Deadliest Catch/Tear Jerker

Examples of Tear Jerkers in Deadliest Catch include:

• Any time a boat or crewman is lost at sea. Usually made worse when they interview the survivors of a lost boat, and viewers get to see these badasses break down over what amounts to losing family.
  • It started early. In Season 1, the Big Valley was lost with only one survivor. Its captain was even the one that earlier demonstrated the EPIRB emergency beacon for Discovery. The same day the Big Valley sunk, a crewman on another boat fell into the ocean and drowned.
  • After the loss of Ocean Challenger in season 3, Captain Keith told the camera that sometimes he wonders if the losses of other boats was desensitizing him. He then promptly broke down in tears.
  • Another bad situation was the Katmai sinking in season 4, with only four surviving out of 11 on board.
• The sight of several rugged sailors discussing the end of derby fishing around the second half of season 1, due to the fact that a number of ships were going to be out of work.
• When Northwestern ex-greenhorn Jake learned that his very Ill Girl sister had died. In a later interview he revealed that the Northwestern crew were like the brothers he never had (his late sister was the oldest of 4 older sisters).

Jake Anderson: She's in a better place, Mom. (chokes up) She's finally beautiful now. She can run.

• The latter half of Season 6 opilio season, with Captain Phil's stroke.
  • Freddy Maughtai encouraging Josh to stay with his dad: "The crab is always catch. It's harder to catch a dad." Doubly wrenching when it's revealed that Freddy's own dad passed away while he was fishing and he didn't go home because he didn't think it was that serious.
  • Keith's reaction when he gets the news about Phil's stroke.

Keith: (choking up) Cut him some slack, Big Guy...cut him some slack.

• • Jake Anderson and Jake Harris talking after Captain Phil is hospitalized, with both boys facing the very real chance that they may lose/have lost their fathers.
    • Even more than that, earlier in the same episode, Jake Anderson was talking about his dad being missing without explanation, and how he wasn't letting himself think about it because he had a job to do. At the end of the episode, when he's talking about Phil being in the hospital, you realize that he was lying the entire time, because he hasn't been able to stop thinking about his dad.
  • Watching the episode where Phil is in the hospital and the doctors say he'll live...when we know he won't.
  • The end of Phil's last episode, Josh Harris' phone call to his younger brother: "We lost Dad, dude."
  • The promos using Pearl Jam's "Rise" are quite bittersweet, especially the one that opens with a closeup on Phil's eyes and later has him say how happy he is to spend time with his kids on the boat and get to know then.
  • In the second-to-last-episode of Season 6, "Valhalla", Keith ordered his crew to set one pot over the side with its rope and buoys locked inside as he rang the Wizard's bell eight times, so that Phil would "always have a full one to come back to." That in itself was a touching show of respect, but Keith was so grief-stricken he could barely get the words out.
  • Also during "Valhalla", the footage of Phil's funeral, especially seeing the urn with a portrait of Phil and his two sons drawn on it.
  • And later in "Valhalla", as the Northwestern is sailing out for their final run, all the crew gather on deck and salute the Cornelia Marie...except for Jake Anderson, who is standing at the rail, sobbing openly. He eventually gets so upset that he has to leave the deck.
• The toast to missing men at the end of the "Save Me" episode of After The Catch, which included the Seabrook's Moose and Justin Tennyson, the enthusiastic new guy from the Time Bandit who was flour-bombed into the crew only months before.
  • Jesus, the whole ending of that episode is a giant Tear Jerker. Scott "Junior" Campbell was clearly emotional recounting the death of his friend - and then Nick, Jake of the Northwestern's uncle, starts recounting how he lost a man three years ago while captaining a salmon boat, crying through it. Andy and Jonathan start crying to the point where neither one can speak and Jonathan leaves the table. Even Sig gets his moment: He recalls that he had gotten a job on a boat, but he broke his ankle getting on and he lost his job. That same boat was never seen from again. Just the way these stone-cold bad-asses talk about death on the Bering Sea is just... wow.
  • To this troper, it was how Justin Tennyson died that hit hard. After surviving a three straight months of snow crab fishing, he dies of sleep apnea two days later at age 33, leaving behind two children.
• Phil, acknowledging that he's not going to be around much longer, admits to trying every kind of drug in his youth (well, presumably).
• Phil's son Jake getting caught stealing his dad's pain meds (he'd been shown a little zonked-out earlier)
  • This could've easily fallen into Harsher in Hindsight territory, as Phil was extremely close to cutting Jake out of his life completely, but softened when Jake admitted he was an addict. Jake's life has been hard enough following Phil's death (he had a DUI arrest before his final stint in rehab in Palm Springs). How hard would it have been if Phil's last lucid moment was kicking Jake out of his life?
• At one point, the stress has Keith falling back on his smokeless tobacco habit. He calls his daughter and lets her chew him out as motivation to quit.

• One of the earliest was in the first season, with the sinking of the FV Big Valley. Feature vessel Maverick and Cornelia Marie (then not a feature vessel; it was partnered with Maverick and only had cameras as a backup) were part of the rescue effort. Of six on-board, only one was found alive, and only two of the dead were recovered.
• Season five had a several of these, starting with the sinking of another boat. The episode is punctuated with home videos of the doomed crewmates, with one of them joking that "they oughta be on Deadliest Catch."
• Later, upstart greenhorn Jake of the Northwestern (who was earlier burned in effigy on another boat for a prank he pulled - it was all in fun, they really just wanted to get rid of the effigy's Northwestern sweatshirt) got the devistating news that the youngest of his four older sisters had died after years of battling painful illnesses. Captain Sig and the cameraman decided not to film Jake getting the news but kept the audio, which is gut-wrenching. The episode ends at night, with Jake on an engineless boat crossing to another boat as the background music contains the lyrics "My sister and I..."
  • In a follow-up episode Jake talked about how close he was with his late sister, who he talked to her every day he was back home, and that he also considers his crewmates the big brothers he never had.
  • Likewise, the seemingly hard-hearted Captain Sig considers Jake to be the son he never had. Aww.
• Word of Captain Phil's stroke making its way through the crab fleet, and the varied reactions of the other captains as the news makes it down the line. Captain Sig throws the radio handset, then throws away his cigarettes in anger while Captain Keith tearfully pleads to God, "Cut him some slack, Big Guy."
• The montage at the end of the episode "Redemption Day", alternating between scenes of Josh Harris at the hospital after Captain Phil has a setback and the fleet working and plowing through rough seas with Johnny Cash's "Redemption Day" playing in the background. And at the very end is Josh Harris' phone call to his younger brother Jake to let him know that their father has passed away.
• The last half of the episode Valhalla when the rest of the crabbing fleet learn of Phil's passing is heartbreaking in itself but watching each ship do a different method of tribute to him will leave you in tears.
  • Time Bandit sets off fireworks in Phil's honor.
  • When they leave harbor after learning of the passing the Northwestern makes a slow pass around the Cornelia Marie as they do one of crew salutes the ship, later Sig talks about the old fisherman's tale of how seagulls are fishermen passed on and how the seagull sitting on his bow at that moment just might be Phil. He also noted that, while Phil was in hospital (almost a month), the sea raged...and then after he died, it went dead calm.
  • On the Wizard Captain Keith rings the bell eight times as his crew throws back a full crab pot, with its shot and buoys (one of which has In Memory of Captain Phil Harris written on it) inside so it stays submerged as a memorial, so he'd "always have some crab to come back to."