
Below Deck
Episode 1
Season 12
Episode 1
Editor’s Rating
Photo: Fred Jagueneau/Bravo
The sun rises on the St. DavidCaptain Kerry’s Sint Maarten superyacht, and doesn’t waste a minute giving us good ol’ reality TV entertainment. It’s the first episode of the season, and some of the stews are already fighting. The chef is already losing his mind. The deck crew is making serious mistakes. The charter guests suck. This is what Below Deck is all about! Can you tell I’ve been parched for action after an uneventful season in the Seychelles with Captain Jason? The teaser at the end of this week’s hour-long episode promises bonafide flagship mess: Obnoxious guests, police coming onboard, deckhand Kyle apparently hooking up with a guest. One thing is for sure: Everyone, everyonewill kiss.
We are once again under the care of Captain Kerry, whose approach to captaincy is best described as benevolent tyranny. He’s happy to help the crew, crack jokes and shoot the shit, but he watches his boat with eyes like a hawk. He runs cleanliness inspections in the cabins — last season, Kyle and bosun Ben got in trouble when they didn’t take them seriously — and does a walk through the boat with the bosun and the chief stew prior to each guest’s arrival. Nor soon nor his new crew is aboard St. Davidhe gathers them to brief them on his philosophy. He shall be strict but fair. “Don’t take my kindness for weakness,” he warns.
The slightly bewildered crew members sitting in front of him have varying levels of yachting experience, as well as varying levels of familiarity with Kerry himself. Returning from last season, we have Scotsman Kyle, a deckhand who won hearts with his disarming, boyish charm. He was in a turbulent situation with Argentine-princess-stew Barbie last season, and although they tried to make it work, it never panned out for them. Kyle can be frustrating: He’s like a mischievous young cousin you love and root for, but who is bound to make some indefensible decisions. Also back on Kerry’s team is Below Deck all-star Fraser Olander, ranked No. 10 on Brian Moylan’s ranking of the cast across all franchises. It’s only right that he should be placed so high: Fraser rocks. He is so good at being chief stew, and he is so tan.
Fraser is so ahead of the game that he gathers the crew for a drink before they even get on St. Davidhoping to break the ice and get to know everyone in their civilian mode before going to war together. It’s a big crew this season: three stews, three deckhands, and the chef. They are all new to us, so let’s take a closer look.
Rainbeau (Second Stew)
That’s short for Beaudine Trinjtje Schilderman de Roos, pronounced rainbow, just to make things clear. She’s Dutch, cool, and ambitious, hoping to one day be chief stew. She has the most experience onboard, so Fraser makes her second-in-command right away.
Solene (Stew)
Solène is a Love Island France alum who is completely new to yachting — her experience amounts to less than 30 days. She proclaims herself a “baby stew” and spends all day sounding and looking frazzled, asking everyone where things are, which worries some of the other stews. She doesn’t know how to roll towels. She doesn’t know cleaning vinegar from kitchen vinegar. It takes her ten minutes to set up for cleaning the toilets, a task which Fraser calculates should take ten minutes overall. She laughs easily and constantly. My prediction is that she will turn out to be either incredible or infuriating, with no gray area in between.
Barbara (Stew)
Imagine my shriek when I saw that there was another Brazilian this season, right after our fellow compatriot Marina conquered the audience on season three of Down Under. Bárbara isn’t even the only Brazilian onboard — we also have Caio, the boss, whom we’ll get to in a moment. Bárbara has barely arrived, and she’s already picking a fight with Solène, who is also her roommate. She has a direct, no-nonsense tone I know well from the homeland. The will go to bat for her.
Caio (Bosun)
He’s a boss, he’s from Rio, he has a memorable head of hair. He has two years of experience as a boss, but the St. David is by far his biggest boat, and as we’ll see, it’ll take some getting used to. He carries himself with classic Rio swag, but his personality doesn’t come through all that strongly, at least not in this episode. He does mention that he works at an “extremely fast pace” immediately after making a huge mistake, which made me think, Okay, work slower.
Jess (Lead Deckhand)
Caio’s second-in-command is an experienced deckie from South Africa who has been bosun and lead deckhand before. The boys take to her immediately — at first impression, she has the cool confidence reserved for people who really know what they’re doing. She aims to be a captain one day and, on the first charter, stays up late into the night looking at… maps? Like Bárbara, she is gay, and she tells fellow deckhand Damo that she likes a girl who speaks another language. That’s lucky for her: none of the stews are native English speakers.
Damo (Deckhand)
To round out the deck crew, we have the Australian Damo, who seemed great until he said that he has “Peter Pan syndrome” and “never wants to grow up.” If there is a redder flag in a man, I’m not aware of it, but so far, he seems to be getting along with roommate Kyle — another manchild type — splendidly. Jury’s out on whether his particular brand of boyishness will be charming or repulsive.
