After much hype and anticipation, the new The Monday Night War program finally hit the WWE Network this past week. Thus far, the original pilot episode that aired a few weeks back and two new episodes are available for streaming on the Network.
After announcing the launch of the WWE Network, this program was probably the most hyped original piece of programming to hit the Network. In fact, they purposely saved it in order to entice the initial round of subscribers to stick around for another six months.
So, after all of the hype and build for the newest WWE original series, was it worth the wait? After flying through the first three episodes, unfortunately it does not seem to add much to the Monday Night War discussion.
There are a few shortcomings that are immediately apparent. Most importantly, it seems to gloss over an entire era in just under an hour. The first episode was off to a great start, with Ted Turner’s acquisition of WCW serving as an adequate launching point. It was a quality pilot for the series and it was expected that the company would take a slow, in-depth look at the era.
However, episodes two and three of the series quickly took the wind out of the sails. The nWo episode, while entertaining, provided nothing that was not already available on the nWo DVD that was released a few years back. In fact, nearly all of the commentary that was featured on the Monday Night War episode was directly lifted from that release.
The same held true for the third episode, which discussed the Attitude Era. Instead of offering a fresh perspective, it basically took the same approach as the DVD box set that was released a few years back. This episode also relied on commentary that is many years old.
My question after watching the first three episodes is simple: Where do they go from here? At the end of episode three, they were already to the end of the Attitude Era and discussed the acquisition of WCW, basically glossing over the entire feud in a little less than an hour.
