Ugh – what can even be said about last night’s Below Deck, except Disco makes more sense? I mean, Kate Chastain is in a cult and gone mad, Chris Brown is absolutely bafflingly sucky, and everyone wants Brianna Adekeye to suck their summin-summin.
With one charter out the door, the crew is in da club and Jen Howell is in the cups. Actually, she’s in the jungle juice and drowning in it. Jen’s messiness is also messing up Kate’s ‘date’ with sexy Aqua Jesus, who truth be told is just OOOOKaaay looking, but Kate has some weird taste in significant others, to say the least! With someone else assuming responsibility for Jen – for once! – Kate and J2.0 depart for his heavenly waters. “What would Jesus do?” Kate says, “Me.” Indeed.
The next morning, Kate walks of shame right into the prying eyes of the crew, and Kate reports that she visited the holy land and came to meet God twice. Captain Lee Rosbach looked like he wanted to choke on his bagel. Holy lack of professional boundaries, Jesus.
Unfortunately, Kate‘s encounter with the Holy Spirit did little to improve her own good graces. In fact, getting away with sin seems to have left Kate feeling immortal. She drinks a beer while they clean the boat and more than ever is treating Jen like part-court jester/part-cabin wench. Although Kate does let Jen put on her bikini and iron her piles of laundry above deck, as Kate watches on nearby, with her beer, and checks her email. What if Jen gets a wrinkle in the napkins and the wrath of Satan needs to come down on her?!
Nico Scholly is dealing with the three month anniversary of his brother’s death while trying to wrangle this atrocious excuse for a deck crew into some semblance of competence. He escapes for a tearful conversation with his girlfriend Holly. Later that evening, he confides in Brianna (and her magical ukulele) that he’s having a really hard time and worrying about his mom. Brianna takes this as a sign that Nico wants more than her friendship. She blew off Sex God Chris Brown for him! Oh, Chris Brown. Let’s check in on him, shall we?
After he drunkenly professed having the hots for Brianna – over bananas and peanut butter (it was a sign, cause: bananas!) – and she gently rebuffed him, Chris Brown decided not to put his energy into anything else. Like nothing. He seriously thinks a shammy works itself. While Bruno Duarte and Baker Manning are trying hard to show improvement, Chris Brown is trying hard not to fall asleep on duty. Nico and Captain Lee are beyond frustrated.
The new charter guests are a group of cougars looking for a disco party, but no one is feeling it. Kate and Lee are not looking forward to two days of shrieking and whopping it up. Jen even notices that the lead guest looks like Vicki Gunvalson – and they are sisters in spirt as well. Oh god, please do not give Bravo any cross-over ideas!
With the group of eight ladies on board, the frazzled crew is immediately enveloped in a sea of WHOO HOOOS, and maybe all the carrying on explains how Chris Brown and Baker got distracted as the boat was pulling away from the dock and didn’t notice that one of the lines was still attached! Major Oops. When Chris Brown hears a lady whooping it up, it’s a transfixing experience for him and he is momentarily transported to an exalted state of ecstasy. They are all calling his name. I don’t know what Baker’s excuse was, cause she was literally staring over the side of the boat, watching the dockhand miss the rope.
A quick note about Baker: You can take the girl out of the south, but you can’t take the southern French tipped acrylics off the girl! A deck hand with acrylics. Girl, this and the big hair halo hat (you know those hats with the cut out on the top of the head to accommodate bouffants) are my favorite things about her. A southern woman never lets her swagger go, not even in sweltering sun while she’s working a shammy!
Anyway, back to the matter at hand – the unattached line causes the Valor to CRASH into the dock, leaving a big dent. Lee is beyond furious and Nico knows that this is the fault of his totally inexperience and unprepared deck crew who don’t even know what they’re supposed to be looking out for. Nico also knows that somehow, somewhere along the line (pun intended) he’ll be blamed.
After the incident, Nico warns the deckhands to steer very clear of Lee and work as hard as possible. Everyone takes the threat serious except guess who? Why, our old foe Chris Brown!
Chris Brown continues slacking off while wondering why everyone thinks he’s such a slacker. He’s a guy who listened to a bunch of Jimmy Buffett songs and thought working on a yacht would take him to Margaritaville. Captain Lee is not about that life and Chris Brown’s laziness gets him sentenced to all-night Anchor Watch. Chris Brown doesn’t get it – why didn’t they just tell him something was wrong with his job performance instead of fabricating this BS punishment? Um, dude, they’ve been telling you over and over again.
Meanwhile, Kate is having Jesus-withdraw and taking it out on Jen and everyone else! Kate got her just desserts when Bruno almost made her fall out of the tug boat as she was going ashore to pick up disco supplies for the guests which also soured her feelings towards him. While Kate was on-board, Brianna was responsible for managing the guests’ needs, but once Kate left, she put Brianna on break but had Jen take over. It’s almost as if Kate wants Jen to fail miserably! And fail miserably Jen did!
