Ice ColdIce Cold
STATUS: Heel. Tag team partners with Poison. Feuding with Lana Star and Patti Pizzazz, although Poison may have abandoned Ice and switched to Lana's side now.
WRESTLING: Ice saunters to the ring in a cool strut, giving the people to each side dirty looks. This makes sense, since she is supposed to be Ice Cold (if not, we've all got a truth in advertising suit against McLane, right?) But once she gets in the ring, all that goes out the window. Her style is basically street brawler. She eye-rakes, stomps, and screeches a lot. This is one of many things about her character that don't make sense. Her offense has often been described as "elbow-riffic." She does seem to be giving 100%, and that is important. Despite her haughty entrance where she ignores the fans, she often berates the fans after the match is over. Huh?
CHARACTER: Well, as I just said, when all we see is her brawling and yelling, it's hard to explain why she theoretically is "Ice Cold". Her teaming with Poison also doesn't make a ton of sense. The announcing team alluded to the fact that "these are two loners", but then gave absolutely no explanation to justify the team. Sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut...
Poor Ice has also been saddled with the worst lines and skits in WOW, worse even than Lana Star's. The writers seem to take sadistic pleasure in hammering her gimmick into the ground. To her everlasting credit, Ice (unlike, say, Bronco Billie) makes every effort with these lines, if anything maybe trying a little too hard. But it just isn't happening.
Although it is generally true that the WOW writing has gotten better as time goes on, we should remember that the Ice Cold/Julie Day interview that made otherwise sane people want to rip their ears off appeared as recently as show #15. Here it is (thanks to Christopher Zimmerman), because I really think you need to see it in full to understand just how bad the writing has been for Ice.
JD: "Ice Cold, you're one of our more secretive competitors
here in WOW. Not a lot is known about you."
IC: "And that's by my choice - I *like* leaving people out in the cold."
JD: "Well, do you think you can give us a little bit about your background?"
IC: "Yeah, I was left out in the cold once...abandoned by my family when I was
young. That's when I learned to fend for myself. It's a cold, cruel world out
there, and you better embrace the cold if you wanna survive. I have."
JD: "That's quite a compelling story."
IC: "Oh, does it send shivers down your spine? Can you FEEL the chill?"
JD:"You know it IS getting a little bit cold in here..."
IC: "*Ice* Cold? That's just the tip of the iceberg - wait'll I freeze the WOW
Championship - and EVERYONE'll be left out in the cold...including you, Julie
Day!"
I really don't know what to highlight here. The faux-devastating comeback "*Ice* Cold?" was probably the most painful moment, especially since Ice had already used that exact same snappy retort in a previous Day interview...aargh. "Wait'll I freeze the WOW Championship" is no prize either. The larger point is that Ice says nine sentences, and makes 10 "cold" references. That is just...painful. The 1960's "Batman" villains were a model of realism and restraint next to this.
Another low point for Ice was having to attack Terri Gold with a fire extinguisher. Well, that part wasn't so bad, although as I recall, she did say "Does THIS cool your fire, Terri Gold???" or something ridiculous like that while doing it. The bad part was when she tried to blast her a second time. Nothing came out of the extinguisher. Ice just sort of wandered off. Is there an editor in the house????
LOOKS: I honestly don't get this. In the WOW swimsuit pics, Ice is blond and wearing a skimpy bikini ... and it does nothing for me. Yet I think she looks sooooooo sexy in the white/blue hair and glimmering silver spacesuit. Does this mean I have a problem? Probably, or else grey is just her color.
COMMENTS: I just don't see much hope for the Ice Cold character. Her gimmick seems like a total misfit. It doesn't match her in-ring skills, and it doesn't even match the way the character has developed. My suggestion is that some sort of trauma happen to her character. It should probably involve her parents, both because that's is a believable reason for trauma, and because if the gimmick change works, at least one can say something good came out of that train wreck of an interview. The traumatic event would transform her character into (this is how hard I thought about this, I came up with names) "Rage", or "Banshee". Rage/Banshee would be an eye-raking, hair-pulling psycho-bitch who fights with more rage (yeah, you got it) than technique.
Corny? Perhaps, but can you deny that it's less corny than the current gimmick? It is consistent with the storylines to this point, and I guarantee you it has a much better shot at getting her over than the mess she is involved with now. Ice is trying very hard, is a good-looking woman, and deserves something that has a prayer of working. She was obviously pushed way too much way too soon, but we can't help that now.
I should note that they did mention, in the usual throwaway manner, that Ice Cold has a sister. Hmmmm....
UPDATES:
2/4/01 (PPV):
- Ice Cold was seemingly betrayed by Poison and got her head shaved at the PPV.
This is great! Now she has no allies, and has just been through a traumatic
experience ... basically, they can do whatever they want with her character
right now, and hopefully make it a lot better. Maybe she can even team with
Caliente and form the McDLT Team! Hot side stays
hot...cool side stays cool! I'm a genius!
3/11/01 (re-run #1):
- Shaved Ice, who has been seen in short glimpses the last couple of weeks raging
against everybody, got mad at swimsuit contest winner Lana. Ice claimed that
she would have won the contest had Lana not shaved her head. Hmm, well, considering
that Ice wasn't bald in her swimsuit video or pics, this makes no sense at all.
Did they really hype the swimsuit contest for weeks so that they could develop
an angle like this??