The ship is sinking for Bravo’s “Below Deck” without last season’s star Adrienne Gang. Numbers don’t lie and neither do all the viewer tweets bitching about her gold-digging replacement.
Although she’s got some funny one-liners, the new head steward is a self-proclaimed Sugar Daddy hunter. In fact, the whole reason she went into yachting and left her stylish Jaguar she drove to her job as a cocktail waitress in Florida was to meet the sons of the owners of the boats she worked on. And there’s nothing unclear about that because she explained it pretty specifically to Kat during a contrived bonding moment on their only night off.
Nice disclosure, Kate. Super classy. Note to future employers: Lock up your children. The staff is on the prowl.
She came out of the box strong tonight, committing about a zillion violations of every sexual harassment policy anywhere by asking Andrew to put on tight shorts and shirt to shake his booty and be a naughty cabana boy for their female guests. OMG. Where is that allowed? Do sexual harassment policies not exist aboard yachts?
Methinks this chick has watched too many episodes of the “Real Housewives of New York” because she’s modeling her behavior after Sonja and Ramona. Who could possibly think it’s okay to treat the rookie on the boat like a piece of male meat? Literally.
“What we want are some beefcakes,” the guests request from Kat, who to her credit, looks appalled. “We want geisha boys to wait on us… We don’t want you to import them in.”
They wanted the boys on the crew to come act like male models and cabana boys and serve them. I don’t know yachting but I’m pretty sure that this cannot be considered a part of the professional job description, especially for the deck crew.
“I’ve never had a request like this… but I’ve never had an Andrew either,” Kate tosses off like it’s all okay. Poor Andrew is getting his ass kicked from every direction – what’s he going to do, refuse to dance when the chief steward tells him to? He already thinks everybody on the boat hates him.
“If you would like to humiliate me with your money, feel free,” Andrew tells the guests.
I’m pretty sure his parents are going to die when they see this after what we learned about him tonight. They’re nice people who sent him off to boarding prep school and the only cruise he’s done was working on his parents’ friend’s boat. Which, btw, I called last week in my blog. Ha!
Watching him dancing the pole for a bunch of cougars was so freaking inappropriate. But what upset me most is that he’s the new guy and he’s supposed to be learning how to do his job. They’re teaching him that humiliating the lower-ranking crew is okay. And it’s not. Even in the Caribbean on a yacht. A little dignity please.
“He’s a moron,” Eddie says after Andrew does it. But Eddie’s his direct supervisor so I’m not entirely sure why he let that go on in the first place. Why not just staff a stripper on the crew? Or is that why they hired Andrew? I mean, truly, the guy left a porthole open and is “a complete tool,” just like Chef Ben calls him. But making him humiliate himself that way was horrible.
Just gotta say that when things like that went down – or should I say started to go down because Adrienne Gang never let it get that far when she was in charge – last season, the guests’ inappropriate behavior was handled professionally. Tips be damned. What if the next group wants all the girls dressed as slutty cocktail waitresses? Oh wait, Kate Chastain can probably rock that one on her own.
This was a warm and fuzzy episode, with all sorts of bonding between bro and sis Kelley and Amy who apparently have hardly seen each other in 12 years. He’s a crier. Like on a regular basis. Emotional guys can be hot, but I’m a little concerned there is some PTSD going on here from his military service. Something ain’t right with that boy. He looks good but something’s off on the inside.
His looks are going to get Jennice into trouble with her boyfriend. They’re totally flirting. And they’re roomies in a very small cabin. They get too close for comfort (at least if I were her boyfriend) at the beach picnic enjoying the sunset together.
“Sometimes there are people in life that you meet and you already know them. And Kelley’s one of them,” Jennice gushes in interview.
Kelley has a girlfriend, but not really. Hmm. Wonder if SHE knows that.
“I’m in a confusing situation,” Jennice says. Nope, not at all. You’re on day three of the first charter and you already want to hook up with the boy sleeping approximately two feet below you, next to you. You are screwed doll, not confused. Confused is when you don’t know if you’re going to hook up with him. Screwed is when all of America watches it with your boyfriend on BravoTV in a future episode.
Their boss Eddie is scoping the whole scene from a distance, and he’s sooo not happy about what he’s seeing.
“Yeah, that doesn’t have disaster written all over it or anything. No! Sounds like a great f**king idea,” Eddie moans. “Dealing with Andrew is hard enough. I really can’t deal with unneeded drama within our crew.” Because we all know that once they start hooking up, there’s gonna be drama. Guaranteed.
In fact, I’m betting that’s why production has so many co-ed cabins. No, that’s not normal for a yachting crew unless the number is uneven like last season. This time there’s no reason for it at all except, maybe, to see what kind of havoc can be wreaked. You know they’d have put Kat in with Ben if they didn’t have the Kat and Amy drama to play with.
Speaking of which – Kat and Amy are playing nicely despite something bad that went down when they worked together before. They haven’t revealed exactly what it is but my money is on Kat hooking up with somebody she shouldn’t have and being too s**tfaced to remember (or apologize properly) for it. I could be wrong, but I’m betting not.
