3. HHH Becoming A Nuisance In Semi-Retirement
For a guy who is supposedly not wrestling anymore, HHH sure takes care to ensure that he never looks bad, ever. Just this past year he's inserted himself into the hottest thing that the company had to offer (Daniel Bryan's push up the card), stood toe-to-toe with Brock Lesnar and beat him at the biggest show of the year, booked himself into a main event feud with Big Show for some reason, and made sure that everyone knows that he's running the show on TV and on the website. You know what Vince McMahon understood when he was on TV every week and HHH apparently doesn't? Vince is the owner and controls everything that happens, and he doesn't need to save face. Vince would go out there and act like an ass to everyone, and then when the time came for the babyfaces to get their revenge, they would beat the ever-loving crap out of him and frequently humiliate him. Vince took a stinkface from Rikishi to pay off the Kiss My Ass club, got his head shaved against Donald Trump, took the beating of a lifetime from Shawn Michaels at Wrestlemania, and even wet his own pants on national TV when confronted by Steve Austin. And yet he understood that he could always get his heat back and people would still fear him. Vince was the boss who everyone hated and could live out their fantasies vicariously against. HHH can't even be TOUCHED, even though it's been made readily apparent that he can defend himself just fine. Even worse, Stephanie is portrayed as a strong woman who everyone fears and respects and this is reinforced OVER AND OVER, but the first time someone lays a hand on her we are expected to react like this is a heinous act. Fans are never going to see comeuppance against the heels, and that's not escapism, it's art imitating life. We don't want to see the same corporate fatcats on TV, never learning their lesson and always escaping unscathed, that we already are forced to deal with in everyday life.