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\n Luke\u2019s mistreatment of Gen and his general disrespect toward his colleagues finally catch up to him.
\n Photo: Fred Jagueneau\/Bravo\n <\/p>\n
So far in the season, Gen has mostly landed on the wrong side of the audience\u2019s favor. Her rivalry with Kayley was unnecessary, and the sheets disaster unbecoming, to say the least \u2014 but if her behavior suggested Gen was too immature to navigate the complex social dynamics of a yacht, this week, she proves that impression wrong. Gen may have acted bratty, but she shows commendable firmness, standing up to a man over ten years her senior who is trying to gaslight her. \u201cI may be young,\u201d she tells Luke, \u201cbut I know men\u2019s behavior.\u201d I was proud of her, but it also made me angry that she should feel that way at such a young age. It\u2019s enough to make you want to get together with a bunch of other women in a room and scream.<\/p>\n
In a confessional at the start of this week\u2019s episode, Luke tries to redress his failure to communicate with Gen as an intentional attempt to guard Gen\u2019s feelings in the middle of the charter. But if there\u2019s anyone whose emotions are getting in the way of a job well done, it\u2019s Luke himself. In the morning, Nathan and Joe notice that Luke didn\u2019t complete all the tasks in his night shift\u2019s to-do list. He\u2019s also not quick enough on his feet during docking, which prompts Joe to remark that Luke is \u201con one today.\u201d Joe knows a thing or two about picking up a love triangle on the job, but Luke\u2019s behavior makes Joe seem like the second coming of John Stuart Mill.<\/p>\n
At this point, with the guests just about to disembark, Nathan\u2019s soiled sheets still haven\u2019t been changed, and Gen is still under the impression that the previous night\u2019s conversation with Luke was \u201creally good.\u201d After the guests leave, Aesha reminds everyone to do their sheets ASAP. Luke offers to change Nathan\u2019s, but the bosun waves away the offer. After all, why should he take Luke up on it, not knowing that he has been sleeping on Luke\u2019s DNA for three straight nights? Besides, Nathan is sick and being overly cautious about not infecting anyone \u2014 he even decides to stay on the boat rather than go back to his rental that night to avoid getting Kayden sick, despite Gael needing his help. Aesha remarks on how hard it must be for her to be alone with the baby all day, and in a foreign country at that; later that night, when Nathan calls her to check in, Gael cries because she feels so overwhelmed.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Luke\u2019s attitude about the dirty sheets is \u201ccould\u2019ve, would\u2019ve, should\u2019ve.\u201d That also more or less describes Joy\u2019s attitude toward Luke. If he wants to win her attention back, he will have to prove that he has the cardio endurance as well as the muscular strength to climb a steep mountain on the way to redemption. Luke steels himself for some \u201cdifficult conversations\u201d that night. It helps that they\u2019re all $2,076 richer from a solid $27,000 tip. During the tip meeting, Sandy singles out Kayley and Cooper, praising them for knocking the Game of Thrones\u2013themed dinner out of the park.<\/p>\n
The hours between finishing work for the day and going out to dinner are the calm before the storm. The crew is on a 24-hour turnaround, which means no one is expecting to drink that much. Aesha FaceTimes her fianc\u00e9, Scott, to make sure he\u2019s getting through the wedding-planning checklist she left for him, and tells him about mentoring her group of young, competent, and reliable stews, speculating that Kayley will make a great chief stew one day. Kayley is laser-focused on her job, but she has also found herself in a comforting situation with Joe. Resting with him in his cabin, she tells him about her brother, Ewan, who had cerebral palsy and passed away when he was only 5 years old. Later that night, Kayley and Joe follow in Kat and Cooper\u2019s wholesome footsteps and decide to sleep on the deck, under the stars. Joe even sets a reminder on his phone for Ewan\u2019s upcoming anniversary date. I\u2019m starting to suspect that Joe went through some kind of reverse Manchurian Candidate thing. Joe Bradley, if you\u2019re in there, blink twice.<\/p>\n