Kate calls them both out at what’s supposed to be a fun off-night dinner on shore and they’re both polite, acknowledging they worked together and leaving it alone. But their boss is digging for dirt, with an audience. She’d have gotten a lot further one-on-one with either one of them but nobody likes her enough to confide anything yet. After this play, I sincerely doubt she’ll become anybody’s rabbi this trip. She has an agenda.
“Can you make that story a little bit longer with a little bit more detail?” Kate won’t leave it alone but still, neither woman takes the bait and this frustrates her no end.
“That’s a red flag. What are they hiding?” Kate asks in interview. I’m sure we’ll find out but it won’t be because one of the girls “shares” with her in a deep moment. She’s just cold and calculating. Hey wait, Andrew’s parents have money. Maybe she can latch onto him. He certainly needs a sympathetic ear and motherly-guidance if he’s going to last the entire season.
Kate has made it her personal challenge to be Kat’s friend. Poor Kat. She doesn’t think much of her boss although she’s behaving much better than she did toward Adrienne last season. I think it’s because Adrienne trained her. But I’ll come back to that. I thought what she had to say about the new Adrienne was hilarious.
“Kate had a Sugar Mama, who had a Sugar Daddy. So now Kate essentially has a Sugar Grandpa. I’m thinking all she wants is a Sugar Daddy.” Bahahaha! So on target. Apparently at some point Kate took time off of college because her boss and her boss’s “Sugar Daddy” gave her lots of presents. Weird weird weird. No wonder she thinks it’s okay to make Andrew pole dance at work. She was probably doing that to show off her new Manolos as a thank you.
Give up on the bff’ing with Kat, doll. The jig is up and the whole world knows that Kat actually learned something from Adrienne Gang last season and they are actually good friends now. True fact: Kat works for Adrienne on a yacht up north between filming.
Why would Adrienne hire her after she was such a badly behaved employee and nightmare on the first season of “Below Deck?” Compassion. Adrienne has no shortage of offers in the real world because she’s good at her job and everyone saw that on TV (I know that feeling). No so for Kat, who proved she’s irresponsible, slutty, and drinks… sometimes on the job.
Rumor has it nobody would hire her after her reality television debut. Unfortunately, reality TV doesn’t pay much unless you’re Snooki hawking pistachios so these cast members all have to work real jobs in between production (just like me). Adrienne took pity on her and hired her and, without the cameras, Kat’s worked hard and they’ve had fun and you can see pics of them together all over social media. It’s not a deep dark secret. It’s just a good thing somebody did to pay it forward for somebody else. That said, Kate isn’t going to become besties with Kat now.
I did agree with Kate’s assessment of beach parties – they’re a pain in the ass. I do them for most of my weddings and they’re a time suck and the lists are endless and it’s a hot sweaty job. But we have to do it. And we do it with a smile. Not this group.
“The secret is a checklist,” Kate says. And she’s right. For a minute you think she’s there because she loves what she does. Then she opens her mouth again.
“I f**kin hate beach picnics.” Bahahaha! And Kat’s not a fan of your lists so it’s even.
“The checklist is like three f**king pages long,” Kat moans. “It’s a goddamn nightmare.”
When Kat does too much bitching and moaning at the party setup, it gets on her boss’s nerves. “It’s annoying.” Then she tells Kat she’ll be fined a quarter every time she complains. Which is twice as funny when Kat tosses it back at her when Kate starts bitching and moaning again. #busted
The tutorial on napkin folding that Kat receives later that night from the guests is painful to watch. I was embarrassed for her. She couldn’t even understand the directions in the book. She wouldn’t make it on a big cruise ship where they have to tie your towels into monkeys and swans every night on your bed. I don’t think she’d ever learn to make the elephant. That said, she’s on far better behavior this season and I think, so far, she’s impressing the captain if not her immediate supervisor.
The guests are thrilled with their trip and tip $15 grand – a cool $1,300 for each crew member. But nobody’s happy Andrew got a full share. He didn’t carry his weight and they know and he knows it. Probably would have earned him some points to offer to buy dinner that night or something. But instead, he just takes more s**t from Ben about pulling his own weight. And bitches about it. Yachting life (the crew side of it, at least), may not be for him.
“It is up to them when I eat, sleep, fart, whatever,” Andrew’s getting a reality check and I don’t think this little boy is happy. Or maybe he’s just realized his friends and family will see his pole dancing debut.
Either way, he’s got a bomb to drop on the captain next week, according to the teasers. They show Andrew making some big revelation to the captain. And Captain doesn’t look like he wants to hear about whatever it is.
“I hate to do this but it’s weighing on me,” Andrew says. The question is, is he gonna rat somebody out, confess something or quit? Inquiring minds want to know, and we’ll be watching.
We also NEED to know if Kelley’s okay after he fell off a swing backwards and landed on his head and neck in the worst-looking way possible. Last minutes of the show make it look pretty damned serious and we know he ends up in the hospital. But we know he’ll be back on board in one piece at some point because they showed him freaking out in a future episode on the full-season teasers week one. Regardless, it looked bad and must’ve hurt. Lesson of the Day: Three on a swing can be dangerous.
Hoping next week is more interesting because this week was kind of a snore… as indicated by ratings. We know from teasers that Adrienne is going to pop in at some point – how much longer do we have to wait? The ship is sinking now and I think they need her.