Watching the crew succumb to their worst instincts and make out with reckless abandon is starting to grow stale.
Photo: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo
This season, you’ll remember, opened with a teaser: Nathan got a certain someone pregnant. Back then, I asked, Can Nathan hold this show together? He was set up to be the season’s main character, and as we reach its midway point, his protagonism has only solidified. He is experiencing painful professional growth, learning by making mistakes, and personally regressing and making bad decisions against his better judgment. This is a motif of the season as a whole: People keep succumbing to their worst instincts. You could tell when Kizzi broke up with Tommy that she knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, only the Kizziest thing. Our cast members are all in on playing their characters. Only Joe is coming at it from a reverse angle: His fondness for V is making him unrecognizable to himself, a refrain that comes up a hundred times this week (yes, Joe, it’s nice to be loved) but that sets him up for a more dramatic turn when things inevitably go wrong. And we know from the teasers that they will.
This all sounds narratively compelling, but this week’s episode lagged after the end of the charter. There’s only so much sucking face I can take before getting bored. At least things improve for Nathan on the professional side. As we pick up on “Bowing Out,” he is getting chewed out for Max’s bad judgment in letting Imran drive the tender. When they finally come back to the boat, Nathan tells Max that Sandy was mad but he can’t use his regular reprimanding strategy — yelling — because Imran is right there. For the first of several times this episode, Sandy reminds Nathan to “be a boss.” Later, Nathan asks the boys whether they think he’s a boss, and they validate him. Doi! Of course, they’re going to say “yes.” It’s easy to take advantage of him!
Sandy’s last straw is a “pathetic float,” a chair (?) that keeps falling on its side. It doesn’t get a lot of attention from the guests because it is impossible to tell what it does or why it’s there. Sandy decides they’re never putting the thing out again. Noticing they are all on thin ice, Nathan gathers his crew and asks them to be their best selves: Sandy is coming down hard on him, and he needs to trust them to make good decisions, e.g., not letting guests drive the tender. Max isn’t exactly sorry about his mistake; he thinks everyone is overreacting anyway, and he’s more focused on swooning Cathy. They are lovey-dovey throughout the charter, and in the mornings, Max always brings her coffee. In a confessional, he tells us about his past history with his parents, who had a bad divorce and abandoned him. It’s why he is so intense: He wants to make his own family unit, one based on security and respect.
As the deck crew struggles to keep their head above water, Josh spends two days on a cochinillo, a Spanish-style suckling pig. It looks delicious, if slightly medieval in vibe and appearance. It kills with the guests, who enjoy it with sumptuous sides — patatas bravas, pan con tomate, etc — and 5,000 shots of tequila. As they do so, Cathy and Kizzi deal with sheets drenched in sweat and, the next day, stained with what looks like tanning lotion. I understand it is very hot in Barcelona in the summer, but these people have en suite bathrooms. Don’t they shower before lying down? It’s all Kizzi can do to keep her mood in check. She has been in a slump all charter being stuck in laundry, besides feeling her stardom was usurped by Cathy’s competency and experience. When she vents to Josh, he encourages her to keep her head up and remember she’ll get a turn doing service next. Aesha also notices her dip in energy, and Kizzi is honest when she tells her that Cathy, whom she deems a better stew, bruised her ego. Aesha tells her that’s not true — they are both great in their own way — and plans on indulging her need for validation. The next morning, after Kizzi lays a nice breakfast table, Aesha makes sure to praise her efforts.
This need for constant praise is annoying. It’s not like it all comes so easily for Cathy — she has a rough night handling Imran and Mike, who get way too drunk. They take off their clothes in the hot tub and then Imran tries to stand on the edge of the boat and pee into the ocean. “I do it on my own yacht,” he argues. Cathy shows superhuman levels of restraint in not telling Imran to fuck off to his own yacht then. Instead, she is a master class in firmness, maintaining a tone that is appeasing to the guests’ needs and wants. Later, when they’re ambling around the boat, Imran and Mike break a glass and she literally sends them to bed. She is so stern with them that Aesha thinks they liked it, in a kinky way.
It makes her popular with the other guests, too, who think it’s hilarious that their friends got yelled at by the stew. Thankfully, it’s time for these people to go. As the Bravado heads to port, Sandy calls Nathan to the bridge to warn him that strong winds will make docking rough. Nathan gives his team a pep talk as they set up. I won’t pretend to fully comprehend what happened during docking — I am but a humble recapper; I don’t know how to park a megayacht. All I know is that Sandy wanted to back into her spot, but the thruster wasn’t working. (Who is the unprepared leader now?!) So Nathan came up with a plan to use the lines to pull the boat along. He needed this: He delegated without yelling or cursing, made a game-time decision that saved the day, and worked seamlessly with the captain through a problem. Sandy is proud of him, though she’s not as effusive in praising him when he saves her ass as she is in chewing him out when he makes her look bad.