On the way to dinner, Luke rides in a taxi with Nathan, Aesha, and Joe. They tell him that they noticed how distracted he was during the charter, and Luke admits that he likes Joy \u201con a very different level\u201d than Gen. He needs to straighten things out, but he needs everyone\u2019s help. This is the first sign of the kind of tomfoolery Luke has in store for the night. Why should anyone help him fix the mess caused by his own behavior? In a confessional, Luke articulates his line of thinking matter-of-factly, and, I thought, audaciously: In order to win back Joy\u2019s favor, he needs the crew on his side, so he purposefully omits the fact that he had sex with Gen from his narrative of the love triangle. Instead \u2014 and this part is implied \u2014 he relies on Gen\u2019s image as a competitive brat to paint her as \u201cobsessed,\u201d thereby washing his hands of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Victims of this manipulation scheme, Nathan and Aesha conspire to impose on the dinner\u2019s seating arrangements in such a way that Luke is sitting next to Joy, and Gen is isolated at the end of the table. Kat encourages Gen to forget a guy who seems like \u201ca fucking player,\u201d but Gen fumes as Luke pleads his case to Joy. He asks for a chance. He tells her he went out of his way to organize her already-organized cupboard during his night shift (instead of doing his own job). Joy starts to feel like maybe she was too hard on Luke, and that maybe a little part of her still likes him, but the feeling hardly has any time to develop before shit hits the fan.<\/p>\n
Gen notices Aesha and Nathan cheers-ing to the success of their seating plot. Not unreasonably feeling ganged up on, she explains to her chief stew that she and Luke were \u201cfully inside each other.\u201d Aesha apologizes; if she knew, she wouldn\u2019t have tried to help Luke. The revelation only confirms Aesha\u2019s instinct that it\u2019s always better not to get involved. At this point, even after Aesha tells her that Luke said, in the car, that he wanted desperately to sit with Joy, Gen is still maintaining that Luke assured her that \u201cThere is no love triangle.\u201d When he gets up to go to the bathroom, Gen follows him, and they finally sit down for their talk. Luke is more direct this time, saying that their fling \u201cdoesn\u2019t sit right\u201d with him, and that he doesn\u2019t want to pursue it. He also says he likes Joy in a more serious, future-oriented way.<\/p>\n
Obviously, Gen feels used. It\u2019s unfair for him to have sex with her and let her go so quickly, as if she were a shirt he tried on and didn\u2019t like. When she says she\u2019ll talk to Joy, Luke gets hostile and defensive. \u201cIt sounds like you\u2019re threatening me because you\u2019re facing rejection\u201d, he says, crazily. He says Gen is trying to \u201csmear\u201d him. Perhaps Luke doesn\u2019t know that a \u201csmear campaign\u201d is usually unsubstantiated, or perhaps he doesn\u2019t remember that he\u2019s being recorded. We saw him getting into bed and initiating sex with Gen twice in a span of 12 hours. \u201cI\u2019m not going to play a part in this,\u201d he announces, as if Gen were acting by herself. In a confessional, he says that Gen is trying to \u201cruin\u201d his chances of making it work with Joy, but he was the one who ruined his own chances. Amazingly, he tells Gen that he\u2019s not \u201creckless with people\u2019s emotions\u201d while he is plainly walking all over hers. Not once does Luke say, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d Gen tells him he\u2019s being an asshole, and saves most of her crying for when it\u2019s just her and Kat. As an older sister of a girl about Gen\u2019s age, a visceral part of me got activated seeing Gen be treated like this, but I was proud of how she handled it.<\/p>\n
