Does anything good ever happen when Bravo stuffs its ‘lebrities into a minibus? Thankfully for all of us, the answer is no.
This week’s Below Deck Med opens with the ongoing fight of drunken throuple Adam, Joao, and Hannah. Hannah tells Joao, who has previously told us he rejects hierarchy because he’s from Zimbabwe, that she’s a chief stew, “but I’ll still make you my bitch.†Joao retorts, “You goat.†Hannah tells us for the 80th time this season that she’s 30, which means she’s “too old to be treated like this.†You could also argue she’s too old to be getting plastered in front of both the staff she manages and her co-workers, both of whose respect her success at work depends on, but she’s a grown-ass, childless woman and nothing’s going to get between her and her sixth vodka cranberry.
Somehow, they manage to board the boat without anyone falling down. A group coalesces around Adam on the floor of the galley to eat ice cream from a box. Joao, who I expected to go to bed right away because that’s what someone that drunk is supposed to do, stumbles in and asks if Adam has “any Joao flavor†before sticking his fingers in the chocolate in Adam’s lap. Adam, who eats raw fish off rocks and has lived in a van, is rightly repulsed.
Joao’s next stop is Brooke’s bedroom, in a scene that Bravo attempted to edit with levity but is just plain creepy. He barges uninvited into Brooke’s room, kisses her on the cheek, and then gets into bed with her and tells her she’s amazing. This is some babe.net nonsense right here. You know when Brooke is sober the next morning, her first thought is going to be, Why didn’t I kick Joao out of my bed last night?
Brooke takes a break from making beds the next day to meet with Joao on the floor. She asks if he remembers what happened last night, and he tells her he does but then tells producers he has no idea what happened and he’s lying to her. He blames his drunken behavior on his “alter ego,†who he’s named Jezabob. He’s “never met†Jezabob but dislikes him just as much as everyone else. So, first he blamed his awful misogynistic behavior on being from Zimbabwe, and now he also blames it on an imaginary person. I don’t think there are worse men than this. He’s the personality equivalent of a T-shirt that says “hand lotion dispenser†with a down arrow.
The next charter guests are a downright palate-cleanse from the last group of caftan-wearing banshees. The primary is Captain Sandy’s friend. She makes a living by rejuvenating vaginas.
It’s going to be like the Deadliest Catch out on the high seas this week so the Talisman Maiton can’t leave the dock. This usually makes for grumpy guests, so Sandy orders Hannah and Conrad to work extra hard to make them happy. Hannah has to come up with some creative activities for them to do while Conrad takes them out in the tender so they get the idea of what it would have been like to drive the yacht around.
Cut to Kasey, the only person glad to not be leaving the dock because of her seasickness. She’s still working out how to do laundry and asks Hannah, “Can I wash beige underwear with red shirts?â€
“Are you seriously asking me that fucking question?†Hannah says in her interview with the producers. “You’re a grown-ass woman — you don’t know how to do laundry?†Yes, Kasey looks like an idiot, but Hannah looks like just as much of a dodo when she’s three sheets to the wind and trying to stroke her 23-year-old colleague’s hair at a nightclub in front of her entire staff.
Before the gynecologists get on board, Hannah and Conrad get a moment to snuggle with a case of ginger ale on the dock. They discuss Conrad’s future; when he gets off the boat, he’s going to buy a house to flip because “I don’t want this to be my life.†The seven-years-his-senior Hannah tells him she puts her money into her shoe collection.
Hannah stops by the galley to request some salads from Adam so she can bring them with the guests when she takes them to make their own pizza. Because that’s exactly what the people who have the money to charter huge tacky boats want to do: make their own food.
Before the primary boards, Sandy assembles the crew for a meeting. She asks Conrad if he put the tender in the water like she told him to, and he says no and now he can’t because the boat is sandwiched between two other boats and there’s no room to unload it. Sandy is mad. The guests were supposed to be trapped on the boat, not the tender. She curses. She orders Colin, my favorite woefully underutilized cast member, to rap “Happy Birthday†to the primary and Jamie to help the interior a lot on this charter. Jamie curses because she’s a deckhand now and just wanted to do stuff with ropes and anchors.
When the guests finally arrive, Hannah shows them the boat and they seem to be impressed with all of its tackiest features, including its brown marble bathtub and royal-blue lounge cushions. They then visit Sandy in the wheelhouse where we learn there are in fact three surgeons on board — “vagina, vagina, penis.†The primary brought Captain Sandy a vibrator guaranteed to make a woman orgasm in one to three minutes. She holds it up to her crotch and says, “Wow.â€
Conrad holds a deck meeting in which he decrees there will be no night-watch person. Joao is in vehement disagreement, because someone could get up in the middle of the night and fall off the back of the boat and drown. He then tells Jamie he’s going to go behind Conrad’s back to tell Captain Sandy that Conrad doesn’t want a night-watch person. Jamie, in the most sensible moment of the season, says she thinks that’s a bad idea because of the hierarchy on the boat. Conrad later confronts Joao, which seems about as worthwhile as having Kasey vacuum.
After the primary works out with an aging shirtless Italian man whose body reminds me of encased meat, it’s time for dinner. She really wants to wear her stilettos even though shoes aren’t allowed on the boat, so she gets special permission from Captain Sandy to do so. Adam serves the same caprese salad he served the last guests, along with the salads he made for lunch that Hannah forgot and have been wilting in a Saran wrap–covered bowl all day. Because these guests are so jovial (maybe this is the difference between those who travel with and without vibrators?) they love everything, including Colin’s happy-birthday rap at the end, which, I have to say, was kind of adorable.
Since Hannah stays up until 4 a.m. cleaning stiletto imprints off the cream-colored boat carpet, a.k.a. flirting with Conrad, she leaves Brooke and Kasey to do breakfast service on their own in the morning. Brooke miraculously remembers everyone’s order and writes them down for Adam, who gets flustered anyway and says he can’t pull breakfast out of his ass, which is obviously a lie since last episode he pulled a cake out of his ass and I’m pretty sure a cake is harder to make than oatmeal and eggs. Kasey may not be seasick but this doesn’t seem to make anything better since she may or may not know how to prepare a Diet Coke.
After Sandy waits 15 minutes for her order of dry toast, she goes to find Hannah to tell her that breakfast service was pure trash. This isn’t Denny’s, it’s a super-yacht! Hannah throws a tantrum in the wheelhouse, where she’s working on provisions instead of doing service because she has blisters on her hands from using a spoon to flirt with Conrad last night. She descends to the galley in tears. If Conrad isn’t available for a cuddle, I’m sure she’ll find a case of Pellegrino that can do the trick.