Watching Reality TV

Oh Tuesday night, you wonderful thing you.  Once again, we start off with “Deadliest Catch”, right in the heart of opilio crab season.  With it?  Some nasty, nasty waves.  And super cold freezing temperatures.  You know what those two elements add up to?  ICE.  Everywhere.  The boats are getting covered with it and the crew must knock off the ice every spare moment they have.  Which, if you’ve been paying attention, they don’t have a lot of.  The highlights from this episode include the fate of the Time Bandit.  If you recall, they were laid up before with a crab pot line tangled in one of the propellers.  So while Andy Hilstrand dons scuba gear to go down and perform some repairs, the law catches up with one of the deckhands.  Apparently he missed a court date or some such and got hauled off to jail.  After some chuckling and joking about letting him cool his heels there for a while, the captain and crew go collect money from an ATM to post bail for the guy and get him back fishing as soon as possible.  Meanwhile, the Northwestern is having tremendous luck.  Good weather and tons of crab.  According to Edgar, they are breaking previous records for the most crab caught in such a short amount of time.  The good fortune allows for some teaching moments with their greenhorn (The same one who thought it might be funny prank Edgar.  It wasn’t.).  He wanted to try throwing the hook so they let him.  However, each time he missed he had to lose a piece of clothing.  Which, in the super cold freezing temperatures is pretty tough to take.  But the greenhorn stuck to his guns and earned some valuable respect while he was at it.  He hopes to earn a jacket bearing the Northwestern’s colors, but he hasn’t gotten it yet.  Mostly because he then started whining about how much his hands hurt.  Bad move, as Edgar recommends to Sig that they try some “old school” fishing with the greenhorn.  They make him hand coil the line, clear the pots of clingers by hand, transfer the hundreds of pound of crab to the hold by hand… basically?  Showed him how good he does have it and that maybe he should stop the whining.  I think he learned that lesson pretty well.  The opilio crab season is winding down and the boats are going to be returning to the processing facilities to get counted up soon.  Then we’ll see who came out on top!

We enjoyed another episode of “On the Lot” last night.  Well, maybe “enjoyed” is too strong a word.   But it wasn’t bad.  We’ve been cut back to one episode a week and last night we only got to see five of the filmmakers films.  Luckily, they were mostly pretty good.  Hilary bombed yet again, however.  And Trever (who impressed me so last week with his golf film) didn’t do so hot with his blind date comedy, “Teri”.  The best was easily Sam’s “Broken Pipe Dreams”, about a guy who has issues with a toilet and then proceeds to accidentally flush an engagement ring down the drain.  He ultimately wins out over the toilet and finds redemption.  It was very imaginative and fun to watch.  Our guest judge last night was Michael Bay who has directed many a summer blockbuster.  I found he was a tough nut to crack as he seemed to find something wrong with every film, except for Shalini’s “Laughing Out Loud: A comedic journey” which he said “gave me a chill.”

My best judgement is that next week we’ll see one of these five be eliminated (I’m thinking it’ll be Hilary) and also see the next five films.  Okay, whatever works right?  I just wish they’d figure out how they’re going to do this show already and stick to it.  I’m starting to feel rather confused over here.