Screenhead

The folks out at Animal Planet, via their press agent Gaiam, sent me a copy of Whale Wars Season 2 on DVD, and it’s definitely interesting to get a look at what the show on Animal Planet is all about.  And it’s also interesting to see how it stacks up against the parody of same as presented on South Park–interestingly, it does that job pretty well.  And though the show itself is entertaining, it’s often entertaining for the wrong reasons.

Whale Wars rejoins the Sea Shepherds, crew of the Steve Irwin (which actually proves darkly ironic given that the ship frequently dies over the course of the episodes, or rather, parts of it do) as they set out on their egomaniacal quest to get everyone to stop hunting for whales.  And lest you ask just what business this is of theirs, that’s why I said egomaniacal.  They’ve MADE it their business, you see.  And as such, they’re going to go out and “strike” at whaling vessels with stink bombs and harsh language.

Oh, and occasionally they’ll ram a boat too.

While the actual presentation of the show is pretty exciting–they’re out on the hunt, often in treacherous waters, in a boat that’s about three feet, metaphorically, from complete collapse. The hunt is exciting, the boat is rickety, anything could go wrong at any time!  But will it?  There’s the excitement!

And sometimes, they’ll get full-bore hypocritical as they declare their desire to defend the whales, then start complaining that they’re being attacked with sonic pulses, a “military-grade weapon” from their estimation, and state that their target is “getting aggressive”.

It never occurs to them that THEY ARE THE AGGRESSORS.

And that’s where things get disturbing.

If someone wanted to make a case that these guys are jumped-up terrorists who somehow got a television show on Animal Planet, well, they probably could pull it off.  I’m not saying that’s what they are, of course, but the case could be made. And yet, they’re riding around the ocean throwing stuff at Japanese whaling vessels doing who knows how much damage, and it’s right here on television.  Of course, the fact that they’re in international waters no doubt helps things, but still.

Legal issues that I know nearly nothing about because I’m not a lawyer aside, the end result is a product that’s actually pretty interesting, even if South Park landed a few good blows at its expense.  The Screenhead Ten Scale hands this morally ambiguous ball of excitement a seven out of ten for being good and possibly very wrong.

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