Okay, so realistically we know there’s a very small chance that this MJF/Adam Cole storyline ends with Cole realizing that he secretly has more in common with MJF than he does with any babyface, and he turns heel again and they become an actual team and do weird gym skits together forever, but we’d honestly be fine with it if they did, and we are going to enjoy the hell out of however long this lasts.

In one of the two major throughlines of this week’s episode, we got basically four full segments related to MJF and Cole. In the gym, Cole calls out MJF’s fatphobia (which, in a retroactively interesting touch, MJF also demonstrated on Collision last Saturday) and MJF is (obviously falsely) chastened; then they unexpectedly bond over their shared derision for Tony Schiavone before Cole gets under the bench press and blows MJF’s mind with how strong he is. There’s so much just in this one vignette — if MJF comes off as disingenuous while being lectured, Cole comes off equally disingenuous while doing the lecturing, as though this is learned behavior, not the result of actual values. Cole also looks briefly shaken after making a joke at Schiavone’s expense, as though he’d forgotten he’d ever done or said things like that. And MJF was clearly prepared to exaggeratedly praise Cole’s strength on the bench press, but just as clearly is actually impressed, and slightly unnerved — you can see the exact moment he thinks to himself “Wow, I should probably pretend to be friends with this guy as long as humanly possible.”

But there’s also the scene backstage where Roderick Strong is starting to get a little concerned at what’s going on here; the Blind Eliminator tag match, where MJF gradually coaxes Cole into illegally assisting with an abdominal stretch, and where MJF plays the face in peril and makes the hot tag to Cole, who wins the match without ever tagging MJF back in, and the post-match birthday party celebration, where MJF (the heel, remember) laughs off the fact that Cole (the hero, you’ll recall) just shoved his face into some cake, and which ends with Cole, apparently sincere, thanking his “friend” for the party. It’s the best kind of manipulation when it comes to the idea of wrestler alignments, and it works because the audience has known Cole so well and for so long as a heel, and because they are desperate to be able to cheer for MJF. If there’s a good lesson to be learned from the other company’s Bloodline story, it’s that we love it when we have no idea where a complicated relationship is going next, and while it’s very likely that this one is going to the least interesting possible place (another match between Heel MJF and Babyface Cole) we are also going to lose our minds if they win their next tag team match with a double clothesline.