Professional wrestling, brought to you by pop culture and the make believe world of mass media.
Medium: Television
Title: Mama’s Family
Bio: The Masked Mabels were once the most dominant tag team in the women’s wrestling division. Despite their size and years of wrestling experience, they were easily defeated by a wrestling grannie on the biggest show in the history of Raytown.
Signature Move: Jobbing to an older lady who has never wrestled.
“Mama Mania”
Season 4, Episode 9
11/21/1987
While Mama’s Family will never make any top ten sitcom lists, or be revered for breaking any ground as a sitcom or, hell, for being an entertaining sitcom for that matter, it was still a sitcom I regularly watched as a kid. Which will tell you that I spent most of my childhood without cable TV. Upholding the long-standing tradition of working class/white trash family sitcoms, Mama’s Family also happened to have a wrestling episode that involved Harper matriarch, Thelma, and daughter-in-law Naomi competing inside the ring. The show also decided to go the much more realistic route of having their TV characters, that have never wrestled before, win their matches against seasoned pros. And yet, we still wonder why the WWE books celebrities the way they do.
