After reserving judgment last week, I’ve decided that I think I like Below Deck Sailing Yacht. It has all the elements of a disaster but set against beautiful scenery and a competent crew.
Take Paget Berry and Ciara Duggan for instance. Together since practically infancy, isolating themselves away on a sailing yacht in a wonky tripod of living with a parental figure who is also a friend and their boss, and cut off from people their age. And in comes the new crew and suddenly Paget overhears Georgia Grobler singing in the laundry (It’s like the Little Mermaid!) and remembers that other women exist. This might come as news to Ciara as well.
Now, Paget has the sex appeal of a boiled potato, and I think it’s mainly his hair which is flaxen-colored flaccidness that belongs on an 8-year-old Norwegian in 1987. Ciara also does flattening things with her hair, and it’s odd to see something so bushy also look so… flat. But we are not here to dismember the intricacies of Pagara’s hair (or are we?) – we are here to pick apart every other thing about their relationship!
The bigger relationship drama, at least last night, comes from the charter guests Guy and Alessia. What are these two? I feel like they don’t even know the primary charter guests, but met them on some sort of TripFinder for swingers. Guy and Alessia are supposed to be aboard Parsifal to celebrate their honeymoon, except they showed up drunk and unmarried, then decided to impulsively get married the next day on the yacht, officiated by Captain Glenn Shephard. For their wedding Alessia wants a pair of wedding shorts, plus hair and makeup, while Guy wants a Stag Night, but not the actual wedding – just any excuse to get drunk.
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By 8 am, chief stew Jenna MacGillivray is ready to rip her hair out planning an impromptu wedding, combined with a Greek dinner party, and Guy has drank about 16 margaritas. Talk about premature ejaculation of celebration, however, because by 8 PM Guy is wasted beyond obliteration to the point that the stews are watering down his margaritas and he doesn’t realize, then picks a huge fight with Alessia because she took a shower.
Guy apparently thought Alessia was in there too long and must be up to something… um what? Fucking one of the deckhands? They get into a screaming domestic dispute that requires Captain Glenn to intervene and make third deckhand Parker McCown stand guard outside their bedroom door in case things escalate. Fun, fun… Needless to say just as the traditional Greek musicians come on board preparing to serenade the wedding couple, Jenna is explaining that the wedding is off.
In fact, Guy barely makes it to dinner, and then the vibe is hella awkward against the backdrop of the gorgeous (and amazing looking) Greek buffet Adam Glick has spent all day preparing as a wedding feast.
The only thing these two deserve was to savage the bones in the garbage can. Which is also where Adam threw the blender after he busted it making them homemade hummus.
Jenna is exhausted, but her competency under pressure and the military precision with which she planned, then canceled a wedding in less than 24 hours has Adam feeling all the love. I mean Adam essentially calls Hannah Ferrier a black hole of gloom and ineptitude when comparing her to Jenna. And on that note, Adam is not wrong!
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But I also note that all those months in the desert have done nothing to truly change Adam from a girl-crazy manwhore. To wit Adam is practically sexually harassing Jenna every time she enters the galley, constantly commenting on how hot she looks and making little insinuations, or hugging her.
Of course, Jenna is rising to that occasion and likes it. What she finds sexy is not Adam’s rugged attractiveness or bawdy sense of humor, but that he’s good at his job. Don’t worry — this is going to go down in flames. Chief engineer Byron Hissey, who by all accounts seems like he’s basically the viewers, but like with a birdseye view, is excited to binge-watch this explosion.
The wedding may be off, but the good news is that Captain Glenn literally climbed the mast to fix something called a donkey and get it back to its hole. This sounds like something you’d find in a Tijauna sex show (allegedly — I have no actual experience of knowing this), but it’s a legit nautical term and it means they can actually set sail again much to the excitement of the guests. Not so much for the crew who is suddenly adding the cleaning up of broken glass and spills to their endless list of tasks.
However, everyone seems to be working well together. Georgia and Madison Stalker are a good team, supportive of each other and, thus-far, respectful of Jenna. Madison acknowledges that the role of second stew is to basically have all the skills of a Chief Stew, but handle all the grunt work while also training the 3rd stew.
Luckily, Madison’s personality is human Adderall so she never, ever, ever gets tired!! And Georgia is pretty uncomplaining — although something tells me this is a temporary honeymoon phase. Georgia belongs on Vanderpump Rules, not here, because she’s a budding musician who works on yachts half the year so she can spend the rest of her year funding her musical endeavors.
On the deck crew, things are a little more fraught. Paget and Ciara are struggling because for the first time he’s the boss and she’s his employee. However, it’s obvious that in their personal lives those roles are dramatically reversed. As bosun, Paget gets frustrated easily and snappish, and expects his underlings to read his mind. For Ciara, reading of Paget’s brain is not necessarily a problem, although she doesn’t know the skills and is getting annoyed with him being so gruff, but poor Parker seems like a lamb being led to a very gentle and tearful slaughter.
Parker is over-eager and asks a ton of questions. He’s also distinctly American, which seems to annoy Paget. I personally find Parker adorable and I really appreciate him, but maybe it’s cause I am an American? Meanwhile, Paget seems driven to connect with Georgia… Whatever is going on it appears to be breeding some resentment in Ciara, who also feels rebuffed that Paget is not relying on her to manage Parker. Which Ciara can’t really, considering that she’s still learning all the deckhand tasks herself and Parker is completely green.
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Despite the bungled wedding the charter guests were absolutely thrilled with their experience and left the crew a $22,000 tip. NOT a bad way to start the season! Even Paget admits that the entire crew is working well together, and although he was worried about the influence of other people joining the boat, he is actually thrilled to be part of civilization again. Paget acts like he just escaped a cult and when he emerged he discovered the internet had been born in his absence. Ciara, though, seems less ecstatic to be losing her grip on her tightly-bundled world.
Captain Glenn praises his crew to the hilt and rewards them with a celebratory dinner, served with a warning that it’s a “school night” so nobody better stay up too late. Obviously, they totally respect his authority! Over dinner Jenna reveals that wine “makes her crazy,” but then decides to partake (and partake and partake) anyway. By the time they’re walking back to the boat Adam is already proposing more wine and everyone climbing into the hot tub. He’s also putting his literal feelers all over Jenna. Adam is like an octopus — it’s like these limbs and sexy comments are coming from all sides and are indefatigable.
Jenna is wasted. Everyone else seems drunk, but Jenna is wasted. As Paget and Georgia serenade the group with a freestyle, nonsensical song to the tune of Parker’s ukulele strumming, Jenna just drinks and drinks and drinks At once point literally dumping a glass of rose on her face. Madison is not impressed.
This woman is supposed to be her superior, after all, not a sorority girl auditioning for Girls Gone Wild, yacht addition! Oh, but Jenna wants Adam and in order to proposition Adam but not feel the sting of rejection (if it occurs) she has to be sufficiently wasted.
Adam wants Jenna too, but Adam is less drunk and mostly just wants women to fawn all over him. Still, they get so drunk she mounts him in the hot tub and then they stumble their way back to an empty cabin… It seems like they’ll be hooking up, but this could be the Bravo editors alluding to something that doesn’t actually happen. At least not YET.
Also before Paget and Georgia could run off together to form a band of traveling minstrels (Or rather Paget chasing Georgia while bellowing Sound Of Music tunes), Ciara announces that it’s time for them to go to bed. I do feel like Paget missed his calling as the fourth member of Hanson.
TELL US – DO YOU THINK JENNA AND ADAM HOOKED UP? ARE PAGET AND CIARA HEADED FOR TROUBLED WATERS?
[Photo Credits: Bravo]