The crew says bye forever to the guests. Imran apologizes to Cathy for making her uncomfortable — even he was playing too much into character. The co-primaries were so unremarkable I forgot they existed, but they did leave a decent $25,000 tip, which came out to $2,272 per person. At the meeting, Sandy congratulates everyone but tells the deck team they need to improve. Then she calls Nathan to the bridge and tells him it’s time to pick a lead deckhand, which he hasn’t been able to do because of his team’s chronic falling-apartness. At his request, she advises him to pick whoever he’d want to be in his lifeboat, but Nathan is stuck between a rock and a hard place: If he picks Joe, it’ll look like he’s playing favorites; if he picks Max, it’ll look like he picked him just because he didn’t want to seem like he was playing favorites. That leaves V, but Nathan thinks she’s too green for the job. It’s true, but she’s the hardest and best worker out of the three anyway.
If nothing else, Nathan is learning that being firm doesn’t mean cursing or yelling. Right before the tip meeting, Max and Joe chat about the girls. Max really likes Cathy and asks Joe, of all people, how he thinks he should approach their relationship. Joe tells him to communicate very clearly about his expectations; for example, maybe tell Cathy their thing has an expiration date. As Joe is telling Max how V’s affections are changing him — he likes cuddling now — Nathan walks by and gives them a few tasks, ordering them back to work without being rude. Nathan’s professional growth and ability to keep it in his pants are apparently inversely proportional. Despite texting Gael “wish you were here” minutes before going out, he spends all night with Kizzi. It becomes a running joke among the crew that Nathan and Kizzi never speak; they only make out.
Joe sends a selfie of himself and V to his mom, which is a big deal. Aesha is impressed by Joe’s newly discovered tender side but warns V to proceed with caution. V is well aware of Joe’s reputation, if also smug about how she “broke him” as if he were a wild horse. Meanwhile, Cathy and Max have a minor crisis. Cathy is in a foul mood; she doesn’t say why, but it’s probably fatigue from dealing with Imran and Mike all night. She tells Nathan and Josh on the way to dinner that she doesn’t want to jump into anything serious with Max, though she acted like a war was breaking out when Kizzi made out with him, thus making him feel very wanted. It all scrambles Max’s passionate brain. When she rejects his request for a kiss, he pulls her aside to ask what’s going on. He rambles about being the kind of person who “gives a lot,” and she tells him it’s not that deep: She doesn’t feel good. I was distracted by her starfish necklace, ring, and bracelet combo, but the gist is that Max offers to skip the club and head back to the boat with her. How can you not love him?
Before they do that, though, Cathy makes sure to check in with Kizzi, whom she overheard tell Nathan that she’s having trouble adjusting to a new personality on the team. At first, I thought it was overeager of Cathy to swoop into their conversation, but it turned out to be a good thing: Kizzi admitted it’s all her ego and it doesn’t have anything to do with Cathy, who understands where she’s coming from. They hug it out and Cathy leaves, letting Kizzi and Nathan resume their flirting, though all Nathan wants to talk about is Gael. Kizzi feels sad for him that he’s still hung up on his ex, an ailment she is completely unfamiliar with; it doesn’t seem as if poor Tommy has crossed her mind once since that fated FaceTime call. Nathan also talks to Aesha about struggling to settle into being a bosun. She gives him some much-needed encouragement by reminding him that her first season as a chief stew was one of the hardest things she ever did — it’s just how it goes.
Still thinking about Gael, Nathan proceeds to get loaded at the club with Kizzi and commences a marathon making-out session. Meanwhile, Joe asks V what she’s doing after the charter; he wants to bring her around to where he lives. So much for having an expiration date! While Nathan and Kizzi and Joe and V make out in the van on the way back to the boat, Cathy summarizes the difference between how she and Max demonstrate affection perfectly. “I respect that you are French and very touchy,” she says, “but you have to respect that I’m English.”
Everyone goes over their night before going to bed. Max tells Josh that he thinks he’s smothering Cathy with his affection; Kizzi, wearing a G-string that made me feel like I was seeing things I wasn’t supposed to see, makes out with Nathan in her cabin until Aesha arrives with her bowl of instant noodles to break up their canoodling; and V and Joe chat in bed. She asks him point-blank if he’s “weirded out by [her] past.” The one-year anniversary of Bon’s death, which falls on V’s birthday, is coming up in a week. She called a friend to talk about it earlier, and she’s not sure how she’ll react when the day arrives. Joe promises to be there for her. Then, just to remind us one more time about how bad it’s going to be when he does it, he says in a confessional that he “can’t hurt her.” It’s in your power not to, my man! Just be normal! That goes for everyone in this crew, too.
