What the World is Watching

That 70’s Show

logo“That Wrestling Show”
Season 1 Episode 15
2/7/1999

As the Attitude Era continued growing in popularity and wrestlers were fast becoming household names once again, it wasn’t strange to see WWE or WCW guys make cameos on other TV shows. One of the better ones involved a few WWE wrestlers showing up on That 70’s Show as old school wrestlers. Most importantly, it had The Rock in his first-ever acting role. He was portraying his dad, Rocky Johnson, a former wrestler, so really there wasn’t a whole lot of acting involved. Still, it’s one of the better wrestling-themed TV episodes out there. Plus, it had Ken Shamrock and The Hardy Boyz in awful wigs.

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Garfield and Friends

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Hulu

“Canvas Back Cat”
Season 5 Episode 8
10/10/1992

In case you’re wondering if this cartoon still holds up after all these years, the answer is yes. Yes, it does. And the fact that there’s an episode that involves pro wrestling makes it all the better.

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Jackie Chan Adventures

jackie chan adventures logo“The Mask of El Toro Fuerte”
Season 1 Episode 3
9/23/2000
Due to the waning days of my adolescence, I was not hip to the action-packed cartoon series that was Jackie Chan Adventures. Given that most of the stunts Chan pulled off in his live-action movies were so damn awesome they blurred the lines of reality, real-life Jackie Chan was definitely better than the animated one anyway. I’d give the cartoon props for sticking to the unbelievable style of Chan’s martial arts, but then again, every action sequence/fighting scene in a cartoon already tends to stretch the limits of real world physics. I will give the creators props for attention to detail, like Chan’s broken English. Why else would this cartoon series be called Jackie Chan Adventures and not The Adventures of Jackie Chan? Early on in the first season of this series the creators introduced El Toro Fuerte, a character that I came to find out, after some clever sleuthing on IMDB.com, is actually a recurring character throughout the cartoon’s run. But seeing as I’m not going to review all ten-plus episodes that feature El Toro Fuerte, I figured I’d go with his aptly-titled debut episode.

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Ren & Stimpy

RenStimpyLogoMad Dog Höek
Season 2 Episode 5
11/21/1992

Like most of the episodes of Ren & Stimpy, there’s no context given or any kind of a backstory that sets up Ren and Stimpy finding themselves inside a wrestling ring opposite two large, roid-raging freaks. So let’s get right into it.

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Mama’s Family

MamasFamilyLogo“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.

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Mongo Wrestling Alliance

Mongo-Wrestling-Alliance-CharactersThe Entire Series
1/23/2011 – 7/31/2011

An animated send-up of all things pro wrestling. Mongo Wrestling Alliance enhances the stereotypes made famous by professional wrestling and inserts the tropes we’ve all come to know and love into the everyday personal lives of their characters. It’s wrestling nerds’ wet dream. Not so much for fans of comedy. Although far from a nightmare, it’s definitely along the lines of one of those abrupt jerking movements that startle you awake just as you’re knocking out.

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The Munsters

themunsterslogo“Herman the Great”
Season 1, Episode 9
11/12/1964

I haven’t seen a full episode of The Munsters since TBS used to air the reruns when I’d get home from kindergarten. Immediately the first thing that came to my mind as I was watching the intro was, why does Grandpa try to bite Lily in the opening credits? It’s his own daughter. And she’s a vampire too. I don’t know how this all works in the mythology of vampires, but that just seemed weird. And a bit on the creepy side. Even for a show about a family of monsters. Anyway, in this episode Herman Munster enters the wrestling ring to earn some extra cash and instead of cashing in on his Frankenstein gimmick, they decide to put a mask on him.

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Roseanne

Amazon Prime

“Roseanne-Feld”
Season 9, Episode 20
3/4/1997

At first, I didn’t get the title to this episode and wondered if it had to do with the wrestling storyline. It didn’t. Having watched it, I realized this episode was pretty much about nothing and then it hit me. This was basically a throwaway episode and apparently a dig at Seinfeld. Only problem is that as good as Roseanne was, their later seasons sucked and even with Seinfeld being a show about “nothing” there were way more great episodes than there were bad ones. I guess, what I’m really trying to say is, I wish there was more wrestling to this episode.

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Lucas Bros. Moving Co.

LucasBros
Hulu

The Entire Series
November 23, 2013 – Present

The Lucas Bros. Moving Co. is an animated show on Fox’s answer to Adult Swim: the ADHD programming block. And it’s pretty damn awesome. To sum up the show in three words: Twins. Stoners. Wrestling.

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Night Court

NightCourtLogo“The Battling Bailiff”
Season 2, Episode 17
2/7/1985

Night Court was a workplace sitcom set in a Manhattan court room during the night shift, which centered on Judge Harry T. Stone and his rag tag group of work buddies. During this particular episode, one of the bailiffs, Bull, a character who was pretty much based on Lenny from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, feels unfulfilled with his life, especially after being made fun of by his coworkers for writing poetry, seeing as they think of him as a one-dimensional guy. So, he decides to take up pro wrestling after meeting a promoter inside the courtroom.
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