BEFORE: I wasn't sure whether to include this one, because it's part of a series on Netflix, all different disasters under the covering title "Trainwreck" - which might seem to make less sense because this one takes place on a ship, not a train, but you know, it's a metaphor. Usually I don't touch things that seem like series, however exceptions have been made for the docs that aired as part of MTV's "Music Box" series a couple of years ago, and also some docs get bought out by PBS and aired as part of their "American Masters" series, like that Liza Minnelli doc I just watched. So, OK, it's in, and my wife wanted to watch this one the day it got released, so I joined her and I figured I could work this in somewhere if the archive footage allowed, and if there was no archive footage of anyone famous, then I just wouldn't review it. But OF COURSE I found a way to work it into my framework, because it's a good framework and the same people keep popping up in docs, over and over again.
Barack Obama carries over from "Tom Hanks: The Nomad". And here are the links that should get me to the end of July: Bill Clinton, Martin Luther King, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, John Lennon, Al Kooper, John F. Kennedy, John Lennon again, Elvis Presley, Diana Ross (et al.), Eddie Murphy, Will Vinton (et al.), Seth Green, Bruce Vilanch, Sam Kinison, Tommy Chong, and Judd Apatow. I know that's only 19 people, but it's enough to get me through 31 days. And there's a lot of overlap, in addition to some of these people hanging around for 3 or 4 days at a stretch, there are definitely other connections to be made, everything is connected after all.
I'm off the subject of actors for now, until next year I suppose, and I'm changing course to set up some films about America in time for July 4. Since this one fits neatly here, I'll have a full schedule for the month, I had scheduled a free day in-between June 30 and July 4, but that ship has sailed. And so now this isn't just a Doc Block, it's also a Dock Block as I get closer to the very brief Jock Block, which links to the Rock Block, which starts on Sunday. But one week into the Doc Block, who's leading the pack? Well, since she appeared in last night's doc on Tom Hanks, Sally Field is now in first place for the year with 10 appearances - but Johnny Carson and other talk show regulars are rising through the ranks, so I'll have to tally it up again at the end of the month.
THE PLOT: A luxury cruise turns disastrous when an engine fire cuts power to the entire ship. 4,000 passengers face failing systems, sewage leaks and food shortages, sparking unrest and media coverage of "The Poop Cruise".
AFTER: What I really can't wait for is that time in August when the documentary portion of my watch list is down to about 20 films that DO NOT connect to each other in any way. Then I can spend the fall and winter and spring building the list back up again, and looking for connections. I also do this with the romance, horror and Christmas categories - so really, those are the four seasons of the year for me. Doc Summer makes perfect sense if you think of romance as spring, horror as fall, and Christmas as winter - so I'm always building up one category or another, based on what season it is. October's all ready to go right now, I just need to get there.
My wife and I were on the three-year (or seven-year) cycle with cruises, but then we took like a 10-year break. We'd been to the Western Caribbean on our honeymoon, the Eastern Caribbean in 2006, and then a Southern Caribbean cruise in 2013, which took us to Aruba, Curacao, Colombia, the Panama Canal and Costa Rica. That last one was 11 days long, which was just a bit too much time at sea, but hey, that's what it took to be able to say I've been to South America. Then we took that break for a while, basically we'd run out of islands to visit - first world problems, right? Those 3 cruises were all on Holland America, and I remember they took great strides at that time with regards to sanitation and cleanliness and managing risk to passengers, like we couldn't serve ourselves at the buffet, the main concern at the time was norovirus, this was pre-COVID after all.
But also, the date of our third cruise was April 2013, two months after the Carnival "poop cruise" fiasco. I remember thinking at first we were totally safe, because we weren't sailing on a Carnival ship, then I made the mistake of looking up who owned Holland America, and finding out it was part of the Carnival corporate structure. So with a cruise of our own coming up, we followed the news pretty closely back then, as reports came in that the Carnival Triumph was floating in the Caribbean without power, unable to make it back to Mexico without help. It was drifting with the current, possibly getting closer to home port in Galveston, but nobody was really sure. What we did know was that there was a fire in the ship's engine room, and though the fire was extinguished, the ship had lost power - we've all been through black-outs at home, when you scramble to save the food in your refrigerator because you don't know how long it will stay cold. Maybe you run to the store and buy some party ice, find the picnic cooler and do a little food triage, and OK, maybe you'll have to replace the milk, but still, that clock is ticking. Multiply that problem times a thousand and you'll get an idea of what the Carnival Triumph was facing.
