Man Overboard

As a raving fan of The Deadliest Catch, I want to like Captain Keith Colburn. He's in business with his brother, takes advice from his adorable little girl and owns a kick-ass crab boat. But time and time again, this skipper had proven himself to be a dill-weed of the highest order. Those who watch the show know what I mean. The only thing more predictable than a shot of some greenhorn deckhand losing his lunch are extended sequences of Captain Keith losing his shit. I suppose it makes for good TV. After all, several (edited) minutes after launching into one of his nearly incoherent tirades, Cap'n Keith can be counted on to repent. Seriously, this guy delivers more sobbing apologies than he does King Crab. And it works! Just when you want to write him off as a psalty psychopath, he says he's sorry, all while reminding everyone within earshot what a tough gig he's got. As a viewer, I've cut him a blank check more times than I can remember. Yeah yeah... killer waves, bad crab, some dude sticking a lens in your face when you're trying to drive... it can't be easy! No matter that all those other captains seem to manage the same thing without berating their crew to the point of mutiny - he's just an emotional guy!

Well, this week a clip from an upcoming show surfaced that has forever erased any slack I may have granted this seafaring putz. In the video, Keith is seen lamenting his fate as a successful businessman when the wheelhouse telephone rings. It's a Discovery Channel cameraman asking for a co-worker. This is apparently against the Wizard's policy, as the commanding officer of said vessel promptly storms below deck to confront the offending lenslinger. What follows is an exercise in absolute gas-baggery. Keith hurls (irrelevant) insults, throws in a few threats for good measure and when the cameraman doesn't back down, frog-marches the two of them from stem to stern before crashing into a distant bulkhead. Even with Keith's history of hissies, it is an embarrassing display of a captain come undone. Of course a crab boat passageway isn't a board room and behavior deemed unacceptable on dry carpet is simply the price of business out to sea. But, Keith, really? Is Discovery putting a little something extra in your check if you promise to go mental every fifteen minutes? I guess it makes up for a lack of crab action, but you're establishing yourself as a villain on a show that really didn't need one.

Worse yet, you came dangerously close to incurring the first ever waterborne Schmuck Alert! Had their been an actual camera in that cameraman's hand, I would have had no choice but to throw the secret switch here at the Lenslinger Institute and bring shame to your entire fishing village. And really, what good is owning your own fishing vessel, appearing regularly on cable TV and starring in your own Sears commercial if much of the nation and every living TV photog considers you an utter tool? Something to think about the next time you're about to 'show your ass' on camera. Just look what it did to David Caruso...