This might be the horniest, craziest, least competent cast Below Deck has ever had and I am so here for it. They bone, they fight, they abandon rich people on sand bars, then they get drunk and do it all again. But mostly, they try to figure out with whom they can do it.
In the opening post-charter, pre–night-out trash purge sequence, Rhylee and Tyler engage in a prelude to doing it in the little deckhand garage area, where they flirt as they fold towels and organize rope. In reference to going out Rhylee says, “Don’t let TOO loose … wrap it up, Tyler!†Tyler grunts and goes, “I don’t wanna have a baby in Tahiti.†Well there’s the viewing public’s single point of commonality with Tyler — no one wants him to have a baby in Tahiti.
Ross and Ashton have a moment where Ashton tells Ross that after he almost died and Ross hugged him, he felt safe in Ross’s arms. Then, as Ross puts on floral sleeves for the night out, Ashton slips his pants on without underwear, his ass bared to America. Ross’s face is right next to Ashton’s bare ass so he asks him what he’s thinking. Ashton explains it’s for “easy access.†He did, after all, have sex in a van.
They get in their vans, and drive about 20 feet to a restaurant where the décor consists of rope wrapped around wooden pillars and out of view probably hangs a fishing net suspending plastic lobsters. This strikes me as the Tahitian version of the type of place Rhylee goes to in Alaska for a beer after a hard day of slaughtering oppressed fish. Laura orders tequila and soda, which is the vocal fry of cocktails. She asks Adrian flirtatiously about the house salad while holding his hand, which makes Adrian think she wants to bone him.
The editors then cut in another flashback to Tyler’s pre-boat existence. He was in a car accident after high school and couldn’t run track anymore because although he didn’t break any bones he was “picking rocks out of my skin.†Once he finished with that, he decided to become an adrenaline junkie and perhaps even to refer to himself as such.  He says, “I decided I was gonna live every day like it was gonna be my last.†Well that’s one way to romanticize folding towels and wiping windows.
After they eat Kate wonders if they should go out or back to the boat and Laura’s like, LET’S GO OOOUUUUTTT. And Kate stares blankly at the horizon while she says she wasn’t really asking Laura’s opinion. Then Laura starts talking about how Kate is “disrespecting†her, which just foreshadows how crazy Laura is. Usually the people who use the word “disrespect†repeatedly on reality shows are those who have outbursts and are prone to violence.
Rhylee stands up and announces she’s glad she can pick her wedgie through her outfit, which includes overalls with gaping sides. Maybe her consistently perplexing going-out looks are a byproduct of living in Alaska, where you never get to dress for warm weather and therefore have no idea how to do it.
Then a bunch of crazy stuff happens rapidly. First, Tyler and Ross talk about Rhylee while urinating. Ross gives him permission to pursue her, saying, “You’d be doing me a favor.†And Rhylee, because the walls in this place are thin, hears them and gets ragey. Back on the boat, she and Tyler go right to their room and just crawl in bed together. Just like that. Adrian is hand-wringing over why Laura doesn’t want to do him after she engaged in conversation with him about salad — he gets so worked up over it he has to call his girlfriend for comfort — and then, just like that, Rhylee and Tyler are in bed without clothes.
While this unfolds, Kate and Laura’s disdain for each other begins metamorphosing into a huge fight. Josiah tells Kate that Laura doesn’t like them, so Kate leaves her room and goes to confront Laura. Laura’s like, it’s you who doesn’t like me, and Kate is like, you said we do a bad job as soon as you got on the boat. Two factions form: the Ashton/Laura faction, because Ashton is still just trying to get some, and the Josiah/Kate/Ross faction. Yes, poor lonely Ross, the last man other than Josiah and Captain Lee who isn’t chasing Rhylee or Laura. He slumps on Kate’s bunk with a bag of Cheetos, nodding listlessly along to their complaints, the disappointment that his “fun†shirt had to end its night like this evident in his entire being.
Meanwhile, Laura has gone off with Ashton to seek sympathy. Ashton recites a bunch of phrases he probably saved to a Pinterest board of “how to hit on girls who are in fights with other girls,†and they wrap themselves in a tarp and start humping, resembling, in the night-vision cam, a sea cucumber in distress.
In the morning, Ashton and Laura go back to their rooms where they admit that they only writhed and kissed, they didn’t actually fornicate. Tyler and Rhylee make similar claims.
A flurry of chores commence while Captain Lee lies shirtless on a chaise. Then he calls Ross, Kate, and Adrian up to his office to impart that the incoming primaries are all primaries. They’re all splitting the bill, which means there are no freeloaders that the crew can safely serve the wrong drinks and strand in shark-infested waters.
Pretty soon, it’s night again, so Rhylee and Tyler start having sex. In the morning, Rhylee, giggling and smug, says she only got two hours of sleep. Tarps are ripped off chairs with the same passion reserved for Rhylee’s bunk, toilet paper is furiously folded into points, and the crew changes into their white greeting attire. Then the horde of primaries comes aboard and remark on how the décor looks Italian, prompting a narrative to take hold amongst the crew that the largest guest is in the mafia.
Soon it’s time for lunch and Kate asks Rhylee to help carry plates to the table because she has decided to banish Laura to the laundry room. Laura’s like, “It’s just the biggest slap in the face.†Right, not being allowed to carry a plate to the table is the worst.
Lee pulls up to the site he wants to park the boat at and asks the deck crew to drop the anchor. Ashton does it and Rhylee complains that she hasn’t yet been “on that anchor.†Yeah, but she did just get to carry a plate to someone.
While Rhylee is thinking about professional advancement, Tyler’s complex mind is in one place: When he’s at work he’s mostly thinking about that, he says, but when he’s not he’s thinking about “havin’ sex with Rhylee.â€
Then Josiah and Kate go through the mob wife’s stuff, which is all black, which scandalizes them, which scandalizes me as a New Yorker. What is wrong with the all-black? Yes it’s especially funereal to wear in Tahiti versus, say, riding the Q train, but if this woman gets hot all she has to do is snap her fingers and Ashton will be at her side in a loincloth fanning her with a palm frond.
Later, Adrian cleans mussels while he quizzes Ashton about Laura, coming to the bitter conclusion that he pities Laura because “she doesn’t know what’s coming for her.†Adrian stuffs his mussels (hey, at least he gets to stuff something!) as Laura reports to Kate that she’s done with turndowns. After the mussels make it to the table, Kate checks the turndowns and finds dirty towels scattered all around the cabins. She asks Laura why the towels are a mess, and Laura accuses her of being aggressive. Kate tells her that she’s in a rush because she has to go finish serving dishes consisting of a thousand ingredients each to the one million primaries.
Laura gets even angrier and tells Tyler that she’s “actually going to freak out,†and Tyler, who presumably does not derive adrenaline from drama, shrugs. At the dinner table, the guests are presented with seafood tagliatelle and the lady who wears only black is so excited by Adrian’s food that she says she wants to “wash his knives†for him and visit him in the kitchen. Adrian, who just wants Laura to wash his knives, is like sure.
Laura then tells Kate she needs to speak with her, so Kate ushers her downstairs so she can have her outburst where the guests won’t hear her. Then she launches into a tirade about how Kate is “insane†and needs to “seriously figure [her] shit out†She tells Kate it was unacceptable for her to go through the cabins after she pretended to turn them down, and that it’s unacceptable for her not to show her any appreciation.
Next week: Kate tries to get Laura fired and Ashton tries to find someone else to bring to his van.