The other night, I stubbed my toe on a door. That, I’m sure we all agree, is what you’d call “an accident.” I didn’t want to stub my toe. I didn’t flirt with the door for four hours before kicking it. Of all the insane things Joe says to V when he tells her that he kissed Kizzi, the most egregious, hands-down, is that “it was an accident.” He pulls her aside after recomposing from his sobbing act and — credit where it’s scantily due — he doesn’t dance around the facts. He tells her what happened, maintaining somewhat weakly that Kizzi doesn’t mean anything to him and that he felt so guilty that he cried. V’s first response is to ask him if he’d kiss Kizzi sober, to which he says no. Then, learning that he was so incredibly crushed by his own actions that he shed a tear, she kisses him.
I wondered, again, if the salt water was making V hallucinate. That impression was strengthened by the reaction she has to Kizzi’s approach. Kizzi watched through the monitors in the crew mess as Joe and V talked. On the way to Space Cowboy, the crew’s spot in Barcelona, Kizzi tells V that she didn’t know Joe was going to speak to her right then (a lie, since they had agreed Joe would speak to V first). Kizzi apologizes for being a shitty friend and recognizes that she broke her promise that she wouldn’t do anything with Joe. At first, V is harder on Kizzi than she is on Joe, telling her that it’s too late to feel bad. Cathy, meanwhile, is desperate not to be sitting in the van with them as they suffer through this conversation.
But by the time they get to the club, V has softened towards Kizzi; she and Joe are so happy about how well V took the blow, it’s all they can do not to high-five. V seems to have absolved both of them; she dances and makes out with Joe in the club. V tells Cathy that Kizzi “needs a little bit of checking,” which is only fair, and that she’s glad Joe was at least honest about what happened. Not one minute after saying this, she walks outside to see Joe and Kizzi dancing, then speaking closely together. V walks by them and playfully pinches Joe’s butt, while Joe and Kizzi talk about how they value each other too much to let this all get in the way of their “friendship.” “You’re me in girl form,” Joe tells Kizzi. She replies that she was put on his path to give him karma.
All night, V acts blind to what’s happening in front of her, which is that neither Kizzi nor Joe seems very remorseful. In hindsight, she admits Joe wasn’t as reserved or attentive as he should have been in the aftermath of screwing up. Reason dawns at the same rate as the alcohol wears off. Though they sleep in the same cabin, V asks Joe to take the top bunk, giving the excuse that it’s “too hot” to share a bed. In the morning, she tells Joe that she forgave Kizzi too easily, then asks him again whether what happened was an accident. Kizzi, meanwhile, tells Aesha that V was “so fine” about the whole thing. V asks to speak with Kizzi, who tells her honestly that while she regrets upsetting V, she doesn’t regret kissing Joe — after all, they had “a connection.”
Despite the fact that Kizzi acted poorly and selfishly — she put her need for male validation and attention above her friend’s feelings — she’s not wrong when she tells V that their connections to Joe are not so different. When V says that Kizzi and Joe had something more “temporary and flirtatious,” Kizzi reminds her that Joe said his fling with V had an expiration date. In fact, when he first confessed to kissing Kizzi on the bow, Joe said about his thing with V, and I quote: “This is going to end in the next few weeks.” It’s for a selfish reason, but Kizzi does well in opening V’s eyes: Joe has been playing her all along!
Kizzi and Joe are equally to blame; they both knew how much they meant to V and disregarded that affection. But at least Kizzi is honest where Joe is facetious: She doesn’t try to make excuses for herself by blaming her drunkenness or insisting they simply “stumbled, tripped and fell into each other’s lips,” as she puts it. She owns up to her actions. Does she show a strain of sociopathy and incurable narcissism when she admits all of this to V? Absolutely. But V needed to hear it. Production backs up Kizzi by playing several clips of Kizzi flirting with Joe before the kiss, even when V was still on the boat. It’s an awkward conversation, but it works. V asks Aesha to fact-check Joe’s I don’t remember anything, it was an accident version of events. Aesha confirms that the kiss was no accident; Joe and Kizzi were flirting all night.
It was what V needed to finally change her attitude. In a confessional, she tells us Bon always stood up for her, something she is now learning to do for herself. She tells Aesha she won’t let “average Joe Schmoe get the best” of her. Hallelujah! V confronts Joe, telling him that he doesn’t deserve someone like her. Bon set a standard which she intends to honor. She’s alive, people! And she’s sane! Joe shrugs his shoulders, admitting he’s not ready for a relationship. Yeah, no shit, Joe. He doesn’t even look upset about the “break-up.” For someone who so ardently insisted that he could not hurt Victoria, he put in zero effort in trying to repair things with her. He simply accepts his lot and moves on, probably eager to be freed from responsibility toward another person. Kizzi, for her part, when she overhears V talking to Cathy in their cabin about the situation, just rolls her eyes and calls the whole thing lame.