Even worse, for some reason the toilets on the ship were powered by electricity, so after the chefs had prepared all the food that was likely to spoil, another problem presented itself - a few thousand people had no way to go to the bathroom. Emergency solutions like peeing off the side of the ship were not feasible, for safety concerns as well as personal privacy issues. I'm sure men would consider it a challenge, but literally pissing into the wind just isn't going to work, and women would be more likely to fall over the railing. So work-around #1 was to tell the passengers to pee in the shower (something people might occasionally do anyway) but then, umm, what about the solid waste? Some people probably hit the ship's buffet hard the night before the fire, and so that was another disaster waiting to happen. Work-around #2, the crew passed around little red baggies that passengers were instructed to poop in, and then deliver the full red baggies to collection stations, similar to the process for dog-walkers cleaning up after a pet, and trying to keep the neighbors' lawns clean. Great in theory, but hard in actual practice. I can speak to this because six years ago I tried that ColoGuard thing, where you poop into a bucket and then mail that bucket to a lab somewhere, and my brain would not allow it to happen - there's just something unnatural about pooping into a tiny container.
Without the proper modern convenience of a working, flushing sewage system, things began to back up, and any listing of the ship would cause the, umm, liquids in the shower to spill, so before too long the pee and poop were spilling out into the hallways, and as you might imagine, that made it hard and disgusting to walk around. Without air conditioning, passengers had relocated their mattresses and linens out to the ship's deck, and used the lounge chairs to create barriers to have private sleeping areas - it was a bit like building pillow forts as a kid, only not as much fun. And attempts to keep up morale were not working, like at one point the cruise line offered guests free drinks at the bar, and you might think that would make the conditions more bearable, but it only caused things to get more out of control, there were drunken fights over territory, plus then people only needed to pee more, think about it.
By the second day, emergency generators had kicked in, and the ship got partial restoration of some functions, also, other Carnival ships in the Gulf of Mexico were able to transfer food and water, however no other ship had the capacity to take on a substantial number of passengers from the Triumph. One passenger transferred to the Legend for medical reasons, they needed dialysis and the best option was to take them back to Cozumel. By Day 4, two seagoing tugboats had reached the ship, and began towing it toward Mobile, Alabama, two more tugboats joined in and the ship reached Alabama on Valentine's Day, Day 5 of the ordeal.
There are interviews in this doc with several of the passengers, some only willing to identify by their first names, and members of the crew like the cruise director (who tried in vain to keep spirits up), a Carnival Public Relations rep who sure had his work cut out for him, and a Chef who's probably scarred for life, at least we know he'll never cook lasagna again. Then there's a stereotypically greazy lawyer who specialized in maritime cases, and was probably standing on the dock in Mobile just waiting with a class-action suit ready for passengers to join. Not all sharks are in the water, apparently. An investigation into the ship's records revealed that the diesel generator that caught fire was more than a year overdue for maintenance, and the month before the incident, there were propulsion issues that caused the ship to cancel a stop in Cozumel, and an investigation found a short in a voltage connection box and cables connected to that generator, however nobody had made any corrections to that issue as of February 10, 2013 (the compliance due date was February 27)
The cruise line settled the lawsuits, offering the affected passengers full refunds for the Poop Cruise, a free future cruise on Carnival (I wonder how many people didn't take advantage of this, I could imagine some people being DONE with cruising after their ordeal) plus additional compensation of $500 per person, plus reimbursement of travel costs and gift shop purchases. Seems low to me, but we are talking about almost 3,000 passengers. The ship is still in service, of course they repaired it and cleaned it (though I wonder if any amount of cleaning would ever be enough) and re-named it the Carnival Sunrise. Looking back through my photos, when we were on our second cruise in 2006, our Holland America ship was docked next to the Triumph when we were in St. Thomas. So we walked RIGHT by it, of course this was almost seven years before it had its Troubles.
