Below Deck<\/a><\/p>\nTalk Derby to Me<\/p>\n
\n Season 12<\/p>\n
Episode 13\n <\/p>\n
\n Editor\u2019s Rating<\/p>\n
4 stars<\/p>\n
****\n <\/p>\n
\n Photo: Bravo\n <\/p>\n
The St. David is falling apart. I mean that figuratively, but Kerry was worried for a second. This week, the new wing-station controller finally comes in, much to the relief of our fearmongering captain, who cautioned that it might not be programmed correctly. Ultimately, it works out fine: The boat can run again. That\u2019s about it for things that are fixed \u2014\u00a0hell, for things that are fixable \u2014\u00a0on this yacht. There are only a couple of charters left, and if the middle of the season dragged through Sol\u00e8ne\u2019s reign of chaos, its back half is plummeting toward complete destruction. Everyone is on edge. Even Hugo, so far the most levelheaded person on the whole team, looks like he\u2019s about to lose his shit. Imagine if Lawrence had stayed on the boat?<\/p>\n
Through the first five or so minutes of this episode, you would be forgiven for thinking that Kyle is the crew member most going through something. After his Rachel Getting Married toast, everyone tells him to rein it in before it\u2019s too late. Fraser threatens to leave but doesn\u2019t and ends up being the one to comfort Kyle, who cries about having hurt his friend. Fraser and Hugo agree that there must be something deeper going on with him. Their instinct seems right, and the thing with Kyle is that, although he can behave regretfully, he is a humble man; he always apologizes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s tough to watch Kyle\u2019s spiral. No matter how remorseful he might get about his own self-destructive behavior \u2014 to the point, even, of calling his mother to relieve his moral hangover \u2014 he always ends up in another bad situation, e.g., in a guest cabin with Sol\u00e8ne for the night. That development was a bummer because it served as a reminder that the odds of true friendship blooming in and surviving the machinations of reality television are slim. Rather than find it amusing that Kyle and Sol\u00e8ne are at it again, I think true friends would step in to intervene \u2014\u00a0these are two people who bring out the worst in each other. As an audience, we have all come together against Sol\u00e8ne, but surely, she has her darkness too. In confessional interviews, they express their nihilistic view of their relationship: It\u2019s already bad, so who cares?<\/p>\n
Someone should. But what do I know! Fraser seems to, but he keeps his interventions to a bare minimum. In the van on the way back to the boat, he brings up the fact that what Jess did to Sol\u00e8ne is not very different from what Sol\u00e8ne did to Kyle, a point she is not willing to concede. In the other van, Damo and Rainbeau finally make out, but it leads nowhere. They both separately describe their kissing experience in fishlike terms. Damo is probably not wrong when he tells Hugo that there\u2019s no such thing as a bad kisser, only two styles that don\u2019t jell. His Brazilian girlfriend taught him how to kiss, he says, which is how we know his style is probably the correct one. It\u2019s so underwhelming between them that when Jess takes over the cabin with B\u00e1rbara, and Kyle leaves his and Damo\u2019s to go with Sol\u00e8ne, Rainbeau prefers to sleep in the crew mess rather than in Damo\u2019s \u201cgross bed.\u201d A sputtering end to the dream that something sweet might happen between those two.<\/p>\n
On the morning of the guests\u2019 arrival, the dynamic between Rainbeau and Sol\u00e8ne takes a turn for the worse. It won\u2019t get really bad until later in the chapter, but it\u2019s the first of two times Rainbeau rats Sol\u00e8ne out to Fraser. With everything that happened with Kyle over the last couple of episodes, I almost forgot how tense it had gotten between the two stews. It sets Rainbeau off to see Sol\u00e8ne taking a cereal break in the crew mess two hours before her official scheduled break. Rainbeau tells Fraser, who reprimands Sol\u00e8ne in the way you would reprimand a very sensitive child. \u201cDarling, we\u2019re not doing a breakfast break yet,\u201d he explains. Sol\u00e8ne copies but seems to finish her cereal anyway.<\/p>\n
She had to get something in her stomach, because she uses her actual break time to have a completely pointless conversation with Jess. She tells her it\u2019s \u201ctime to talk,\u201d then calls her a coward for avoiding her. This accusation seems to be driven by the fact that Jess waved at Sol\u00e8ne from the deck as the automatic doors closed, rather than stepping in to talk to her at the bar. It\u2019s impossible to tell exactly what Sol\u00e8ne expects to get from this conversation. Jess apologizes for sleeping with B\u00e1rbara in their cabin \u2014\u00a0that was bad and also five days ago \u2014\u00a0and then shrugs her shoulders: She has nothing else to say.<\/p>\n
Jess\u2019s day only gets worse. During the preference sheet meeting, we learn that primary Emily \u2014 a \u201crenowned dentist\u201d \u2014\u00a0just finished chemotherapy treatment and is about to undergo a mastectomy. Jess immediately wells up in tears; the mention of cancer makes her think of her grandparents, whom she lost to the disease (she tells us that her grandmother died of cancer, and her grandfather was so heartbroken that he passed soon after). Later, she will tell us how close she was to her grandparents, who managed a yacht club, but for now, she has to pay attention to Kerry\u2019s explanation of the tricky mid-moor anchoring they will have to do at St. Barts.<\/p>\n
