What Happens Below Deck Stays Below Deck
I am the captain now. Yes, this is still funny in 2021.
On last week’s episode of Below Deck two crew members of the super yacht My Seanna, a deckhand and a steward, slept together in a guest cabin. In the mythos of the show, this is a no-no. Despite there being no guests on the yacht, and none expected to arrive for another 30-ish hours, sleeping in a guest cabin without the permission of the Chief Steward or the Captain is a fireable offense. The episode ended by leaving viewers wondering wether either of the rogue staff members would lose their jobs. The safe money was on the steward Elizabeth, who has been on the verge of being fired all season, being the summarily dismissed for sleeping in the wrong bed.
This interaction is emblematic of the Below Deck oeuvre. Petty workplace tyranny set against the backdrop of the paradise of uber-rich vacationers. Mixing Downton Abbey style upstairs/downstairs class interactions with the typical reality-show fodder of drunken hook-ups and shouting matches, Below Deck has found a recipe that works, and stuck with it. Part of the Bravo network of reality shows, Below Deck, Below Deck Mediterranean, and Below Deck: Sailing have taken the network by storm, bypassing long-time ratings stalwarts Real Housewives in the last few years. It is also the first reality show that I’ve watched regularly in my life. My girlfriend introduced it to me last year and I’ve been hooked ever since.
The pitch of Below Deck is simple. You get to see twenty-somethings act like fools while working in paradise. It’s an easy show to watch. Major plot points are teased out often and early. Recaps happen before and after every commercial break. Important moments are shown multiple times. You can be on your phone for half the show and still know what’s going on. No need to remember something that happened two seasons ago, and if you do, well the editors will throw in the clip so you’re not confused. The main cast has about a 95% turnover rate every season meaning that once a season is done, there is no need to remember anything at all about old cast members. Except for Chief Stewardess Kate. Everyone loves Kate Chastain. Fluff, to use the derogatory term that many critics have applied to such reality shows.
However, the appeal of Below Deck lies a little deeper than all that. If there’s one thing that the show’s producers have come to understand it’s that rich people are assholes, and that makes for good TV. Below Deck takes place on super-yachts. Multi-million dollar yachts, over 50-meters long. A three day, two-night cruise on one of these will set you back somewhere between $200,000-300,000. That’s not including the cost of food, drinks, whatever activities you want to do, and a five-figure tip for the crew. Naturally, the guests are well-heeled. This means that they are incredibly demanding, quite often to the point of obnoxiousness. It’s in these interactions, drunken millionaires – not billionaires, billionaires don’t have to rent yachts – demanding that the over-worked crew make them gourmet food at two AM, whining that they haven’t been served a drink in the last twenty minutes, complaining that their private-chef made Osso Bucco isn’t hot enough, or just generally being ungenially obstreperous, that the show sings.
I certainly don’t want to make it seem like Below Deck is about making rich people look bad. It’s not. The guests, usually, don’t get any comeuppance for their foul behavior. At most, their trip will be cut short, but that is an incredibly rare occurrence, so rare as to have achieved mythic status. Usually, they get away with it, other than having their assholery digitized and broadcasted to millions of people. The confessionals are the only time the cast is really allowed to talk back to the guests. And they take advantage of it. Catering to every will and whim of the CEO of a roofing company sounds like its own hell, and the cast uses these moments to talk as much shit about the guests as they can get away with. The guests, for once, can’t do anything about it.
No, the genius of the show is that the producers don’t really have to do anything to make the guests seem like entitled crybabies. Other reality shows like Real Housewives or Keeping Up With The Kardashians find their drama in the personal battles between rich people. Below Deck doesn’t do this. The boat guests are secondary players at most. Their names are given in one episode and forgotten by the next. They are referred to as “the primary,” or “the drunk one.” Background players who seem to be mostly unaware of how they look. It is these glimpses at the unadorned assholerly of the rich make Below Deck worth watching.
An example. A few seasons ago, the yacht was chartered by some guy who made a couple million trading penny stocks chartered the boat for a three-day trip. He brought some of his cronies and his girlfriend along. He immediately complained that the WiFi on a boat in the middle of the ocean was too slow. He and his trading buddies then proceeded to spend most of their trip on their laptops being assholes to the crew. In one instance the guy who paid for the trip, “the primary,” in show parlance, wanted a fancy modernist gastronomic meal for him and his girlfriend. The chef provided. However, the girlfriend apparently just wanted like a quesadilla. This, naturally, was not explained to the chef, and it caused a big to do. At the end of their trip, this penny stock asshole, takes out a big chunk of cash that was supposed to be the tip, and IN FRONT OF THE CAPTAIN starts removing money from the pile for each supposed indignity he had to suffer. With absolutely no shame. The crew and captain have a blast absolutely ripping into this guy in their follow-up interviews. Some of the best TV I’ve ever seen in my life.
I guess I could go into the psychology or politics of watching rich dicks getting played, or why I enjoy seeing people reveal themselves as assholes on TV, but this piece is already too long. So I’ll just leave this here, and tell you to watch Below Deck.