What the World is Watching

Quantum Leap

QuantumLeapLogo“Heart of a Champion – July 23, 1955”
Season 3 Episode 20
5/8/1991

Watching the opening title credits for Quantum Leap made me nostalgic for 80’s and 90’s cheesy TV opening credit sequences. I’m sure I’m not the only one who pines for the days of edited footage from previous episodes with terrible music and actors turning at the right time just as their name is displayed across the screen. Why else would WWE.com decide to reimagine Raw as a 90’s sitcom? Other than that bit of nostalgia, I don’t know much about Quantum Leap other than it used to be on after Monday Night Raw back in the day. Having watched this particular episode I kind of want to binge on the entire series courtesy of Hulu Plus. Then again, I’m sure the other episodes cannot compete with Scott Bakula time traveling to 1950s professional wrestling as a kayfabe Russian heel.

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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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What the World is Watching

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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What the World is Watching

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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What the World is Watching

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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What the World is Watching

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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