Below Deck Recap: Mess with the Bull, Get the Horns

Below Deck
Diva Down Bad for a Deckie
Season 13 Episode 4
Editor’s Rating ★★★
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Deckhand Matt may just be the most audacious toe-stepper to debut in this franchise since Alesia, who, in the last season of Down Under, managed to rearrange the interior team according to her own proclivities. Matt might be able to pull a similar move and establish himself as bosun — Joe Bradley, watch and weep — if Alex doesn’t get his ass up and work.

That said, the second charter of the season is rough for every department. Last week, I wrote that Fraser was dropping his service standards, but toward the end of the charter, it was mostly the guests’ unappeasable attitudes that were ruining the vibe. Well, let us not generalize: Acro-yoga inventor Jason is a good time. All he wants to do is spin grown men in the air. He even gets to “fly” Kerry, who looks extremely uncomfortable the entire time but is game enough to help secure a good tip. We know Jason is a nice guy because, leaving the boat, he says with ignorant bliss: “I’m going to miss the crew! We’re gonna hang out with them after; they love us.” Sir, you will never see these people again.

This week’s episode picks up right where we left off with steam coming out of Kerry’s ears after Alex doesn’t react quickly enough to Sen dropping the Jet Ski strap in the water. Matt says they lost the only strap they had onboard, which I found hard to believe. Surely, things must fall into the ocean all the time? To make matters worse, Alex screws up again when Kerry, Fraser, and Kaylee leave with the guests for an excursion at the elephant sanctuary. They get tendered there, and before leaving, Kerry asks Alex to make sure they didn’t leave anything behind. Alex gives him a go-ahead, not realizing he forgot to pack towels. Fraser notices it when they’re already on the way. “I’m gonna end up getting sacked,” Alex laments when he gets Kerry’s furious text. Alex sends Matt over with the towels, and even though Matt sprints down the dock where the guests are waiting — it’s only 15 minutes, but to these people, it might as well be 15 hours — Kerry still yells at him. The captain scolds him with his favorite expression: He’ll “have to make changes” if the team doesn’t get their act together. One of the guests chuckles with evil delight when Kerry confirms that someone got in trouble.

Back on the boat, Matt is angry about having taken the heat for Alex’s mistake. He muses that Alex probably sent him because Alex didn’t want to get chewed out again so soon after the Jet Ski strap fiasco. All of this adds to Matt’s frustration with the bosun. Earlier, while putting out the slide, he complained to Sen and James that if working on deck is like driving a car, he is a “race car driver” while Alex “rides horses.” In a confessional, he says that the job is “not that hard” and Alex should be able to “do it in his sleep.” This is aggravating because Matt’s arrogance is extremely annoying, and Alex keeps giving him reasons to talk.

Still, Alex at least takes full accountability for his mistakes. He apologizes to the captain for underperforming and explains, as he did to Matt, that the sleep deprivation is getting to him. Kerry worries Alex won’t be able to manage the stress of the job, but gradually, Alex turns things around. He comes up with a solution for the lost Jet Ski strap by MacGyvering an old one he found in the laz. He tests it out with the deck team and one non-cast engineer; they nearly drop the Jet Ski in the water, but manage to haul it up. The next day, when Kerry sees the Jet Ski safely tied down on the sun deck, he praises Alex for a job well done. Later, heading into a windy marina with strong tides, Alex leads a smooth, competent docking. Kerry is relieved to see Alex prove that he does have what it takes, even if he’s on his back foot for now.

Kerry has his doubts, especially after talking with Matt when they return from the excursion. Matt comes up to the wheelhouse to apologize for the deck’s screw-ups and to say that Alex is falling short. In no uncertain terms, he tells the captain that he is ready to “step up” should he need to. Kerry appreciates the talk and tells Matt he’ll think it over, but he doesn’t seem at all disturbed by Matt’s shameless attempt at a coup d’état. Matt’s frustrations are understandable, but there are a hundred other approaches he could take, not least among them having an open discussion with Alex. The bosun has reassured his team time and again that he is open to collaboration and feedback, and rather than take that to heart, Matt is content to stab him in the back.

Of course, that’s because Matt is not really concerned with the success of the team — he just wants to be the loudest voice on deck. As they’re hauling the anchor to depart for the marina, he repeatedly asks Sen to take down the anchor ball before the anchor has been locked in. Sen insists on waiting until Alex is done guiding the chain up, “so [Alex’s] hand doesn’t get chopped.” Matt keeps pushing, but Sen holds her own and waits until Alex is done, as she said she would. In a confessional, she says that Matt is “ignorant, arrogant, and a manchild,” while Matt insists that as a green deckie, she should do as she’s told and not talk back. That’s how he puts it, which is as red a flag as I’ve seen when it comes to the way a man speaks to and about women.