Okay, so that’s how this soap opera ends. Before we move on to the charter, let us quickly go over the other couples. Nathan is emotional on Gael’s last night out, and at Space Cowboy, he tells her again how much he loves her, that things will be different if she gives him a second chance. It’s not that she doesn’t believe him, but that he has said these same things before and changed his mind, which makes her hesitant to trust him. In a confessional, he talks about how his family’s broken attachments have hardened him against abandonment, which is why he gets spooked. But as Gael says, his actions, rather than his words, will prove how serious he is about getting her back. They sleep together in a guest cabin, and he essentially begs her to stay in Europe so they can be together after the season. She doesn’t say yes, but she doesn’t say no. When she leaves, she doesn’t kiss him, but promises they’ll see each other again. Later, Nathan texts her asking her to leave with him after the season is over, and she replies that she’ll think about it. Later still, he tells the boys that he is going to ask her to come to his sister’s wedding.
Cathy and Max remain an unproblematic couple, displaying healthy, even wholesome, levels of affection toward one another. He tells her how mad he was at Nathan for keeping him at the beach picnic when Cathy learned news about her stepfather. Max becomes irritated with Nathan’s “dictator” persona as soon as he has to change from his skinny, skinny pants into his uniform. After the guests arrive, he brings an attitude to undocking, bickering with Nathan and then with V over the lines. Max is like a child trying to regulate his emotions, which is to say, he can’t. When the line he is grabbing from the dock hits V and she tells him to watch it, he throws a tantrum, claiming it’s not his fault. (Nathan, overhearing their arguing, pleads with them to shut up.) Later, when V tries to make light of their bickering, he tells her he doesn’t want to hear it. Espousing a slightly sexist POV, V tells Aesha and Cathy in the crew mess that it’s like Max has his period. In the galley, Cathy tells Kizzi that she doesn’t care to be complained to about her cherie.
By this point, though, V is up to here with him. Upon arrival, primary Michael and Valerie and their friends hang out, have lunch, drink several spicy margs, and make ample use of the water toys. They seem like a fun bunch, but they shouldn’t be allowed to drive a Jet Ski if they have had four margaritas. Seeing one of the buzzed guests get on the Jet Ski, Cathy radios Nathan, who in turn radios V and Max that someone needs to go with him on the Jet Ski. V passes the instruction on to Max from the swimming platform; he either doesn’t hear her or doesn’t care, because he lets the guest take off anyway. Nathan is reaching his limit on Max’s disregard for guest safety — he reminds us that Christian got fired for this very reason, though he was also underperforming in other areas of his job.
We get a bit of vintage deck team chaos as the charter goes on. Max insists that V didn’t tell him that the guest was drinking, then says he didn’t seem that drunk, before finally acquiescing and bringing the guest in. Nathan switches V and Joe on the swim platform so Joe can keep an eye on Max. Later, after showing Joe how to work the Jet Ski crane, Nathan gets hit in the face by the hook — at the same time that Max notices that another Jet Ski has floated away and runs to get it. The guests watch and laugh as the deck team scrambles, and though in a confessional Nathan laughs at his own distraction getting hit by the crane, he’s getting nervous that the deck team’s rhythms are getting disrupted again.
All of the personal mess can’t be helping. The tension between V and Joe is exacerbated by the fact that, freed from their guilt, Kizzi and Joe are back to flirting. They get together to come up with a Spanish dance routine for the night’s entertainment, which the guests required to accompany their Spanish-style dinner, complete with a Jamón Ibérico, which stresses Josh out. It’s a cool request; I was surprised to see Josh so thrown by it. Maybe he could’ve brought in a Spanish person who knows how to do this, rather than suffer the humiliation of trying to carve it. The chef plans for a plated dinner with synchronized service to get Aesha and Sandy off his back, but it’s the leg of ham that makes him sweat. As he works to carve it, Michael says, “It’s not that good,” and Valerie gives him some tips, which all make him feel inadequate. Still, everyone is nice about it — Josh admits he’s new to this and the guests take him in stride. The episode ends before dinner, but I’m sure Josh will redeem his vast repertoire with the service.
After Joe and Kizzi rehearse their dance — in a confessional, Kizzi says that even though she and Joe have great chemistry, they’ll never be able to pursue each other without being hated by the rest of the crew — and have at least one minor flashing incident, the swell, as ever, comes in. If we can count on one thing this season, it’s the swell coming in. Sandy orders the deck team to bring the toys in. Max is still in the water with the errant Jet Ski, which must be hooked to the crane. Nathan tells him to get in the water in order to fix the hooks and ropes, but Max stands on the Jet Ski instead, which aggravates the bosun. They go back and forth, cursing at each other inappropriately loudly when there are guests eating on the sundeck.
Their fight is to be continued next week, and whether or not another member of the deck team gets bonked on the head remains to be determined. I’m not sure where or how to include the disturbing detail that Aesha has sucked milk out of a breastfeeding friend’s nipple before, so, uh, here. She said that.
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