Ozzy Osborne and Hulk Hogan have a few things in common: both have alliterative stage names, both were featured on an MTV Entertainment Group reality television production that followed their home lives, both had extramarital affairs exposed publicly, both have daughters with decent pop singles, and both were laid to rest in July of 2025.
I had never heard of Black Sabbath before watching MTV’s The Osborne’s, the 2002 reality series starring the first family of darkness. It was the pioneer of two interwoven genres: The Reality Docuseries and The Renewed Attention on Aging Famous Person Show.
I devoured the premiere episode. A bunch of Kazaa downloads and a physical copy of the official television soundtrack played on repeat. I liked this crazy music. For literal child me, previously only exposed to her father’s AC/DC collection, this was pretty heavy stuff. When Kelly Osborne released her own debut single, a cover of Madonna’s Papa Don’t Preach, I listed to it on my CD player on the school bus, blissfully unaware of its cynical existence as a promotional tie-in to the show.
In contrast, I knew of Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea long before his own family’s try at the spotlight, VH1’s Hogan Knows Best (2005). Years of watching WWF had me excited to see what The Hulkamaniac was all about. I hardly expected to be so endeared to the tallest of the brood, his daughter Brooke. When I tell you the absolute CHOKEHOLD the Paul Wall verse of her debut single About Us had on the youths. Suburbia has still not recovered from being introduced to grillz.
Each of these men mean different things to different people. For Ozzy, perhaps he’s best known to you as a bat biter; Hulk, the man that destroyed online media. I have equal parts nostalgia and disgust for the time in pop culture history in which their shows aired. A complicated opinion of the complicated families depicted. To be honest, I had a whole essay in my head comparing and contrasting these two shows and by extension the men at the center of them. The words don’t seem to be coming, though.
In the absence of the profound, I suppose I’ll leave their legacies to it. Cheers to the end of a few different eras, and may rest come easy for all the good fathers.
