It’s a minor miracle there isn’t more drama in an episode filled with this much making out and another guest from hell.
Photo: Bravo
After a string of high-tension, high-stakes episodes — will the deck team implode? Will Joe and V or won’t they? Will Josh make up a slightly unsettling song? — this week’s episode is a bit of a snoozer. Through most of it, we follow the crew on their day off at a beach club in Barcelona. It’s not an uneventful day, but the events that unfold are boring. Everyone puts lotion on everyone, people get horny and kiss indiscriminately. I’ll be glad if I never have to see another tongue shoving and sliding and twirling in my life. Aesha tells her fiancé, Scott, the morning after that she danced for three straight hours by herself, because everyone was too busy making out. It’s unclear what Josh was doing for the duration of that time, and why he wasn’t dancing with Aesha. Maybe — and this is almost too sad to type — he was hoping to get in on the action at some point. But maybe he was just vibing in Josh-world, where there is perfect equilibrium in all things. By the way, a desperate plea for this season’s editors: Please, no more of that naked photo of Josh with the roses. We’ve seen it enough.
The crew’s make-out-fest starts the night before in the hot tub, with Kizzi and Max kissing in front of Cathy. Seeing them, Aesha tells Cathy that Kizzi goes after guys other girls are into because she wants to be “the No. 1 prize.” After they leave, Kizzi tells V that she could hear what they were saying, and that it didn’t feel good. I was thinking it can’t have felt good to hear Max ask Cathy if they can make out the next day, either, but then I remembered that Kizzi doesn’t really care. She’s not getting emotionally involved with any of these men; by her own admission, she just “wants a snog.”
So that’s what she does, in the hot tub and the next day, at the beach club. Max regrets kissing her, since it’s Cathy he really wants. Really, the male brain should be studied. Cathy was right there! In the end, though, Max manages to redeem himself. Everyone makes amends. In the vans on the way to the beach club, Kizzi tells V, Cathy, and Josh that Cathy and Aesha’s conversation made her feel bad. Cathy cowers a bit — she takes herself out of the situation by stating that she didn’t say anything bad, even though the subject directly concerns her. Once they meet up with the rest of the crew, Kizzi brings up the incident with Aesha. It takes less than a minute for them to talk it out: Aesha says she loves her dearly, but that she stands by what she said. Kizzi tells her that she doesn’t disagree with Aesha’s assessment of her attention problem; she just wanted to have the chance to defend herself. Kizzi, much like Joe, who also has commitment issues, is exceedingly self-aware — at one point in this episode, she admits to Josh that she wants to be the center of attention — but seemingly unable to act on her reflections.
Maybe that’s because she’s kissing everyone for a cause: Women’s empowerment. A suffragist spirit possesses her to make out with Nathan a bunch in the pool. Nathan left the boat intending to “play hard” so he can “work hard” tomorrow, and in a confessional he admits to feeling the need to let off some steam. He’s been feeling the pressure from Captain Sandy, and he hates that he has to be an asshole to his boys in order to do a good job. He still hasn’t gotten it through his head that he doesn’t, actually, need to be an asshole; he just needs to be a manager.
This problem will only deteriorate once the next charter begins; but before we get there, let’s check in on the other two developing couples. Joe and V are left alone in the hot tub the night before their day off and end up sleeping in the same bed in Joe’s cabin, where — surprise, surprise — they make out. They’re all lovey-dovey at the beach club the next day. On the way over, Joe tells Aesha and the boys that he likes V and won’t be “pursuing other options,” as if he has concluded a job search. He confesses his feelings to V, but takes care to note that their dalliance has an “expiry date,” which V receives with a completely straight face.
I’m starting to think that the saltwater is making this woman hallucinate. Or maybe I’m hallucinating — did Joe tell a story about being caught up in a fraud-scheme that lost him his real estate career and his home? Joe tells V he hasn’t felt this way since his ex, the only woman he ever loved, whom he had to leave when things blew up in his life. V reciprocates the feeling that she hasn’t been as interested in someone since Beau. She says this to Kizzi, who tells her she won’t pursue Joe because she knows how much V likes him. She does this in front of Cathy, which, if not hilarious, is at least a little bit appalling. They are completely different situations — V and Joe were clearly more involved than Max and Cathy were at the point at which Kizzi made out with Max — but it’s inconsiderate to say the least that Kizzi didn’t wait to share her feelings with her friend in a more private situation.
Cathy, in any case, is already upset with Kizzi. She unleashes some of her frustration in the morning by telling Kizzi that her outfit is not quite right for the beach club, even though she is wearing a Lilly Pulitzer style bikini-and-cover-up combo. But when they get to the beach club, Cathy’s mood lightens, since she makes up with Max almost immediately. Max, who started the day intending to fix the problem he created, says in a confessional that dancing with and kissing Cathy on the dance floor was one of the best days of his life.
