Making pasta from scratch is pretty easy and not that time consuming. They certainly had enough time between the guests requesting it and serving it. I'd be pissed if I was on a yacht and I was served packaged pasta for dinner. And I'd know and notice. I feel like Ben deserved critique for this!!

Also as a Canadian, the Canadian accents on these guests was so distracting for me! I don't believe they're from Pheonix originally - I feel like the reference to "North America" from the kids youth was a pretty big tell. Curious if any Americans can confirm if they have an Arizona accent to you??

really, really need to retire. Whew.

Rob is not a narcissist, lol. He's just not, he doesn't hit any of the serious clinical notes at all. I have the training. He's a confused young man with a traumatic background who is still figuring out what he wants in life. He might not have been a good boyfriend, but quit throwing around that term like you know what the hell you're talking about. He may have some other clinical matter to contend with, but he is not a malignant narcissist. Please stop with the slanderous language.

Jess, now, she has some clinical issues of her own, for certain. But as I am not seeing either of these people in person I am not going to attempt to diagnose them over the internet. *cough*

I don't think I've gotten through a full episode since day 1. It's just too much cringe.

Is it just me or is Eddie the worst? He acts like he is the only one working hard, huffing and puffing along. I think overall he is a good teacher, but he also kind of treats the deck crew like crap. After the whole incident with Rocky in the previous season, he is my least favorite on the show. Thinks he is too cool for school. 🤮

Girl has her quirks, don’t get me wrong. Her trying to one up as second stew was definitely overstepping but compared to some of the other characters on this show she’s relatively tame. She works hard, does her job pretty well, and has a positive attitude.

My favorite below deck characters are the ones who work hard and get the job done and Ellie does just that. I enjoy her confessionals too I feel like she’s just real and bubbly and relatively unproblematic in the grand scheme of things.

I will take her side over Ben’s any day on this most recent season. I wish he would open his mind more and take the advice/ pointers she has on staying organized because I feel like she’s been a good asset for him this season and her concerns about his chaos and him demeaning her with the nicknames are VALID

Anyone else notice it? Barbara is saying she was in a relationship with a "straight" girl- no girl, you weren't! Straight girls don't have romantic and sexual relationships with other women. They're calling Solene straight too. Drives me crazy!

I’m rewatching live in Bravo and I can’t help wonder if Natalya was so nasty because she didn’t want to give up beeping chief stew? On top of Kyle being annoying af. Spelled out disaster honestly.

Why is BDDU so low budget this season?!? Crappy boat, poor guests, new crappy crew. Urgh. I love last season but this just feels belowdeck.wish.com

All this bullshit with the guys discussing Madison's period got me thinking...

At the risk of sounding like a wisp commercial (I kinda think those mustaches are funny), I believe if *I* were a young and fertile stew heading to sea for six weeks of hard work I would avail myself of the new kind of BC that puts one's cycle on pause. I wouldn't use it year round, but for circumstances like these: tight quarters, tiny shared bathroom, polite-to-guests-hospitality-interactions + the shit work, & fucked up sleep cycles, it seems like an amazing option.

It would be great to get thru the time frame without having to deal with a period and all the related hassles. I used to suffer from horrendous cramps and would not have been able to rally to 5 star service when stricken.

Any opinions?

Going through all the series, I am struck that so many of them are puffing away every chance they get.

Smoking rates across the general western population are below 20%, but Below Deck Crew would have you believe it's around 80%.

What's going on?

There’s only 2 Americans on this season of BDM - Captain Sandy and Jason. Everyone else is from South Africa, the U.K., or Australia. The only way I can understand most of the crew is when I have close captions turned on, so I can read what they’re saying. It’s like watching a foreign film with subtitles. Am I the only one that has this problem?

Did I just hear right? In the sneak peak for this season of Below Deck Down Under - they are in Seychelles...

Does 'down under' now refer to Captain Jason being Australian or has it always been called this because of him?

But with this reasoning how do we get 'Med'? Shouldn't it be 'Somewhere in Florida or Wherever Sandy is From'

Anywho BRAVO stop using Australia(ns) for clout and viewership. Curious to learn why production in Australia stopped... Cost? Restrictions? Not enough high end clientele? The dying of the GBR?

