The Post-Dynasty Hangover

We are exactly ten days removed from the spectacle of AEW Dynasty, and the hangover is hitting hard. Wednesday night's episode of Dynamite rolled through the arena with all the momentum of a runaway freight train.

Unfortunately, it repeatedly derailed itself every thirty minutes. It was a completely bipolar episode of television.

On one hand, you had instances of pure professional wrestling brilliance that remind you why you sacrifice two hours of your week. On the other hand, you had booking decisions so baffling they make you want to throw your remote.

With Double or Nothing sitting exactly 45 days away on May 24, AEW needs to start laying the groundwork for Las Vegas. You cannot just coast on the fumes of the last pay-per-view.

You need to build the next one. Instead, we got a show that pulled us in two completely different directions.

Here is a deep dive into everything that hit the mark last night, and everything that made me question my life choices.

Loved: Swerve Strickland is operating on a different plane

Swerve Strickland is the guy. It is not up for debate anymore. The argument is over.

When he grabbed the microphone last night in the middle of the ring, the entire arena stopped breathing. He didn't just cut a standard wrestling promo.

He dismantled his next potential challenger with the surgical precision of a man who knows exactly how untouchable he is right now. He targeted the insecurities of the locker room, openly calling out the guys who spend more time complaining on social media than working on their craft.

It was a brutal exercise in blurring the lines between work and shoot. He isn't out there screaming until he is red in the face.

He just talks quietly, and you are forced to lean in and listen. The way he paced the ring, never breaking eye contact with the hard camera, was reminiscent of prime Jake The Snake Roberts.

Whenever he is on screen, AEW feels like the most important wrestling company in the world.

Hated: The Learning Tree has completely run out of branches

Chris Jericho. We need to sit down and have a very serious conversation. The entire Learning Tree gimmick was mildly amusing for exactly three weeks.

It had a brief window where the irony was actually entertaining. Now? It is actively suffocating the momentum of anyone who gets dragged into its orbit.

Last night's segment went a staggering 14 minutes. That is a quarter of an hour of awkward pauses, missed comedic cues, and a live crowd begging for a commercial break.

AEW has a roster absolutely packed with young, hungry talent dying for television time. Giving that much time to a bit that stopped being funny a month ago is nothing short of booking malpractice.

The crowd was completely dead by the time the segment finally stumbled to a merciful finish. It felt like watching a legendary comedian refuse to leave the stage after his material bombed.

It is time to pull the plug, scrap the tree, and move on before it drags down the entire midcard.

Loved: Takeshita vs. Darby Allin was pure, unfiltered violence

If you ever find yourself needing a quick reminder of why AEW exists in the first place, just go back and rewatch this match. Konosuke Takeshita and Darby Allin went out there on free television and decided to test the absolute limits of human endurance.

Takeshita is a freak of nature. He possesses a terrifying combination of power and speed that shouldn't be physically possible.

He threw Darby around the ring like a discarded lawn dart. There was a sequence on the outside where Takeshita caught Darby completely out of mid-air during a high-speed suicide dive.

He paused for a second to let the crowd realize what was happening, then transitioned it into a sheer-drop brainbuster on the exposed floor. It was terrifying.

It was beautiful. Darby, as always, bumped like a crash test dummy who owed a mobster money.

The finish was an absolute masterpiece of violence. Takeshita caught Darby coming off the top rope with a sickening rolling elbow, followed immediately by an avalanche Blue Thunder Bomb for the clean pinfall at the 18-minute mark.

No gimmicks, no outside interference nonsense. Just two athletes beating the absolute hell out of each other.

Hated: The absolutely disjointed pacing of the second hour

AEW has always historically struggled with the formatting of their television shows, but last night was genuinely egregious. After the incredible Takeshita and Darby match, the show aggressively slammed on the brakes.

We were subjected to four consecutive backstage segments back-to-back-to-back. It felt like someone in the production truck accidentally hit the fast-forward button on a DVR.

You simply cannot take a live crowd that is red-hot and exhausted from a brutal sprint and force them to stare at the big screen. Watching pre-taped promos for ten straight minutes completely murders the live atmosphere.

By the time the main event finally rolled around, the building felt like a public library. The fans had been taken out of the experience entirely.

Pacing is just as vitally important as the matches themselves. You have to build the tension, give the audience a chance to breathe, and then ramp it back up.

Tony Khan needs to figure out how to structure a two-hour block of television so that it flows logically. This constant start-and-stop booking gives the viewing audience severe whiplash.

Loved: Mariah May is the undisputed MVP of the women's division

Forget everything else happening in the women's division right now, because nothing else matters. Mariah May is the absolute truth.

Her slow-burn transition from Toni Storm's obsessed understudy to a cold-blooded killer has been exceptional. It is the single best piece of long-term storytelling on the entire program.

Last night, she didn't even wrestle a match. She didn't need to.

She simply walked out onto the stage in the middle of a promo, stared an absolute hole through the champion, and calmly walked back to the locker room. It was 30 seconds of television time, but it accomplished exponentially more than a contrived twenty-minute promo battle ever could have.

The crowd reaction to her mere presence was deafening. She carries herself with an unmistakable aura of untouchability.

She is the final boss of the division right now. The inevitable, violent title clash at Double or Nothing cannot get here fast enough.

She has completely outgrown the sidekick role and seized the spotlight for herself.

Hated: The TBS Championship picture is an absolute ghost town

While Mariah May is thriving at the top of the card, the rest of the midcard women's division is currently on life support. The TBS Championship used to actually mean something.

It used to be a coveted workhorse title that guaranteed a solid, hard-hitting match every single week. Right now, it feels like a total afterthought.

The current champion hasn't had a deeply meaningful, story-driven feud in months. Last night's predictable squash match did absolutely zero favors for the belt or the unfortunate challenger who had to take the pin.

The match was undeniably sloppy, the finish felt completely rushed, and the post-match beatdown was incredibly generic and uninspired.

AEW has way too much elite talent sitting backstage in catering to let this secondary title gather dust. Give us a grueling tournament.

Give us a weekly open challenge to bring in outside talent. Give us literally anything other than these totally meaningless three-minute television matches that help absolutely nobody.

It is a massive disservice to the incredibly talented women on the roster.

The Road to Vegas

This week's edition of Dynamite was a ridiculously bumpy ride. When it was good, it was phenomenal.

That Takeshita match is going straight to my match of the year shortlist, and Swerve is doing the best character work of his entire career. But when the show was bad, it was borderline unwatchable.

The road to Double or Nothing next month needs to be a hell of a lot smoother than this. They have the roster.

They have the television time. Now they just need the discipline and the focus to execute it properly week in and week out.

Stop relying on crutches, stop letting segments drag on past their expiration date, and start booking like a company that wants to take over the world. Let's see if they can course-correct before Collision this weekend.