Honestly, I thought this episode was everything reality TV should be. Phil and his son Jake -- whom the captain had essentially disowned after discovering him to be a prescription-drug stealing addict -- reconciled when Jake pledged to get treatment and apologized for disappointing his father (who has been known to have a few addiction issues of his own). It was sincere, riveting stuff (if not necessarily the most creatively edited; how many cutaways to one more mast-affixed WaveCam shot were we going to get?), deepened that much more by viewers' knowledge of the horror to come. Captain Phil was virtually grey at the controls; he jittered and fretted stressed in all new ways.
His stroke itself came after he tried to get some alone time, retreating to his cabin, where he was unresponsive when called later on. His discovery by the crew was depicted off-camera, but the medics' attention to the captain was portrayed with fairly unprecedented candor. People go into the ER on TV all the time, generally with the producers' knowledge -- and thus the viewers' implicit understanding -- that they will come out. Straightforward as the sequence was overall, Jake's brow-gripping terror at the possibility of reconciliation being the last thing his father ever did is... well, I'm sorry. It's profound -- all the more so because it for once revealed the gravest of realities that reality TV is always so desperate to conceal. The show is called Deadliest Catch, for crying out loud. And there might be some crying out loud.
Or maybe not! You tell me.