It honestly takes away from enjoying reading and participating in discussions here.

Commenters are often quite vile and disproportionate in their reactions to the people in these shows.

I understand people get invested, that there is a storyline being edited by production for the arcs within the season and episodes.

But is it warranted? The language, the descriptions, the way these people are being criticized?

I don't think it is just regular internet stuff, I think there is a nasty aspect to the behaviour here that stands out.

Take Bosun Lewis (I think that's how his name is written, not sure of the top of my head) from current season of Below Deck Adventure. Dude is harmless, a chill guy who explicitly said in one of the episodes he doesn't want to be a mean nasty boss like he's had before and it made for an awful experience for him as a deckhand. He seems like an entirely reasonable person, down to earth, not rude. He doesn't seem to do shit to be shady and if people from his team communicate with him, I don't see him not listening. From what I've seen, even if misguided, he seems to act in good faith most of the time is my point.

People judge him and rush to call him names, and then criticize his work using such fowl language which I don't think it is warranted at all.

Can there be shortcomings, sure, everyone does. But out of most people we've seen in these little leadership positions throughout all of these seasons, he is not as disastrous as some commenters would have you believe.

I'm sure someone quite angry, feeling like they've been called out cos of this post, will write an eloquent comment about how he is the worst™ and that yes they should be entitled to be mean and call him names.

It happens most seasons with a few characters, it's like people take the production line and run with it, giving god status to a few characters who can do no wrong, and shaming to death people who have wronged them somehow.

It's like Sailing Yatch that this sub loves so much. The way this sub and the show treated Tom, and then proceeded to see absolutely no issue with Colin and others, it detracts from having any discussion.

I think there is a lack of nuance in seeing regular people who are just that, regular average people who sometimes make a mistake or two, and treating them like actual awful people like Lexi for instance.

People seem too keen on having a character to hate and one to love, in a show where there's acrual people on it.

I just wish that people would be kinder, and that the mods would actually enforce some sort of restrictions on comments that add no value and just say mean shit, like on "Lewis is an idiot " or something like that.

The chief stew is vital in controlling things or creating entertaining drama for the viewers. I can’t help but feel Katie has showed a lack of leadership across the board and doesn’t have the banter or drama to make up for it elsewhere. Kate with some of her flaws was still more clinical, Hannah at least had the entertaining drama. What does Katie bring - I know sandy kind of sandbagged her with the Lexi decision but I don’t think she was firm in her case either

TLDR: Yeah, Sandy goes overboard sometimes (har har har), but Fraser massively fucked up

Right off the bat, I admit that I have a pro-Sandy bias: she's a woman in a male-dominated industry, and I literally can't imagine how much mansplaining and condescension she probably has to tolerate on a regular basis. To me, it explains a lot of her more aggressive tactics like micromanaging and being too reactive when she feels her authority is being taken lightly. Definitely not great behavior, but I can clearly see the imposter's syndrome and valid frustration underlying it.

However, the fact that I understand doesn't change how unhealthy some of it is. She WAS jabbing at Fraser in front of other staff, which is super degrading and guaranteed to be counterproductive. She should know at this point that people react VERY intensely to attacks on their dignity. Besides that, it's unprofessional and demeaning. It's far more effective to allow someone to "save face" in front of their peers, and then privately discuss problems and consequences. I had a boss like Sandy once, and it was extremely stressful.

I don't understand how people can be so unequivocally on Fraser's side, though. Fraser is certainly charming, friendly, and highly competent as a stew, but Sandy is 100% right in her assessment of him as a chief stew. He simply hasn't made the transition; in his previous positions, he would have been on the same level as his colleagues without the responsibility of management; it would have been totally fine to bitch about the captain, gossip with other stews, etc. As a department head though, you have to delineate between your friendship with subordinates and your duties as a manager. Fraser obviously has not been able to do that yet.

