The rhythm is familiar to any Below Deck viewer: One moment, we’re bombarded with the romantic mishaps of a group of adults who should know better; the next, we’re back to the upstairs-downstairs dynamic that defined the show from the start. Below Deck has been airing for over a decade, and some seasons have been better than others at achieving a balance between the show’s newer preoccupation with romance and its older focus on the quirks of the yachting profession. (All the brave souls who endured season 12 of the flagship St. David with me know what I’m talking about.) In all, this season of Mediterranean solidly squares the two sides of the show, though it tends to distribute work and personal drama in big episodic chunks. Last week’s episode was all romantic entanglements; the episode before that gave us mostly departmental issues. Despite its ridiculous title, this week’s “The Poo-petrator” gets closer to the Goldilocks ideal. Personal relationships are falling apart. There is a storm coming, again. With one crew member down, another has to show up — one who “just so happens” to be a purveyor of drama in her own right. The guests are insane. There is poop in the shower.
We pick up where we left off: Gael arrives with her guitar and, despite his nervousness about how she would react to their reunion, runs into Nathan’s embrace. He even cries a little. It would’ve been more touching if he hadn’t revealed himself to espouse hateful, racist views on Instagram last week. Aesha and Sandy are also happy to see Gael, if not as touched; Joe is hesitant, given Gael’s intolerance for his treatment of women; and Kizzi is annoyed. Gael catches us up on what she has been doing for the past ten months: She became a licensed scuba-diving instructor and a master of yachts 200 ton, which qualifies her to captain several smaller kinds of boats. She has come a long way, so much so that Sandy says she could easily see Gael running her own vessel.
In other words, Gael has done some growing up; the jury is out on whether Nathan has done the same. Aesha gives him some words of encouragement: “This is the first day of the rest of your life.” Nathan can barely contain his excitement; he literally runs around with joy. After bringing Gael up to speed on the Joe–V–Kizzi drama, he admits to having kissed Kizzi “on a night out,” though he has kissed her on at least a couple nights out. He tells Gael that he and Kizzi don’t talk, which is not not true. Gael assures him she’s not worried about it one way or the other.
In fact, Gael is hesitant to jump back into anything with Nathan. There is real hurt in her voice when she talks about their breakup — she can’t discuss it without crying. In a confessional, she tells us that when she went back to Australia after traveling around with Nathan for a couple of months, he ghosted her for five days and then resurfaced to tell her he couldn’t commit to their long-distance relationship. Given Nathan’s jump-for-joy reaction to Gael’s presence, you can’t help but wonder, What is wrong with these men?! Sandy even notices that Nathan put on cologne for Gael’s arrival. He tries to draw her in with sweet nothings, like “I need you” and “I think I love you” and other sentiments of the like, but she gently pushes him away. When he comes into her cabin one night, she lets him lie with her for a few moments before sending him back to his own bed. If Nathan truly is a reformed man, he’ll have to do a lot more than just follow Gael around like a puppy to prove it.
That’s because Gael is a self-respecting woman with a functioning bullshit detector — she has zero tolerance for Joe. He pulls her aside to clear the air, as they left things on a sour note last season. Joe had a tendency to micromanage, which made Gael feel disrespected. He apologizes for that, and they put on a nice enough face for each other — sounding like every sleazy guy who has ever lived, Joe swears he has changed — but individually, they both admit they don’t trust the other. Joe has the gall to judge Gael, and pretty harshly at that, for kissing Nathan before officially breaking up with her boyfriend last season. “I lose a lot of respect when people cheat,” he says unbelievably. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
In an effort to reassure the viewer that she is not hallucinating, the producer conducting this confessional interview pushes back: What about what happened with Kizzi? Joe trips on his words, sputtering and stuttering until he can get out a delusional version of events in which what he did is “really different” from what Gael did. “I’m a nice guy,” he insists later. “I just like women.” And that’s not even the worst thing he’ll say this episode. The worst thing comes out on the following day, when he’s setting up an excursion picnic for the guests with Max. All episode long, people ask Joe and Kizzi whether they have heard from V or are in touch with her. It’s the Day, after all — her birthday and the anniversary of Bon’s passing. Joe texts her in the morning saying they miss her (no happy birthday); Kizzi writes her something similar. Otherwise, Kizzi deflects, saying that Joe will speak to V once she’s back. To Max, at the excursion, Joe says, “I’m going to tell V [about the kiss] because I’m a man, I don’t hide anything.” That’s the worst thing. Then, just for good measure, he appends, “I just don’t want to hurt her.”
