Below Deck Mediterranean Recap: Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Why did this episode feel like a therapy session?
This episode should have been called “Trauma Dump,” because that is what we got from the crew members. They are in seemingly innocuous situations and then they launch the kind of sob story that’s usually reserved for lesser episodes of Dr. Phil.
Gael is on the tender with Ellie and Joe, taking the guests snorkeling in a lovely cave on the Greek coast. We see her swimming with fins underwater and enjoying being in the sea. “Being underwater is the first place I ever felt safe and at peace with myself,” she says. Oh, that’s so cute and lovely. But why? Oh, because she had a difficult childhood growing up half Asian and socially awkward, so all the other kids were mean to her. First of all, sorry. Second of all, damn. That is dark and made me enjoy her underwater swimming a lot less.
But don’t worry, Bri also has terrible stories about her youth. When she and Ellie are at odds once again, Ellie accuses her of not being able to understand hierarchy. She says she does because she went to boarding school as a kid, and they all had to defer to any girl older than them. If she was at the door and there was an upperclassman nearby, she had to wait for them to go through the door first, or else she’d be bullied. First of all, sorry. Second of all, damn. That’s really messed up. I thought boarding school was just privilege and playing disgusting party games. Now there’s bullying, too?
Things have to turn around, though, right? This whole episode can’t be terrible childhood stories. When the guests request the crew sing “Happy Birthday” for two of their cohort, Aesha enlists hunky deckhand Joe to play the piano while they all sing. We learn that Joe is a performer who plays multiple instruments, including the guitar and the piano. Like most guys, he learned to play the guitar so he could get laid, right? Wrong! He learned how to play because his mother suffers from fibromyalgia and was bedridden for most of his life, so he had to learn how to keep her happy while she was in bed. First of all, sorry. Second of all, damn. I’m glad he can play all of those instruments, but no one wants to be driven to the arts in a desperate attempt to preserve his mother’s mortality.
That’s enough for one episode, right? We have to get back to normal with the chef fucking things up and the crew being a little too lazy. Speaking of which, Gael is working on deck, and her co-workers and Captain Sandy praise her efforts. That has to come from a solid work ethic installed by her parents. I’m sure. Has to be. No, wait, it’s because on her last boat, she was carrying a big block of metal (who carries a big block of metal?) and she dropped it on her ankle and needed 16 stitches and a skin graft to recover. First of all, sorry. Second of all, please stop. This is all too much. And there were pictures! Pictures of her bloodied ankle, and we didn’t even get a trigger warning.
When Ellie gets in the water to swim into the cave, she tells us she’s not a very strong swimmer. I braced myself against the couch. It’s going to be because her uncle died in the 2004 Thailand tsunami, and now she’s scared of the water. No, wait. Maybe she had to watch her sister drown on the shore because neither of them could swim, and as her sister went under, Ellie thought to herself, I will do this for her. I will never learn to swim. That has to be it, right? Maybe she just listened to “In the Air Tonight,” by Phil Collins, one too many times, and she’s scared of drowning? (Even though that urban legend isn’t true.) Thankfully, no. There was no explanation. Maybe she just doesn’t like getting her hair wet, like that one guest who looks like the ghost of the Old Navy Lady.
The episode wasn’t all about the staff’s past traumas. (I was waiting for Captain Sandy to tell us her story about hitting rock bottom!) We also got some more of the drama between Bri and Ellie, though it’s mostly wound up. I think the biggest takeaway from this is just how well Aesha handled the whole situation. Ellie complains to Aesha that Bri says Ellie “belittles” her, and Aesha asks, “Well, did you?” It’s a very valid question, but Ellie says no. Ellie also complains about Bri sleeping in the boys’ room, something Nathan and Joe would complain to Aesha about themselves if they knew they could.
Aesha then asks Bri why she’s sleeping in the boys’ room. Bri tells her it’s because Joe asked her, and she thought it was fun. Okay, that’s was the first night. What about the second night? Aesha tells Bri to knock it off and get in her bed. In both of these instances, she tells Ellie and Bri just to suck it up while the guests are there and that they’ll have a real conversation when they’re off charter. She even gives Bri a high five when she finds out she spent the entire night in her own bed. Aesha seems to already be practicing for raising a 4-year-old.
Because Bri is sleeping in their cabin, it seems like Joe no longer wants to have topless make outs with her in the hot tub. Also, Ellie seems very concerned with how Joe sees her and doesn’t want him to think she’s belittling anyone because she still hopes she’ll get one of the famous Scouse tongue lashings she’s heard all about. (What she doesn’t know is that refers to a Scouser drunkenly yelling at you for two hours, not them using their tongue in more intimate places.) When they’re away at the cave with the guests, Ellie tells Joe that she finds him attractive and is interested in him, so she thinks Bri is mad at her.
Joe, bless his horny little heart, is glad there’s still a chance between him and Ellie. Joe then does the smartest thing that I have ever seen an amorous deckhand on this show do: He asks a woman’s advice on what to do about women. He explains the situation to Gael and asks if he can still crack on with Ellie, and she gives him some excellent advice: “If you want to bang her, make sure she’s the person you want to keep banging, or else it’s going to cause trouble.” Perfect. She is exactly correct. Excellent job all around. Now Joe should carry a big block of metal so that Gael is saved from any more trauma she might have to get over later.
As for the guests on the charter, they seem mostly fine and well behaved, except for the primary, Brittany, who gets wasted at dinner and decides to go full Kyle Richards, doing the splits when no one asked her to. They also seem to like Jono’s food and presentation. Captain Sandy, who is not above running plates to the guests herself, seems satisfied, and he’s not currently fired, but I have a feeling it’s coming.
The biggest drama was at the end of the episode, and it had something to do with a windlass. I hate when there is actual boat drama rather than interpersonal drama. Two stews yelling at each other over a man we know something about. We’ve seen it before, we may have even lived it before, so we can all be experts on how people should behave. But when something goes wrong with the boat? No clue. Totally — excuse the pun — at sea. I have never heard of a windlass until now, and I’m still not entirely clear about what it does. It winds the anchor, I guess?
All I know is that when you see the actual crew on the boat, the ones who aren’t usually on-camera, you know shit is serious. This week, we got to meet not one, but three. There’s Luka, the second engineer, trying to put a wind on the other windlass so they can pull up the Starburst anchor. Wait, it’s starboard, and not named after candy? Whatever. Then we see Piers, the second officer, hop into the tender, but the battery is dead because Iain is a dolt who is horrible at his job and left it on all night. Then we see Ivan, the first officer, show up and order everyone around as the line on the second windlass snaps and the anchor drops all the way to the bottom of the ocean. It probably did that because it has abandonment issues from when its mother took it to its first swimming lesson and just threw it in the deep end without any warning. I tell you, everything that happened this episode is due to trauma.