Great White Appetite, Wednesday, 9:00pm - 10:00pm

Great White Appetite premiered last night and was hosted by none other than Mario Van Peebles, star of Solo and director of New Jack City amongst other things. Mario Van Peebles was and is a BAADASSSSS. After dishing out whoop ass in front of, and behind the screen, it's natural that investigating Great White Sharks would be the next step for Mario Van Peebles.

In Great White Appetite, Mario Van Peebles plays the roll of ex-Marine Recon soldier Charles Ingram and he's out to use his knowledge and balls of steel he learned in Marine Recon and Underwater Combat to help learn more about the eating habits of Great White sharks. Sign me up, I'm going all on with Mario Van Peebles.

The program starts out with "Ingram" (Van Peebles) standing in on a Zodiac, full wet suit, in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Gaudelupe Island. Immediately, and seemingly unprovoked and chumless, a Great White bites the fucking Zodiac and "Ingram" (Van Peebles) is forced to jump on the main boat. Pretty cool.

"Ingram's" first task is feeding a large female Great White tuna until she is too full to eat anymore. After 466 pounds of tuna, accounting for 25% of body weight, the Great White is full and swims it's fat ass away. That's more tuna than my buddy The Lowe ate during our entire freshman fall semester at the University of Florida (The Lowe kept kosher. Miss you The Lowe).

"Ingram" then traveled to False Bay/Seal Island/South Africa to tug seal decoy's along and see if the Great White's polaris breached to attack the larger or smaller decoy (the smaller, ultimately a little disappointing). In between trips back to Guadelupe in Mexico and Neptune Island in South Australia for Great White biopsy samples, "Ingram" returned to False Bay with a test of dangling three baited food options for the Great White's: tuna, squid, or kelp. Kelp being just fucking sea weed. What is the Great White most interested in? The fucking kelp. Out of all things. Way to sell out your awesomeness shark. This angers me. Maybe Mario Van Peebles found the pussiest Great White in all of the oceans. Mario Van Peebles explains the hypothesis that because the kelp was moving, the Great White is most attracted to movement. Way to save face Mario ("Ingram").

Our final destination in Great White Appetite is back to Guadelupe. What "Ingram" has in store for us is something we've yet to see on Shark Week: a clear plexi-glass shark cage (much like the predator shield Discovery Channel/Animal Planet staple Dave Salmoni uses). In all seriousness, this cage was pretty fucking sweet. Aside from the corners where it's connected, you can barely tell that it's there. They want to see how the Great White responds. They hang a baited tuna near the cage, and "Ingram" (Mario Van Peebles) swims in the cage to simulate movement. The Great White goes after the tuna and not Mario Van Peebles. To prove the Great White was not spooked by the cage, they put the baited tuna in the cage and remove "Ingram". The Great White rams the cage to get the tuna, nearly splitting. I'm officially amazed.

Mario Van Peebles did an excellent job. This was definitely a solid program. Might have been a Tiger Shark without Mario Van Peebles. However, our ultimate ruling.

Anticipated Rating: Bull Shark
Actual Rating: Bull Shark