True, by now we've become somewhat accustomed to the trickery employed by so-called "reality" TV to achieve the sorts of heightened, 12-unemployed-bartenders -living-on-the- Radford-lot drama that keeps us glued to our sets. But we hold certain networks to a higher standard. History Channel—we expect those Ice Road Truckers to be careening over real roads, on real ice, in real trucks. And Discovery Channel: You offer us the delicious prospect of a Deadliest Catch, well then, that 5,000-lb. crab-leviathan your crew are hauling in better be the real thing, and not some Ray Harryhausenesque flight-of-fancy. Unfortunately, THR has stumbled upon a production outline that suggests the Xtreme fishing show may have been fudging some of the details:

[A] sequence suggests that the fishermen are in danger of sinking as a violent tempest tosses huge waves against the boat.

But here's the not-so-deadliest catch: The boat flooded in September. The huge storm waves were from October. And a producer may have filmed extra footage to help stitch the two events together. [...]

From the outline:

WIZARD ROGUE WAVE: Combine Wizard leak story on 9/26 with the Wizard being hit by a big wave on 10/1 and 10/2. The fiction we are constructing is that the big wave hit the Wizard on their steam up to Dutch — caused a leak in Lenny's stateroom. In reality these were two separate events. In addition to the original source material, (a producer's name omitted by THR) shot re-enactment footage.

The network "strongly denies" that Catch ever uses re-enactment footage, but we'll leave you to examine the scene in question for yourselves. Are those perilous, photogenic waves the real thing? Or could the presence of giant, God-like hand overturning what appears to be a World's Best Effects Coordinator coffee mug of water onto a model ship full of tiny, plastic fisherman suggest that certain elements may have been staged?

• 'Deadliest Catch' caught in fishy editing [THR]

Tags: clips | deadliest catch | discovery channel | reality tv