And the mindless Shark Week programming keeps on coming! The other night on Discovery Channel’s Shark After Dark, which I guess is like Talking Dead but for Shark Week, Sharknado star Tara Reid joined host Josh Wolf and co-star Ian Ziering to teach us literally nothing about sharks. Seriously, I know less about sharks now than I did ten minutes ago.
Now, bless Tara Reid’s heart, I don’t fault her for trying her darnedest to share with us what she was able to google about sharks half an hour before arriving on set. But that’s not exactly Tara Reid’s job, is it? It’s the Discovery Channel’s job — so why do they think need a sit-down talk show as part of their Shark Week programming?
Talking Dead works because it taps into a fannish desire to dissect and interpret a fictional narrative with others — applying that same principle to sharks is ridiculous. Sharks are sharks. Can we just watch the sharks? If we seriously wanted to think about Tara Reid in relation to totally made-up sharks then we would watch Sharknado again.
Then again, this is also the channel that does bring us fictional narratives now, and both that and Shark Week After Dark together pulled in a record number of ratings for Discovery Channel. So whatever. Do what you want. I don’t care anymore.
(via Uproxxx, image via Sharknado)
- Maybe that shark on the NY subway killed itself from grief
- I am so over Shark Week already, you guys
- Even the awesomeness of the actual extinct Megalodon can’t get me excited anymore
