We hear the term professionalism tossed around a lot on Below Deck Mediterranean, especially from the crew. But there’s a better word of the day for tonight’s episode: hypocrisy. I’m looking at you, Christine “Bugsy” Drake.
Let’s back up for a minute. It’s almost 2 AM aboard the Sirocco and Chief Steward Hannah Ferrier just got more than a tip of the primary charter guest, Jason. I don’t know exactly how it went down but they connected, they flirted, he dropped his iPhone in the hot tub, they smooched after hours in his room, you get the idea. He leaves the ship after getting her email and the world of reality TV yachting keeps on turning. Unless you have a Second Stew who wanted to be First Stew and has an axe to grind. Then it’s a never ending story of gossip and passive aggressiveness in the form of say, nonchalantly mentioning to Captain Sandy Yawn that Hannah came into the room so late, Bugsy thought it was morning and time to get up already. Nothing gets by Captain Sandy, who wants to know if Hannah was up partying with the guests.
The seed was planted and Bugsy is very pleased with herself, especially because she thinks Hannah is taking advantage of sleeping later because no one actually knows when she went to bed. If Bugsy were Chief Stew, she would never let her crew handle breakfast service while she slept. Just like she would never let her crew set up a themed dinner party by themselves and so on and so on. So many things Bugsy would do differently if she was the Chief Stew but gosh, wouldn’t it be nice if Bugs just focused on her job as the Second Stew?
After Jason and his guests leave, Sandy calls a tip meeting and starts off by reminding everyone that partying with the guests is not allowed. Hannah is sweating a little bit and also feeling guilty for breaking her rule of mixing business with pleasure. But she breathes a sigh of relief when Captain Sandy moves on to praising Chef Adam Glick for ummm…doing his job? Is that really necessary? Either way, the tip ends up being $1,400/person and Sandy also arranged for everyone to go to the Croatian fortress later, which is a really nice reward.
Max Hagley is excitedly waiting for his girlfriend, Emily, who he hasn’t seen in six long weeks. Make that six long weeks and ten minutes because the moment Emily boards the boat, nature is calling and Max is in the bathroom taking a dump. It might not be the most romantic way to welcome your girlfriend to the boat, but Emily and her exposed butt cheeks happily wait for him to exit so they can reunite. They really are cute together!
The crew makes their way to the fortress, with Hannah literally stepping over a baby playing on the sidewalk. Once at the fortress, Max tries in vain to break down all the hook ups to Emily, who can barely keep up. I feel like even the go go dancing scene in Dubai is much tamer than this group of heathens. On another fortress ledge, Adam is whining to Malia White about how she isn’t paying him enough attention. When they all head out for drinks after the fortress, his neediness reaches an all-time high as he smothers her when she’s close by and when she’s not in arms reach, watches her like a stalker.
This is all pretty odd behavior for someone she just met, right? Well, about that…..After Malia takes a walk with Wesley Wiz Walton and they kiss (again), she returns to the table and informs Adam that Wiz has feelings for her and is heartbroken over her, which seems a tad over dramatic. Adam’s response is to babble on about everything they have been through, the penthouse and Santorini. Huh? Well, if you’re stumped as a viewer, supposedly you’re just as stumped as the producers, who have to ask Adam if he and Malia had a thing before the show. A serial killer stone faced Adam admits that yes, they did have a thing that started three weeks before filming when they met in Florida at a yacht certification course.
I’m not sure I believe production not knowing anything about this but either way, the cat is out of the bag, sort of. The rest of the crew doesn’t know but now we do, so I’m just waiting to see when it all blows up on board.
Malia’s side of things is that she did mess with Adam before they started filming but she came on the ship and has now fallen for Wiz. Oh, and she really doesn’t want to break Adam’s heart (insert huge eye roll). I know Malia thinks all this attention means the Mediterranean sun rises and sets around her but I guarantee if Emily brought along one of her go go dancing friends, both Adam and Wiz would be on that quicker than a tribal tattoo on Bobby Giancola’s bicep. Or quicker than Bugsy can wipe out in the middle of the road when looking for her friend vodka. I’m not going to lie, I rewound that scene more than a few times.
Back on the boat, Malia pulls Adam aside to cancel their planned date because he’s getting a little too hard to handle. They aren’t dating and she isn’t cheating on him, she assures herself. That may be true but if that’s the case, then why does she feel the need to run back and tell him everything that happens with Wiz? Look, I don’t care if she hooks up with ten guys on the ship, that’s cool. But I think Malia could take a lesson in discretion (and also, maturity) and stop playing up to these guys’ insecurities by giving them the scoop on what she’s doing with the other one. Seems just a tad attention seeking, no?
