they end up creating an unkempt mess.

I was sort of hoping that Finn Balor would show up, or at least his music would hit and the Demon would appear on the video screen. If he’s going to be a part of the draft, there’s no way he could make a surprise appearance at the pay-per-view since he’ll have shown up just six days prior on the first live Smackdown.

The structure WWE created with this episode of RAW was solid, but it would have tied everything together very well to end the show with a cliffhanger that would turn the structure on its ear with RAW going off the air in a state of chaos.