The crew gets back to the boat drunk, exhausted, and still kissing each other. Nathan is already nursing a moral hangover when he tells Josh he’ll have to rally to be on the ball the next day, and confesses to Joe that it might have been a mistake to have gotten with Kizzi when, really, he misses Gael. Kizzi, meanwhile, just thinks it’s funny that at one point, she had all of the boys wrapped around her finger, and now she only gets to kiss Nathan, if that.
But not all of life is making out, as our crew knows. The next day, they get to work. Aesha has her stews trade shifts for the upcoming charter: Cathy will now be in service while Kizzi does laundry, which irritates her so much that she starts talking about how it’s understandable what Tonya Harding did. Captain Sandy, meanwhile, decides to show the deck team what’s what. She essentially turns into the Great Santini, telling Nathan first that the boat’s exterior needs to be squeaky clean by the time the sun rises, and proceeding to watch his every step. She is worried that while he has plenty of technical skill, he’s lacking in management ability. Nathan’s fear and insecurity lead him to lash out at his teammates, who, in turn, don’t know whether to regard him as their equal or as their boss, given that his manipulation of authority is volatile at best.
It’s not going to help morale that these guests suck. Sandy is welcoming them to the Bravado when Imran — the charter’s villain from the very first moment, and, let’s remember, not the primary — interrupts her to say that someone should take their hand towels. As Aesha is giving them the tour, Imran asks her if there is “a servant” who can do his laundry. Then, when the boat has to dock because of an incoming swell, again — at this point, almost every charter this season has had to return to dock — he talks and gets in Sandy’s way while she’s swinging the humongous thing in a narrow basin. And Sandy was already ticked off to begin with; Nathan asked her whether they could keep the tenders inflated and she had to remind him they’re not “a floating trailer park.”
We see some corroborating images that the swell is pretty bad — a door swings open menacingly, and the surface of the hot tub shifts in the wind — and these guests are awful, but they’re not wrong that they dock in the least-scenic marina of all time, facing a parking lot. It’s pretty unpleasant! Luckily, their ancient-Greece-themed dinner delivers in every way, from the tablescape to Josh’s excellent menu, even if Imran complains about the wine. This guy is the new Carlos: he’s going to complain about everything because it is fun to him, a guy who probably grew up throwing salt on snails, so we might as well ignore him. As the guests enjoy dinner, Kizzi vents to Josh that she has been in a bad mood all day, especially when Cathy’s “yachtie personality” (which, to her, is different from embracing “yachtie” as a job title, though she doesn’t explain the difference) is so grating. Josh can tell she is feeling left out, and she admits she feels small, though she also concedes that Cathy is a nice person and that it probably has more to do with her than with anyone else. Aesha’s plan for how to dispel the tension between the girls is to shower everyone with positivity, which seems to be working … so far.
Even then, Nathan’s docking experience takes the cake of unpleasantness that evening. The Bravado pulls up to the dock through the opposite side than they are used to, which means all their lines are wrong, and they have to hustle to fix them before Sandy blows a gasket. Ultimately, they do fine, but Nathan is so high-strung that, when V gets confused that they have to take off a line that should stay, he starts cursing and yelling at her and Joe. Sandy radios him not to yell and not to get frustrated. He tells her he’s not mad, he’s just being “assertive.” I’m starting to think Nathan has lost grasp of that word’s meaning. Max wonders why he doesn’t just “copy-paste” Sandy’s approach to firmness.
While it’s obvious that Nathan is having an issue settling into a leadership position, am I alone in thinking that Sandy is coming in slightly too hot? It seems like the harder she presses in, the more he loses his head. What he needs, I think, is some kind of demonstration that assertiveness has nothing to do with cursing or yelling. The next day, she asks Joe, the first deckie up, to wake up the whole team so they can leave the dock in 15 minutes. Then she asks Nathan how come the deck team isn’t up as early as the interior team. I mean, okay? This note could’ve come way earlier. At least, their exchange is amusing to one of the non-cast crewmembers, who watches from behind a door with a smile on his face as Sandy digs into Nathan.
It only gets worse for our “brosun” once they’re anchored back at sea. The guests request to use every single toy available (of course they do), so, after anchoring with only minor hiccups, the crew hustles to get it all ready. Max is in the water with the guests when Imran — always him — asks if he can drive the tender. Max tells him yes; in the meantime, Nathan goofs off for half a second with Kizzi and Joe in the galley. Of course, that’s where Sandy catches him. When they come back out to the swim platform, they see Max and Imran way out in the tender, and Sandy is pissed. Nathan is evidently starting to feel that he can’t do anything right, and that things only happen when he has decided to “untense” his body. I’m starting to feel bad for him. It’s almost like Providence is playing an old prank on him. He’s not that bad! … Is he?
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