Lawrence (Chef)
Oh, Lawrence. The protagonist of the season’s opening episode, this Christian Brit loses his cool about ten seconds after stepping foot on the St. David. He tells us that he once struggled with anger management issues and addiction, but things became better for him once he accepted Christ in his life. “Better” is relative: The editors have a field day pairing tidbits of him cursing, huffing, puffing, and complaining with sounds of him reading from the proverbs. Picking up on his negative vibes, Kerry tells him not to hesitate to ask for help if he’s overwhelmed, but what’s really eating at Lawrence is the pressure to be on camera. He’s unpacking provisions in the galley when he asks not to be filmed for the first time — and as we’ll see, it won’t be the last. Lawrence is like that orange M&Mor the also-orange wiry guy from Inside Out 2. I like him immediately because I am also a freaker-outer, which is why I have chosen a line of work that can be accomplished individually and in silence.
With all the crew aboard, the St. David can start preparing to receive its first charter guests. Kerry decides to change things up, and instead of having a traditional preference sheet meeting with the three heads of department, he goes over the deck stuff with the deck crew and leaves it to Fraser to figure out the interior alongside the chef. This shows how much Kerry trusts Fraser, and maybe it was better for his peace of mind not to see Lawrence’s reaction to the guests’ request for a Japanese tasting menu on their first night. After the interior meets, Bárbara tells Fraser she is worried about Solène. The chief stew tells her to be patient and that he’ll keep an eye on her.
The next day, perhaps hoping to give her a boost of confidence and some exposure, Fraser sends Solène with Kerry to pick up the guests from the marina. Because there is a bridge at the port that is dangerously narrow for a boat of the St. David‘s size to go through, especially when winds are strong, Kerry prefers to have the boat anchored out at sea and pick up the guests in the tender — just as he did with the crew when they arrived. The primary, Sam Rashid, is a demanding man from Tampa who is bringing his entire family on vacation, including two adorable four-year-olds.
It’s not Solène’s job to look after the guests’ luggage — that’s the deck crew’s responsibility — but one does wonder if, had someone more experienced accompanied Kerry to shore, LuggageGate would have happened. Fraser might’ve noticed immediately that the bags simply weren’t following behind the guests and the captain. As it stands, the anchor is just coming up, the boat is starting to pull away, and the guests are snacking on Lawrence’s delightful-looking hors d’oeuvres when they wonder where their bags are. This is mainly because Sam, obviously a totally chill and normal person, travels with a black light so he can make sure things are clean, clean. It befalls Fraser to tell the captain that the bags aren’t onboard.
The deck crew is so frightened when they learn that no one picked up the luggage from the port that it makes them laugh in that incredulous, oh shit kind of way. Kerry has a yachting service deliver them on a shuttle but not before calling Caio to the bridge for a good talking to. It worries me that Caio doesn’t apologize or offer to rectify the situation in any way: He only tells Kerry, sheepishly, that it won’t happen again. When the bags WILL arrive, Sam uses his black light on the room and finds that the light switches are “disgustingly dirty,” which is so ridiculous it makes Bárbara laugh.
Elsewhere on the boat, Bárbara and Solène are bickering because they both have attitudes. Solène accuses Bárbara of using too rude a tone when she asks for something. If Bárbara sounds short, it’s because she is annoyed: Solène needs constant babysitting. It comes to a head when Solène speculates that Brazilian people don’t know how to say please, which is offensive to me personally, but Bárbara doesn’t seem to care. Could she be less aggressive? Yes. It’s she wrong…? Solène is not exactly Miss Prim and Proper herself. If I were new to a job where my inexperience ran the risk of putting everyone behind, I’d like to think I’d lead with some humility.
As Lawrence is setting up for dinner, Kerry comes in to offer a few words of encouragement, which is nice and needed. The nonsensical “Pan-Asian Japanese fusion night” (is it Japanese or pan-Asian?) starts out beautifully with a shiitake broth for the adults and chicken tenders and fries for the kids and turns into a disaster with the steak course. Sam had explicitly stated in his preference sheet that he likes his steak beyond well-done, basically charred. When on his plate arrives a cut of meat that is ever so slightly pink in the center, he sends it back to the kitchen. “It’s against everything I believe,” he states. What could that possibly mean? What is the relationship of meat temperatures to overarching belief? One thing is not to eat meat; that’s a belief. Eating meat, but only if it’s well-done, is not a belief.
As if emboldened by Sam, everyone decides to send their steaks back after a consensus agreement that the meat is tough and cold. I thought Lawrence was going to have a heart attack. The saddest thing is when someone is already anxious, and then something anxiety-inducing happens. Ultimately, the guests choose to skip the steak altogether. They will appreciate the deboned chicken wings and dessert, but it’s not enough to make Lawrence feel better.
The poor guy tosses and turns all night. He finally gets up at five in the morning and heads to the kitchen, where he has another breakdown. He can’t figure out the electric stove. He begs the camera crew to leave. A producer comes to talk to him, but he’s already past the point of being talked to. The implication of his complaints is that the production sets the crew up for failure rather than success: “I get told ‘we want to make you succeed,’” he says. “Bollocks! That’s a lie.” By the time Kerry comes down to the kitchen, Lawrence has already declared that he won’t stay for another charter. This is the first episode, and we’re already seeing the back of a producer’s head. By the end of it, I almost felt like I was there, with Kyle and Caio — unnervingly rhyming names — taking a smoke break and considering the long, long road ahead.
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