Word: catchings
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cable, however, there's a growing alternate universe of hit reality series about workers no one puts in sitcoms anymore. The highest-rated show on the Discovery Channel, Deadliest Catch, follows crews of Alaskan crab fishermen fighting storms, monster waves and other boats to haul wriggling paydays from the cruel, icy deep. The show's producer, Thom Beers, has followed up with the History Channel's Ice Road Truckers (about long-haul drivers in the Arctic), Ax Men (loggers in Oregon) and truTV's Black Gold (oil riggers in Texas), debuting in June. Dirty Jobs profiles salvage workers, plumbers...
There's a show-biz reason for the money focus: Deadliest Catch and its offspring have competition elements, with work crews keeping score by dollars earned, loads hauled, etc. Like Survivor, they have overdramatic narratives and editing. (Guess what? Most doctors don't look like McDreamy either...
...viewers with the sensational promise of danger. (In Ax Men, computer animation shows what would happen if a logger got speared by a falling branch.) But underneath that is the scary reality, not unique to drillers and fishermen, of surviving boom-and-bust capitalism with no safety net. Deadliest Catch and its ilk celebrate rather than pity their heroes. But for all the big paydays the characters' work can bring, the shows never forget that hard times are one slipup or bad break away. That's the catch, and it's a deadly...
...plans to fence 70 miles of the Texas border - mainly the populated stretches, where immigrants and smugglers can reach safe-houses or catch a ride north within minutes of crossing - have stirred up serious opposition. South Texans are happy with the soft barrier provided by nature - the Rio Grande - and enjoy a long history of easy commerce from one side of the border to the other and back again. In other words, Tex-Mex is more than a style of cooking down there - it's an entire culture, and what looks like a bright line on the map is actually...
...Business was better, however, for cafes and pubs equipped with large TV screens. Russian fans, short of the $790 to to $4730 needed to buy a Luzhniki ticket, had booked all the city and suburban joints well in advance, eager to catch every detail of the biggest sports even staged in Moscow since the 1980 Olympics. Inevitably, it produced a bizarre mix of politics and business, diplomacy and security, sports and ideology...