River monsters - American killers

First, a bit of a prequel. This blog was initially designed by me to post my reviews and opinions of the lectures on my RLG 213 course. By now, of course, this course is over, and I mostly forgot about my blog - but now I remembered about it, and decided to use it, because, hey, it's my blog - why it should be wasted? For now, I'm going to post my opinions of the 4th season of "River Monsters" series (one of my favorite), but later... who knows?

Anyways, my point for now that if anyone was reading this blog, considered it to be a "ghost" or whatever, and is now surprised to see it return from the dead with a whole new subject - sorry. Please feel to follow or to disregard it however you see fit. Now on with the review!

...Yesterday I was capable of watching the premier episode of the 4th season of "River Monsters" - "American killers" on Discovery Channel. In this episode, Jeremy Wade abandoned his usual haunts of Africa and South America for the closer to home North American waterways in search of NA's own river monsters - the bull shark and the giant (i.e. oversized) catfish.

So, what's my take on the premiere? As usual, Jeremy Wade delivers what he has promised in style, but the fish of this episode were...something else, and not in a good way.

First, the bull shark. This is one of my favorite fish; the way it faces-off with the hippopotamus in AFO is classic, and it is a shark, so it naturally gets some thrill points, but at this point in series? It has become a permanent fixture of RM. Season 1 - bull shark. Season 2 - bull shark. Season 3 - bull shark (freshwater sawfish episode). Now, season 4 - bull shark. Yes, the bull shark is a shark that can live in freshwater rivers and lakes as well as in salty seas and oceans, and it is a potential maneater, but... that's that, basically. For a show that shows all sorts of river monsters, from the arapaima to tigerfish to Japanese salamander, this may no longer be enough. Being a shark may no longer cut it as the biggest bad of the show. Example - the goliath grouper. That fish was amazing - as big as a person and probably much heavier... really just a maneuverable mouth. With such a piscine heavyweight in the water no wonder that JW had problems catching bull sharks that night: if a juvenile bull shark and a golith grouper came to a face off, the question of who would eat/attack who could go either way - not the odds predators enjoy!

More importantly, (at least for me), the goliath grouper stole the show from the bull shark: it appeared much more rarely than the bull shark on the show, and as such, it was a genuine surprise, while the bull shark... wasn't. In RM, where practically every episode features a new monster, for the bull shark to become a regular...may not be such a good idea. But that's just me, and even I was impressed to see JW catch yet another bull shark in with new fishing style.

Now, as for the catfish. JW loves catching catfish, starting from S1, with its giant Amazonian catfish and the equally massive Himalayan (Asian) goonch, so there's no surprise that he went after North America's flathead and blue catfishes. And yet... this part of the ep seemed to be something of a plug for another fishing show - Hillbilly Handfishing, and I'm just not sure how I feel about that: I'm generally not fond of plugs, but I may be wrong...

Oh, and one more thing. The original, Animal Planet release, apparently had an alligator gar segment as well. DC has cut it out - because it didn't fit into the alloted time frame, or because it's exclusive AP fragment, or something. Pity. Alligator gar (and its relatives) are amazing, though endangered, fish that could use as much good PR as they can get. But, on DC, they got passed over for the sake of more popular catfish - oh well, that's the way the cookie crumbles.

And so, 4th season of RM on DC begins on a mixed note, with good intermixed with... less good. Let's wait and see what the next episodes will bring.