Pictured: Basically what every day looks like in the average newsroom too, so don't stand there acting all bad-ass.

GateHouse — Because a 6-year-old lives in it, our house has pretty strict rules about TV, but because I’m a reasonable parent — and by that I mean “inconsistent whenever it’s convenient for me” — I tend to waive those rules under appropriate circumstances, such as the airing of a “Deadliest Catch” marathon on the Discovery Channel.

I do this because I am father to possibly the developed world’s liveliest 6-year-old “Deadliest Catch” fan. If there was a Time Bandit Lego playset, or perhaps a Capt. Phil Harris action figure (with detachable cigarette), Christmas 2009 would have featured a whole lot more crabs in it, instead of just the three million trains. (Absolutely true story: My son recently wondered aloud if the Phil Harris from “Deadliest Catch” is the same Phil Harris who voices Baloo in “The Jungle Book.” I’m investigating whether or not you can get scholarships through IMDB.)

If you aren’t familiar, “Deadliest Catch” returns for its sixth season April 13 on the Discovery Channel, a cable outlet which used to be devoted strictly to relentless animal fornication but now is TV’s premier outlet for showing people whose jobs involve an elevated amount of open sewage, on-the-job violence or fluids of displeasing origins. (In addition to “Catch,” Discovery airs the fantastic “Dirty Jobs,” which, the last time I watched, featured two people manipulating the digestive system of a snake until it chorked up three-quarters of a moderately digested fish onto a table; the only part missing, delightfully, was the head. On the plus side it’s not like I was enjoying a fish sandwich at the time or anything OH WAIT YES I WAS, BUT GO AHEAD GUYS, KEEP IT UP, WITH THE CLOSE-UP SNAKE FISHVOMIT).

Anyway, “Deadliest Catch” is a reality show not in the vacant-eyed gossip-pinups-dance-for-money vein, but one that tracks the bracingly intense and oft-bleeped exploits of Alaskan crab fisherman, a group of snow-covered seapeople who are defined by insane hours, an inhuman willingness to work through shattering conditions and many pretty immediate dental needs. If you are, say, someone whose days are given over to remaining seated in front of a computer, it is near-perfect “Into The Wild”-type escapism, albeit escapism that makes you feel like about a third of an actual man, especially if  you hypothetically have a thing about spiders or whatever.

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• K-Os – Crabbuckit

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• Eddie Vedder – Rise

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