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Below Deck Adventure Recap: Mercury in Retrograde

Season 1 Episode 8 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Bravo Hello and welcome to Below Deck Adventure. You know when you would play a ’90s video game and there would always be one group of levels where everything was frozen and Mario would just slide around on the ice? Well, that is what BDA is to the greater Below Deck universe. We are picking up in the middle of the season because of popular demand. What have you missed so far? The captain’s name is Kerry, and he is what you get when you combine the laid-back attitude (and hairstyle) of Captain Glen with the workout routine of Captain Jason. He’s already fired a hunky cowboy who was perhaps the worst crewmember in BD history. The interior and the exterior, headed by chief stew Faye and bosun Lewis, hate each other. And I am convinced that Faye is the long-lost daughter of Cathouse’s Airforce Amy. (If you got that joke, you and I will meet when our souls ascend to reality television heaven.)

Heather Gay and her crew have just left the boat, and everyone had a wild night out with new deckhand Seth whose pants are too short and whose abs are delightfully tight. I’m a little bit worried about our Sethy Wethy, though, and it’s not only because he has to sleep all day and work all night. Seth is the kind of crew who has been a captain or a bosun on another boat and chafes at being just a regular old boring deckhand once again. These guys are always nightmares because they think they know better, second-guess authority, and are always hot. My type has always been hot assholes, which is why there is a poster of Paul Ryan’s Men’s Health spread pasted to the ceiling above my bed.

As the crew wakes up from their night out, Kasey finds herself in Mike’s bed and confesses to Oriana that nothing happened between them and they didn’t even cuddle because she hates cuddling. Um, how do you share one of those tiny little bunks and not snuggle up a little bit? That’s like wearing a pair of men’s briefs a size too small and having the nuts never touch. That’s just never going to happen. My dear darling Kasey says she has never been in a relationship on a boat before, she just had sex with her fellow employees. This is the sort of sex-positive, relationship-negative view that I think we need expressed a lot more on this here reality-television program. Hashtag Sluts4Eva

There are naturally a new group of guests arriving, and the primaries are Mike, the kind of guy who wears floral print shorts with a pink zippy sweater, and Stefanie, the kind of person who spells Stefanie just like that. As soon as Mike gets aboard, he asks the captain if he does calisthenics with the crew every morning, and we all instantly hate him and wish he would not survive this here adventure cruise. Considering they’re going paragliding, the chances that we will get our wish is higher than Woody Harrelson at his dispensary’s grand opening.

The thing that I possibly hate the most out of all the BDs is when they have themed parties or themed dinners. If I’m ever on a superyacht, there is no way that I’m dressing up in some stupid party attire like I’m auditioning for the role of beer wench at a Medieval Times. Anyway, Faye and the girls put on their beer-wench outfits for a Viking Oktoberfest-themed dinner. Okay, this is not a thing. Oktoberfest is, of course, German. Vikings are, of course, Norwegian. Having a Viking Oktoberfest is sort of like having a Canadian Mounties Cinco de Mayo party. Just putting Viking in front of anything doesn’t mean that it’s suitable for being Norwegian.

There seems to be a giant problem with communication on this ship, and I have to be honest, I think it starts at the top. As much as I would like to caress Captain Kerry’s bald head, he doesn’t seem as involved as any of the other captains we’ve witnessed on these boats before. Maybe it’s because of that that Faye and Lewis can never get on the same page. That also translates to what is happening with Jess and Faye at the dinner service.

Jess is immediately pissed off that the stews sit the guests before she’s ready to fire up the scallops like she’s on an early episode of Top Chef. When they bring the plates upstairs, the stews don’t deliver the plates to the right people, particularly because one of the guests is allergic to seafood and another is a pescatarian and the dish has chorizo on top. I get it. Jess is pissed because she calmly and clearly explained which plates needed to go where to Faye and Oriana before they headed upstairs. That’s annoying. However, when she catches the error, she tells the guests that the “girls” never listen to her.

Oriana is pissed that she’s talking shit in front of the people they’re there to serve, and she’s totally right. It’s especially bad when the guests hear the fighting and ask Faye if she is upset about something, and she totally has to put on a fake smile and shake her boobs in the stupid, culturally incorrect beer-wench outfit that she forced herself into. However, Jess is also right that they’re not doing their job as well as they could have. It’s so strenuous when everyone is right and everyone is wrong. How can we just hate people without complications? That’s why we’re here in the first place, right? When Kerry shows up in the kitchen to help for a change, Jess tells him that he needs to leave because he stresses her out when she’s around.

I get it, dinner service is what Jess has been working toward all day, but there’s no reason to be a dick about it, especially to the captain. At least she’s capable of making amends. She apologizes to Kerry before heading to bed and makes up her roommate Faye’s bed as a gesture of goodwill. The next day at the picnic, she’s being nice to all the girls again, and Oriana says that this is the “cool Jess” to make up for her bad behavior. Yeah, that’s the way life works. If she’s cool 90 percent of the time, you’re going to forgive her for the 10 percent that she is a total asshole. I mean, we’ve seen all the chefs on this franchise for years. Almost all of them use the 90-10 rule in regard to the rest of the crew.

The next morning, the guests go to the top of the mountain to go paragliding, which is basically running off a cliff with a man and a parachute strapped to your back while you fall into a field where a picnic and a barf bag are waiting for you. I’m sorry, but you could not get me to do that even if the man strapped to my back was a completely naked and visibly aroused Tom Holland and there was a chocolate fountain and Cleopatra Jones pizza from Two Boots waiting at the bottom of that drop.

Making it even worse, Faye has decided that after all the guests land in the field and eat the lunch prepared by Jess, they will play games with the crew. This is despite the fact that at the preference-sheet meeting, Lewis said he would create an obstacle course for the crew back at the boat. So these people are going to paraglide, do tug of war with the crew, and then climb up the inflatable iceberg that Lewis spent the entire day filling with hot air like it’s Oriana’s ear and he’s filling it with empty promises.

This is what I mean about no communication. The crew needs to be on the boat setting this up. The stews need to be on the boat to like vacuum and stuff, and Faye is insisting they all come out to this field to hang out with the guests who would much rather be eating their Greek-inspired cuisine than playing a bunch of games with people they met less than 24 hours ago. No one wants these games and none of the crew is bothering to tell Faye to take her game of rounders and shove it in her St. Pauli Girl outfit.

When she calls Jess for an update on what is happening, she tells Faye that she and Kasey have returned to the boat and don’t want to play the games. None of the deck crew ever showed up in the field to help at all, and they’re helping Lewis get it up, which is a long and arduous process that takes hours. Oh, by “it,” I mean the inflatable iceberg. Was that not clear? Guess next week we’ll find out how much the guests enjoy the games and the obstacle course because it ends with Faye being pissed off, Lewis being stupid, Seth fuming someone and being totally hot, and Oriana thinking about totally new ways to be the worst. I can’t wait to find out what they are.

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