Shark Week is upon us, the yearly, bloody, Tracy Jordan–endorsed programming block on Discovery that asks us to both love and fear our unfriendly neighbors of the sea. Shark Week’s lineup generally veers from shows about shark conservation to shows about how badly they’ll injure you if they’re lucky enough to get a hold of your leg: On the one hand, they’re glorious creatures who need our protection; on the other, they’re pretty happy to kill you and eat you whole. But no matter, so long as we can watch them swim and jump and rip into flesh safely from our couch, in a city, where there’s no chance of a tiger shark stealthily stalking us (or is there?). This year’s new Shark Week shows include Ultimate Air Jaws (they fly … and bite!), Into the Shark Bite (it hurts), and Shark Bite Beach (don’t go there), and last night we caught the premiere of Shark Attack Survival, probably the most useful hour of TV we’ve watched since Stacy and Clinton taught us about the perils of wide-legged pants on What Not to Wear.
In it, our fearless host, Terry Schappert, who is some sort of ex–Green Beret type, demonstrates all the ways to avoid getting eaten by a shark when you’re alone in tropical waters, bleeding, and surrounded by human-hungry monsters. First off, don’t panic. Well, that’s easy. Secondly, find something with which to bind your wound. Check! And lastly, grab some sort of weapon to fight off the sharks with. Okay, got that? Now you know how to survive a shark attack! Though we think we’ll take the slightly easier route, and stay on our couch, in the city, or at least bring along a partner on our next deep-sea-fishing expedition. Watch the clip below for more handy tips, and for the rest of the week, enjoy the carnage.
