Stock up on Ramen Noodle soup. Cancel all of your plans. Skip work. Don’t leave your couch. It’s here: Shark Week 2014.
Shark Week, the popular summer television event on the Discovery Channel, began as a series of purely educational filler programming, airing in mid-summer when we’d all rather be outside anyway. Now, it is a widespread media phenomenon complete celebrity endorsements and hoax promotions. Shark Week 2013 was watched by more than 53 million people.
As the legend has it, Shark Week began when someone scribbled the idea on a cocktail napkin at a bar in 1987. That’s where all great ideas come from, right? On July 17, 1988, the series premiered with a special titled Caged in Fear, about the dangerous job of climbing into a cage and plunging into the sea to visit with the ocean’s most vicious creatures.
A decade earlier, Jaws had taught pop culture audiences that sharks were pure evil. The reputation stuck, and so did our fascination. Twenty-seven years later, Discovery’s Shark Week is the longest running television event in history.
Discovery declared Shark Week the “King of Summer” in this year’s ridiculous promo, which features actor Rob Lowe waterskiing on the backs of two sharks, while a mermaid clings to his leg and other sharks and sea life fly through the air around him. It is set to the epic track “2808” by UK dubstep artist Nero. Discovery is clearly taking some queues in tone and humor from its sister phenomenon, SyFy’s Sharknado – making sharks ridiculous since 2013. Sharknado 2: The Second One premiered on July 30. Coincidence? I think not.
