Season Review: Camp WWE Season Two

Send this one into a table.

When it comes to WWE animated series, it’s been a bad month. A mere couple of weeks after the lackluster Dallas & Robo which streamed all eight episodes in its entirety on the WWE Youtube channel a couple of weeks ago, Camp WWE wraps a very lackluster second season of its lone adult animated comedy.

The main issue with Camp WWE, is in its variety, which is really surprising because the WWE Roster is like 75 wrestlers strong, but the producers of Camp WWE deem it fit to only give us storylines that focus on maybe one or two of the campers and the revolving door of “go to” camp counselors and management which typically consists of Ric Flair, Sergeant Slaughter, and Vince McMahon. The aforementioned three are typically the only talent that is voiced by their actual selves, everyone else is voiced by various voice actors in the roles of John Cena, Stone Cold,  R-Truth, the Bellas, Big Show, an occasional Mark Henry appearance, Stephanie, HHH, and The Undertaker…and maybe a line or two from Paige.

And therein lies the issue. Half of every episode revolves around Vince McMahon, the definitive star of Camp WWE which has been the case for both seasons now. The billion-dollar owner is the backbone of the franchise and is by far the funniest of all the characters. Kudos need to be sent up to the voice directors feeding the CEO of one of the largest sports entertainment companies in the world dealing with risque topics like masturbation, ghosts, and anything else that appears to come through the pages. The same can’t be said for the second half of each episode, usually some sort of half-baked measure to have one of the kids palling around with the camp counselors that grow tiresome after a bit. Between the two of them, I don’t know who I’m more tired of at this rate…Flair or Slaughter. We did get a couple of cameos from not Ultimate Warrior and The Godfather, the latter of which worked and the former of which is one of the crummiest voice performances I’ve ever heard, but other than that, the B-plots are usually a revolving door of the same kid-Superstar characters over and over again. It even looked like that this season we were going to get a bit more Undertaker than in the prior season, but the one-time owner of the longest-running Wrestlemania streak is typically a quick hit and leaves Hell, even when Paul Bearer showed up, no one thought that The Undertaker should’ve had more of a stake in the show, which is rather bizarre if you know your WWE history.

The writing is by far the biggest drawback of the series. More often than not, each episode of Camp WWE runs out of its own ideas when it pertains to whatever ham-filled plot it’s trying to deliver and instead feeds us heaping helpings of montages, some of which are very much poorly produced (I’m still scratching my head over the scene with The Godfather and John Cena in “Blackjack Beauty”). These are all surprising flaws considering Camp WWE is produced by Stoopid Buddy Stoodios who have always done a swell job in producing quality programming. However, in the case of Camp WWE, it may be time for this series to tap out. It’s still better than the debacle that was Storytime WWE Season Two, but that’s not saying much.  Season Two gets a passing grade on the back of Vince McMahon being possibly the best-animated character in the business today.