Will Celebrities Like Shaq, Gronk, Aaron Rodgers, And Lindsay Vonn Be Able To "Face Their Fears" On Shark Week?!
Last night the 30th Edition of Shark Week kicked off with all the bells and whistles and largely was more of the same as recent years. Bear Grylls started things off trying to bait the viewers into believing how extreme he is and be amazed at the dangerous scenarios he puts himself into. It just falls flat at this point however and makes me wonder why we’re still focusing on selling the “danger” of sharks as the only way to hook viewers into watching. Every year they try to sell how dangerous and vicious Sharks are and how the viewer needs to be concerned about the “crazy” stunt the person is about to pull, and every year they miraculously pull through. I wonder what the ratings would look like if we made a Shark Week show where I show how hard it is to get bitten by a shark and how 99.9% of the time they just want to go about their day without human interaction. Also, how much credibility would Bear Grylls have if he didn’t have a sweet, dramatic sounding British accent. That flip off the helicopter was hardo city if you are just an average sounding American dude.
(Hardoooooooooooo)
Why can’t Shark Week focus on the animals themselves instead of begging for relevance with celebrities “facing their fears”. For the casual viewer, they are used to seeing Shaq or other big time celebrities on TV nonstop all year, why pay all of that money to get them involved and then focus the whole show on these TV personalities do more of the same shit they do all the time? The beginning of the show had a lot of promise. Rob Riggle was funny and some of their skits were setting up for the perfect mix of humor and eventually an entertaining way to showcase the coolest animals on Earth on the biggest stage, but the wheels kind of came off the tracks as the show went on. It seemed to devolve into a tired repetition of coaxing Shaq to swim with a Nurse Shark while he acts terrified of standing in 3 feet of water while two scientists hold the thing in their arms like an infant. The viewer was being sold on caring about Sharks irrational fear of 3 foot Sharks rather than the show being centered around incredible creatures with a otherworldly senses.
Monday, July 23
8 p.m. — “Monster Tag”
Aaron Rodgers, Lindsey Vonn and Rob Gronkowski join forces with top shark scientists to learn crucial information about the ocean’s top predators.
This show is obviously Discovery’s fastball for the night and possibly for the week due to the celebrities involved. It has the potential to be much more than the Shaq show due to one simple reason, the premise is to show science and research methods used to study sharks rather than just asking “Will Gronk overcome his fears” 100 times. The University of Miami and Neil Hammerschlag always do it the right way and if they incorporate the celebrities into the science, it has a chance to be a home run. PackerNation holds its breath for Double A-Ron but R-E-L-A-X, I think he’ll be just fine.
9 p.m. — “Great White Abyss”
The deeper you dive the bigger the sharks? A team of experts go to Great White hotspot Guadalupe Island to look for the biggest sharks of their kind.
Giant Sharks play much better in real life than they do on TV, especially when we’re talking about the 10,000th iteration of Shark Week Great White shows. Its a tough paradox because they are by far the Heavyweight attraction in the shark world, but how can people realistically get excited when they’ve seen most of this stuff in some form or fashion every year.
10 p.m. — “Cuba’s Secret Shark Lair”
Two teams of researchers have finally been granted permission to delve into the mystery of Cuba’s gigantic sharks.
I’m ALL IN on this type of thing. Its amazing that Cuba is so close to us but we have had so little contact for 50 years. I would assume that most of the shit would be the same due to the proximity to the Florida Keys and similar climate, but different conservation methods over the past 50 years may result in different results as far as numbers and size of the sharks in the area. This is definitely something to stay up for tonight.