I absolutely loved this article from The Hollywood Reporter -- it's about Discovery Channel's popular reality program Deadliest Catch. You know the show -- it's the one that tries to make deep-sea crab-catching look fun and cool and exciting (for me, it would be none of the above). It is an engaging show, though -- I've watched a couple episodes, and I will admit, it was hard to turn away from the events on those fishing boats. The people who make these reality shows have genuine talent when it comes to turning ordinary jobs that otherwise would be boring and monotonous if they were experienced in actual life into magical fantasy worlds that become career goals for the viewer taking them in on the small screen. But, the thrust of the Reporter article is that not everything you see on Catch is necessarily representative of actual events all the time.

Apparently, the producers of the show did some editing on the premiere that spliced together two separate events to make them seem like they were happening at the same moment in time. I won't go into the whole thing, but there was a flooding situation on a boat that occurred during one month, and there were giant waves causing chaos on the sea during an entirely different month. The two sequences were combined, and presto -- you think the waves happening during month B are causing the flooding that took place during month A. An outline is offered up as proof of the creative editing, as the document seems to direct editors to make the combination.

The Reporter article states that this might be considered controversial since Catch is supposed to be a documentary and not a reality show. Well, as I've said, I've seen Catch, and personally, I can tell you it isn't a documentary. Nope; not a chance. This is a reality show, and as such, the viewer will always want to assume that not everything is as it seems.

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Are reality shows no different than professional wrestling? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 19 Apr 2008 09:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.