As I’m sure you all know, last night marked the beginning of Shark Week on Discovery — a solid seven days of ocean-based terror and excitement. This year, Discovery tapped Andy Samberg of “Saturday Night Live” and The Lonely Island as host, which I think is a pretty cool idea. Hopefully he’ll be able to add a little levity to the proceedings, because HOLY CRAP YOU GUYS this clip gave me like a zillion panic attacks. In it, some shark scientist* paddleboards in shallow water with a great white swimming below him. On purpose. From EW:

“He relies on his expertise, 20 years of working with [great] white sharks, and was extremely confident about it — he knew the sharks wouldn’t knock him off the board. That’s what I was hoping for, ” Kurr jokes. “We did some serious last-minute training on that paddleboard to make that scene come off. But it was with a point, it wasn’t to be a stunt. It was for him to again show that the white sharks are not these crazy killing machines that are gonna attack everything. People are paddleboarding with them all the time and they don’t even know it. We saw that from helicopters looking down along the coastline. Just fly over the beach in Malibu any July day and look down, and you’re gonna see white sharks with the people. People are happily paddleboarding and white sharks are going right under their boards. If white sharks wanted to come in close to shore and kill us all, they could do it very easily because they’re there, and they’re there in increasing numbers. But they don’t.

Oh, ok then. There are tons of sharks swimming underneath us in the ocean that could murder the crap out of us anytime they want, but they totally don’t. Except when they do. Got it. I hate it when people do this. “Sharks don’t mean to kill humans. Sometimes they just mistake surfboards and paddleboards for seals. That’s why they attack.” Oh, that makes me feel better. My life is in the fins of a giant dinosaur with razor-sharp teeth who is too stupid to tell the difference between its favorite food and a piece of fiberglass. That would be like choosing to work as an assistant for a knife-thrower who routinely eats wax fruit by mistake. No thank you to all of that, sir or madam.

Video and bonus TV pitch after the jump.

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Uh oh, somebody ate at Taco Bell.

Discovery Channel is teaming up with the Catholic Church to create a reality show about exorcisms. With real exorcists. It’ll be kind of like “Ghost Hunters,” but approved by the Vatican. It’s always nice to get the official Catholic Church stamp of the approval, a pleasure that gays and abortion clinics will never know.

The Exorcist Files will recreate stories of real-life hauntings and demonic possession, based on cases investigated by the Catholic Church. The project includes access into the Vatican’s case files, as well as interviews with the organization’s top exorcists — religious experts who are rarely seen on television.

“The Vatican is an extraordinarily hard place to get access to, but we explained we’re not going to try to tell people what to think,” says Discovery president and GM Clark Bunting. [Inside TV]

Yeah, don’t try to tell people what to think, television! That’s religion’s job!

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Prepare to have your delicate sensibilities offended, because what you see on the Discovery Channel’s “Cash Cab” is NOT THE WAY IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS. Online reports about “Cash Cab’s” lack of veracity have circulated for a couple years, but the A.V. Club does a nice job of summing up the findings:

Riders are generally found or screened at a bar or on the street. People who are gregarious, funny, and sometimes half in the bag get told they’ve made it on a non-specified reality show and that a cab will be coming to take them to the shoot. A cab pulls up, and, surprise, it’s the Cash Cab! This might explain why so many improv-comedy types are on the show… Other revelations: The cash is fake (Winners are mailed a check) and there’s some leeway in the red light challenge.

I don’t know about you, but I was shocked — SHOCKED, I SAY — to learn that something on television was presented in a false light. Must every cherished totem be dashed at our feet? What’s next? Rigged voting in reality competitions? Actors on reality shows? Make-up on news anchors? My stars, I’m getting the vapors!

James Lee, the extreme environmentalist who took hostages at the Discovery Networks headquarters before being shot to death yesterday, had previously pitched a reality show to Discovery that the cable channel rejected. Titled “Race to Save the Earth,” the show would be a competition in which — and I quote — “contestants would come from all over to compete with each other and come up with ideas to save the planet.” That’s as specific as he got with the premise. He didn’t list any kind of challenges or action of any sort.

In 2008, following his protest outside Discovery, Lee even enlisted the help of others to make his reality show a reality, offering “about $200,000 worth of commercial real estate property in Hawaii plus $10,000 in cash for the best TV show idea to save the planet.” His guidelines:

“The title of your TV show should be very catchy … Think of titles like ‘American Idol,’ ‘The Apprentice,’ and other shows that are obviously good and memorable because of their catchy, well-thought out, titles. Then think of the titles that are obviously bad and try to avoid making your show title sound like those,” Lee wrote. [MSNBC]

Man, he had a real gift for teaching, didn’t he? “It should be good like other good titles, and not bad like bad titles.” “Think of some bad titles, and then throw those out.” You know, I’m not sure if anyone has said this about the lunatic who took hostages in an attempt to implement unrealistic changes to a cable network, but I’m beginning to think he might not have been the smartest guy.

Here’s amateur footage of the 2008 protest where Discovery hostage-taker James Lee threw money into a crowd, a stunt for which he was soon arrested and later sentenced to probation.

You know, Lee’s getting some really bad press just because he’s threatening to shoot people and/or blow them up. But someone should play devil’s advocate here. He hands out free money. He cares about the environment. He dislikes all the same TLC shows I do. Hell, most of the people at Discovery got the day off because of him. And the handful of hostages who didn’t will probably get the rest of the week off. Assuming they aren’t, you know, killed by the anti-procreation madman blaming cable TV networks for the decline of the planet. I’m not defending him, I’m just sayin’: no one’s ever handed me free money before.

[via The Daily What]

UPDATE, 5:05 p.m.: A police spokesman has confirmed that police have shot James Lee. His condition is unknown.