Deadliest Catch Up

In which we discuss the Discovery series about Alaskan King Crab fisherman, “Deadliest Catch.”

Last night’s episode couldn’t hold up to last week’s, as evidenced by the fact they recapped the rescue from last week for the first ten minutes of the show. But that’s okay—seeing that man they plucked out of the waters lose it and start hugging the skipper was powerful television. And the good fishing afterwards was heart-warming enough to make you almost question the possibility of good karma.

The season is winding down, obviously, which means it’s almost certain that Captain Blake is going to end up near the bottom of the catch rankings, which is great, because that dude is a dick. Every time he gets that smarmy look on his face and cracks a joke to his crew it makes me cringe, especially when it’s so obvious from their responses that they don’t respect him. Maybe every captain goes through that in his early years, but I sort of doubt it.

What I’d like to see next year is more talk about how the pots have to be reset to catch the migration of the crabs. They showed one graphic early in the season that implied how the whole crab hunt happens, but then hardly mentioned it again, leaving viewers to infer from the comments of the captains. I want to see a bunch of deep sea camera crews in the water filming this “biomass” of crabs shuffling across the ocean floor. I wouldn’t mind hearing more about how the business side of things work as well; it was clear from yesterday’s episode that there are some real jerks working on the docks.