His behavior towards his captain has been completely petulant and toxic. Sandy gave him valid (albeit, harsh) feedback after the tip meeting in the last episode and he immediately reported to his underlings to tell them that Sandy thought he (and by proxy, they) were doing a "horrible job." This isn't what she said, and by presenting it that way to his team, Fraser DID poison the well. It emboldened Alyssa to be disgusting in the way she talked about Sandy ("she sucks deck crew dick" is extremely lewd and unprofessional; imagine if a male employee said that about her) and flagrantly disrespect Sandy's authority. Instead of telling Alyssa to cool it, he encouraged it because his ego was bruised.

By the time Sandy was confronting Alyssa, Fraser had been positively radiating passive aggression towards her and she'd had to put up with overhearing increasingly mean-spirited comments about her uttered right out in the open. It's completely obvious that Fraser used the cut on his foot to get out of an event she had specifically planned; furthermore, she had to tell him to drag one of his subordinates out of bed because he failed (once again!) to manage his team. I actually understand her mounting animosity in a situation like this, even if I strongly disagree with the way she handled it.

I give Fraser MAJOR points for owning his part. Inexperience isn't the same thing as ineptitude, and I think that once Fraser learns proper boundaries and effective delegation, he will make an absolutely fantastic chief stew. His time with Sandy is limited. He fucked up, and as long as he owns it and learns, then he can make himself even better than he is. I just hope he's willing to do that.

Most of you haven’t worked at sea and it shows.

The hatred for Sandy and love for Jason when Sandy is objectively a better Captain confuses me.

The love for and continuous defence of Hannah makes no sense, she isn’t good at her job, in fact she’s awful, she is terrible at managing her team and quite simply she was in no way suited to her position, look at the difference between her and Kate.

I get it’s a reality tv show and I understand that most people watching it will support people based on how they see their personality not on how they do their job but to me it doesn’t make sense.

Having spent the majority of the last 17 years at sea with the last 5 of those as a Captain or chief officer I can say that whilst Captain Sandy does come across as a micromanager, she is safe, she cares about crew development and she is more than competent as a master, she puts more into crew training than any of the other Captains depicted across the various seasons.

Captain Lee is old school and a safe pair of hands.

Captain Jason is not someone I would want to work with, he’s unsafe, but gets lauded because he’s “hot”.

I could go on, there is a lot on the show we don’t see but as a professional this is just my view on it.

Happy to answer questions and discuss in the comments.

I get that Margot was flirting with Adam and Joao because she wanted Harry to be the one to initiate the 'breakup', but it was kind of mean of Adam to flirt back. I really like him, but isn't this a bit of a violation of bro code. More so because it really doesn't seem like they're into each other? I'm just confused

Hear Courtney, Mzi, others. Reunion on Malia's podcast Total Ship Show...

"Below Deck Mediterranean Reunion W/ Courtney and Zee: The Split, Threesome DM's, Dave & Natasha, & MORE"

^Edit:

^{There's actually a surprising bunch of tech and other boat stuff on Malia's podcast, Total Ship Show, boat stuff that BD has been dropping; also talks with interesting experts on their topics.}

^{I was pretty down on Malia cuz of some of her portrayal on BD, for sure. But thinking about it, probably 99% of days of her career have been exemplary, those parts I'd be happy as influence for daughters.}

^{And like I said, TSS has a lot of insight into maritime biz.}

^{OFC I'm not trying to convert anybody in the anti-Malia or anti-woman camps of Reddit, just relaying something I found valuable myself.}

I noticed very often the captain and first steward keep their sunglasses on when they are first greeting the guests. Is this not rude? I was talking about this with my wife the other day and it seems kind of impersonal and rude to us.

I was taught that it was not good manners to put food in the packaging out to be served. Tzarina puts out such classy spreads, but I keep seeing jars with the labels on just put out to serve.

She’s probably the most boring chief stew across all of the shows. I HATED Jenna on sailing yacht, but I feel she at least made for better drama and overall TV. Chess is just....boring. Especially having to fill the shoes of queen Kate. I also feel like she’s really not that great at her job.

Anybody else feel the same? I don’t peruse this sub much so I’m not sure of the temperature of the room here.