You weren't watching the "Deadliest Catch" marathon broadcast on the Discovery Channel over New Year's? Oh, I see. You have a life.
I tuned in, mesmerized by the heaving swells of the Bering Sea, by the relentless monotony of the lives of crab fishermen, fascinated by men who smoke and curse for a living, hauling in basket after basket of squiggly orange crustaceans, a gourmet delicacy that neither they nor I plan on eating. Locked in a death grip of self-loathing, I gazed at the show for hours on end, wondering: Why am I watching this?
A better question would be: Why are millions of other Americans watching this show, and several others like it, e.g., "Ax Men," "Dirty Jobs," "American Loggers," etc. It can't be for the content. True, the ADD camera work enthralls, and the drummy, insistent "Survivor: Borneo"-era soundtrack of "Catch" prevents you from falling asleep. "Watching foulmouthed men in slickers pull crab pots up on deck and count their catch" is not "inherently interesting," a New York Times critic noted.
"Catch," watched by more than 20 million Americans, according to
I asked co-executive producer Paul Gasek if this genre had a name, such as Guys Doing Guy Jobs While Swearing and Smoking. He came up with "observational documentary," lumping "Catch" in with the famous CBS-National Geographic TV movie about the Portuguese White Fleet, "The Lonely Doreyman," first aired in 1968. Maybe. I'm not going to knock it. I like it.
What is it, exactly? "Deadliest Catch," which launches its fifth season next week, follows four trawlers during the brief crab fishing season in Alaska. Labor Department statistics backstop the show's selling premise: Fishing is indeed America's most hazardous profession. Cynics like me have noted that, sadly for the ratings, no one has died on the show, although many fishermen from other boats have perished. This season Discovery's cameras will piggyback on a Coast Guard search and rescue mission for survivors of the Katmai, a vessel that sank in the Aleutian Islands last fall.
Still, perils abound. My favorite moment in Season 4 occurred when a storm-tossed captain Phil Harris of the Cornelia Marie started coughing up blood after smashing against a bulkhead. He used his satellite telephone to call onshore emergency rooms, looking for a doctor who would assure him that he was well enough to stay out in the ocean and keep fishing. But no such doctor could be found. Instead he was counseled to abandon the fishery and come in for treatment. The incident restored my faith in American medicine.
I'm happy to report that Phil is coming back this season, still sucking on the coffin nails, looking healthier than ever. That blood clot has disappeared. Or has it? You'll have to tune in. Next week's premiere informs us that a "22-year tobacco habit has finally caught up with" Phil's colleague, skipper Keith Colburn of the trawler Wizard. Colburn gets his biopsy results on camera. It's "General Hospital" on the bounding main.
So where's the danger, I asked producer Gasek, formerly a long-line fisherman sailing out of Chatham. Where are the killer whales flopping across the deck, the marauding Russian corsairs defending their territorial waters? "These people are feeling the same pressures the rest of us feel," Gasek replied, citing the pinched economy and high fuel prices during last fall's crab season. The captains have paid for expensive boat repairs, and their trawlers are mortgaged to the hilt.
Hospital tests? Whining about high gas prices? Mortgage payments? That sounds like Brookline, Bedford, or Boxborough, not the Bering Strait. Maybe they should call the show "Deadliest Kvetch." Nonetheless, I'll be watching. Those crabs have got their claws in me and they won't let go.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 
