Don’t like shark-y weather? Just wait a minute
At the dawn of television, snarky critics defined TV as “terrible vaudeville.” Six decades later, they’re still partly right. The key to vaudeville was its onslaught of variety. As the old saying went, if you don’t like something (or someone) on stage now, stick around 90 seconds and you’ll see somebody or something else.
Vaudeville comes to mind while watching “Sharknado: The 4th Awakens” (8 p.m., Sunday, SYFY, TV-14). As the title implies, it kicks off with an extended “Star Wars” gag. But like most of the bits in the movie, this ends up going nowhere, unless giving way to another pop culture sight gag is a destination in itself.
This installment of the spoof movie series takes place in the American heartland, far from shark-infested seas. But not far enough from Hollywood to jar us with the appearance of 1970s supermodel Cheryl Tiegs as a simple Kansas farmer who happens to be Fin Shepard’s (Ian Ziering) mother.
The action takes us to Las Vegas, a destination city that gets plenty of product placement before being laid waste by a sandstorm-based SharkNado, or SandNado. Not to give too much away, but one of the recurring gags here are the ever-shifting origins of these killer weather phenomena. Over the course of the twohour assault, we will experience a BoulderNado, FireNado, NukeNado and an OilNado, as mayhem follows Fin from Vegas to Buffalo by way of the Grand Canyon and Kansas. This curious trajectory allows for a gazillion cameos from the worlds of reality TV, shock rock, pro wrestling and YouTube celebrity. Familiar faces and hasbeens from old-fashioned “TV” shows are growing increasingly rare. That doesn’t stop David Faustino (“Married With Children”) from showing up early as a degenerate gambler. Paul Schaffer makes a cameo, and David Hasselhoff resumes his role as Gil Shepard, dragging a few “Baywatch” references along. Stacey Dash, credited here as actress and “pundit,” makes a brief appearance as the mayor of Chicago, in a storyline that simply withers away. Carrot Top crashes the scene as a chatty Uber driver. He’s also among the first to die.
You could probably watch this a dozen times and not register or “get” all of the references. At one point, April (Tara Reid) appears in a ridiculously contrived nod to the cover of Action Comics No. 1, the very first Superman comic book, before quickly giving way to a shark-festation of Salt Lake City’s comic convention and moving on to other absurd, fish-way-out-of-water sight gags.
DEATH JUMP?
They don’t make, or promote, live-TV daredevil events the way they used to. “Heaven Sent” (8 p.m., tonight, Fox) presents skydiver and precision flier Luke Aikins as he attempts to jump from an airplane at 25,000 feet — with neither parachute nor wingsuit, nothing but the clothes on his back — and land safely on earth.
Just why this death-defying moment is consigned to a Saturday night on the last weekend of July is anybody’s guess. Evel Knievel would have expected a higher profile.
GRIM WORK
“Boston EMS” (10 p.m., tonight, ABC) returns for a second season. The documentary series rides along with members of the Boston Emergency Medical Services. These same first responders rushed to the injured after the Boston Marathon bombing three years back.
In the season opener, the EMS paramedics rush to attend to a stabbing victim in a crowded park. Once there, they begin to worry that his baggy outfit might hide an explosive device and that he may have been rigged as a “human bomb.” A grim day’s work, complete with a “ticking clock” storytelling device essential to thrillers both real and scripted.
ABC also has been attracting a true-crime audience with “20/20: In an Instant” (9 p.m., tonight, repeat). Tonight’s story recalls a gunman who held a hospital maternity ward hostage.
Contact Kevin McDonough at kevin.tvguy@gmail.com.