Three months ago, we returned to cruising after that 12-year break, but a trip that left from NYC (no flight to Florida required) and just went to Bermuda (an island we haven't been to!) and back. Just five days, back on the sixth, and only a day and a half on the island - and on a different cruise line than the one we got used to, because my wife wanted to shake things up. She's become a little cruise-obsessed, watching YouTube videos and reviews and she's also got the next one booked already, despite my reservations. Being under-employed right now, it's difficult for me to feel like I need a break, when I'm only working three or four days a week at best. Yes, I work hard, but I feel like I have to, and if I get the new gig, I hope to someday beef that back up to five days a week. But we sailed to Bermuda while I was also being fired from my 30-year job, so it was hard for me to relax and enjoy it, because I had so much on my mind. The food was great, Bermuda was beautiful and it did kind of help me get lost in the un-reality of it while my work life was in flux.
I got to talking to our butler (yes, we had a butler) and he mentioned how Norwegian (and I assume the other lines as well) kept ships in dock for nearly two years during the pandemic, and they kept a full staff employed on the ship, even though there were NO passengers, because they wanted to be ready whenever COVID cooled and the world was ready to travel in style again. Sure, I get it, the whole world was on pause, and there are probably worse ways to spend your time away from society than living on a cruise ship - the food was still good and it was probably a relief to still have a job even when your company doesn't have any income. But that's when I realized that the ship was a little microcosm of our country, or our planet, perhaps. There's a class system, just like the one in the USA, and there are passengers and there are crew, or the working class. Without the workers the whole system falls apart, something maybe the politicians should remember when they're debating a bill offering more tax cuts for the rich.
When there's an emergency, like a fire or a power outage, who fixes it? The working class. Who maintains order and keeps the Karens of the world in their place? The working class. And then when everything's going well, who sees to the needs of the people on vacation, just trying to relax for a few days and eat and drink and (try to) be happy? Duh, it's the working class. And without them things don't function, and then we're all really sunk. If you want to expand the metaphor, the planet's like a ship out on the ocean, far away from any land, and the resources are limited, and pollution is a problem. If we don't conserve and recycle, stuff is rapidly going to run out and things will get very messy. Just saying.
For me, I just worry about karma - like I don't want to be one of those entitled people who needs to be catered to while on vacation. Sure, I want to relax and enjoy some nice food and beverages while on vacation, and don't get me wrong, if I find out there are ribs at the buffet, well, I'm already THERE, you don't need to tell me twice. But then feeling like I deserve all that comfort and luxury, that's another story. When we started our BBQ Crawl vacation series back in 2017, we spent a few more SkyMiles and upgraded to first class - it was on my bucket list to fly first class ONCE, just to see what it was like. Well, sure, the unlimited coffee and snacks on board is nice, but the real benefit is that you get to skip a lot of the lines at the airport, which could save you an hour or more. Also, they unload the first class luggage FIRST, so your bags come down on that conveyor belt FIRST, and you can leave the airport before the commoners, which is helpful if you've got limited time and a lot of vacation-y things you want to do. So it's been very hard for us to go back to economy class, we'll spend the extra miles or money to make it happen, but then there's that part of me that thinks about karma, and I wonder if I'm borrowing against the future, and somehow increasing the chances of a plane crash, which is ridiculous, I know. Deep down maybe that's my problem with cruises, like maybe there's only so much luxury and enjoyment that each person is entitled to, and I don't want to push it, and possibly end up on something like the Poop Cruise. Still, I'd love to be proven wrong.
Directed by James Ross
Also starring Brooke Baldwin (last seen in "The Accidental President"), Buck Banks, Jen Baxter, Jayme Lamm, Devin Marble, Larry Poret, Mary Poret, Rebekah Poret, Frank Spagnoletti, Chef Abhi.
with archive footage of Pope Benedict (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Wolf Blitzer (last seen in "You've Been Trumped Too"), Anderson Cooper (last seen in "Scandalous: The True Story of the National Enquirer"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "Brats"), Jon Stewart (last heard in "IF"), Cecily Strong (last heard in "The Garfield Movie"), Jason Sudeikis (last seen in "Fool's Paradise"), Jeff Zucker (also last seen in "The Accidental President")
RATING: 6 out of 10 decks to search through for a possibly mythical still-working toilet
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