When the WWE wants to have a magical evening with their fans they tend to set the mood with steel chairs, pre-sawed folding tables, ladders, loosely screwed announcing booths and the occasional exploding Honky Tonk guitar. Last night's episode of Friday Night Smackdown proved again that, much like wine and roses, none of that‘s really necessary if the sentiment is there. Really, the only gesture the WWE needs to make in order to get me excited about where things are headed is to put two soft, fluffy chairs on a sound stage and sit Good Ole' J.R. in one of them.

Yes, it was time for another one's of Jim Ross' private conversations with a wrestler. About once a year Jim Ross and a wrestler sit  with their knees pointed together and do their best impersonation of a Barbara Walters Oscars special - you know, the kind where she asks movie stars to talk about tragic moments in their life - except here there's no moral ambiguity about whether we should actually be watching this. It's still wrestling. But the conversations are almost always compelling, moving and exciting moments. They're Must See TV.

As soon as I read that Jim Ross would be sitting down with Triple H to talk about Randy Orton's attack on Stephanie McMahon this past Monday night on RAW I knew almost everything that would be said. I assume most people could hazard a good guess. Paul LaVesque, the man who portrays 13 time WWE champion Triple H, fell in love with the boss' daughter when they were working closely together on a storyline in 2002. They were married the next year and despite the stresses of stardom and life on the road by all accounts they've been very happy together. They now have two kids, Murphy and Aurora Rose (I'm sorry but those are two awful names to stick kids with and they go together like orange juice and toothpaste.) Despite the characters of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon getting a divorce seven years ago after Wrestlemania and never reconnecting, the performers' real life love story has been mentioned in countless news articles and underlied fan accusations of nepotism ever since. The characters, on the other hand, have barely crossed paths in seven years except to pull off the occasional inside joke.

When Triple H ran to Stephanie's side after Randy Orton delivered a vicious neck breaker on her this past Monday night nothing needed to be said for most fans to intuit where this was going. The WWE, which has successfully broken the third wall countless times in the past by integrating real life dramas like Matt Hardy's breakup with Amy “Lita” Dumas into wrestling storylines, finally outed the power couple. But hey, I guess I'm sort of like a high school girl whose known for weeks that her best friend and boy were totally digging each other. Seeing Triple H and Stephanie share an inatimate moment was not enough. Wrestling fans had to hear the couple admit their relationship out loud.

The moment was tantalizingly drawn out, as Triple H got closer and closer to the point of an announcement but kept backing down. He stopped mid-sentence, sat in silence, took a drink of water, rubbed his forehead, cleared his throat, opened his mouth, closed it again and wiped his nose. The guy acted like he'd eaten really spicy buffalo wings just before he'd come out and maybe he did because he seemed to get a frog in his throat every couple of words. But when he finally said it I was still leaning forward in my chair with a stupid grin on my face. I still jumped to my feet after he was done and went to go get another Diet Dr. Pepper with genuine vigor and excitement.

Let's go over his exact words again:

“Randy Orton's been walking a fine line around here for a while now…. Hghmm… This past week on RAW… He put his hands…. Hgghmm. Hgmmm. I'm sorry…A lot of people might not like my father-in-law Vince McMahon…. But he's a 63 year old man. Randy Orton kicked him in the head and then he hid behind doctors and lawyers. He did the same thing to my brother-in-law Shane for trying to defend his father…. And then…. Hgghhmmm. He put his hands on my wife. “

So let me get this straight. Triple H never stopped loving the Million Dollar Princess even when he swore he hated her. Even when she cheated on him with Chris Jericho it was only in order to drive him insane because she loved him. He destroyed her car and she ran over his dog but they were always in love. When she was a bad girl and he was a good guy they were together. When he was a bad guy and she was a good girl they were together. Somewhere along the way they got remarried, presumably this time someplace other than a Vegas drive through chapel and when Stephanie was feeling a little more coherent than the last time. Through her whole feud with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, the formation of Evolution, the reformation of Degeneration X and his Wrestlemania matches with John Cena, the characters of Triple H and Stephanie had a secret and torrid love affair carrying over from the McMahon-Helmsley era. Wow. That may be ridiculous but it's also a beauty of a WWE storyline.

I'll be disappointed if the WWE drops the ball on the dramatic implications of what we're talking about here. I'll think it's pretty boneheaded if the writers just leave us to draw our own conclusions about how two married characters who got a divorce in 2003 are still married and have two children in 2009. They have a gold mine here. They'd darn well better get their pick axes and start prying loose gems in every interview from here to Wrestlemania because that's far more dramatic TV than any series of RAW main events ending in interference and episode-ending stare downs they'd normally come up with. And I really want to hear what the deliciously nasty and always articulate ex-boyfriend in all of this, Chris Jericho, has to say. Of course, the irony? Two of the people most responsible for deciding how the story will be told are the Vice President of Creative Development, Stephanie McMahon, and the wrestler with the most backstage influence, Triple H.



Henry Jenkins, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(photo credit goes to The WWE)