Kaylee, bless her, is hoping Matt won’t be another “lesson” in her life. “I’m sick of lessons!” she pleads. To his coworkers, Matt jokes that having a captain is like having a girlfriend: “You can be nice to her for three years, then you cheat once…” Rainbeau gets it: She tells Moe that her current boyfriend is the only one she has never cheated on. Later on, after the guests have left, this cheating convention makes Kaylee nervous. Rainbeau asks to sit next to Matt at dinner, so she can “get to know him better.” Probably not thinking much of it, Matt agrees. Later Rainbeau tells Kaylee, in her weird fake English accent, that she hopes it’s okay that she asked to sit next to “her man.” This puts Kaylee in a bad position: If she says she does care, she comes off looking like a jealous type, which she is, because she’s been cheated on in the past. The stress makes her cry. Oh, Kaylee. It’s been four days. 

Rosa reassures Kaylee that she’s not crazy for being jealous of Rainbeau. Regardless of how thoughtlessly Rainbeau might be acting, Rosa has had it out for her since day one. Rainbeau is trying her best to connect with Rosa, but she feels like Rosa runs hot and cold. At least when it comes to James, Rosa has put in a more explicit effort. After Kaylee tells her that James has a thing with a girl at home, Rosa asks him explicitly if he is seeing someone. James replies that he is “fully single,” which is good enough for Rosa, but should set off alarms. Where is my red button? Fully single? Last week, he told us that he was in an open relationship with ground rules that include no cuddling! It’s starting to look like it’ll be Rosa, not Kaylee, who will be taught a lesson, if she can find it in herself to speak more than two words to James.

Still, out of all of this drama, it is probably Moe who has the worst charter. He makes mistakes, it’s true, but as Fraser says to Kerry, it also seems like the guests decided before they came onboard that they would take issue with the food. Kerry offers to have dinner with the guests on their last night, hoping his presence will temper their complaints. The last dinner is a “big deal” because it’s Melani’s birthday, and Melani has proved to be nothing but understanding and flexible, ha, ha. She calls a meeting with Fraser, Moe, and Carolyn — it’s amazing how the most difficult guests are almost never the primary — to go over the menu. When Moe offers to make her a birthday cake, she says she would prefer a cheese course instead. I’m sorry to anyone out there who “hates cake,” but that’s as strong an indicator of a rancid personality as hating dogs or children.

Moe’s military training prepared him to keep cool under pressure. He turns out two beautiful courses, though he forgets to include the glass noodles Carolyn had requested during their meeting. Worse, he puts a dollop of strawberry jam in Melani’s cheese plate dessert. Melani is, as we’ll all remember, allergic to strawberries. Seeing the cheese plates before they went out, Fraser suggested they add some jam, but neither he nor Moe remembered the allergy in time. It’s a silly mistake, and Melani is, of course, rude when Rainbeau comes to take away her jam dish. “They’re trying to kill me,” she says, but doesn’t throw as big of a tantrum as I expected. Apparently, she cares less about a potential anaphylactic reaction than she does about not having her bedside wine.

Kerry’s presence at dinner works well as a complaint-shield, but the guests resume their shit-talking as soon as they’re back in their cabins. Carolyn is annoyed that Moe came up to the dinner table in his blue uniform, which she calls “a dirty T-shirt.” I’m sorry, lady; he didn’t have time to change because he was busy making you food. “Dinner sucked,” Robby says, sounding like a kid who was forced to eat broccoli. The next morning, Robby talks to Fraser about the noodles. Fraser was in the meeting with Carolyn and Melani, too, and he also seems to have forgotten about the request. He apologizes and encourages Moe to do the same. When he does, Moe is met with a lukewarm “It’s okay.”

Amazingly, given how much, how often, and how stridently they complained, the guests leave a whopping $33,333 tip. It might seem like an act of generosity, but I think the really difficult guests leave huge tips not because they want to make up for being difficult, but because they want to show off their wealth. At the tip meeting, Kerry acknowledges it was a rough charter for Moe — leaving the dock, Robby says that he had “a little problem with the food here and there” — and for the deck team, and they probably don’t deserve such a fat tip. If that’s so, it makes no difference to the crew, who are each happy to be $2,777 richer.

Before going out, Moe talks with his teenage daughter on the phone. He tells us that as a girl dad, he feels protective over young women; we’ve watched him develop a loving relationship with the stews. That’s probably why he gets so aggravated when, leaving for their night out, a random drunken douchebag starts messing with the girls. They mostly ignore him and then ask him to leave, but he keeps trailing them. So, while all the other men in the crew stand around doing nothing, Moe steps in to tell the guy to leave — once calmly, then more aggressively — and then takes off his belt and wraps it around his hand. The episode ends on a “to be continued” cliffhanger, but we all know that Moe won’t actually get into a physical fight with these people.