I Love Television

Note to network executives: Here’s a suggestion if you’d like to
continue your career in the television industry. If you debut a new
TV show entitled Shark Tank, then it might be a good
idea IF YOU HAD AT LEAST ONE MOTHERLOVIN’ SHARK IN THE GOD-BLINKIN’
SHOW!!! (Note to readers: As I write this, it is currently 105 degrees
outside, which has caused my internal organs to liquefy and run out of
my bottom hole, soaking my chair and floor with effluvia. So I’m a bit
peeved today.)

When I originally learned a show entitled Shark Tank was
debuting this week (ABC, Sun Aug 9, 9 pm), my initial response was to
literally explode with delight, shooting up, up, up into the
air, carving a brilliant rainbow in the sky, before eventually
disintegrating into a billion tiny gumdrops and falling into the mouths
of the most adorable orphans in the world. HOWEVER! My explosion of
joy quickly turned into a poot of RAGE when I learned that on a
scale of 1 to 10 of actual sharks in the show, there were exactly ZERO
FREAKING SHARKS!

WHAT… THE… FAAAAAAWWWWKKK?!? Now, I may just be a lowly TV
columnist standing in a puddle of liquefied intestines, but even
I know that calling a show Shark Tank and failing to
supply any sharks is tantamount to naming a show Hey, Guys! It’s
Megan Fox’s Vagina! and bypassing the vagina!

What’s Shark Tank actually about? OH, I’LL TELL YOU! It’s a
reality competition in which wannabe inventors/entrepreneurs beg a jury
of self-made millionaires for money to get their fledgling businesses
off the ground—aaaaand THAT’S IT. Does the show take place in a
shark tank? NO. Are any of the self-made millionaires actually
sharks in disguise? NO. There’s not even a whiff of a shark within
50 billion miles of this show, but I will tell you what Shark
Tank does have, and that’s DICKS.

I watched a preview of Shark Tank, and here’s a
representative scene: An inventor stands in front of the millionaire
jury and might say something like, “Hey, I just invented a cure for
neck cancer.” The millionaires will invariably roll their eyes, scoff,
tell an incredibly boring story about how they suffered to become so
stinking rich, and then offer the inventor $500 and a packet of
ketchup for the idea IF they can own 87 percent of the business and
all future profits. Umm… that’s not a shark tank—that’s a DICK
TANK!

So what we’ve got here is a show whose very premise is to exploit
the ignorant, celebrate greed, make the millionaires even MORE
millions, destroy the self-esteem of the contestants, and… what else?
I know I’m forgetting something… oh, yeah. IT DOESN’T HAVE A SINGLE
FREAKING SHARK IN IT!

Now if the scenario were more like the inventor curing neck cancer
and the millionaire who tried to rip him off being catapulted 90 feet
through the air and into the thrashing jaws of a tank full of
actual sharks? Well, okay. Then the adorable orphans of the world
could eat my gumdrops (that is, as soon as I figure out how to
unliquefy my spleen).