Jessie

Lizard Scales and Wrestling Tales
Season 3, Episode 5
11/15/2013

Oddly enough, Disney’s Jessie expired from Netflix today, exactly four years after the premiere date of its wrestling episode. So, I guess you should read this and see what you missed out on.

Jessie is about a Texan teen (Jessie) who moves to New York City to follow her dreams (whatever they may be), but somehow ends up as a nanny for a high profile couple’s four adopted children. Based on the racial make up of some of the children, I’m assuming at least half of them are adopted. Surely enough, Luke Ross, one of the adopted sons, starts off the episode by mentioning that he has a family history project for school and is interested in locating his real mother. His adopted mother, Christina Ross, doesn’t seem to keen to talk about the whole thing, but doesn’t really dissuade him from pursuing this.

Eventually, Luke comes across the name, Vanessa Colson, who he believes to be his biological mother, and who just happens to be a professional wrestler called The Mauler. Luckily for him, The Mauler happens to be in New York City that weekend to wrestle. This is where Jessie comes in. Sensing that this might be too much for him to handle,  Jessie tells the young privileged kid that it’s probably for the best that he doesn’t attend the wrestling show. Having grown up with money, he clearly has a hard time comprehending, much less accepting the word “no,” and decides to go to the wrestling show with his older sister, Emma.

Before Jessie finds out that Luke sneaked away, she also happens to find out that The Mauler isn’t his biological mother. Bertram, the Ross’ butler, reveals that he had smeared blackberry jam on the name Colson while filing the paperwork that Luke had pulled up, making her real last name Olson. But that doesn’t make sense since blackberry jam is dark and the ink is dark, and it’s on white paper. Maybe her real name is Colson, and Luke thought it was Olson? That would make more sense. I should’ve probably popped on the captions. Or paid more attention.

Jessie makes her way to the wrestling show, dressed as Cindy the Slammin’ Centurion, since she wasn’t able to get seats to the sold out high school gym show. I can only imagine that poor Cindy wound up knocked out and tied up in some janitor’s closet. Before Jessie can break the news to Luke, The Mauler tosses her opponent outside the ring and demands more competition.

The Mauler looks less like what you would imagine a mauler to look, and more like Molly Holly if she had played Hardcore Holly’s cousin when he was Bob “Spark Plug” Holly, the race car driver. She recognizes Jessie to be Cindy The Centurion, based solely on what she’s wearing because The Mauler lacks the part of your brain that operates facial recognition. Despite her protests, Jessie gets pulled into the ring by her hair, and is immediately ragdolled the same way Chyna did Marlena when she debuted on Raw.

After a quick break to see how things are shaping up in the B story, we join the match in time to see Jessie get repeatedly hip tossed, while her pleas of mistaken identity go unheard. So either The Mauler is going into business for herself, or this type of pro wrestling is as real as it gets. Which, of course, is the latter, because it’s a Disney show and they’re all about creating and maintaining the magic of childhood wonderment. So why not extend that to the world of professional wrestling within the Disney universe? After a back body drop, and another missed opportunity to inform Luke about his mistake, Jessie finally hulks up and mounts a comeback.

Jessie Irish whips The Mauler and gives her a clothesline, which consists of Jessie just standing in place with her arm outstretched, without even making any kind of effort to throw her body into it. The Mauler sells it like it’s a Clothesline from Hell. Jessie makes the rookie mistake of pandering to the crowd, which causes Luke to jump onto the apron and badmouth Jessie for clotheslining his mom. The distraction allows The Mauler to grab a freakin’ metal folding chair and nail this tiny, untrained, Texas teen in the back. The referee seems okay with it, which I guess means this was a hardcore match all along. Or was the match ever officially started?

Further solidifying that theory is Luke jumping into the ring to cheer on his mom and call for her finisher, The Pit of Pain. It’s basically the Nasty Boys’ Pit Stop move, but with The Mauler standing off to the side, lifting her arm and just letting the stench waft by her opponents’ noses, instead of burying their faces in her armpit. Luke plays along, lifting his own smelly adolescent armpit.

The Mauler casually places her foot over a fallen Jessie and is instantly declared the winner by the referee. So, was this an official match? Was it a last woman standing match? That would explain why the referee didn’t count to three. Then again, he also didn’t count to ten as is customary in most last man standing matches. In the end, it doesn’t matter because the ref catches a whiff of The Mauler’s armpit as he’s raising her hand in victory, and also passes out. You would think wearing long sleeves would contain some of the smell, but this woman’s BO is on another level.

Before Luke can reveal that he’s The Mauler’s son, Jessie finally breaks the bad news. The Mauler tries to offer some consolatory words, but it’s not enough to keep him from storming away from the ring, which is just him half-running towards the ropes, climbing over the bottom rope and carefully stepping down from the apron so as not to hurt himself. It really derails his momentum.

Back home, Jessie oversteps her boundaries as a nanny by forcing her boss Christina to talk to her son about his biological parents, and recognize the hard truth that she’s the one that’s not ready to have this conversation. Maybe if the WWE had put this much care and effort in the development of the Jason Jordan/Kurt Angle father and son storyline the fans might’ve seemed somewhat invested in it, or, at the very least, not shit on it as much.