#it's been a WHILE since i've published a samijey rant

[samijey]

Corey Graves with the foreshadowing of all time in this old episode of Smackdown (February 19th, 2021)

Let's talk about this episode, shall we? Because the Sami & Jey dynamic is really interesting in retrospect

Let's talk about how this episode accidentally focuses on the samijey dynamic way before it became "a thing" - remember these were HEEL Jey and Sami - they were both at their lowest points, with Jey at his most volatile and aggressive (still reeling from his defeats against Roman) and Sami being an annoying, paranoid mess (this was shortly before the whole Johnny Knoxville thing).

At the start of the show, Sami interrupts a segment between Edge and Roman (the "real" top feud going on in SD at that time, if you'll remember - oof pandemic era) and immediately starts rambling, which Roman ignores, Edge laughs at and Jey just watches looking equal parts confused and curious:

man literally got the 🤔 going on

that was until Sami got the camera crew involved and started yelling into the microphone, at which point Jey lost patience and superkicked him - look at his face when he turns around to look at the camera guys he's soooo annoyed

classic samijey angst shot before it was a thing i'm just sayin'

Sami rolls to the outside after the superkick so Edge and Roman can resume their thing - and what does Jey keep doing during the rest of the segment? stare at Sami on the outside, of course

he just keeps doing it for no apparent reason

even while they're all making their exit, Jey's in the back of the shot staring at Sami, who's still down (lol at his little head popping up in the right corner of the frame)

cut to the main event tag match of heels Sami, Jey & Corbin vs babyfaces Daniel, KO and Cesaro. Immediately as Jey makes his entrance he and Sami start bickering

that's when you have that great line from Corey Graves about sparks flying (talk about foreshadowing lmao)

also let's talk about how Sami gets in Jey's face but Jey doesn't look phased by it and looks weirdly relaxed as he responds with "I got you"

they go on to bicker during the match, of course

but to also be the only two people to work together (we even pause the match at one point to have a classic "angry" tag spot between them)

and to put a cherry on top, they are also the only 2 to save the other from getting pinned

it's fun to see that even over a year before Sami famously approached Roman to officially kickstart the Sami in the Bloodline story arc, these two were already gravitating towards each other on a random episode of Smackdown 🤧��� it makes for really funny (unintentional) foreshadowing