Implosion BravadoThe deck crew is scratching an old, familiar itch. After several seasons of mostly interpersonal drama on both the spin-off and flagship series, Mediterranean creates a vintage mess: people arguing over their work. Part Below DeckThe appeal of the film is that the difficulties inherent in yachting are highlighted by the presence of a camera and the need to play a character. Some actors like Ayesha excel in authenticity; some, like Max, recognize the trickiness of reality TV and support the performance. All of this makes the regular, daily demands of the job that much richer: arguing over whether Christian washed his outboard engines becomes an opportunity to improve character. I love how this season is developing.
Moreover, although Kizzi teased the possibility of drama with the boatman and promised to get drunk, the crew's first night passed without incident. This week we start with Christian and Max still fighting, capsizing the boat. After Nathan's gentle intervention – “they're not lions, they're cats,” he explains – the team prepares to leave. On the way to dinner, Max tells Nathan and Aisha that he doesn't know how to deal with Christian. Nathan says he's having trouble understanding the problem, and Aisha confirms his difficulty by saying department heads don't have time to train anyone. It's good that she has the support of her friend, but she trained V without any problems.
The only thing powerful enough to bring Max, Christian and Nathan together is Kizzy's revelation that she has a “gentleman” at home. This is after Nathan, who managed to sit across the table from her, leaving Christian and Max to kill each other on the other end, heard about her plans to “wyazz” her, er, break up with that word Bravado. The boys go out for a cigarette to digest the news about the guy. “Let’s not believe it,” Max wisely advises. “Create your own reality, bro.” This spirit of delusion calms Max and Christian enough to force them to admit their differences. They can talk to each other like adults, right? Or at least they can dance drunkenly together?
Vee, quiet and focused on her work (she asks Aisha for feedback and volunteers to vacuum forgotten corners), comes alive at the club. She competes for everyone's attention with Kizzy, although without hostility; they have fun together, attracting male attention. Kizzy insists that Tommy, her beau, trusts her “totally” and that she doesn’t just want sex—she likes a real connection. She loves to cuddle! She demonstrates this passion by twerking in Aisha's arms. I was almost ready to believe that this Tommy didn't exist after all, that maybe Kizzy had come up with some kind of scheme with her friend at home to provide intrigue for her on-screen persona when Tommy revealed himself on FaceTime. As easy as it is to forget about him in the daily hustle and bustle of the boat, something about the way Tommy asks if the people on board know he exists touches Kizzy's heart. Nobody ever makes it to the jacuzzi.
Meanwhile, Nathan, who refuses Kizzy's attentions for the night despite Aisha's assurances that he “won't lose”, is on the phone with his old flame Gael. In a confessional, he says he misses her but is trying to move on from their relationship after things turned sour. It's hard to imagine how moving on would be the equivalent of calling her on FaceTime in the middle of the night, but the next morning Nathan seemed to get his second wind. Maybe it's Gael's voice that lights a fire under his ass, maybe it's the searing clarity of a hangover, but Nathan shows up on the next charter as a reformed bosun. I mentioned last week that he had lost track of his responsibilities as a leader – somewhere between the club and the bow he found them. He gathers his team and sets out clear expectations for the next charter: more urgency and more initiative. He tells Christian and Tessa to do as Max says, as he will be Nathan's point man on the team (Christian displays a saintly level of restraint, despite Max's smug self-righteousness in the matter). The first charter got off to a rocky start with Nathan and Tessa's illness and the fact that they were on a brand new boat. Now they have no excuses.
It's a good pep talk, but it barely gets through to the crew. Almost immediately after this, Sandy notices that there are watermarks on the outboards and asks them to wash them. While Nathan talks to the captain about how much Tessa and Christian still have to learn, Tessa kicks shit up by telling Max what Christian told herthe day before that outboard engines only need to be rinsed, not washed. Furious, Max takes Christian aside to ask why he said such a thing. What Max wants from this conversation is for Christian to apologize to him since he is the “unofficial lead deckman.” Christian, understanding Max's Napoleon complex, tells him that he must let the “volcano inside him” just “explode.” The tension between these two wreaks havoc on the team, but it's fun. Their arguments have the same tone and seriousness as the argument between Harry and Marv in Home alone. When they finally wash the outboards, Max asks Christian not to call him “bro” anymore, and that’s how you know the situation is beyond repair. Looking disappointed with the teacher, Nathan tells them that if they fight again during the charter, he will go straight to the captain.
