ABC's Shark Tank bears the primary hallmark of unreliable unscripted entertainment: the name of Mark Burnett. Burnett has been producing Survivor since 2000, which is widely assumed to give him a sort of instant credibility (in this context, I'm saying — credibility in this context).

But the rest of his history only underscores the absolute slot-machine-pull that is the experience of watching a Burnett show. Some of his shows are fun, like Survivor itself. Some of them, like The Apprentice, are fun for one season and then dull and horrible after that. Some of them are very popular in spite of having no detectable merit: Think Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?, a show that almost wrote its own dismissive jokes.

Many of his shows, however, have been unmemorable flops. Remember On The Lot? Of course not. The Restaurant? The Casino? (At one point, Burnett seemed intent on creating a series of establishment-based reality shows; I kept waiting for The Laundromat, The Bank, and perhaps The Mostly Deserted Bookstore.)

We consider the placement of Shark Tank in the Burnett oeuvre, and discuss turkey basters, after the jump...

 

Most notoriously, Burnett was behind the remarkable story of Pirate Master, a summer 2007 show attempting to capitalize on the pirate mania you may fondly (or not-fondly) remember. The show was so terrible and so incoherent and so enthusiastically shunned by the public that it didn't complete its network run. That's right: They just stopped showing a reality-TV competition right in the middle, before anybody won. They just put the rest of the episodes up online.

That is bad. Even Married By America aired all its episodes.

Shark Tank is a bit of a change of pace for Burnett, who's had success primarily with competition shows. (Survivor and The Apprentice are essentially the same show, if you assume that Donald Trump produces enough spiteful capriciousness for 16 people.) This show is more like American Inventor, which ABC aired for a couple of years — and which was produced by the other behemoth of American reality television in the current climate, Simon Cowell (and friends).

American Inventor didn't last, but now there is Shark Tank. Basically, Shark Tank involves several judgmental, self-satisfied rich people with businesses of their own who decide whether to make a deal with some upstart in search of investors.

The funniest one I've seen involved a couple of guys who had started a business as college kids that they called "College Hunks Hauling Junk." They were looking to expand by creating a new company called "College Foxes Moving Boxes." That's right: You would now be able to have your possessions moved by attractive people of either gender! What could be a safer job for your college-age daughter? That one was fun to watch, primarily because it required a tense showdown involving heavy use of the terms "hunks" and "foxes."

At any rate: On last night's show, one guy wanted money to make an educational product to teach kids about state capitals. (He didn't get it). One lady wanted money to market her children's book aimed at kids with anxiety disorders. (She got it.) One lady wanted to reinvent the turkey baster, but didn't know how much it would cost or how many she might sell or how you might manufacture it or anything like that. (She got further than you might think.)

And then there's the fellow in the clip above.

He's come up with a very interesting idea that he is sure will make him giant amount of money. So far, however, he has not made any money. In fact, says he: "We are cash-flow negative."

He nevertheless values his cash-flow-negative company, for the purposes of making an investment in it, at $10 million. I must admit: What happens after that is fairly entertaining.