On the next Rewind-A-Wai this Friday, Wai Ting & I will be reviewing the 1991 pilot ‘Tag Team’ starring Jesse Ventura & Roddy Piper … as cops.
This choice was selected by Espresso Executive Producer @KrisEaly and he will join us to explain his decision.
Leave any feedback or questions for this week’s show and tune in Friday!
Please direct all of your hate mail to me for this episode. LOL
Sean from Toronto
Wow, this was a piece of work. I guess kayfabe was alive enough in 1991 (ironically the same year 9 year old me started regularly watching wrestling) that you can pass off the ridiculous “banned by promoter’s evil wife” setup as something that could plausibly happen. Ironically, I was instantly reminded of Stephanie McMahon with this character and I wouldn’t be surprised if such an angle played out on today’s heavily scripted WWE TV.
The show itself was typical generic buddy cop fare, which seemed like it was a dime a dozen in the 1990s. I can see why it wasn’t brought to series, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it got a syndicated afternoon slot to fill out the schedule. It’s no worse than Thunder in Paradise was.
But yeah, the early 1990s commercials were the best part. It’s like rubbing salt in the wound when the clip starts off with the final few seconds of a Twin Peaks promo and I’m now craving one of those McDonald’s steak sandwiches, which I don’t think was even available in Canada.
I should probably clarify that I didn’t start being a regular wrestling viewer until May 1991, which would have been a few months after Tag Team aired.
Brandon from Oshawa
You mean to tell me, that McDonalds had a steak sandwich and I never knew about it? I’m sure it was as tough as those $2 steaks that Jim Ross always talked about, but sign me up, I’d give it a try. Finding out about that was probably the best part of this. This show absolutely sucked and made me hope that the WWE never remembers this, or we’ll get some crappy WWE Studios movie, featuring Breezango in the role.
The only other highlight for me was the Norwegian Cruiseline add promoting it as “the pleasure ships”. I’ve been on 7 cruises over the years and if I was about to go on an 8th, that had that tag line, I’d think I was going to a porn convention or something. I’d love to see how that tag line would go over in 2018, with this PG world that we live in now.
I think you guys should give Kris a do over to pick a show that isn’t Tag Team. This was god awful! Don’t get me wrong Ventura and Piper have pulled off some respectable acting in other movies but they had no chance to get these characters over with such horrible character development and scripted lines like “I think we body slammed the truck”. And what the fuck was with Piper’s character just wanting to give up to become a ranch hand after they got suspended and then got all sentimental about loving being a cop. The two guys in the McDonald’s commercial had better character development and scripting.
But that was an epic slow-mo hot tag from Piper near the end.
The only thing that gave me true entertainment in this show was the fact Jesse refused to dress in anything other than his “Body” clothes. I mean come on Jesse, new cops have uniforms they have to wear! After watching this you can understand why it never got past a pilot.
I cannot thank my LA counterpart enough for smartening me up to the existence of this. I put it on par with the classic Heatwave and Jack as horribly great pilots. Really enjoyed the cheese and camp of it, and the commercials very much were the best part.
Michael from Newfoundland
I’m not sure if kayfabe was in full effect or if the characters that Piper and Ventura played were delusional. They were blacklisted for going into business for themselves which actually makes sense from a promoter’s viewpoint.
I don’t know the inner workings of actual tag teams. Do most tag teams live together? I mean, it would save money but I can’t imagine Sheamus and Cesaro living in the same cramped apartment; although that would have been a good follow-up of their best-of-seven series they had years ago. Actually, now that the WWE Network is constantly looking for cheap content to fill its time slots, it wouldn’t surprise me if they forced them or some other tag team to live together in an apartment or a loft.
I loved the scene in the supermarket. Any situation where wrestling moves are used in real life situations is okay with me; my life is lacking in the everyday-grappling department.
I also liked that whoever uploaded the file couldn’t be bothered to edit out the commercials. Looking up the Wikipedia articles for these forgotten shows was great.
All in all, I would have watched this show if it had been picked up.