The sharks are back
The smells are familiar as the fish keep flying in Sharknado: The 4th Awakens
The “gate” is open for Sharknado: The 4th Awakens.
You know how virtually every scandal automatically has the suffix “gate” attached to it? It dates back, of course, to the Watergate scandal of the 1970s.
Adding “gate” obviously doesn’t make any literal sense, but language is a fluid thing, and I don’t judge. When people hear “gate,” they know it means “scandal,” so in that sense, the suffix does its job.
I realize this doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, which debuts Sunday, July 31, across Canada on Space (and on Syfy in the United States). But I got thinking about “gate” because of the Sharknado franchise’s liberal use of “nado.”
Not to give away any of the intricate plot twists in Sharknado: The
4th Awakens — that was sarcasm, albeit good-natured sarcasm — but “nado” gets attached to just about everything, and appropriately so.
Think of something, anything, add “nado” to it, and it could be part of this. Fire? Firenado. Lightning ? Lightningnado. Cows? Cownado. You get the idea.
But Sharknado: The 4th Awakens sure burns through a lot of story ideas, and story locations, far more frantically than the first three editions. The creators might have wanted to hang on to a few of those, if Sharknado is to continue its unofficial role as a summertime TV tradition.
As you’ll recall, Sharknado burst onto the scene back in 2013, and it was one of the first big occasions when the success of something on TV primarily was built by advance word of mouth on social media.
Each instalment of Sharknado has starred Ian Ziering as Fin Shepard and Tara Reid as April Wexler-Shepard. April’s survival was in question at the end of
Sharknado 3, but fans got to vote on whether she lived or died, with predictable results.
David Hasselhoff is back playing Fin’s dad, Gil. Notable additions for Sharknado: The 4th Awakens are none other than Gary Busey, who plays April’s father Wilford, and former supermodel Cheryl Tiegs, who plays Fin’s mother Raye. The main cast also includes Ryan Newman as Claudia and Masiela Lusha as Gemini. Despite the comedic material — storms are spewing out sharks, after all — everyone plays their ridiculous roles with straight faces.
All the Sharknado movies have featured more celebrity cameos than you possibly could count. There never were many A-listers, to be blunt, but there still are a good number of B-, Cand D-listers crawling out of the woodwork.
Some of the faces you’ll recognize in Sharknado: The 4th Awakens belong to Carrot Top, Wayne Newton, Paul Shaffer, Robert Herjavec, Steve Guttenberg, Vince Neil and Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman.
You can watch the Sharknado movies with a cynical eye and merely conclude that everything is stupid — and you wouldn’t be wrong. Or, as always, you can just shrug and go with it.
I’ve been able to go with it, for the most part, but we’re up to the fourth movie here, and what’s old isn’t quite new again, if you know what I mean. Sharknado: The 4th Awakens begins five years after Sharknado 3 ended. There hasn’t been a sharknado in those five years, thanks to an innovative weather stabilization system engineered by Aston Reynolds, played by Tommy Davidson.
But sharknados are sneaky buggers. They can develop from a combination of elements that you might never consider. Literally within 10 minutes, the sharks are flying again. A lot of back-story is jammed into those first few scenes. But this never has been about intricacies. Someone has to fight those damn sharks, and Ziering’s Fin, as always, is the reluctant hero.
Reid recently walked out of a testy radio interview with Jenny McCarthy, who quipped sarcastically, “Love you, Tara. Good luck with Sharknado 18.” Insults aside, I can’t imagine
Sharknado will make it to 18. Can it?
Hey, who knew we’d still be adding “gate” to everything more than four decades after Richard Nixon was forced to resign? For now, ‘Nado Nation lives, and “nado” is the new “gate.” Good lord, I’m speaking in code.