Life After Shark Week.

*tears*

It’s official. Shark Week has been over for about a week now. If you currently resemble Robert Downey Jr. in Less Than Zero, I’m sorry to inform that you are experiencing some major Shark Week withdrawl. It happens to the best of us-how can you just go from a week of seals being bit in half to reruns of That 70’s show? You cant- at least not cold turkey. For the true Shark Week addict I present a few suggestions to curb your shark cravings until next summer.

1) Watch Jaws

I’d wager every host and expert on shark week would say that the reason they’re willing to risk their limbs to stick their fingers up a shark’s butt (in the name of science, of course) is because they saw Jaws when they were a kid. It’s completely obvious when you look at the members of the research teams which one wanted to be Captain Quint when he grew up and which wanted to be Hooper. Now, you may be wondering: who would want to be nerdy rich boy Hooper when you could be the grizzly badass Quint? A valid question if you never read the book in which Hooper totally fingerbangs Brody’s wife. So there’s that…Moving on.

"Yeah, I totally did."

Sharks probably could have stood on their own as some of the coolest creatures out there-mythical or otherwise-without any help from Stephen Spielberg. Hell, so could have dinosaurs. However, before Jurassic Park came out, I never asked Santa Claus for a fossil hunter’s pickaxe. Similarly, the first shark week promo of the season wouldn’t make me cream my swimsuit if I had never seen Jaws.

So why not watch it while waiting for Shark Week 2012/the next season of Deadliest Catch(does Discovery have other shows?)? I mean, if Jaws was a person, it’s excrement would still be better than the reenactments on Shark Week programming (if you’ve never seen it, it IS that great a movie). As an added bonus, not one person in the cast speaks like they’re imitating Steve Irwin. Maybe next year we should all just watch a week-long Jaws Marathon, pausing only to catch Air Jaws on Discovery and Dinoshark on Syfy.

2) Go swimming.

2011 Shark Week made me realize something that I hope the rest of you noticed. All the time and millions of dollars that go into these shark expeditions, research, and metallic cage building are intended to increase the human understanding of sharks so we can, you know, not get eaten by them. This is a splendid use of our satellite technology and we here at ihogeek fully approve of not becoming shark-breakfast. However, this is NOT what the researchers on Shark Week are accomplishing. In fact, I would argue that these shows and efforts are only teaching sharks to prey on humans, something that most experts swear they don’t generally do because apparently we taste like sweaty gym socks.

One show in particular, Jaws Comes Home (at least I think it was, they all run together after a while–excluding Air Jaws, of course) seemed passionately devoted to training sharks to gobble up the human race. Their lesson plan included filling a wet suit with fish

This could be you!

guts and other shark-scooby snacks and tossing it in the water to get a shark to bite it…does anyone else see the problem here? Our only defense against these killing machines was that we tasted like shit to them! Why would you even suggest to them that we come in fish flavor? We are doomed.

So, what should you do to get your shark fix now that the best block of television is a whole year away? Go swim in the ocean! According to Shark Week, the chance that a shark will attack you has increased leaps and bounds since last year– gee, I wonder why? So play your cards right and you could end up on your own Shark Week special aptly titled “Humans: the New Chicken of the Sea.”

Now, if you don’t live by the coast, the only thing I can recommend is to go paddle around in a stream or something. Maybe you’ll end up on River Monsters.

3) Find a low-carb-shark substitute.

Unless you have an obsession with all things nautical and fishy, the reason you probably like sharks is because they’re giant killing machines with basically no peers on land or sea. However, recently some less terrifying animals have upped their deadly-to-humans-game. Luckily for the rest of us, multiple TV shows surrounding these semi-threatening creatures have popped up during the cultural void that is the other 51 weeks out of the year. For example, if you’d still want to be discouraged from water related activities, check out Swamp People, Hillbilly Handfishing, and of course River Monsters (Deadliest Catch wasn’t forgotten, but you should already be watching that). If you’re willing to expand your horizons beyond murky sludge water, look into Hogs Gone Wild, I Shouldn’t Be Alive, and My Cat From Hell (I’ve never actually seen MCfH, but it sounds entertaining). None of these shows will replace Shark Week in your heart, but they’ll at least numb you through the long wait until next summer.

4)…Or you could just move on with your life.

As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t think much about Shark Week during the fall, and by spring it’s almost entirely forgotten. Let’s face it; a large chunk of Shark Weeks viewership is based on people seeking to appear hip or unique in their facebook statuses. Few truly understand or respect the noble sport that is watching Air Jaws EVERY SINGLE TIME IT AIRS. But hey, I’m guilty too: I only get excited about Shark Week when I see the first promo of the summer. For fun, let’s for a second imagine that this isn’t a bad thing. It can’t be proven that we’d get tired of shark related programming because only one week a year is devoted to their awesomeness. Personally, I don’t want to know what my own shark-limit is, so why keep shooting up until I overdose?

Even if with time Shark Week fades to the deep archive of my facebook, every year it comes back with a vengeance as one of the best bits about summer. Be honest, is there a greater feeling than turning on the television and realizing “Oh shit, its Shark Week?” No, there really isn’t. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, so maybe we should all go back to our previously scheduled television routine and let next Shark Week swim up and bite us on the ass when it may.

Plus, next year you can look foward to this.