Now that the Discovery Channel has embedded Shark Week into popular culture so thoroughly that 30 Rock can make a punch line out of "Live every week like it's Shark Week," they're looking to do the same thing for Alaska Week, which is now in full swing.

Tonight's banner event is the 9:00 p.m. fifth-season premiere of Discovery's very popular Deadliest Catch, a documentary series about the dangerous life aboard fishing boats during Alaska's crab season.

But at 10:00 tonight, Discovery is also premiering a rejiggered version of The Alaska Experiment. The show first appeared last year, in a format that sent several teams to different locations to try and survive in the Alaskan wilderness.

This year, retitled Out Of The Wild: The Alaska Experiment, it hews more closely to reality-show conventions: A group of nine people are dropped in the wilderness, with minimal supplies, and tasked with hiking out as a group.

If you're drawn to the parts of Survivor that feature people trying to figure out how to catch fish and build shelter, but you don't like the parts where insurance guys and bartenders fight over who has more "integrity," you might really enjoy this show, where nobody gets voted out and you only leave if you quit.

It's kind of fascinating, in fact, to watch the way people start out thinking they will neatly execute the steps they learned in survival training and will build, say, a clever little rustic contraption to neatly ensnare a tasty dinner they will garnish with herbs of the forest. Because before long, it's more like, "Uh, we're going to try throwing rocks."

In short: Out of the Wild offers some rooting interest, some good old-fashioned schadenfreude, and plenty of opportunities to learn that when experienced people tell you something about how to keep your feet warm, you should believe them.