After three seasons of keeping our love for Bravo’s seafaring reality show under our hats, we decided it was time to come clean. And we suspect that there are a lot of you who, like us, will watch anything set on a ship…especially if it also happens to include pretty people behaving poorly. So welcome to our first official Below Deck recap!
Now, if you missed last week’s premiere, here are the two crucial things to know going into this recap: 1) Trevor, the senior deck hand aboard the Valor, thinks that he is all that. 2) Trevor, the senior deck hand aboard the Valor, is not actually all that. Oh, and there’s this little bit of info, which we’ll just call a bonus: The cameras caught him picking his nose and then licking his finger. Yeah. So perhaps from now on, we’ll just call Trevor… Boogie.
Life’s A Beach
This week’s episode started with boson Kelley taking Boogie to task for making Lauren and Nico feel like peons. (A bosun, by the way, is basically the guy in charge of the deck crew. This is opposed to the boson, which is a subatomic particle. See, already we’re learning things. This is gonna be fun). Their conversation consists mainly of “bro” and “dude” and some agreeable-sounding grunting. Trevor feels betrayed, so he later punishes Nico by making him set up one of the beach picnics every crew despises all on his lonesome. Nico is ultimately rewarded, however, when he has a front-row seat for the all-female, social media-obsessed guests stripping down and frolicking in the water like dolphins. Better still, he shares an “awkwardly romantic” bonding moment with Lauren.
The Love Boat
Emily and Sierra talk about the fact that Kate’s got a girlfriend, and I’m gonna go out on a limb and guesss that these episodes were filmed before Kate was arrested for allegedly beating on said lady love this past June. Sierra later listens in as Nico mocks Kelley – who loves reminding us it’s been five months since last he got any action – about his crush on one of the guests.
Kate and Ben continue to do their dysfunctional dance, going from an inexplicable argument about the making of toast to a hug which even Ben describes as “awkward and weird.” The whole thing further proves my long-festering theory that Ben is, in fact, a 12-year-old boy trapped in a grown man’s body. And when not playing Mr. & Mrs. Bickerson with Ben, Kate tries playing matchmaker between Emily (who seems like she stepped right out of a Harry Potter novel) and Nico. How cute does Kate think the sexy deckhand is? “If he wasn’t 22,” she declares, “and I wasn’t a lesbian… “ Which she wasn’t until recently, so who knows where this could all lead!
Say What?
The quote of the episode probably goes to chef Ben, who realizes that they need provisions due to the dietary restrictions of the charter guests. “We’re running out of gluten-free, fat-free, dairy-free tasteless ingredients,” he explains. Ben also gets the “understatement of the night” award for declaring that Trevor strikes him as “a bit of an odd duck.”
Booze Cruise
After earning a substantial tip from their first charter, the crew hits the town… where Trevor slams the Long Island ice teas as if he has a wooden leg and dances as if he’s got two left feet… both of which he then manages to put into his mouth during an epic display of tactlessness. Nico proves the better man by walking away, and Kelley exhibits the kind of restraint usually only shown by dieters when confronted by a dessert bar. Spoilers indicate that Captain Lee hands someone a ticket home pretty early in the season, so I won’t be surprised if we wind up saying “bon voyage” to Trevor next week!
Should Trevor be given the boot? Should Kelley pursue his flirtation with Emily? Is Sierra a bit of a ditz or a budding lunatic? Hit the comments with your thoughts!
