Below Deck Mediterranean Recap: Switching Sides

While there is no shortage of personal problems among the Bravado’s crew this season — competition for and among the boys being the prime hurdle — they work well as a team to overcome that most quintessential of Below Deck challenges: entitled, demanding guests. When, at the end of a difficult charter that saw two full days on dock, the team racks up $40,000 in tips — $4,000 each, the most Aesha has ever taken home from a single charter — I felt a strange pride tugging on the old heartstrings, almost as if I’d been part of it …

Though they are united on the work front, the crew’s personal attachments are starting to fall apart. Kizzi pretends to be “so confused” about whether or not she wants to be in a long-distance relationship, but by the end of the episode, she’ll have ended things with “Tommy boy,” as V pointedly refers to him. She lets him down over an extremely awkward FaceTime call that should not have been televised, for Tommy’s sake. He’s the one who seems actually confused about being broken up with suddenly. “We’re in a relationship, Kizzi!” he cries out when she tells him she desperately wants to kiss someone.

Kizzi’s whole argument is that she craves the freedom of flirting guilt free, the last term being the operative distinction: It’s not like she ever really held back on flirting. Alone with Nathan and Joe at one point, Aesha articulates Kizzi’s dilemma: She’s at a disadvantage compared to V — who also likes Joe — because she knows she has no right to compete for Joe’s attention when she has a boyfriend. For his part, Joe is into V and Kizzi, but he doesn’t want to repeat last season’s mistakes and get involved with both of them. What is it about this guy that is so irresistible? Why does it work on V when he drunkenly tells her that while he likes Kizzi in a fun way, he likes V’s “soul”?

But all of that interpersonal drama can only surface after LaDonna’s charter is over. When we pick up this week, Josh is so aggravated about Carlos’s attitude toward dinner that he steps off the boat, but in classic Below Deck red-herring fashion, he just needed a cigarette to recompose. Besides, everyone apart from Carlos loves the food; the guy just likes to complain. When another guest mentions that their afternoon excursion was amazing, he retorts that they were dropped off in “an undesirable neighborhood.” Okay, Carlos! You are in a major European city! How about you make your own itinerary, and while you’re at it, get some of your own food?!

The next morning, the wind dies down enough for the Bravado to leave the dock and anchor out at sea. The stakes are high for the deck team; it’s their “only chance to give these guests the experience they paid for,” according to Sandy. It’s also V’s debut on deck, so she feels the pressure to prove herself as they undock and anchor the boat. Unsurprisingly, she does an amazing job, showing more initiative and skill in the span of an hour than Christian and Tessa did in days. Aesha even tells Sandy that deck work seems to suit V more naturally than stew work.

V proves herself able to handle the inherent chaos of the deck/stew position: She turns up the master cabin while LaDonna has breakfast; then, when LaDonna wants to go for a Jet Ski ride, she jumps back on deck. On the platform, she does a knot that Joe doesn’t know how to do. He asks her to teach him, which makes her very happy — not because her crush is crushing, but because it was Bon, her late boyfriend, who taught her how to do it. Bon was a veteran who served in Afghanistan, and he was strict when he trained her to work on boats. V feels like he’d be proud of how well she’s doing on deck. I’m really rooting for her.

Mercifully, breakfast goes by with no complaints. Just as things begin to improve, the wind picks up again. It becomes so strong that the deck team has to hustle to bring in all of the water toys. Max has a heroic moment when he jumps onto the tender just in time to stop it from floating away — by that point, the wind and swell are so strong that the clip that was holding it attached to the whip snapped. The guests think Max’s performance is awesome, but they don’t think it’s so awesome when Sandy tells them it’s too dangerous to stay out and they’ll have to return to dock. At least, docking goes great. Nathan is over the moon with his new deckie. “I’ll take V working part-time any day over Christian and Tessa working full-time,” he marvels. Sandy is similarly impressed.

