Below Deck Mediterranean Recap: Walk of Shame

Below Deck Mediterranean
The Deckhand Cometh
Season 11 Episode 5
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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When I hit play on this week’s episode, I worried for a minute that I was seeing things. Was I hallucinating, or did I witness Joe Bradley tell a woman they should each sleep in their own cabin and avoid making hasty mistakes? I rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I had to confront my new reality, which is that Joe Bradley is no longer the boat’s No. 1 tormentor of women’s lives. In fact, so far, all Joe has done is put his head down, commit to mending his relationship with Nathan, and work hard to earn his position as lead deckhand. Of course, you can’t change a man’s essence — he still has a romantic prospect on board, but his easy situationship with Kayley seems to have zero tension on the horizon. 

Luke has risen to the position Joe once occupied; Joy might call his approach to having sex in front of cameras laissez-faire. Apparently not content with their performances the night before, in the morning Luke lies down next to Gen in Nathan’s bottom bunk, where their way-too-loud hook-up continues in less… uh, penetrative fashion. I said this last week, but I’d like to reiterate it in case any producers are reading this: I don’t need, and indeed I don’t want, this level of graphic detail in my Below Deck. I want to watch a tenacious group of people navigate a challenging workplace and bond over their distaste of entitled rich people; I don’t need, and indeed I don’t want, to see Temu Clark Kent ejaculate all over his boss’s sheets.

The fact that we have already been so exposed to sex only five episodes in is not a great sign of where this season is headed, but an even worse indicator is what happens with Nathan’s sheets, a debacle that stretches over the entire episode despite its preventable nature. After he has been… satisfied, Gen tells Luke that she will wash the sheets if he brings them into the laundry room later. It’s a turnaround day for the crew — the new guests won’t arrive for another 24 hours. Joy speculates that Luke and Gen kissed; she can “feel it in the energy of the boat.” Even then, it hardly matters: Luke made his choice, so that’s that. This abrupt conclusion to their flirtationship makes Joy a little sad, but she resolves to focus on work and keep her eye on the ball: It’s cooking that pays her bills, after all.

Joy proceeds to give Luke the cold shoulder, which makes him realize, at this late hour, that Joy does like him. Apparently, when Joy told him the night before that since he’s single he’s free to do whatever he wants, he understood that she meant he should feel encouraged to have super loud sex with Gen, despite the fact that even then he knew that Joy would “hate him” if he hooked up with anyone else — he spoke those very words. Later, he worries about how Joy might react if she found out the full truth of what happened between him and Gen, but his apprehension is another misinterpretation. Joy wouldn’t julienne his penis because she won’t allow herself to get that worked up. What’s throwing off Luke’s game is something which might be unfamiliar to him: Self-respect.

When Nathan arrives from his rental in the morning, his soiled sheets still haven’t been changed. I’d love to swap brains with Luke for a minute so I could understand why, oh why, Luke didn’t simply take the sheets with him when he got up in the morning. Gen tells Kat that she and Luke had sex, but doesn’t mention the dirty sheets until that night, when it occurs to her that she never saw the sheets come through the laundry room. At one point during the day, Luke checked the laundry room, but was dissuaded from acting when he saw the machines were all being used. Oh my God, of course they were. This is a superyacht — they have a hundred million tons of laundry to do. Nathan doesn’t notice anything different about his sheets all day and goes to bed blissfully unaware that he is sleeping on Luke’s genetic material.

In the morning, Gen asks Luke whether or not he washed the sheets, and Luke replies only that the machines were full. By the time the charter guests are heading out on their first excursion,  two days after the hook-up, Luke still hasn’t found the time to clean the sheets. Even Kat starts to get nervous about it. Of course, it’s Luke’s semen on the bed, so it’s Luke’s responsibility to take care of it. That said — and I really hate saying this — Gen could have been way more proactive on the sheets front; housekeeping is her responsibility. She took matters into her own hands once; she could’ve done it again. The bosun is outside, like, 18 hours a day. Just put the damn sheets in the machine! 

To counterbalance the grossness of this situation, we get to see Kat and Coop go on a nice date. Coop even gets Nathan’s blessing to leave the boat with “Katrina.” He is every bit the “Southern gentleman” we might have expected him to be — he opens doors for Kat, carries her bag, and asks if she’s ever “been in love.” They go for a swim, kiss in the ocean, and feel fireworks around each other. Meanwhile, Luke, who couldn’t be any farther from this wholesomeness, calls his mom for some advice on his love triangle. Reasonably, his mother tells him to “stick to [his] integrity,” speak to both women, and apologize. He feels better after talking to her, though he is quick to reflect that “we all mess up,” so he shouldn’t be so hard on himself. 