Jen seriously doesn’t know the difference between a Stella and Sauvignon Blanc. It takes her 35 minutes to find a bottle opener and she twice serves the guests warm beer. Among other things. Jen blames Kate and complains that she shirks responsibility and is a hypocrite for leaving Valor for church.
When Kate returns, she forces Jen to wear a disco wig to serve dinner and Jen is the ONLY one required to wear a costume. Kate smirks that it’s revenge for all the time Jen spends styling her Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! hair, and it’s definitely Kate’s way of f–king with Jen. It’s pretty snarky and mean. Kate is being awful to everyone; she even calls Matt Burns and his cooking boring. Luckily, the guests LOVE it and cannot stop raving about how delicious every morsel is – even the bread pudding. Who likes bread pudding? I think it’s too heavy for yachting life.
Jen and Chris Brown are basically in the same predicament: neither comprehends how bad they are at their job.
Unfortunately for Jen, Kate is far more vicious about asserting her authority and condescending her charges than than Nico is. Jen complains about the wig and generally runs around like a chicken with her wig ripped off. When Kate lectures her on handling the stressful dinner rush, Jen interrupts to complain that Kate is micromanaging her. Kate treats Jen like a child; Jen acts like a child – how is it possible that Jen actually has a child. Are we sure her dad is watching her daughter or did Jen just leave her home alone with a couple boxes of Captain Crunch and the TV remote? #CallCPS Seriously, will Chris Brown and Jen never have a ‘Come To Jesus’ moment?!
Salty at Jen, and deserted by the Holy Spirit, Kate next turns her wrath on poor, innocent, stupefied Bruno. After working a 14 hour day, he’s relaxing with his after-dinner tea, when Kate attempts to order him into a disco costume to dance for the randy cougars. It was the saddest disco party I ever saw – like sadder than the one Shannon Beador threw and with even lower-rent costumes, but I don’t think Bruno’s abs could’ve saved it.
Oh ladies… they should’ve left those glory days on dry land! Bruno grumbles that he’s too tired to subject himself to more sexual harassment at the hands of horny guests and demure. Kate rips him out for admitting that he’s tired, then accuses him of not being able to do his job. I’m on Team Bruno here. Frankly, I’m surprised Chris Brown didn’t leap around the corner and eagerly volunteer to strip tease for these ladies while wearing an afro. Cause the ladies love Chris Brown. Instead the they were stuck with Brianna and her magical cleaning spray.
The next morning, Bruno tattles to Nico about Kate yelling at him. Nico promises to intervene in the future, but warns Bruno that Kate does have some authority over him, even if she doesn’t realize how hard he’s working above deck. BS – Kate totally knows and was just being a twat.
Luckily, the guests had a blast, and they were more than wooed by Matt’s food, so they reward the crew with a big tip. Unfortunately, before Lee can dole out the dollars, there’s major trouble docking the boat. With not enough pressure due to the water levels, it’s literally an all-hands on deck situation to manually position the Valor, yet the deck crew is too inept. After watching Bruno lamely toss a line right into the water, missing the dock completely, Matt drops what he’s doing to pitch in, basically saving the the crew another crash. Nico is disheartened as he watched this motley mess of people f–k up yet again.
Lee is livid, and as he hands out tips, congratulates the ladies but warns the deck crew that someone is getting fired. My Magic Hate Ball tells me that Chris Brown is going to find himself on the first dinghy home! And no one wishes for that more than Nico.
By the time the crew hits the bar, tensions are at an all-time high. And no one needs a drink more than Jen! At least that’s what she tells herself … every trip back to the bar. Jen is fed up with Kate and her hypocrisy and micromanaging and the only thing she can do is self-sabotage with martinis the size of her head. While Jen gets more and more trashed, Brianna dry-humps the stripper pole, which is obviously a signal to all the menz that she wants some sexing! Matt confides to Nico that he’s got a major crush on her, and Nico encourages Matt to live out the fantasies he cannot by asking Briana out. She accepts, although she doesn’t seem thrilled about it.
In the Uber back to Valor, Brianna whispers to Nico that she wished he would’ve danced with her. Back on board, she puts on a her sexiest mumu to drunkenly wander into his room and confess that she thinks he’s handsome. Unfortunately, Nico’s roommate is Matt, and Matt shows up just in time to break up this would-be tryst. Nico realizes he narrowly escaped a serious mistake. What if he finds himself fin the same boat out as Chris Brown?! I mean, there’s Holly to think of you guys! Meanwhile Jen is crashing around the yacht like Chris Brown and Bruno are in charge of managing her ropes. Bruno is shocked by the level of drunkenness Jen is able to accomplish. She and CB are totally soul mates!
I dunno you guys – Brianna seems like one of those girls who calls herself a ‘guys-girl,’ pretends she has no idea why guys are always trying to get in her pants while she shamelessly flirts with them. Am I just being a bad girls-girl, who deserves to be stoned by Real Housewives across the globe?
TELL US – DO YOU THINK NICO IS GOING TO CHEAT ON HOLLY? SHOULD CHRIS BROWN BE FIRED? WAS KATE OUT OF LINE TOWARDS JEN AND BRUNO?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]
