In the Beginning
Back during the first decade or so of Shark Week, the documentaries featured dedicated shark biologists engaging in genuine shark research. We still have some of that today, but we also have an increasing collection of mildly charming, TV-ready, dorks who constantly shout into their respirators, and who may or may not actually be scientists. Additionally, when true scientists do appear they are too often forced to contend with absurd questions, written by TV producers with business degrees, and mouthed at them by an ever-changing gaggle of C-level celebrities, who know about as much about sharks as an average house cat knows about the Apollo space program.
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| (One of the Many Sharks Who Are Fed Up with Shark Week) |
The Celebrities
The celebrity personalities featured in The Real Sharknado are Ian Ziering and Tara Reid, stars of that shit-geyser, Sharknado. Ziering is billed as “Shark Protagonist,” while Tara Reid is given the moniker “Sharknado Survivor.”
In its search for maximum ad dollars, the Discovery Channel has, evidently, bought itself a trowel and used it to scrape the bottom of the celebrity barrel. I mean the very bottommost bottom; that part of the bottom from which it is impossible to detect more bottom.
The Scientist
A voiceover narrator tells us that Ian and Tara are going to “risk it all to unravel the relationship between sharks, movies, and weather.” They are guided on their quest by Tristan Guttridge, a legitimate shark biologist who specializes in their cognition and group behavior.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Guttridge described his reaction when the producers asked him to participate in the program: “I was like, ‘Uhh, I don’t know. I mean, ‘Sharknado’ is obviously just insane… I would like to think that most people that watch it would not believe that this is how sharks act, but you never quite know with people these days.”
This was pretty much the reaction one would hope for from a scientist. Especially the part about never quite knowing about people these days. Human beings have an endless capacity for lapping up nonsense, a trait that is on glaring display everywhere right now.
In the Post interview, Guttridge went on to say that he was eventually sold on the project after being told that he would be able to collect actual scientific data about how sharks behave during inclement weather. Unfortunately, those bits take up perhaps 40 seconds of the hour-long broadcast.
Maybe additional observations of sharks in stormy seas happened off camera? If so, the television audience was deprived of the few interesting facts about sharks they might have been offered that evening. And presenting interesting facts about sharks would seem to be the bare minimum one might demand from a show airing during something called Shark Week.
The Dialogue
Giving Guttridge the benefit of the doubt, let’s go ahead and assume that he was coached about what to say when the cameras rolled. I mention this because in no rational dimension would a biologist claim that he had brought Ian and Tara to the Bahamas to “point out the discrepancies” between real sharks and the sharks in Sharknado, and that he also hoped to dispel any lingering Hollywood notions that sharks might, in reality, fly around in waterspouts and eat people.
The SCUBA Bunny
Early on, Tara Reid asks Guttridge how the tiger shark got its name; a perfectly reasonable question if you’ve never seen one and don’t know that they have stripes similar to those of a tiger. Before Guttridge can answer however, Tara wonders aloud if it could be because a tiger had sex with a shark.
I shit you not.
And I don’t think she was kidding. Guttridge didn’t appear to think so either, judging by the way his face assumed the stunned, goggle-eyed rictus one usually associates with getting surprised in the dark by something moist.
Even the most basic understanding of natural processes ought to have enlightened Tara that a tiger and a shark making the beast with two backs (yeah, I said it) simply would not and cannot possibly happen. How the hell did she survive into her fourth or fifth decade on earth without, I don’t know, slouching into an early grave after suffering a series of gory bobby-pin mishaps?
Somewhat later in the program, Guttridge and Ziering are down in the water as a storm approaches, and the sharks begin to act “skittish.” At this point, for some unfathomable reason, the producers thought it wise to cut to Tara Reid up on the boat, where she is – yes – busily applying mascara. She looks at the camera and says something along the lines of “I’m sure they are fine. I mean, what am I going to do, jump in the water?” And then she giggles.
You sort of get the feeling that Ms. Reid wasn’t acting when she played Bunny Lebowski.
The Banter
Heading into the first commercial break, Ian Ziering asks the camera “Is there any truth to the Sharknado films? I guess that remains to be seen.” My suspicion is that this bewildering comment was somehow intended to provide a moment of drama that would entice viewers to return after the 750 years of commercials the Discovery Channel routinely inflicts on its audience. It is also one of the numerous references to that goddamn Sharknado movie. Another example: When Guttridge points out an approaching tiger shark, Ziering responds, “Yeah, she has a look in her eye like she definitely saw Sharknado!”
Reid and Ziering banter with one another throughout the show. Reid’s commentary generally revolves around not wanting to be eaten by sharks, while Ziering focuses mainly on his feelings about being in the water with sharks. He also tosses thinly veiled barbs at Reid, suggesting that her ineptitude is going to turn her into human chum.
Ziering, for his part, seems to enjoy farting around with the sharks, but never seems completely enthusiastic about the project. He maintains an I’m-only-in-it-for-the-money attitude throughout, which feels at times a little bit hypocritical, especially when he is insulting Tara, who is also there for the sole purpose of picking up a paycheck. And the fact that he doesn’t know the first thing about sharks, apart from the idea that there are fish in the ocean and some of them are called “sharks,” doesn’t seem to bother Guttridge, Reid, or anyone else.
Sharknado
I suppose I ought to say at least a couple of words about the movie Sharknado. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a massive weather event that inundates Los Angeles with water. Add to this a waterspout packed to the…um…gills with ravenous sharks of every species, and you have the makings of a 90 minute time-suck from which you might never recover.
Look, I get it. Sharknado found an audience (including a handful of people who, I am reliably informed, can both read and write). It must have been successful, seeing as it spawned five sequels, but it has absolutely nothing to recommend it. After I watched the thing I asked my cat if she would please shoot me in the head. She declined, but only because I wouldn’t let her do it slowly, over time, with lawn darts.
The Nifty Little Boat
There is, as it happens, one really cool thing in The Real Sharknado. They have this very slick, two-person kayak made entirely of clear Lexan. Tara and Ian paddle around in it for a while, watching a group of Caribbean reef sharks. I have no problem admitting that I lusted after the little vessel.
They christened the kayak the “Shark Jumping Bait Boat,” which I didn’t understand right off (I might’ve been a little high). But then it was revealed that they had suspended some rope between PVC tubing at either end of the kayak, and then strung four fish from its length. For some reason, the producers were still worried about disabusing the world’s imbeciles of those stray notions they might have plucked from Sharknado, vis-à-vis the possibility that gangs of toothy fish might hurtle from the water and bite off their appendages.
The whole thing was quite ridiculous, but I wouldn’t mind
at all having one of those nifty kayaks.
And Then Finally…
It was over. Oh, they spent a few minutes trying to see if tiger sharks will eat bananas. Turns out they will, but it doesn’t prove much. Tiger sharks are commonly referred to as the “garbage cans of the ocean,” because they will eat anything (one was found with an expensive mink coat in its stomach).
By the time the credits rolled I’d slipped into a funk. I had just devoted an hour to completely pointless television. Yes, I know, there are many hundreds of programs out there that are completely pointless, but this one was even more completely pointless than most because it pretended to provide valid information.
In the end The Real Sharknado accomplished three things. 1.) It proved that mediocre celebrities will do just about anything for money. 2.) It did women a disservice by presenting Tara Reid as a tittering dimwit, when she could just as easily have been presented as a serious person with serious intentions. 3.) It made shark research look silly and unworthy of our interest or admiration.
Now that I think
about it, “unworthy of our interest or admiration” nicely sums up today’s Shark Week telecasts.
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