After a 14-year hiatus, the animated adolescents Beavis and Butt-Head returned to MTV in style Oct. 27, drawing in 3.3 million viewers. The duo can’t mock MTV’s music videos these days (as the network no longer airs any), but the network’s bevy of reality shows actually may fit Beavis and Butt-Head’s shallow ethos even better. “The two kids, stunted, self-centered and amoral, were a satirical exaggeration of American instant-gratification taken to its logical extreme,” writes Time’s television critic James Poniewozik, explaining the show’s original appeal. “Whether they were annoying their old-school neighbor…disappointing their hippie teacher or generally abusing each other, they represented—on pop culture’s most prominent outlet—a brutally funny takedown of pop culture and the dumb, lazy egocentrism it catered to. The sugar rush of empty-calorie consumer society, it told us, makes Cornholios of us all.” (Time)