overnights

Below Deck Recap: Scorpiongate

Below Deck

The Scorpion Queen
Season 7 Episode 16
Editor’s Rating 5 stars

Below Deck

The Scorpion Queen
Season 7 Episode 16
Editor’s Rating 5 stars
Photo: Bravo

The saga of Kevin’s back pain reaches the unsurprising conclusion that … it’s fine. Captain Lee will not have to revisit his days as a line cook and make 12-egg omelets for the current guests because Kevin is fine. Apparently Lee can cook because he has experience from owning ten restaurants, but “can’t make a pimple on his ass as far as preparation and presentation.”

Meanwhile on deck, Rhylee does the dainty work of directing an iPhone photo shoot with the guests while her male colleagues do heavy machine stuff, like pull the anchor. By the time Kevin gets to the galley, where pulling a couple of lightweight metal bowls out of the cabinet causes him to groan in pain, the primary is in the hot tub. The editors cut from Kevin’s open-mouthed moans to her humping her man in the hot tub. She announces he has an erection.

Back to the Brian/Courtney/“What Is Love?” story line, where the unraveling of their relationship continues. In his confessional, Brian tells the producer that he and Courtney don’t have sex. Of course they don’t — Courtney is the only one next to Simone who can control herself when she drinks, and doesn’t want to appear on-camera with wet hair, do we really think she’s having sex in a bedroom with cameras?

For the independence-themed divorce-party dinner, Kevin gets the venison ready while the primary pulls Kate aside to say she’s already showered four times today and doesn’t want to shower a fifth, could they please eat dinner inside? It’s 88 degrees at 7 p.m and Kate has to agree, even though she doesn’t like having guests within earshot of the galley, where everyone has to constantly pretend not to hate both the guests and one another.

While the guests apply bronzer and hair products, Tanner takes an unnecessary jaunt past Kate to ask when the next invite to her room is. Ashton witnesses this and laughs, “Boatmances!” as he descends the stairs to the crew quarters. Simone, down there, as usual, with the iron, asks who Ashton’s talking about. Ashton, who could have had the decency to say, “Nobody!” says Tanner and Kate. Simone says that if she knew Tanner was this terrible she wouldn’t have gone there. Then Ashton asks, “Do you regret going there?” I know this is Ashton we’re talking about, and “perceptive” isn’t the word you’d think to put next to his face in the dictionary, but how could anyone for one second think that a woman who fooled around with a guy who then planned to have sex with her boss and wasn’t even trying to hide it would NOT regret it?

Upstairs, it’s dinner time, and Lee shows up to the table to applause and someone shouting, “The legend!” Lee’s expression softens with bemused satisfaction. He may have to regularly eat dinner with television’s most insufferable people, but at least they worship him.

At dinner, the primary wears a large sparkly headband from Meghan Markle’s future Kohl’s line. Kate and Kevin have a disagreement in the galley over the gravy boats Kate didn’t get ready for Kevin’s soup. Kevin is mad because he thinks Kate is checked out. But Kate says they never discussed gravy boats, and Kevin agrees, “I know we didn’t.” Who’s checked out now? The guests don’t care and love the soup so much they joke about how fat Kevin is making them.

While the guests move onto venison on a bed of pumpkin, Courtney goes to Brian and says she doesn’t want to fight anymore. They make out a little and Courtney says she just missed Brian so much. Once again, discussing their specific issues is entirely avoided, but at least she can enjoy another cuddle with his nice, sun-warmed muscles.

After the primary devours Kevin’s lemon bar on coffee-chocolate soil and fat shames herself once more, the guests go to bed. Simone and Kate clean up and Simone breaks a glass. Kate remarks that breaking a glass is so dangerous and asks how it happened, as though Simone would turn around and say, “I dropped it because I’m the idiot stew who can’t do anything right — not even hold a glass!”

The next day, Tanner oversleeps, which Ashton says has become a habit. He forgives him anyway. This sends Rhylee, understandably, into a rage. “Because Tanner’s a dude and one of the boys, he gets away with murder,” she says.

Back in La La Land, a.k.a. breakfast, the guests gaze at Thailand’s rock formations as the boat whizzes past, and say, “Can you believe this is your life right now?” Which is the exact question Rhylee continues to ask herself, but in the non-hashtag way. Courtney tells the guests today’s muffins are banana and chocolate, which means Kevin has been making different muffins for every breakfast and they’ve just now come up? Now all I can think about is what kind of muffins he made those guests he hated enough to serve the Wonder Bread French Toast. Corn? All dried out, with rubbery black bottoms?

