Planet Earth, Episodes 9 and 10

Shallow Seas:
We explore the shallow regions of the sea. Whales are given a brief spotlight. After establishing a mother and calf whale as characters, the show skips quickly on. Perhaps it is aware that enough whale-centric media already exists. We are shown a whole mess of urchins and starfish. Apparently they have their own very slow system of predation and prey. Very novel to me and interesting. Coral reefs are shown off, in their bewildering variety. We make a small pit-stop to mourn the destruction of the reefs. The polyps and algae are praised for their cooperation and credited with supporting all of the life there. We move on to spawning squids who are eaten by majestic giant sting rays. The camera tracks further out to reveal smaller sharks and then the climax: the great white shark. As with the whales, the time spent on the great white is mercifully short. We move on to seals hunting penguins. Even when being slaughtered, the penguins are always hilarious. The episode ends with a return to the mama/babby whale. Episode animal mascots: few cute animals actually. I'm going to give the title to the parrotfish and of course the whale.

Seasonal Forests:
The show tips its anglo-centric hand a bit by assuming a bit more familiarity with seasonal forests on the viewer's behalf and digging a bit deeper. The show is accidentally profound for a moment when talking about the wolverine. David tells us the indigenous people believe the wolverines to be spiritual creatures and to be a mix between a wolf and a bear. In fact, we are jocularly told, they are a "giant weasel." I feel some pretentious point could be made here about the mystery of religion vs the reality of science and the sniping between them. Anyway, we move on to unusual bird displays and thankfulness that these animals are too remote to have contact with humans. We see pine martens hunting squirrels and lounging adorably. Newly-hatched and goofy owls dangle upside-down by one claw. A cicada hatching provides a lot of purple narration about their zombie-like single-mindedness (though how their instinct is different from that of, say, a newly hatched sea turtle, is unclear.) and the feast provided to almost every other animal in the forest. We see the odd sight of a squirrel hunting a cicada. We drift to the redwoods, briefly touch on the 1000s-of-years-old trees that were ancient "when christ was born" and the episode ends. Episode animal mascots: the kodkod (which is a sort of mini-cat,) and those cute martens.