This is a new anxiety for Kerry, though after the guests arrive, the production insists on a dun dun dun music cue as the St. David goes through the damn bridge. One of the guests makes a disgusting joke involving the boat and lubricant. In a precedent for a larger screwup later, Jess gets a mini-earful from Kerry for taking too long to update him on the chains during the anchoring process. It puts her on edge, and when Damo doesn\u2019t hear her tell him something, she gets angry. Hugo pulls her aside to ask her what\u2019s going on, and she tells him that she\u2019s been emotionally overwhelmed, which is getting in the way of her work. Hugo speculates that she\u2019s gotten too entangled in her romances, but she doesn\u2019t tell him about her family history with cancer. In the crew mess later, she apologizes to Damo, and they hug it out.\u00a0It\u2019s nice.<\/p>\n
After lunch, the guests go snorkeling. Meanwhile, Fraser goes on break and gives Sol\u00e8ne a few tasks. Before completing them, she joins Kyle for a smoke break. Rainbeau spots them before Sol\u00e8ne has had a chance to light her Winston and immediately radios Fraser. Sol\u00e8ne and Kyle laugh about it in a way that reminds you of when someone got called into the principal\u2019s office and everyone went oooh. Fraser talks some big talk about how he\u2019s fed up with Sol\u00e8ne and how she would have already been fired from any other boat, but once again, he treats her gently, even patronizingly. He tells her she should\u2019ve at least finished her work before going on her illicit break. If, in the analogy above, Fraser is the principal, he\u2019s the kind who wants to be buddy-buddy with the kids; there\u2019s no gravity to the way he reprimands his pet student. This is probably why Sol\u00e8ne hasn\u2019t actually improved: She knows she can\u2019t get into any real trouble and that the principal secretly thinks her high jinks are funny, which injures hardworking, desperate-to-impress Rainbeau\u2019s sense of justice. Rainbeau tells Kyle \u2014\u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t do anything!\u201d \u2014 that if she sees him encouraging Sol\u00e8ne again, they won\u2019t be friends anymore. Sol\u00e8ne swears that if one day she sees Rainbeau misstepping, she will run to Fraser, forgetting that the whole point of Rainbeau is that she obviously won\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Okay, I\u2019m done with the school metaphor. I like Emily primarily because she is going through something very painful, but she is hilarious about it:Sshe likens everything to boobs and, when she loses her hat, thinks it\u2019s apropos since she\u2019s also \u201closing [her] tits.\u201d It\u2019s all bearing heavily on Jess\u2019s mind, who messes up for real during the mid-moor anchoring that Kerry was worried about. When he asks her to prep the anchor, she accidentally drops it. She realizes the mistake right away and pulls the anchor right up, but it\u2019s enough to demonstrate that her head is somewhere else. Kerry reprimands her (Fraser should learn), and she opens up to him about how the proximity to a cancer patient is affecting her performance. As she cries, Kerry hugs her tightly and sends her on a break, telling her to turn off her radio and take a moment for herself. B\u00e1rbara checks in on her briefly, bringing her some water, before getting back to work. It\u2019s sad to see Jess so beaten up \u2014\u00a0it\u2019s been a rough couple of days.<\/p>\n
Not just for her, but for everyone \u2014\u00a0even Hugo and Rainbeau get into it in the pantry while the guests have dinner. Hugo teases Rainbeau about hating Sol\u00e8ne, and when Rainbeau counters that she doesn\u2019t hate her \u2014\u00a0especially after Fraser comes in to ask what they\u2019re talking about \u2014\u00a0Hugo tells her not to bullshit him. It escalates sort of randomly, with Rainbeau telling him to stay in his lane and Hugo calling her a \u201cjoke,\u201d which is needlessly harsh. Sometimes, it seems like something gets into Hugo, like he has a really low tolerance for the most random things. The whole thing puts Rainbeau in a foul mood for the rest of the night. Hugo blows off some steam pretending to be a horse for the guests\u2019 Kentucky Derby\u2013themed entertainment while Rainbeau\u2019s anger festers.<\/p>\n
When Sol\u00e8ne shows her what looks to be a minor burn or injury of some sort, Rainbeau gratuitously asks if, when she gets hurt, she wonders if it\u2019s karma doing its work. Sol\u00e8ne asks her to come again, and Rainbeau repeats that her little injuries represent each time she has \u201cfucked over one of [her] teammates.\u201d They go over the night\u2019s checklist together, and Rainbeau tells Sol\u00e8ne that she will go to bed not once she\u2019s checked off every item, but once Rainbeau has said so. She tells Sol\u00e8ne that her negative energy makes her feel like Sol\u00e8ne doesn\u2019t care about her, and Sol\u00e8ne proves the point by shrugging her shoulders. As Sol\u00e8ne leaves, Rainbeau clenches her fists, talking herself out of hitting Sol\u00e8ne and remembering the way disputes got resolved in her family. Though production wants to suggest that Rainbeau might actually do something, it\u2019s obvious she won\u2019t \u2014\u00a0she\u2019s far too smart for that. Judging from next week\u2019s preview, it\u2019s all about to come to a head regarding Sol\u00e8ne\u2019s work ethic. Is it possible that we\u2019ll see her get into real trouble?<\/p>\n
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