TNA Wrestling - The Angle/Jarrett Feud

I've had my issues with the ongoing Angle/Jarrett feud on TNA Impact Wrestling these past few months. Most forms of entertainment are meant to be escapist fun in one way or another. You watch television dramas, read about far-away lands, play the role of the hero in video games- Entertainment is way to unwind. A way to get away from the world, if only subconsciously and only for a little while. The Angle/Jarrett feud has been hard to watch because of its basis in the real world.

Knowing that Kurt Angle really did divorce his wife, Karen, who then went on to marry TNA founder Jeff Jarrett makes it difficult to watch this feud as a work of fiction. There's too much truth here. The news stories that we hear about Kurt Angle's ongoing difficulties in managing his personal life only make this stuff that much harder to watch. Might Angle have not gotten his last DUI if he weren't forced to confront such emotional material on a regular part of his employment? I'm not trying to make excuses for the man, Angle makes his own choices, but it's the sort of thing I can't help but wonder about.

From this background it has been rather disheartening to watch this feud week after week. Angle has done nothing but lose and every overbooked match finish has just felt more insulting than the last. The Lockdown steel cage match that still saw interference from Karen despite being in a cage and despite her being sent to the back before the match began? Yeah, talk about frustrating. Kurt Angle may be a professional and he may have given this whole storyline his blessing at some point in some meeting backstage, but he is only human. This must affect him at some level. It makes my skin crawl watching it.

So the storyline has managed to evoke emotion in me, which must mean that Jarrett and Angle are doing their jobs as performers adequately, right? Unfortunately the emotion all comes from the real world basis of the storyline. Jarrett and Angle could be the best performers in the world and it wouldn't matter, their performances are overshadowed by the real world events at the story's core. As I mentioned, this isn't entertainment. This isn't escapist. This is putting real problems on national TV, like some sort of messed up Jerry Springer episode.

I am not entertained.