"Deadliest Catch": Reality TV's first on-screen death

Salon.com ^ | Tuesday, Jul 13, 2010 09:01 ET | Matt Zoller Seitz

[Bratch]

"I'm not gonna be here for very much longer," said Phil Harris, the hard-living captain of the crab fishing vessel Corneila Marie in a recent episode of Discovery Channel's unscripted series "Deadliest Catch." "That's a fact. I smoke and I drink. I've done every drug known to man. I mean, hell -- it catches up to you."

It caught up to Capt. Phil in January, when he suffered a stroke not long after the above statement was recorded. The show's producers were thrown into a quandary. "Deadliest Catch" is known for its commitment to reality -- in the documentary sense of the word, as opposed to the corrupt facsimile associated with the so-called "reality TV," a genre consisting mainly of glorified game shows and deranged sociological experiments. But catastrophe and suffering are innately cinematic. Even a sensitive documentarian might look at the "Deadliest Catch" camera crew's post-stroke footage and think, "This is a motherlode," then set about repackaging pain as entertainment. The task was daunting: In a genre that has captured endless humiliation, violence and other human suffering, here was reality TV's first death.

Remarkably, "Deadliest Catch" handles the captain's passing, which culminates in tonight's finale (9 p.m. on Discovery), with intelligence and taste. During this season, with the consent of Harris' family, the cameras kept rolling as the Coast Guard flew the captain to a hospital. They caught his sons (and fellow boatmates) Josh and Jake fretting over whether to cut the fishing season short or sail on. They showed doctors trying to relieve pressure on his brain by removing a piece of his skull, and his family and crewmates coping in the aftermath. At no point did the series succumb to dumb voyeurism.

[Minn]

I worked in the Bering Sea (fish, not crab) in the late 80s. Drugs were known to be a big problem back then.

Can't imagine the slippery cold deck of a fishing vessel and a nose full of coke would go well together.

[Bob]

Great photo!

Thanks. I really thought that was one of my better shots of the night.

I was the webmaster for that bar so I took a whole bunch of pictures that night. Everyone who was there wanted a picture of themselves taken with Captain Phil. He accommodated them all and extended the stop far longer than had originally been planned. (Unfortunately, I completely forgot to have someone take a picture of me with him.)

He really came across as a genuine, down-to-earth guy. There was no pretentiousness about him.

[DWar]

Flawed, indomitable, human;
Godspeed, Captain.

[ransomnote]

Well - we were kind of talking about the captains and they don’t slide around on the deck too much. Some boat captains who were known to drift into traffic while not answering their radios for extended periods of time or say, for dragging a stabilizer arm down the side of a huge processing vessel that was sounding a collision alarm were, coincidentally, those with a reputation for ‘partying’. When the large processing ship was unavailable for a period of time, the smaller ‘party boat’ would sail into the donut hole (a politically contested, roughly circular area in the fishing grounds where no fishing was permitted) or off to the side of heavy traffic areas and set it’s drift lights and then even the crew got to ‘have fun’. Of course it’s extremely dangerous as even a good day in the Bering is a bad day.
It was considered a sign that one had been ‘out too long’. By that I mean that one had spent too many extended periods of time out on the water and spent too much time around those with established drug habits. Alcohol didn’t have the same reputation, for the most part. I am sure the intention always starts out to be that drugs were to be a recreation and not used during work but those ideas sometimes get lost in addiction.
Notice that Jake was not performing well on the deck as his addiction set in - I imagine deck crewmen with drug habits are more likely to become fired, injured, or go over the side than those w/o the problem. Some perhaps use drugs to try to stay awake or keep working 24 hour shifts. SOme people live their lives on the water to forget or avoid personal problems on land only to be snared by a drug habit.