Returning as chief guest is 'Sydney socialite' Jack Freeman, whom we met in the notoriously terrible second season from Down under. Aisha immediately remembers him. It is crowded – the kind of guest who asks the stews to unpack his luggage, of which he brings no less than seven pieces, containing 40 pairs of shoes – but pleasant enough. He doesn't ask for anything special other than an eight-course dinner. The deck crew were able to undock without too much trouble, and although Josh was worried about proving his prowess in Spanish cuisine, his paella for lunch was a hit. Aisha is delighted with Josh's performance, but fears that he will eventually burn out, although neurotics are the rule, not the exception.
Imagine the wonderful things that could happen if you could take a piece of Josh's perfectionist drive and drill it into Christian and Tessa's brains. Nathan leaves the two of them with the guests while he and Max announce the tender. He makes sure to ask them to keep a close eye on the guests, making sure they are wearing vests, helmets, and so on. About 10 minutes later, Sandy notices one of the guests floating away on a tinfoil board. The same guest told Christian as he was getting up that he didn't know how to use the controls, to which Christian simply said, “You'll get it.” Noticing that the guest is floating away, Tessa says that she is not obligated to do anything about it, not to mention that this is what “watching the guests” entails. Christian watches, scratching the back of his head, until Sandy barks, “Help him!”
But even the captain cannot motivate Christian to action. Sandy asks Nathan to return to the stern and he retrieves the stranded guest in the tender. The whole thing is “ridiculous” and “embarrassing” according to the captain, who advises Nathan to never leave Christian and Tessa alone again. Aisha brings news of the deck crew's disaster to the galley. When Tessa admits that they didn't show the guest how to use the foil, Nathan reprimands her with quiet severity: “I told you to do that.” He gathers the entire team together to tell them they need to up their game if they ever stop looking like amateurs. Tessa doesn't understand why she's being blamed for this. She's just a ghost on deck! She can't even lift hard things. When she complains in confessional about Nathan's lack of leadership, we move on to a series of instances where Nathan instructed his sailors exactly what to do.
After a busy day, guests prepare for a themed dinner with caviar and truffles. Kizzy sets a gorgeous table and Josh serves butternut squash risotto with salmon, caviar and truffles. He forgets to put the truffles on one of the plates, which is good news for Max, who snacks on them in the galley. When Josh comes after them to correct his mistake, there is a momentary tension in the air: where are the truffles? Will Max confess to his theft? But this is not something that would bother Josh, who is always ready. The guy who makes Plan B desserts has extra truffles, just in case.
Jack asks for a caviar cone paired with a shot of ice-cold vodka, which unfortunately sounds delicious. He makes one, then two, then three, and then, when all his friends are ready to go to bed, he wants Szechuan chicken. Eager to go the extra mile, Kizzy toys with the idea of cooking chicken with Christian's help. But their plans are interrupted by Nathan, who's worried that a) they'll poison Jack and b) it'll distract Christian from the damn list of jobs they carefully reviewed earlier and which he's begging Christian to go back to. Kizzy checks the crew's refrigerator and decides to give Jack some chili instead, figuring he's too drunk to tell the difference. It turns out that he is too drunk to eat at all: when she comes to his room with food, Jack is fast asleep. This makes Kizzy laugh because she is a good athlete. Overall she was great except for the disturbing comment she made the next morning when Tessa told her she had gone to high school in Bali. “It was a regular school,” Kizzy asks, as if she were at Love Island audition, “or were you in the huts?”
When the sun comes up on the second day of the charter, Josh kills him on three and a half hours of sleep while Christian continues to lose him. He did not fill the jacuzzi, although the task was in the list of vacancies, what he is unable to pay attention to. It's like he's never heard of what a to-do list is or how it works. Nathan is so confused when telling Sandy about Christian's failure that it makes him laugh. Sandy has every reason to sympathize, as when she tried to throw a bouncy chair to Christian, he just watched it fall into the ocean. Sandy reminds Nathan that a boatswain's job is hard but has its rewards, and Nathan is able to tell himself this as he watches the jet ski's hook hit Christian in the face. He could have used that as a mantra as he watched Christian fly off on the jet ski after failing to launch it. He may repeat this to himself when he hears Sandy's voice on the radio: “We have a sailor sailing away on a jet ski, what are you going to do with this Nathan?” He has his rewards, he has his rewards…