Gen asks Luke to grab Kat, and on the way back to the table, he decides he should come clean to Joy before Gen gets a chance to. It\u2019s unclear what Luke expected Joy\u2019s reaction to be \u2014 did he think she\u2019d be grateful? Joy sees the situation clear as day: \u201cSo, you give her a green flag, get intimate with her, and then you just, like \u2026 go back to me?\u201d She makes a blergh sound, sticking her tongue out. Echoing the sentiment, Kat tells Gen that Luke \u201crhymes with puke\u201d and that he\u2019s \u201ccringe,\u201d then encourages her to channel the girls\u2019 girl she knows lives within and speak with Joy. Before she can do so, the chef has already disabused Luke of any hope, telling him that he seems \u201cvery weak\u201d and that she doesn\u2019t \u201cwant a man like this in [her] life.\u201d When Gen takes her aside to talk, Joy doesn\u2019t say much, only that Gen \u201ccan keep him.\u201d But Gen doesn\u2019t want him, either.<\/p>\n
For the rest of the night, Luke acts like a wittle baby. He groans when he sees Joy and Gen talking and bickers with Gen when she says she doesn\u2019t want to ride in the same van as him. Gen goes with Coop and Kat instead, and, in an act of revenge, tells Coop about the sheets, knowing the information will travel among the deck team. In the morning, Coop can barely look Luke in the eye. Too hesitant to go straight to the bosun but too disturbed to not say anything, he decides to tell Joe instead. Joe resolves to tell Nathan right away \u2014 or at least, right after the preference sheet meeting. Coming on board in a few hours, with her dog Sugar Baby, is the \u201cglamorous entrepreneur\u201d Suzanne, who is using the boat as a matchmaking site, once again with the help of Amy the matchmaker<\/a>, who had zero success finding her client Joe a wife last time<\/a> she was aboard Captain Sandy\u2019s vessel. I\u2019m hoping for Suzanne that Amy got better at her job in the few months\u2019 interim. Last season\u2019s matchmaking episodes were hilarious, so my expectations for absurdist fun are high going into next week.<\/p>\n Lord knows we need it if we\u2019re ever going to get through Sheetsgate. After the preference sheet meeting, Joe tells Nathan he\u2019s been \u201csleeping in a dirty bed.\u201d Nathan thinks Joe is teasing him about his cleanliness, and jokes back that Joe hasn\u2019t changed his sheets, either. Joe then explains that \u201cthere\u2019s another man\u2019s deposit on your bed.\u201d It\u2019s so absurd, you can tell both of them are trying not to laugh. For some time, as they\u2019re getting ready to welcome the guests \u2014 Suzanne will arrive with Amy first, and the bachelors one hour later, just as it happened last season \u2014 Nathan is jokey about the incident. He calls Luke \u201cbunker spunker\u201d and then lets him figure out what the nickname means for himself. Then he tells Aesha, and soon the whole boat knows about the sheets. Nathan needles Luke in front of the other deckies, and increasingly, it bothers him that at no point does Luke offer an apology or acknowledge the gravity of his (mis)behavior. The more Nathan thinks about it, the more annoyed he gets. He\u2019s about ready to blow a gasket when he detects the vestige of a smile on Luke\u2019s face as he talks to Joe. Luke \u2014 closer to 40 than to 30 \u2014 doesn\u2019t understand why Joe had to go and say anything, but by the end of the conversation, he knows his job is on the line. Nathan threatens that if he slips up even once, he\u2019ll be walking down the dock with his bags in no time.<\/p>\n For all of Luke\u2019s harmful behavior in this episode, both Joy and Gen should feel satisfied that he comes across as a total fool. Not just a tool but the whole toolshed, as Kat put it last week<\/a>. Speaking of Kat, I\u2019ll leave you with a brief summary of Kat and Cooper\u2019s lovely \u201cromcom vibes,\u201d as Kat describes them: They snuggle in his cabin after their night out, and Coop promises that he won\u2019t hurt her because that\u2019s not what he\u2019s about. Early in this episode, Kat gets emotional, telling us that Coop is the first guy she has opened up to since a bad breakup some time ago. I don\u2019t think I have ever rooted for a Below Deck couple this much, ever. I only wish all the girls on board were treated so nicely.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Housewives Institute Bulletin<\/p>\n Dame Brian Moylan breaks down all the gossip and drama, on- and off-screen, for dedicated students of the Reality Television Arts and Sciences.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n