I actually started thinking about this for a good reason. Well, somewhat good. I have this thing, when I get really attached to something (as in fall head over heels in love/ borderline obsession), I almost always take a step back and ask myself why. Why, Cait, did you get so involved in this one song, or that TV show? All four of those TV shows? If you've been following the blog (thanks, btw), I've mentioned a few times how much I love Deadliest Catch on the Discovery channel, and it's the most recent instance of me sitting back and really thinking about why I got so involved with this show about a handful of men crab fishing.
After a considerable amount of thought, it finally dawned on me while I was IMing a friend of mine about some random topic. Probably her cat that looks like Hitler. The answer was very simple, and very straightforward. Of all the rubbish that's on TV, selling one thing or scripted "reality" shows that for some odd reason still surprises people to find out it's fake (The Hills, anyone? saw that coming a mile away!), this one show feels honest. I would say it is honest, but that's not really something I can prove or disprove conclusively. My gut tells me it's honest, and I relish that feeling of seeing these people, on good days and on the worst days, go through the mechanics of what are their typical lives, and not question the veracity of what they say. Sure, you know there's hijinks going on, and the guys are usually pretty up front about it. Hell, a show with that many sets of brothers, you know there's stuff going down, and occasional elaborations of the truth, and lots and lots of pissing matches. Isn't that the nature of brothers? Sure it is!
I just started watching season 5 on DVD (series 5 for my English pals) to get all my ducks in a row, as I've caught most of it but out of order. If you don't watch, lots of stuff happened. Lots of big damage to ships, tons of money spent paying for repairs, some really bad storms, a couple really nasty accidents, the sinking of one boat with several deaths , and one guy discovering the loss of a sibling back home while he was at sea. It's intense. By the end of the first episode I was choked up, and within two episodes I was sobbing my little heart out. If there's one thing to know about me, it's that I never cry during movies, or during TV shows, with LOST pretty much being the grand exception, and only in the last two seasons, as well as Harry Potter. I allowed myself to be immersed in those fantastic worlds and actually felt for completely made-up people. I cried for a house-elf, for goodness' sake!
But I cry during DC. I cry a lot, because of the hurt and the pain those guys endure in every was imaginable, and they just soldier on because they have to. And truthfully, I don't know if I could suck it up like they do and carry on. Thinking back to high school and the student losses we suffered, I was a wreck my junior year. A car accident killed two students, one of whom was a girl from my own circle of girlfriends. It tore me to pieces, and really messed me up for a long time. I'm still getting back to liking the winter holiday season again, because the accident was at the beginning of December, and for a few years I wanted nothing to do with it. I still hate how early decorations come out in retail establishments (Christmas stuff out on Halloween when I worked at Macy's, ri-effing-diculous), and most winters I go through a rough patch of depression. I'm fine with admitting it, it doesn't make me a lesser or weaker person to say it, and every year gets easier and a little bit better.
But suddenly being in a place of 'I can relate to you, random guy on this show,' really made me appreciate how they do what they do, year in and year out. Are they hurting? Of course. but do they keep on keepin' on, get their work done, and then take the time to hurt and sort it out? I would think so. I wish I had been able to see this show 10 years ago this December, because it most likely could have made me see things a lot easier. It happened, and there's a time to deal with it, but it's not right now. That's the truth of it. Looking back on it, I was hard to handle. No one really knew how to talk to me about it and I didn't have the words for it. To this day I still don't. I didn't have anyone to talk to about it who didn't spin it in a different direction in which I wasn't prepared to go, all my friends were mourning in their own ways, and there was a bit of distance between all of us for a while. As of this day only one of those girls is still a very close friend. That's a lot of crap to deal with for your 17th birthday, and it definitely shifted me toward becoming the person I am today, and if it's any indicator, I frequently refer to myself as "sledgehammer" or "hurricane."
In the end, I developed a very blunt way of talking to people about certain matters that most others tend to pussy-foot around, which is another reason why I love DC. No time for crap, it all gets out in the open and dealt with NOW. Once again, it's easy to relate to the fishermen more, thanks to the endless passive-aggressive BS that's being crammed down our throats from every direction on TV. Don't believe me? Think of every show where someone talks smack about someone else, then puts on a fake smile and pretends to be best friends again. And let's not even mention that "Real Housewives" set on Bravo, what catty rubbish is that? It's glorified in the media, and people just eat it up!
Nope, give me the men who have a bone to pick, and they get it out there! Give me the ineloquent, give me the bumblers, give me the hot heads who yell and swear at their cameraman more than their crews, the chain smokers, the greenhorns with everything to prove and the vets with an axe to grind. give me the ones who hate to show any kind of emotion that might portray them as weak. Give me the men who laugh when someone's bleeding because they're glad it's not them. That's honest. A bit pig-headed and a lot of macho hoopla, but it's plain, simple, relatable honesty.
Speaking of macho, a bit just popped into my head from the final 3 episodes of the most recent season (6), where, as you may or may not know, one of the captains, Phil Harris, passed away this past February. You can find this on the Discovery channel's Deadliest Catch website, but there's a bit in there with Phil and one of his boys, Josh, in the hospital. It breaks my heart to watch this particular clip, because Phil apologizes for not being a better father, and you can see how hard it hit that kid to hear his dad say that, and he got choked up telling his dad that he had been the best dad he could be and helped him be a good man, and he went on to say how he hated to cry in front of people, especially his dad. From a peer perspective, since I think Josh is of a similar age, that really hit home, and I appreciate seeing his experience going through that with his dad. Sounds ass-backwards, but consider that I just said how I wished I had seen them deal with loss when I was dealing with loss, combined with my insane love for my dad. It hit hard, since I no longer live near my dad. After having sobbed pretty profusely through those three episodes at the end of the season, I feel like I've learned something from people worth learning from about the hard knocks we take in life. At a terrible cost, yes, but I've learned.
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I just got teary-eyed thinking about that stupid clip. And this post took a turn for the depressing, and I totally didn't mean to, sorry!!! If that gets you down it's not my intent, because for me thinking through this stuff and having it sorted in my head makes it all better, and then I can just talk about it. It's weird, but that's the shift I had back in high school. So if you read thus far and think I'm I really screwed up individual, I assure you I'm not, my head's just been forced to a different way of thinking about things. And if this disclaimer just broke the mood I'd created, the mood was already gone by the time I started typing this last bit.
In the end, then, this post about lies is about the truth we find, or I found, and my experience with it. It's such an important dynamic in the grand scheme of me, which I'll elaborate upon in the next post. For now, though, if you've picked up on me saying stuff about Deadliest Catch, now you know why. I can't help what has impact on me, and if you can... I don't want to sniff your glue. To find a random program like this that can move someone like me, obviously a little more than a little bit jaded, to tears so easily by something as plain as "here we are, take it or leave it," is really a cool thing, and without sounding creepy, which at this point may be hard, it really means a lot to me. It's a bit dramatic, but it really is that cliche of the shining light amidst all the darkness in the wasteland called TV. OK, it's really dramatic, but the point's there, right? Amidst all the lies and fictions, which I can watch without caring unless it's really well-written (Big Bang Theory! Inception!), this one tiny program makes me feel. A lot. Sounds like a minor thing, but if you consider that it took discrimination at a college to make me cry for the first time after junior year of high school, maybe you can grasp the scope of what it means to me to really feel for the guys on the show. More power to them all, and many safe returns, as I believe they're all getting ready to head out again in the next few weeks (so I "liked" a couple of the ships on facebook, you get good information from them!). As for me, I'm just waiting for next season to air.