The guests do arrive at some point in the middle of all this literally nasty drama. Primary Pat embarks with his fiancée, Karen, to celebrate their engagement with friends. These guests love Game of Thrones, which is perfect for this trip because so much of the show was filmed in Croatia. They’ll only be onboard for two days, but they’re planning to make the most out of it by requesting both a picnic and a walking tour of Game of Thrones shooting locations in Dubrovnik, all in one day. Aesha sends Gen ashore with Joe to set up the guests’ lush-garden-themed picnic, and they realize too late that Luke packed the wrong chairs — they are too low for the table. To Joe, that’s proof that Luke is distracted by his love triangle, but Gen couldn’t care less. She’s riding high on the painfully wrong feeling that she and Luke are on the same page — she even tells us, in a confessional, that not being second stew is actually a weight off her shoulders and a good excuse to “enjoy the season” and “concentrate on Luke” — and the fact that Aesha and the guests applaud her when they see the set-up. The guests notice the too-short chairs as soon as they sit down. Luckily, Joy’s picnic food is so good — their dessert is shaped like a gift box for Pat and Karen — that the guests don’t mind them.

Almost as soon as they’re back on the Akira One, the guests head out again for their Game of Thrones tour. Kat, who is half-Croatian and a GoT lover, leads the excursion with characteristic enthusiasm. At a medieval-looking staircase, Luke dons a cloak as he descends the steps while the guests chant Shame! Shame! at him, in a recreation of a Game of Thrones scene. I’m sorry to disappoint my readers — I’m sure many quips and jokes could be made out of the parallels between Luke’s plight and this moment, but I have never seen an episode of Game of Thrones in my life. Shame!

Back on the boat, Joy plans an elaborate feast for dinner; focusing on work helps keep her mind off Luke. Even Aesha mentions to the chef that she could tell right away that Joy had no intention of “playing games” with Luke and Gen. “I’m playing this game,” Joy says, gesturing at the galley. Her meal looks nothing short of phenomenal, and even more impressive set on Kayley’s virtuosic tablescape. After dinner, Joe dresses up as a “dragon slayer” and Coop as a dragon, or at least something resembling it, and they perform a bit for the guests, which culminates in Coop getting “thrown” overboard. 

In other words, dinner is such a success that the guests could never imagine the extent of the mess going on in the galley. Shortly after dinner, Luke asks Joy if she has “space and time” to talk to him, but she tells him no, “I don’t care.” In an act of repentance, Luke begins washing dishes. About 45 minutes past the end of his shift, and right before Joe and Coop are about to do their thing upstairs, Gen catches Luke helping Joy in the galley and becomes annoyed. She wonders if he’s not supposed to be in bed, and off to bed he goes, but not before rinsing every last fork. In the crew mess, unable to help herself and admitting to being “an insecure bitch,” Gen tells Luke that it bothers her that he’d stay up to help Joy finish her tasks, but when she does “all this cute shit” for him — I suppose she’s referring to the Post-It notes and the like — she gets “nothing” back. Luke smiles nervously. In a confessional, he calls Gen’s behavior “psycho stuff.” 

The guests go to bed early-ish, but Gen stays up until Luke’s night shift begins at 2 a.m., so they can talk. When he finds her in the pantry, she tells him that the guests just went to bed, a flat-out lie. Luke tries to break things off with Gen, or else he imagines that that’s what he’s doing, but their conversation — much like João’s talk with Ellie in the last season of Down Under — means one thing to him and the completely opposite thing to her. When Luke says that there is “no love triangle anymore,” Gen takes it as great news –– it means he has finally, decidedly picked her over Joy. When he says he needs to take a step back, Gen thinks that’s wonderful — if he needs space to break the disappointing news to Joy, let him have it! Hearing him say there’s no love triangle anymore is all Gen ever wanted. She leaves the conversation satisfied that they’re on the same page, but hoping they can “be there for each other” a little more going forward. For his part, Luke leaves the conversation dumbfounded. He wants to break things off, but doesn’t know how to do it. Here’s a tip for next time, Luke: Just say “I want to break things off.” In the long run, it’s much less hurtful.