Nothin’ but phony TV drama and pseudo life-threatening commercial cliff-hangers. A soap-opera on the Bering Sea.
It looks like they have edited out anything from Sig and Edgar’s boat, since old Ed got busted for kiddle-diddle. They went the way of soap-opera long ago anyway. Daughter on the boat, son-in-law hijinks. Who cares?
The latest was when Keith starts a fight with his brother for the TV cameras and ends up firing him, the same day he unloads a huge butt-load of sea spiders for a butt-ton of money. Come on. :rolleyes: I’ve thought for years that Keith and his pet circus animal Freddy were the biggest assholes afloat. The last episode reinforced that delusion.
How is this crap still on, and why do I keep watching it. And why did I start a thread about it?
Another choice would be ‘The Jersey Shore’ or all them ‘Kardashian’ chicks. Personally, I prefer to watch some old movie first. Hate that reality shit.
Or, hey, let’s watch the Bigfoot hunters, riveting TeeVee!
The ongoing popularity of the absolute garbage known as “reality TV” pretty much illustrates the sad state of American society. It also explains the sad state of the government in Washington.
The first couple of seasons were entertaining. I’m generally down on “reality” television, but Deadliest Catch was a guilty pleasure. But it’s definitely became less of a pleasure and I felt more guilty as time went on until I finally gave up. It seems to be a recurrent theme that with success these shows all become more scripted for faux drama and what started out as a kinda interesting quasi-documentary approach becomes a soap opera.
The first few seasons were good because it introduced a bit of education about crab fishing. The people involved, while not entirely secondary, were not the sole focus of the show. The drama came from full pot or empty pot, which was novel and enjoyable, but not all that repeatable as entertainment. The show also benefitted from the first season being the last season of derby fishing, so the contrast between that and quotas was also worth watching.
We used to watch it all the time. Frankly, I’m surprised it’s still a thing.
Like others, I enjoyed the first ~3-ish seasons, but the repetition became boring, and the faux-commercial cliffhangers were just too manipulative. I don’t like being insulted like that.
Yeah, Edgar seemed like the only guy on the show who wasn’t a complete ass. He seems to have been completely edited out. Northwestern wasn’t shown at all last episode, but appears in the preview for next week, but no Edgar! And he’s the engineer and deck-boss! If there is another season, I’ll bet the boat is dropped.
What an idiot! Piss away all that free TV money. Thinkin’ with the wrong head, Ed.
They should have ended the show when Phil Harris died. I finally quit watching when they started devoting so much of each episode to that little misogynistic s***-weasel (Elliot Neese?).
Had no idea about Edgar…geez, talk about a slap on the wrist. :mad: I’m guessing those fines are a drop in the bucket for him.
Never did get into Deadliest Catch, but always enjoyed Gold Rush. At least the first few years. Now, as you say, it’s all about the fake feuds and the fake “quotas” they set for themselves.
I used to eagerly watch every season. It got obviously scripted a couple years ago. This year was so over the top that I finally gave up.
I haven’t been watching Deadliest Catch regularly this season. I did see the episode with Monty and the new relief captain. He was an old guy pulled out of retirement. Keith supposedly was out for the season with a bad disc in his back.
Next time I watched, Monty was there and the relief captain was gone? Was he introduced as some scripted bs for the cameras?
I was sick with the flu one weekend and came across a marathon of the first season. I ended up watching the whole thing. I love learning about stuff that is totally alien to me. It was amazing to me that people would put themselves in such a situation, not sleeping for days and handling dangerous equipment in the middle of a raging sea. The drama of the guy falling overboard was heart stopping. That’s probably one of the most intense things I’ve ever seen.
Going to quota fishing definitely made the following seasons less exciting so they had to go more for the scripted drama. But I continued to watch until Phil died. He seemed like a really good guy and was always entertaining, even when dealing with his punkass kids.
I only watched the first few seasons too. Not too surprised Phil Harris died young since his diet seemed to be mostly coffee and cigarettes. He looked much older than he was.
The deadliest catch ran into a problem when the government went to a quota system instead of a derby race. The race aspect was what made crab fishing especially deadly - people working on pitching, icy decks full of heavy equipment moving around in terrible conditions while not having slept for 30 hours. Or people continuing to fish in horrible weather or with serious mechanical issues that should have sent them back to port.
Once the quota system came in, the danger level went down somewhat (although the short season still forces risk taking) and so they resorted to scripted drama to keep people watching.
I can’t count the number of good reality shows destroyed by scripted drama. I guess that’s what the majority of the audience wants. That’s why most of my ‘reality’ viewing is on youtube now. If I want to see a master swordmaker create a samurai sword from scratch using traditional techniques, I don’t want to also sit through some concocted story about how his son wants to take over the business or some cockamamie deadline to amp up the drama. Just show me the guy making something amazing. That’s good enough.
I got sick of Keith’s verbal and physical abuse a while back and only watched when I happened to catch it on or there wasn’t anything else. But with the Edgar mess, I’m done for good.
And why did I start a thread about it?