Talk about it here.

Elizabeth does an understated, classy appeal to Jack Tunney to reinstate Randy Savage as the crowd goes crazy with the "Reinstate!" chant. Great stuff building up excitement for Savage's return.

I can't help thinking that this might have been done slightly differently in the Attitude Era.

I shudder to think how trashy they could have really made it then.

I was totally looking through my sleazy Attitude Era glasses on this one and seeing more than what was really going on.

As good as she was used throughout her WWF stint and as over as she was, I generally think Liz is a horrible performer. She got over by proxy from Randy, by looking good, and being a one-of-a-kind presence simply by virtue of being a petite good-looking woman. That said, she's tolerable in measured, pre-taped settings like this.

This is one of Liz's better acting jobs as she pleads with Tunney for Savage's reinstatement. I love the interaction between Piper and Randy.

Sorry, but this didn't work for me. Classy, demure Liz just wasn't enough under these circumstances. I'm not saying she should have been screaming and swearing, but a little anger might have helped. Even giving her Randy's line at the end about Tunney being no more of a man than Jake if he turned down Randy's reinstatement would have been enough of a shock to let everyone know that she meant business, dammit. As it was, Randy said it better than she did in about one-eighth of the time.

 

I'm not sure if Liz was a bad performer, as Pete said, or if the confines of the Miss Elizabeth character just didn't allow her to reach her potential as a performer. (By the way, why do they still refer to her as "Miss Elizabeth" when she's married on-screen? For that matter, why did they start in the first place? It's not like she was playing a classic Southern belle, the type of woman whom you might refer to in that way.)

Liz was originally envisioned to be a cunning and manipulative woman in the mold of the show Dallas, similar to how Woman was later portrayed. They soon decided that presenting her as the demure one as a contrast to Savage being such a loose cannon was a better dynamic. Anyway, I think the name "Miss Elizabeth" was left over from the original plans for how to present her.

I knew about Liz being originally presented as a schemer, but I've never heard about the "Miss Elizabeth" name being part of it, even as a theory. It makes sense, though, considering that the patriarch of the Ewing family was Miss Ellie. Given Vince's penchant for direct steals and bad puns, we should be grateful that she wasn't called Miss Smelly or Miss Jelly.

 

Thanks, Loss!

I thought Liz did well enough with this. She wasn't supposed to be dynamic or anything over-the-top. She was just a woman pleading with her husband's boss to let him do something we all want to see him do.