Bugsy is cleaning up the interior and happens to come across the master iPad for the yacht, pinging away with messages. Curious, she opens it up and sees all these text messages exchanged between Hannah and Jason, the primary charter guest who just left. She runs and shows Bobby, who eats it up like a steroid-filled protein shake and figures out that when Jason dropped his phone in the hot tub, he started using the iPad and never logged out of it. Bugsy is practically foaming at the mouth at how unprofessional it is and for once, Bobby has no words.
When Bobby and Bugsy head out for a drink later with Max and Emily, they bring the iPad along to show them too. Bobby claims he doesn’t care that Hannah is talking to the guy but he’s upset that she said in one of her texts that the crew was expecting a bigger tip. I seriously doubt Hannah would say that to someone she is flirting with without it being a joke but Bobby thinks it’s making them all look bad. They continue to follow the texts in real time and see that Hannah is planning on meeting Jason later that night. When Hannah leaves, Bobby and Max go all Cagney and Lacey on us and run after her, trying to catch her in the middle of a secret rendezvous. Too bad these two dopes couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag and by the time they get Hannah, she’s alone, smoking on a bench.
Back at the boat, Bugsy is busy telling Wiz about Hannah’s texts and finally, Emily steps in as the voice of reason, saying that this could upset Hannah since they are violating her privacy. Bugsy decides now that she has told everyone and she thinks she has sufficient backing on the matter, they should confront Hannah and tell her what they know. She goes with Bobby and Max and they all come clean. You can tell Hannah is stunned that they have been snooping around in her texts all day long instead of just coming to her. When she finally speaks, she coolly tells them that she has done nothing wrong.
Bugsy doesn’t know what to do with herself so naturally, she tries to get more people on the Hate Hannah Train in the form of gossiping about it all to Malia and Lauren Cohen. Lauren immediately says it sucks that they read Hannah’s personal messages. Malia and Bugsy aren’t happy that Lauren isn’t willing to judge Hannah right along with them and Malia snickers about how insecure both Hannah and Lauren are. Malia, consider yourself Hypocrite One in the Hypocrite Twins duo that is made up of you and Bugsy. Hannah may have kissed a guest and exchanged (GASP!) text messages with him, but you’re hooking up with your boss while simultaneously selling your soul for a damn freshly made omelet each morning.
The next day, Hannah is uncomfortable with what went down and knows she can’t trust Bugsy so she decides to be a grown ass woman and admit her folly to Captain Sandy. Captain Sandy immediately tells her it’s not cool and pulls her off of night duty so she isn’t tempted anymore. I understand Captain Sandy’s need to take some action but does she really think now that Hannah is just going to start making out with every guest that comes on board? It’s also kind of annoying that Adam blatantly lied to her and disrespected the guests by not following orders but he had zero penalty applied to him.
Hannah leaves her meeting with Captain Sandy and immediately sits down with Bugsy to lay it all out – she would have expected Bugs to come to her instead of spending all day reading her private messages. Bugsy gives a wide eyed apology, even though she is still talking smack behind Hannah’s back, saying that the iPad is property of the yacht in an effort to defend her being a snoop.
Bugsy can argue all she wants about the iPad being property of the yacht and that she did everyone a favor because guests could have potentially found the iPad and seen the messages but that defense is as lame as they come. If Bugsy were a true friend, or let’s just say, a true adult, she would have told Hannah what she saw, logged Jason out of the iPad, and gone on her merry way. Instead, she spent all day reading private messages, telling everyone on board behind Hannah’s back, and having her two doofus counterparts follow Hannah to try and catch her meeting their previous guest. How is that any more professional that kissing a guest? It’s not and it’s way worse, because not only was Bugsy reading and showing the crew Hannah’s private text messages, but they were also the guest’s private messages.
The new charter guests arrive and hopefully, it’s time for a clean slate. Not so fast, Adam still has to ruin everything by going out to talk to the guests in a backwards baseball cap, dirty apron, and dishtowel slung over his shoulder. When Hannah approaches him later and nicely asks him to do her a favor and wear different attire when meeting the guests, he snaps right back into d-ck mode. Or did he ever really leave it? They get into another epic exchange of words, with Hannah refuses to back down and reminding him that she doesn’t care what he thinks of her since she’s here to make the guests happy, not him.
Adam definitely didn’t get the memo.
TELL US – WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON – BUGSY OR HANNAH?
Photo Credit: Bravo
