10 Things We Don't Miss About WWE's Attitude Era
2. Risible Comedy
The Attitude Era was wrestling's funniest, undoubtedly. The Rock was a catchphrase machine, Kurt Angle's deluded babyface shtick was 24-carat gold, and Steve Austin was a riot even in casual conversation, often decreeing that the "big a**es" of various WWF superstars belonged to him.
But for every time he and Angle would serenade Vince McMahon with the help of an acoustic guitar and some cowboy hats, Davey Boy Smith would get Rock Bottomed on dog sh*t. The puerility if the era hasn't disappeared entirely - we're not too far removed from Natalya's gassy gimmick, after all - but if we have PG to thank for one thing, it's that WWE can no longer dress Pat Patterson up in women's clothing to cruelly poke fun at his sexual orientation.
Mercifully, some of the most abhorrent ideas never made it to TV proper - Beaver Cleavage was a character who'd be offered 'mother's milk' in his cereal. As his buxom mother offered a more natural substitute, Cleavage turned to the camera and wiggled his eyebrows at the hilarious innuendo. That was the extent of the joke.
It's not that incest can't be funny, necessarily - as Trey Parker once said, either everything should be okay to laugh at, or nothing should - but only a caveman would have found those vignettes amusing.