Watching Reality TV

I didn’t enjoy my television as much last night as I normally do on Tuesday nights.  “Deadliest Catch” was spot on, of course.  But then, it always is.  It’s so incredibly difficult to find any show with any sort of consistency in the world of reality TV and “Deadliest Catch” delivers week after week.  I have great affection for this show, as you may have noticed.  Last night saw the final hours of the opilio crab season, as the boats scrambled to snap up huge amounts of crab before going to the sorting facilities to offload their catch.  And snap up huge amounts they did!  Many pots full of 700+ crab were hauled on deck and that’s just amazing right there.  The deckhands were punch-drunk excited when they started calculating what sort of money they’re dealing with.  Ice threatened more than one boat.  It’s quite a gamble, going north to look for crab.  Getting stuck in the ice or losing pots under the ice or having the ice bust open the hull of the ship would be disastrous.  Luckily, it would appear our boats made it out just fine.  And next week?  The boats cash in and we find out just what kind of money they made this season.  And, we say goodbye.  Until next year, that is.  *sniff*

“On the Lot” was on last night as well.  We saw five more contestants films.  I’ve since confirmed that these are indeed their submission films.  And tonight, there was no one film that just jumped out and grabbed me.  Andrew’s “Polished” was pretty decent, as was Shira-Lee’s “Beeline”.  But those films had their faults and fell short of perfect or even “great” in my book.  However, there were some poor films this go around so I think Andrew and Shira-Lee are safe.  Kenny, dear Kenny, did a very serious if disorienting film about grief and alcoholism called “Edge on the End”.  I think he and Marty (who did another serious short called “Dance with the Devil”) are the ones at risk this week.  Marty has great style, but he’s insufferably egotistical and has yet to show any substance to his films.  And Kenny is all style and strange film angles and rough cuts.  Which is fine and good, but depending on what they’re looking for in this competition, I don’t think he stands a great chance.  By having the public vote for the winners, I would gather that they’re looking for a mainstream director and Kenny is anything BUT mainstream.

In other “On the Lot” news, our bottom two from last week are Trever and Hilary.  I would agree that Trever’s film last week was pretty poor, but so was Hilary’s.  And at least Trever’s 1 minute short was awesome, whereas Hilary’s was NOT.  So that makes her with two poor films and him with one and guess who went home?  Yep, it was Trever.  A big bummer, as far as I’m concerned.  I thought she was sure thing to be leaving last night.   Next week?  Five more films.  And then we move on.  I HOPE.