Whatever hopes and illusions Kizzi may have harbored that the kiss could’ve been kept secret are shattered within two minutes of this episode. Nathan is the first to start talking: He tells Aesha, who is disappointed but not surprised. When Josh asks Kizzi how her conscience is faring, she replies simply, “I hate myself.”’ Even Gael, just arrived, tries to gauge if Joe might be afflicted by similar self-reproach. But Joe is already on the mend. He tells Gael that V gives off “relationship vibes” for which he is not ready, though he has spent the last several days insisting that V has changed him. Later, he asks Kizzi if she feels bad, but doesn’t admit as much himself. It honestly stretches the imagination. If there is one couple who is growing into real affection and trust, it is, improbably, Cathy and Max. Telling Kizzi about how much she has been touched by Max’s affection makes Cathy cry –– and she never cries in front of anyone. I’m really rooting for them. I think it’s cute that Max calls her “my little Cathy.”
The preference sheets for the incoming guests portend nothing good. Primary Carlyn, who owns 17 real-estate companies, is taking one of her brokerages on charter. To Josh’s dismay, her employees have all manner of dietary restrictions — some are vegetarian, some pescatarian, someone’s vegan, another gluten free, another lactose intolerant. To make matters worse, the boat has to stay docked again for the first night of the charter, because of a storm. Sandy breaks the news to the guests as soon as they arrive but promises they’ll check the weather first thing next morning so they can get moving. The obvious protagonist of the charter is a mustachioed man named Joaquin who arrives ready to raise hell. He is taking so many pictures and ordering so many margaritas.
The day is kind of a dud as the weather isn’t good enough to go swimming and the boat has to stay docked. At night, the guests and crew get ready for an ’80s-themed dinner, which is not Josh’s preferred decade. He’s more of a ’70s guy, and to prove his allegiance, we see a clip of his ’70s-inspired, clown-clad music video (no comment). For dinner, Carlyn requested “Asian,” that most specific cuisine, but Josh delivers, as always. As Carlyn and her friends/employees enjoy various rolls and crudos and caviar and tostadas and miso-braised eggplants, Kizzi stumbles into PoopGate. Her night was already off to a weird start when one of the guests told her that he wanted no service at all in his cabin. It gets worse when she asks Cathy to come down to another one of the cabins to help her identify the source of a vile smell, and they find a literal piece of shit in the shower. “All crew, there’s poop in the shower,” Kizzi calls on the radio, barely able to contain her laughter.
Soon, the whole crew takes an interest in the pooped shower. Josh becomes increasingly aggravated that the situation is distracting the stews in the middle of dinner service. Say what you will about Kizzi, but she is game enough to deal with it, even if it makes her retch and shriek. Things escalate when she pushes the drain cover aside and discovers even more poop inside. Kizzi runs to get Aesha. No one likes talking or laughing about poop more than Aesha — “I have a high tolerance for rectal issues,” is how she eloquently puts it — but this is too much even for her. Leader that she is, though, she offers to do the dirty work of cleaning out the drain herself. She and Kizzi team up to quadruple-bag this shit and move on.
A person’s sense of entitlement and disregard for others has to be truly off the charts to do something like this and expect it to be cleaned up. Aesha generously frames the whole thing as an accident that the guest was hoping they wouldn’t notice; maybe I’m jaded, but I’m thinking they literally don’t give a shit whether somebody else has to clean up their bowel functions. Aesha has fun after dinner trying to suss out who might have been responsible for such a vile act; the next morning, before they leave for their picnic at Calella Lighthouse, production conspicuously leaves in a sound bite in which Carlyn admits she’s been “having diarrhea.” A clue, perhaps?
Speaking of the picnic: Max is not happy that Nathan sends him to set it up with Joe just so that he can spend more time with Gael on the boat. Though it’s an overreaction on Max’s part to be so wounded that he has to do his job, his pettiness sharpens his observations: He clocks Nathan slacking around the boat, trying to recapture Gael’s heart, and Nathan admits in a confessional that he did purposefully give himself a few hours with Gael back on the boat. Still, most of the crew likes getting off the boat — Kizzi, for one, is happy to get some air. They keep calling it a “beach picnic,” but it’s not really on the beach; rather, the guests will have lunch by the lighthouse at a high point that overlooks the beach. While Gael tenders the crew there, Aesha asks Nathan how the two of them are getting along and if they’re going to “try again.” Nathan says he wants to, but Gael is hesitant. As the episode draws to a close, Cathy gets a text from her mom asking her to call ASAP. She gets some horrible news: Her stepfather, who raised her, has just passed away. Cathy is shattered. It’s really sad to see her so bereft, but for what it’s worth, her mom seems great. She encourages her daughter to keep her head up and avail herself of the love that the crew has for her — and indeed, both Sandy and Aesha run to comfort her.
VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice