The crew gets so caught up in flirting and jockeying for romantic interest that they can’t focus on their actual jobs.
Photo: Bravo

Well, that was an anti-climactic denouement to primary Joe’s search for love. To clear this out of the way, so we can get to the crew’s work and personal drama: At the end of the second night of the charter, Amy asks Joe to pick two final ladies. Though Joe concedes that Anna has been “her own unique and independent self,” he kicks her off the boat along with Mariely, which is just as well, since Mariely decided Joe was giving “low net worth” anyway. Joe and Alicia make out on the sundeck, and later that night, Alicia asks Kizzi to grab Joe for her after everyone goes to bed. In the morning, Cathy becomes convinced there is foundation on Joe’s pillow, suggesting that Alicia was there during the night.

Kizzi and Cathy are laughing and riffing about FoundationGate — Alicia “pissed on him” to mark her territory, they joke; she “sprayed him like a skunk” — when Ashleigh happens to walk by. It ends up being good for Ashleigh, who barely had any screen time until this very minute. She tries, but the problem really is Joe. After a romantic dinner, he tells them he wants to date them both. Neither of them likes the idea very much, but Ashleigh is particularly incensed; she was already nurturing an ick from when he told her that he wants to have ten kids. “It’s not a buffet,” she reminds him before texting Amy that they are both dumping Joe. The next day, she Irish exits before anyone else is up, the only correct way to leave this situation. It all makes great gossip for the crew: Kizzi, who was on her night shift when it all went down, leaves a Post-it note in Aesha’s bathroom detailing the drama for her to find in the morning.

Over breakfast, Joe apologizes to Alicia about how strange their last night was. It’s kind of a best-case scenario for him that Ashleigh left, because he gets to tell Alicia he wants to keep seeing her without having to ditch Ashleigh. It’s all so painfully awkward, though. I almost crumbled into dust when I saw Alicia and Joe link arms walking down the dock. For her part, Amy is “so confused” about how it all ended. How does one get Amy’s job? It doesn’t seem like she’s particularly good at it, yet there she is, on a yacht, enjoying an “old-fashioned burger” — as opposed, of course, to an avant-garde burger — and a glass of wine while other people embarrass themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing recaps, but that’s a pretty good situation this Amy has found herself in …

The gamified charter is a success with the crew. One thing they love about it is that they keep losing guests, so by the time it’s the last day of the charter, they’re down to four people. You would think that would make everyone’s job so much easier. Sandy even tells the deck team not to bother putting the slide in for the second day, since the guests haven’t demonstrated any eagerness to be in the water or use the toys. When they undock at night, it goes great, and Nathan is so happy with how far his team has come. Everything is so chill that the deck team relaxes way too much.

Sandy catches Max and Joe doing breathing exercises during the anchor drop. She starts to think that since Joe arrived, the vibe on deck has been more fun than work. Sandy had already expressed that Nathan’s real test as a bosun would begin once they settled on a functional, good team, but Nathan has spent so much time marveling at how much his team improved that he let its hierarchy fall out of order. For example: The next morning, when Nathan sends Joe down to eat, Joe takes a 45-minute break while Nathan covers his position. Nathan himself only gets 15 minutes when Joe finally comes up. Noticing that he took too long, Joe straight up lies that he was “helping out” in the galley and in cabins, when really he was eating Josh’s leftover madeleines and flirting with the stews.

Instead of setting a boundary right then and there, Nathan tells Joe that it’s fine. Things get worse when, later, Joe leaves the swim platform for a “deck check,” since there are no guests outside. The absence of deckhands on the swim platform becomes an issue for the rest of the charter. When Sandy notices there is no one there, she radios Nathan, but Nathan is in the crew mess without his radio. Failing to reach him, Sandy goes down to the crew mess, where she sees Nathan, Max, and Joe all there at the same time, a sight, she says, that she “never wants to see again, not on charter.” She reiterates that there is always supposed to be at least one person on the swim platform. The guys look like kids who just got caught by the principal.

Back on the platform, Nathan tells Joe that he is “fuming” — Joe shouldn’t have left. Joe apologizes and, in a confessional, admits he’s been slacking because his friend is his boss. This self-awareness is good, but can it turn into accountability? It doesn’t matter that you know you’re doing something wrong if you’re unwilling to stop doing it. This is kind of a theme for Joe, as we’ll see when we go over his romantic “pickle.” In any case, it’s Nathan’s neck on the line. Sandy calls him to the bridge for a talking-to. She encourages him to be less friendly and more professional. Nathan seems embarrassed; the talk strikes a chord with him.

Before he can get the deck team ready for departure — they have to return to dock because of weather again — Nathan asks Aesha for leadership advice. She tells him to be stricter, firm but fair. Just then, Max radios Nathan to let him know he’s on the swim platform. Nathan tells him to stay there, but not a minute later, Max comes up to where Aesha and Nathan are talking. He says he has to go to the bathroom. Frustrated that Max is illustrating the deck team’s inability to respect his authority, Nathan sends Max back and reiterates that there needs to be someone on the swim platform at all times. Not unreasonably, Max points out that he could hear Nathan upstairs, which is why he felt free to ask him to switch in person rather than over the radio. Nathan is slightly overreacting, probably not only because he was talking about this very problem as it happened but because it seems easier for him to be hard on Max than on Joe.

In fact, I didn’t think Nathan had it in him to take a hard line with Joe until the next day. As the boat gets ready to dock, Nathan sees Joe and V flirting and smilingly asks them to focus. Sandy calls it their smoothest docking to date, so morale seems to be improving. But in the afternoon, Max and Joe take a nearly hourlong break in the crew mess while V works. In a perfect demonstration of his awareness-versus-accountability issue, it occurs to Joe that they probably shouldn’t be in the crew mess together. But when Max quips that they should be on the swim platform instead — even though they’re docked — Joe laughs and continues to chill. Nathan calls them out on the radio so that Sandy can hear it. “Can’t be sitting around, lads,” he says.

By the time Nathan catches up with Joe, he’s pissed. He wants to know what they were doing, and when Joe can’t fully answer, he reminds him that they can’t just be doing whatever — they have to check in with the bosun. Joe puts his tail between his legs, but Max is less willing to take Nathan’s crankiness. (“Emotionally, I’m going to be a storm,” he says in one of his wonderful Maxisms.) It’s a jarring 180 from the precedent Nathan had set — realizing he’s being taken advantage of, he all of a sudden becomes a hard-ass. It’s not convincing. He has yet to figure out how to strike Aesha’s balance of friendliness and discipline. Aesha gets along great with her stews, but she constantly finds gentle ways to reinforce their hierarchy — saying she’s proud of them, for example, or thanking them for what they’ve done. In a way, that reminds the girls that she’s above them while still making them feel valued.

At the tip meeting, Sandy tells the deck team she was disappointed, though she makes an explicit point to exclude V from that. The crew makes $2,200 each from a $25,000 tip. Aesha gathers her stews to give Cathy another stripe — it seemed ridiculous to have her as a third with all of that experience, so now Cathy and Kizzi are both second stews. Say what you will about Kizzi, but she is a good team player. She reacts well to Cathy’s promotion, even though she hates it inside. She knows that her jealousy is her own problem and makes a conscious effort not to let it affect her work. It’s a huge relief for Aesha that Kizzi reacted so nicely, and though she acts messily for the rest of the night, at least when it comes to work, she has admirable poise.

If only she could keep it when it comes to boys! All episode, Joe goes on and on about how badly he feels about his new love triangle. There are two aspects of his behavior that I find unpardonably aggravating. One, this refrain about how it’s just going to kill him if V gets hurt, as if it’s out of his control whether or not she does. Two, that he seems to assume Kizzi can’t get hurt. He is acting like he is forced by the law to get involved with them. If it’s all so “scary” to him, why doesn’t he just back off? In an effort to heed Aesha’s advice on their night out, he tells V that he’s not looking to attach any strings, when really he should have said: I want to also have sex with Kizzi. V thinks that’s his way of warning her not to “go down the rabbit hole,” though she still wants to “explore Wonderland” with him (ew). Later, she tells Kizzi she really likes him. Joe tells the boys that he is scared of how much he might like V, which I also don’t get. Why not date her then? What is the problem?

Somehow, though, most of this week’s romance drama has less to do with Joe than it does with Max, over whom Kizzi and Cathy compete. That’s at least partly fueled by Kizzi’s drive to compete with Cathy in general, but to be fair, she has had chemistry with Max since the beginning. Max flirts with both of them indiscriminately, without seeming worried about any repercussions. He jokes around with Cathy that she was “made in China” when she makes fun of her own “fake nose, fake boobs, and fake hair,” then checks in with her later to make sure he didn’t offend. He is sensitive, but he also has no problem telling Kizzi he got a boner just from looking at her, especially after she jumped into his arms in the morning.

Kizzi is thrilled with the news and goes around the boat telling everyone. Cathy rolls her eyes, particularly because she told Kizzi earlier that she wants to kiss Max, to which Kizzi suggested they “all shag.” Aiming for peace, Kizzi and Cathy do face and feet masks together before going out, and in the vans, they acknowledge they both like Max. By the time they’re at dinner, though, it’s every woman for herself. Cathy lays it on pretty thick, asking if Max likes her hair. She encourages Kizzi to pursue Joe, but Kizzi is reluctant; she knows how much V likes him. Cathy tells her that it’s a necessary move so that V will “back off a little bit.” Okay, Cathy! Then you can’t be that mad when Kizzi makes out with Max in the hot tub back at the Bravado. 

Maybe that’s too harsh — she’s allowed to be a little ticked off. It was right in her face! She complains to Aesha, then gets out of the hot tub. Joe and V almost kiss, but don’t. Nathan skips the hot tub and goes straight to bed because he’s serious now. Maybe he’s thinking of Gael, whom he FaceTimed the previous night for some emotional support. The most unbothered person in this whole cast is Josh. All he does is work hard and have fun; he even takes his pants off to get in the hot tub. There wasn’t a lot of pressure on him this charter — the guests seemed completely uninterested in having a gastronomic experience. Does that mean Josh used all of his extra time to write that very strange poem for Kizzi? I love him and love that he’s throwing his hat in the ring, but it seems like a long shot … unless Kizzi surprises us all.

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