'Deadliest Catch' preview: MRI and ice

Tonight’s Deadliest Catch (Discovery, 9 p.m. ET) continues to follow Capt. Phil Harris’ final days. The first preview clip below shows a neurologist updating his sons, Josh and Jake, and Johnathan Hillstrand on his condition after a 12-hour surgery to relieve pressure on his swelling brain. As I said in my recap for last week’s episode, as a viewer, it gives me some comfort knowing that John was there for the boys. And for Phil. After Harris’ passing, Catch exec producer Thom Beers shared a story with us about the friends. He’d loaned Phil and John his tricked-out 1996 Chevy Impala Super Sport while they were visiting Los Angeles. “About four days later, I get a call from Johnathan. Again, I’m in Los Angeles. He says, ‘Can you do us a favor? We got to leave town in a hurry. We left the car. Can you get somebody to pick it up?’ I go, ‘Yeah. Okay. No problem. Where is it?’ He goes, ‘Uh, Las Vegas.’ I’m like, ‘What? What do you mean Las Vegas?’ ‘Yeah, we had to leave town in a hurry.’ I didn’t even ask,” Beers said. “That’s the kind of guys these guys are. I love these guys. They’re just rough and tumble. Not great table manners, but I’ll tell you what, they’ll tell you a story, they’ll live hard and they’ll play hard and they’ll take the risks, and God, you gotta look up to that. So many people spend their lives in complacency. These guys, man, there’s nothing complacent about them. And Phil certainly shows us that.” John, meanwhile, is showing us their heart.

The second preview clip follows the deckhands on the Hillstrands’ Time Bandit as they pull pots when it’s -30°. You wouldn’t think this would be the comic relief, but it is when guys say stuff like, “I wouldn’t pee outside, that’s how cold it is.”