Aesha, meanwhile, worries about the state of the charter. The guests abscond to their rooms after docking, once again raising the point that they are in a major European city with a vibrant cultural scene and world-renowned nightlife. Go outside? Anyway, the dinner theme is high tea, and the guests have requested to “end the night with a group dance led by the yacht crew.” It’s a good thing that Kizzi used to be a competitive dancer, and even better for her flirting strategies that she can use Joe as a dance partner. She comes up with the routine, which is as suggestive as you’d expect.

For dinner, Josh follows the previous night’s plan, which is to present the guests with three protein and salad options and 8,000 sides. Nobody thanks him after he goes up to the table to explain what each thing is, and Carlos doesn’t miss the chance to complain that his breaded mushrooms are greasy. But Josh blows them all away with dessert, which he serves in a coconut bowl. It’s a coconut puree with fresh pineapple, coconut and almond crumble and passion fruit sorbet, covered by a honey tuile (just typing this activates my tropical-bred taste buds). Josh tells the guests that he made the dessert for “a competition” the previous year. Another reality show? Where can I see this?

The night continues to score points with the group dance led by Kizzi and Joe, who bring in Aesha and Josh to dance with the guests. “It’s the first time I’ve seen a smile on half of these guests’ faces,” Aesha says. In short, the wind seems to have blown away any doubts about this charter’s success, but while the boys gush about how good it is to have V on deck, Kizzi tells Aesha that she was ticked off when something wasn’t done by V in the cabins earlier. She admits that the stress of the heavier workload is affecting her mood, but doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Aesha promises they’ll get more help soon. As soon as next week’s episode, it turns out: Sandy gets a new stew lined up to join before the next charter.

The morning of drop-off, Aesha and LaDonna have a sweet moment looking for a headband that LaDonna had left on her bed. It belonged to her late daughter, who passed away at just 18 years old in 2022. Aesha gives her a big hug and finds the headband in no time. Aesha’s superpower as a chief stew will always come down to her ability to connect with people. When you Google the definition of “people person,” a picture of her should come up.

After the guests leave, Sandy meets with Nathan and Aesha to discuss the V situation. As much as Aesha loved having her on her team, they all agreed that V seems happier and better suited for the exterior team. When they give her the news that she’s switching permanently, V can barely contain her excitement. She even cries when she tells Kizzi, who seems genuinely happy for her. The high of a job well done only gets higher with that astounding tip, and by the time Josh is putting on his eyeliner for the night out, being $4,000 richer tastes like freedom. Kizzi tells Nathan that she is so excited “to be a slut on a night out,” and he asks her to let him know once she’s broken up with her boyfriend.

I can’t imagine the relationship between Kizzi and V won’t strain over Joe, but at least so far, there’s no hostility between them. Over dinner, Kizzi tells Josh that she met Tommy at an inconvenient time, because she’s not made for long distance. Joe, meanwhile, summarizes his feelings toward Kizzi eloquently: “When she smiles, my balls tingle.” I felt for Max, whose standing in Kizzi’s estimation sustained a significant blow after Joe came into the picture. “Normally I’m the exotic French guy,” he laments, “but now he just come and snatch.” Get it together, Max! What happened to being Napoleon?

At the club, Nathan tells V that her work ethic reminds him of Gael. She spends most of the night dancing and talking closely with Joe, whose signature move — in a throwback to 11th-grade classes everywhere — is to pick girls up. Joe tells V that he’s sorry about Bon. When she asks why he’s bringing up her past, he tells her that he wants to say it before things go further; that he doesn’t want to be the guy who “comes in, then ciao.” Then he picks her up again. I’m puzzled by this interaction. Is this his way of telling her that he means to split after getting involved? V tells us that since Bon’s passing, guys don’t really know how to handle her grief. “I’m not broken,” she says. The question for us as we head into next week’s Bachelor-style charter is: Can this bachelor learn anything from Joe?