A few things you need to know first, presented via bulletin point to get us all to the action as quickly as possible
- Shark Week started on Sunday
- There was a one-hour program titled “Jackass Shark Week Special”
- How in the world it took us all the way until 2021 to combine Jackass and Shark Week — two of America’s greatest traditions — I’ll never understand
- There are new members of the crew, one named Jasper and one named, I swear this is true, Poopies
- Poopies got bit by a shark
Okay, now we provide the context. The structure of the Jackass Shark Week special went something like this: Johnny Knoxville, recording from a shark-free balcony in Los Angeles, sent the crew — Steve-O, Chris Pontius, Jasper, Poopies — videos from the internet of idiots screwing around with sharks. Just a bunch of the dumbest things you’ve ever seen anyone do in the presence of an apex predator, all openly courting disaster they somehow avoided. Then, a shark scientist who was with them said something like, “Yeah, this is a bad idea and no one should do it.” And then the guys would do exactly what they were warned not to do, but with extra flair. I think this, with no additional context, will sum things up nicely.
So there was that. And there were lots of other needlessly dangerous things happening for our enjoyment, like humans eating chum and puking, and Jasper sitting in the ocean in an inner tube with his whole butt hanging out the bottom as sharks circled him below, and Steve-O testing what other bodily fluids besides blood might lure sharks. It was lovely. It was basically a solid hour of dudes daring sharks to bite them and the dudes somehow emerging unscathed. Or, at least, mostly unscathed.
This brings us to Poopies, who has a real name (Sean McInerney), but whatever. Poopies was tasked with recreating the now-iconic “Jump the Shark” scene from Happy Days, in which Henry Winkler — as The Fonz — leaps over a shark while waterskiing and eventual inspires a pop culture phenomenon where the phrase comes to be shorthand for a show starting to get weird when it runs out of ideas. You know all of this. And it’s not really the point. The point is that Poopies was set up with a wakeboard and a ramp with a slew of riled-up sharks beneath it and strict instructions to not fall into the water after landing.
So… whoops.
This all resulted in a chaotic and completely predictable series of events, which can best be expressed by a series of four screencaps.
“Poopies got bit.” This sentence has been rattling around in my brain since I heard it last night. It’s really locked in there. There’s a real chance I’ll be on my deathbed many years from now and instead of some comforting words for my family or a profound reflection on society, I’ll just mumble “Poopies got bit” and flatline. There are worse legacies to leave behind.
Anyway, the good news here is that Poopies was only bitten on his hand and he didn’t lose any fingers and the crew was able to get him out of the water before the blood turned the sharks too bite-crazy. And Poopies, to his credit, took it about as in-stride as one can take getting bitten by a shark while recreating a scene starring The Fonz and being called “Poopies” dozens of times on a popular basic cable television special, saying, “I knew there was a chance I was gonna get bit by a shark, but I didn’t think it was gonna happen. I don’t blame the sharks at all. I mean, I was in their living room, and it was dinnertime.”
Well said, Poopies. Well said.