Nothing spells crisis on Below Deck Med like putting some food on a rocky beach for a blouse-obsessed, onion-hating drunk man from Oklahoma. Adam, forced to wear a #NoOnions hat the producers made Kenny give to him at the start of the charter, is so determined to please this man that he acquiesces to the picnic request without any complaining whatsoever. Brooke claims beach picnics can take two to three hours to set up. I don’t know anything about running a yacht or serving the winners who rent them, but putting some Tupperware in a tender and driving it to a table on the beach doesn’t seem like it should take that long unless you’re also sourcing and polishing your decorative tablescape shells when you get there.
Brooke has to do the entire thing without Hannah, who is vomiting up her anxiety in her bed. I like how on this show every character gets an Olympics broadcast–style interlude where you get to know them better, which usually includes childhood photos — or a photo of you in bed with a snake if you’re João — sad music, and a story of adversity that remains with you to this day. For Hannah, that adversity is her anxiety. Conrad expresses concern for Hannah but also concern for his job. He refrains from visiting Hannah’s cabin during the day since he knows Sandy would rather eat nails than see him near her.
João, wearing a shirt so tight it may as well be underneath his skin, helps Brooke set up the food on the beach along with a tent that blows away, which Bravo hyped one million times in previews for this season but was the source of no drama whatsoever. Since the guests are constantly wasted everyone was just like LOLZ and moved on. As nervous as Adam claims to feel about pleasing these people, they don’t seem that difficult, probably because they may as well have an IV of Grey Goose hooked up to their bodies at all times and just want a twice-baked potato here and there that doesn’t come frozen out of a box.
Cut to Kasey, whose banishment to the laundry room and rejection by João is now manifesting in pure, wonderful bitchiness. She wants to know if Hannah is actually sick like Jamie, who’s still quarantined in bed, or just “hungover.” Also aboard the “S.S. I Hate Hannah” is Captain Sandy, who points out that Conrad is focused today for once, probably because Hannah isn’t around. And there’s Adam, who says he’s “pumped with Brooke right now” for pulling off “the fastest beach picnic in yachting history.” Yet this is a new, more spiritual Adam than last season — an Adam who is reformed after eating raw fish off of riverbed rocks and living in a van — and so he still finds it in the goodness of his heart to bring Hannah a ham sandwich that looks like it came from Kenny’s local gas station.
After everyone survives serving the guests food on the beach, Conrad and João have a cat fight about what to do with the slide while Sandy re-parks the boat. João feels the slide should be tucked into the boat, but Conrad is determined to tow it. “Don’t tell me to shut up, mate,” one of them says. “I just did!” the other replies, like a Real Housewife. Conrad ends up towing the slide with the tender anyway, looking like a little Lego person. Sandy is so impressed she takes a picture.
By the time he’s done proving João wrong, the guests are just about too drunk to stand, which is why only two of them show up to dinner on time. Adam wastes away in the kitchen with his meat and potatoes while Kenny and Amber are passed out in their room. Unlike Hannah, Brooke attempts to wake them, which thrills Adam, who by now is lying on the floor in a puddle of his own drool etching hatch marks into the metal surfaces of his kitchen.
Since he picked, like, four figs days ago, Adam won’t stop going on about how he’s basically a farm-to-table chef now. Kenny and his squad declare that the twice-baked potato was the best they’ve ever had! And the crew agrees that serving these weirdos is much easier when Hannah isn’t there.
The next morning, Hannah has to go back to work. She wakes up alone in bed and decides either she’s going to go home and deal with her anxiety over her Disney prince–resembling early-twentysomething boyfriend or throw herself into work and earn money so she can buy more Yves Saint Laurent tank tops at Century 21. Since she’s the central character on this show, allowing her to do things like take Instagrams with people like noted Below Deck superfan Chrissy Teigen, she obviously chooses to stay.
Her first order of business is to make a Nespresso and gossip with Kasey about Brooke’s love life. The newly calcified Kasey sees right through this move and says she won’t be fooled by Hannah’s fake friendliness.
Adam receives a huge delivery of onions. He suggests to Sandy they do an “onion scavenger hunt” on the boat where they hide onions and Kenny has to find them. Because “you know how Kenny loves games.” As dumb as this sounds, it’s actually one of the more creative ideas the people who work on the Below Deck boats have had. Before the season ends I hope Adam applies the same sense of ingenuity to the centerpiece supply cabinet.
Then, Sandy’s exciting downward spiral of fury toward Hannah and Conrad begins when Conrad leaves the place he’s supposed to stand, to wait for the guests to go wakeboarding, to put a paddleboard in the water at Hannah’s request. Sandy tells Conrad the reason he did a good job yesterday was because Hannah was bedridden. Naturally, Conrad’s next move is to spend the next eight hours off the boat with Hannah.
This is where the season gets especially delicious because Sandy is about to flip out at Hannah more dramatically than she’s ever flipped out at anyone or anything ever before. Hannah asks if she can have “a Coke” with the guests at the cliffside bar they went to the other day. Sandy says fine if it’s just “a Coke” and not “hours and hours.” When Hannah and Conrad get to the bar, their first order of business is to smoke Hannah’s cigarettes and gossip about why Sandy hates Conrad so much. Hannah, who thinks she’s never wrong and scares everybody else on the crew, including Sandy, says Sandy doesn’t mess with her because she knows she’ll fight back. Because that’s exactly how being a boss works — you have the power to order people around and tell them what to do, but instead you leave the power on the table and get scared of everyone getting paid to keep you happy.
After the bar, Kenny and Amber ride around in the tender with Hannah and Conrad. Hannah is tucked into a towel next to Amber like they’re BFF. Kenny has traded his man blouse for a blue T-shirt that says “NEW MONEY.” Odious as it is, I guess you have to hand it to him for owning his personal brand. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew is actually working on the boat: Adam makes dough, Colin Windexes, Kasey makes a bed, and Sandy tries frantically to reach Conrad because she wants to yell at Hannah for disobeying her. She finally reaches him and orders him to take Hannah back to the boat. Hannah, who again is never wrong, says, “I’m pouring drinks, I’m doing my job, what’s up?” Hannah may have been around her work but she certainly wasn’t working. Like, people who have to answer emails and make Excel spreadsheets for a living don’t get credit for just being near their laptops.
“I wanna fire her fucking ass,” Sandy says as Hannah returns. “I’m sick of that girl.” João and Brooke are delighted to see Sandy so mad at their nemesis, which is probably worse for the kind of person Hannah is than her actual boss being mad at her.
When Hannah gets to the wheelhouse, Sandy is too mad to even look at her, and delivers the following dramatic monologue: “Get away from me. Go to your cabin. I’m going to come see you when I’m calm. Go to your cabin. I’m on the verge of fucking firing you Hannah. You’ve been gone. Go away. Leave me. Leave me.”
Hannah sulks downstairs wondering “what the fuck is going on?” I mean, probably nothing since without Hannah there would be no show but still! How exciting it will be to see her get her ass handed to her next week?