Courtney then takes egg orders: eggs Benedict, a five-egg omelet, eggs Benedict with three eggs, three eggs scrambled and then — eight eggs with cheese. Courtney: “No one should eat eight eggs.” Right, and no one should eat five, either. That’s like one quiche’s worth of eggs. Then the guests depart and tell the crew it was the best vacation they’ve ever had.

The crew goes to eat lunch in the crew mess. Rhylee is last to fill her plate and, despite there being a lot of elbow room between them, no one will scoot over so she can sit down in the booth. Tanner then gets up and sits at the counter where he can have elbow room. Rhylee is offended and takes her plate into her room. Then Ashton grumbles that Rhylee is “a fucking kid throwing her toys out the cart,” which he’s said about 15 times this season as it is the only metaphor he’s been able to summon about Rhylee’s personality.

Kate walks past the first boat she ever worked on, which randomly showed up in Thailand, and muses about ending her yachting career. I can’t imagine her not being on Bravo, given the opportunity to be on Bravo, but maybe this group of men she has to work with has really been that bad.

They each get a $1,600 tip. Then they have to wash the boat. Rhylee, following lunch, is in a terrible mood. She sees Tanner taking a cigarette break, and says she should take up smoking so she could get 20 breaks a day, which is a good point. Ashton tells her she’s not being “constructive” — as though all of his comments about her have been exactly that. Rhylee then tells Ashton she wants to do her cleaning by herself, so he tells Brian and Tanner not to go near Rhylee today. Tanner says something nonsensical about how Rhylee is a Champagne bottle on New Year’s Eve, you keep shaking her and don’t know when she’s going to pop. That’s exactly how someone like Tanner would open a bottle of Champagne.

Then there’s a preference sheet meeting about the next primary, sports journalist Jemele Hill, who’s having a pre-bachelorette party with her girlfriends. She wants “dirty-themed drinks, like blow job shots,” quothe Lee, who turns to Kate in a moment of inspiration, and says, “Can we get any of those, like, little dick lollipops?” They also want a penis cake, which Kevin says will be no problem, and which Kate says should be presented standing up, like a little skyscraper.

Before they go out for the night, Rhylee crawls into Simone’s bunk to comfort her re: Tanner, who is so not worth Simone’s feelings. For Tanner’s part, as soon as he gets into the guys’ van, Kevin asks him, “Is Kate being too much of a bitch to stick your dick in it all right or what?” And Tanner laughs and says, “I have to do it.”

At the Thai market, Ashton notes, “There are so many different smells.” Tanner: “I just want a corn dog.” Then everyone starts eating insects. Simone, Rhylee, and Kate eat scorpions in a moment of female solidarity. Tanner derps over and Kate lets him lick the scorpion crumbs out of the bag.

Then Kevin buys fried crickets and some other insects. Rhylee hovers behind him and tries to prevent him from buying all the scorpions, which enrages Kevin, who buys them all anyway because that’s the kind of person he is. As he walks away from the insect stand, he says so Rhylee can hear him, “What a fucking bitch.” He goes to the guys to complain about what just happened, and Ashton says, “Did you slap her with your dick?” These guys sure spend a lot of time talking about each other’s dicks.

Rhylee enters the fray. She yells that the guys are misogynists, which they are. Courtney tries to defuse the situation, and Brian accuses her of standing up for Rhylee, which makes her run to the back of the girls’ van in tears. Instead of getting into the girls’ van, Rhylee sticks her face into the guys’ van and yells at them.

Now it seems like Courtney is done with Brian because she feels he yells at her “every time I have an opinion.” Again, she should be done with Brian, because a yachtie is not the man for her. They should do a postseason fling in Bali, realize they hate each other, and then part ways until the reunion.

Back on the boat, the guys settle in to drink with one another. They tell Tanner he should go have sex with Kate. He hesitates because, he says, of Scorpiongate, but it’s probably because he’s not drunk enough to try to sleep with her. Kevin says that Kate is probably up, given “the amount of Coca-Cola and Cheetos she’s been eating.”

Then Kate swans onto the deck, and the guys cheer, which is scary because a group of men drinking and cheering is scary, and Kate gets mad because she knows they’re talking shit about her. Kevin gets a hankering for the insects he bought at the market, and goes to his room to get them, only Kate won’t let him pass through the interior, her department, because she hates him.

The yelling and carrying on rouses Captain Lee at 11:09 p.m. He curses and goes to the deck wearing nothing but a pair of white workout shorts. He tells everyone to go to bed. Reflecting in his confessional, he says, “They’re still up kicking this dead horse. I’m madder than a pissed-on chicken.”

He claims there will be hell to pay in the morning, but judging from the teaser for next week’s episode, the real hell to pay may come when Jamele Hill doesn’t like Kevin’s disturbing vertical penis cake.

Below Deck Recap: Scorpiongate