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I’m a fan of the McMahon family and their involvement in the TV storylines, but I must admit that their extended absence has been a good thing for RAW and SmackDown.

Sometimes, too much of them on TV is simply too much and their prescence becomes about as welcome as commercial collection agencies at a Debtors Anonymous meeting.

That’s why I hope they don’t rush Vince back to his on-camera roll. The shows are more fun and less predictable now, and I’d like to see WWE run with this concept for a while longer.

Who knows? Maybe when they finally bring Vince back, they’ll even find a way to make his character fresh and unpredictable.

After a five year absence from a WWE ring, D’Lo Brown finally returned to Monday Night Raw last week. Hold your enthusiasm, please. I know, I know, it’s not like The Rock has come back, nor even Chyna…. D’Lo Brown, at his best, was a slightly-above-average midlist wrestler.

But hey, he looked clean, fresh and energetic in a feel-good return match against Santino Marella and maybe he’ll even have a chance to get a bit of a push this time ’round. You never know, stranger things have happened… like Stephanie McMahon wearing religious jewelry.

While Batista winning the Fatal Four-Way main event on Raw to become the number one contender and set up a Punk vs. Batista main event at Great American Bash was a refreshing change of pace, the single weirdest booking moment came after the match, when Kane, among the losers of the Fatal Four-Way, put on a fairly good act of going apeshit, beating up ringside officials and the announce crew to express his disappointment.

I swear, he’d have hit Mae Young with a pella pan if he’d had the opportunity. It was an odd moment.

Odd because it seems to be the centerpiece toward setting Kane up to be a main eventer once again, which frankly doesn’t do a whole lot for me. Kane’s been main-event pushed for well over a decade now, and to be honest, he hasn’t had much mystique since he stopped wearing the mask. Although a faithful and yeomanlike worker, his star just hasn’t shone very brightly … not for quite a while.

Considering that most of Raw was a beginner’s primer, set up to welcome new viewers to the show, rolling out Kane as a monster main eventer in this way is out-of-place with the show’s new direction and certainly won’t help anyone who may have watched 10 years ago feel like much has changed in WWE since the last time they watched regularly.

This week’s RAW got me to thinking about John Cena’s antics and how they measure up to those commited by Stone Cold Steve Austin in his prime. Watching Raw from a new TV wall mount, I was amused by Cena abusing JBL’s stretch limo, with a little help from Crime Tyme, and for a moment flashed back to some of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s trash-a-limo antics in his fued with Vince McMahon.

It’s an easy and obvious comparison, but is it apt? The more I thought about it, the more I realized how much WWE has pulled back from the over-the-top, nearly NC-17 antics that were the hallmark of the WWE Attitude era.

See, when Stone Cold struck out at Vince McMahon’s limo, he left nothing to doubt and no thought uncensored. If he spray-painted anything on McMahon’s limo, it would likely say something like, “Austin 3:16″ or “Kiss My Ass” and then he’d flip off Vinnie Mac and the entire audience while cracking open some brewskis. It was on the surface quite similar, but in execution, much edgier.

Compare that to Cena’s destruction of JBL’s limo. The biggest insult Cena spray-painted? “JBL is poopy!”

Welcome to “Everyone Poops!” your host if John Cena, boys and girls. WWE has arrived safely back on TV-14 territory. Hopefully that will mean more viewers.

As new proof of the roster remix making both Raw and Smackdown must-see TV again, one need look no further than last week’s Smackdown and this week’s Raw. With both world titles around the waist of Smackdown wrestlers after the WWE Draft, it came as a pleasant surprise when C.M. Punk showed up on Smackdown to win out of nowhere and take the World Heavyweight Championship off of Edge and bring it over to Raw, while Triple H stays on Smackdown with the WWE Title.

It’s especially poetic because, both times Edge won the strap as a Money In the Bank winner, he won it in ambush fashion, just as Punk did to him. And to prove it was no trick of indoor lighting, Punk showed up on Raw with the world title around his waist and ready to take on all comers.

The result is that sometthing really important and can’t-miss happened last week on Smackdown, which makes the show essential viewing once again; and the other result is that Raw has a new title, a new champ, and a whole new set of rivalries and fueds to work with.

What could be better, for ratings, in the long term? I mean, what more could they do, give away a million dollars per episode? That’d never happen! Ha!

Last year, MVP was diagnosed with a potentially-fatal heart condition that was unearthed in testing conducted via the WWE Wellness Program. MVP credits that test with saving his life and says the condition has been corrected and he is back to 100-percent health.

Although MVP is hoping to land a spot or two in upcoming WWE Films movies, he’s not looking to pull a Dwayne Johnson and leave WWE for films any time soon. “WWE is my passion, so leaving the WWE to become a full-time actor, that’s not something I’m looking at right now,” MVP said in a press release.

Sure is good to see MVP praising WWE for catching a heart condition rather than the program catching a WWE superstar perusing a list of best diet pills.

It was like looking at the first version of WWE SmackDown on PS2 instead of PS3; it’s been that long since Triple H has been on the SmackDown roster and on Friday when he made his appearance on the show, it became obvious immediately why WWE chose to move Triple H over to the Friday show.

Simply put: it’s a move to save SmackDown as an entity, as it moves from CW to MyNetworkTV at the end of the summer. SmackDown has become a morose show over the past couple years, becoming a breeding ground for two potential breakout stars in MVP and Mr. Kennedy, but all too often filled with second- and third-tier talent.

That’s where this Triple H move comes in; he immediately adds watchable talent to the SmackDown broadcast and helps lead the rebalancing of the brands. Seeing Triple H opposite MVP, even if it was just for an in-ring interview, was something no one’s seen yet; certainly that has to appeal to Triple H, now the mentor of the entire SmackDown roster, far more than staying on Raw another year and reworking the same old feuds again and again and again.