Deadliest Catch/Funny

Even a show as serious as Deadliest Catch can bring the funny. Here's some of the best moments:

• All the practical jokes. For example:
  • The infamous "flour bomb": Put a bag of flour on the line by the buoy so it explodes when it hits the block.
  • Phil putting a length of pipe on a line belonging to the Northwestern.
  • The Wizard attaching a porta-potty to a pot belonging to the North American.
  • The Time Bandit once replaced a pot from the Cornelia Marie with a junked truck.
  • A few times, one boat will weld one of another boat's pots shut.
  • Northwestern deckhand Jake Anderson stealing Jonathan Hillstrand's USA Jacket, then wearing it with a hat on deck and impersonating him. The Hillstrands responded by hanging him in effigy. Later they burned his effigy ostensibly because the presence of the dummy's Northwestern sweatshirt was offending the Crab God(s).
    • And that was after what they did to Jake after he came back to return the jacket so that they wouldn't seek retribution on the entire Northwestern crew: taped him to the crane and then lowered him waist deep into the water.
  • During the "Jake swap" in Season 6, Northwestern emptied one of Cornelia Marie's pots, replaced the contents with an IOU, and made sure Jake Harris was implicated in the prank.
  • Near the end of King Crab 2009 the Time Bandit crew pulled one of the Northwestern's pots and stuck an alligator skull in the webbing, hoping that the crew of the Northwestern would think it came from some prehistoric sea monster. It worked.

Northwestern deckhand Matt Bradley: I don't know what it is, but it's prehistoric and it's MINE!

• • While down in New Orleans Andy Hillstrand and Wild Bill went crawdad fishing, but while Andy pulled up full "pots" Wild Bill pulled up almost all blanks. The truth didn't come out until they were filming After The Catch IV: Andy had gone back and emptied nearly all of Wild Bill's crawdad traps into his own.
  • At the end of king crab season 2010, Johnathan Hillstrand launched a set of 40 Chinese lanterns into the air near the Northwestern. He also disabled his GPS and killed his boat lights to keep anyone on the Northwestern from seeing him. As Johnathan hoped, Sig Hansen freaked out at seeing over three dozen unidentified flying lights near his ship. And it was hilarious.
    • Sig's response was to fight fire with fireworks—seemingly all of the fireworks in Alaska aimed directly at the Time Bandit, which promptly returned fire. And it was GLORIOUS.
      • And the war continues: The crew of the Northwestern decided to kick off the 2011 king crab season by sneaking aboard the Time Bandit in the middle of the night and inflating a life raft in the middle of their bunk area while the crew was alseep. Then to top it off Josh Harris, now a Time Bandit deckhand, got a bucketful of flour tossed in his face courtesy of his brother Jake, now working aboard the Northwestern.
  • At the beginning of the 2011 Opilio season, Seabrooke captain Scott "Jr." Campbell and some of his crew decided it would be a good idea to tag the crane of the Time Bandit with a lightning bolt and his boat's initials. Andy and Jonathan retaliate by going out and purchasing over 1000 eggs and then calling in help from the Northwestern and the Ramblin' Rose. The end result is a mass egging of the Seabrooke and her crew, proving once again that you Do Not Screw With the Hillstrand Brothers.
  • The Time Bandit crew's version of a birthday cake? Egg, water, milk, and cake mix tossed into the face of the unsuspecting birthday boy.
• The captains seeing their show dubbed in different languages. The funny comes in when you realize all the clips are of arguments.
• Phil's method for hunting opilio? Sniffing out crab farts. He's just messing with his sons.
• The various times Edgar sets stuff/his crewmembers/himself and the boat on fire.
• On Time Bandit during 2009 King Crab, Scott Hillstrand was feeling down about an impending divorce, so Captain Jonathan let his son take the wheel for a bit. The crew took that opportunity to put on a show, and by "show" I mean deckhand Mike Fourtner stripping to his boxers (which got ripped when he fell on his rear end), spraying him with water, and blowing up a watermelon (they love their firecrackers). Needless to say, the show was greatly appreciated.
• "You're gonna set this string, then you're gonna set another, then you're gonna make dinner, then you're gonna take a watch, then you're gonna do it all - over - again."
• Keith bet the camera crew on the Wizard that they couldn't stay up for a 36-hour pot run, filming every pot as it came up. He lost the bet...and had to spend 15 minutes in the crow's nest in his skivvies.
• When Johnathan decided to spend some time on the deck, he was going to toss the hook under handed rather than over handed like everyone else. He ended up whacking himself in the face, with blood, bruises and all.

Johnathan: (to the camera immediately afterward) A face only a mother could love! (laughs)

• Young Phil showing up at his disapproving guidance counselor's house with his first $100,000 in a sack and offering to buy it from her (she declined).
• During a really bad run where several pots were completely empty or nearly so, the Time Bandit's crew started razzing Capt. Andy; he responded by having bottle rockets shot at them.
  • Andy had another one along these lines on the July 19, 2011 episode - after calling in the deckhands for a few minutes and having them fall asleep inside (thanks to being up an insane number of hours in a row), Andy woke them up by tossing a lit firecracker out of the wheelhouse window and onto the deck.
• Jake Harris' recounting a phone call he had with Phil after buying his first motorcycle. Keep in mind that as far as Phil was concerned, motorcycles were Harleys, and that was it.

Jake: Hey, I got a bike.
Phil: Oh, that's cool. What'd you get?
Jake: An R1.
Phil: You're fired. (hangs up phone)

• Actually, Phil pretty much lived with these, along with Crowning Moments of Awesome. The following conversation was related in the fourth season of After The Catch.

Mike Rowe: We were up in Seattle, and I was outside the bar, and Phil rides up on this new Titan. I say "Hey Phil, how you doing?" He goes "I got nothing to say to you."
*all the captains laugh uproariously*
Mike: I'm like, "Why?", and he says, "Well, I just bought this new bike, and it's all I wanna talk about." So I say, "Okay, how's the bike?" And he says "Mike, how can you talk about a bike if you haven't ridden it?" And he hands me the keys, and heads into the bar.

• The entire montage of "Bering Sea dementia" antics.
• Edgar's apology to Jake for making fun of him:

Edgar's sign: "I'm sorry and I love you"

—Edgar's hidden, second sign: probably something like "Now get your ass back to work or you're fired."

• John Hillstrand and the crew of the Time Bandit throwing around Cluster F Bombs on deck in an effort to get Eddie Jr. (whom Andy Hillstrand said "talks like a choir boy") to follow their lead and utter ONE bleepable word on camera.
• After a long night of fishing Edgar fixes coffee for the rest of the crew, handing it out to the guys on deck through an open window in the galley like he's in a restaurant drive-thru. Matt Bradley comes up to the window and jokingly asks for soy milk; Edgar's response is to shut the window in his face.
• After Josh Harris wins a bet between the Time Bandit deckhands and won't shut up about it, the other deckhands decide to teach him a lesson by duct taping him to the ladder and putting a duct tape gag over his mouth.