Now that we’re done with charter three, it’s time for the crew to drown their sorrows in booze during their night out, which is obnoxiously annoying yet still the most entertaining part of the episode.
We open with everyone having beers out on the deck, where Daisy talks to Gary about having a difficult charter and that “when I tried to go stand up for myself, Colin fucking completely turns back around on me.” She then tells us that she’s “never been this angry with Colin before” and that he needs to “shut the fuck up and know his place.” Agreed. I get that Colin was trying to spin this into a team thing, but his comment during the tip meeting resulted from Daisy’s emotional reaction to Captain Glenn’s feedback.
While everyone prepares for dinner, Gary and Colin discuss the Daisy situation and Mads. Colin asks Gary if he likes Mads, and Gary says that if he’s going to kiss someone tonight, it will be her. In a confessional, he says he never expected to hook up with Mads but is now “quite happy.” A producer then asks, “Do you care if Daisy knows?” He says no because she and Alex hooked up, which is stupid.
Daisy and Colin then share awkward tension after bumping into each other, and this dynamic remains the heart of the episode. Captain Glenn drives the crew to their destination, a restaurant called Deste, where they’re told about the “Sardinian experience” they’re embarking on. Chase calls the waiters 006 and 005, and when they place napkins on the table using tweezers, Chase says, “Oooh, so fancy” in an annoying voice that makes Lucy (and me) cringe. As if he hadn’t already been on everyone’s nerves, he says, “All right, ladies, take note of what these guys are doing.” Lucy, fuming, tells us that “Chase making shit jokes about my fucking job” is the last thing she needs. Lucy continues to climb the ranks of my favorite Below Deck stews.
When Lucy asks Colin to put the d-board up on her bed during dinner, he says he’ll “put it on the fucking jobs list,” and Daisy says, “as long as you do something,” which sparks a back-and-forth between them. Colin’s like, “Daisy wants to have a fight with me,” and Daisy says, “Somebody’s in the firing line, might as well be you.” In his confessional, Colin says he doesn’t want to fight with anyone, but “I’m not gonna be made to feel bad about giving my opinion.” I’m kind of here for this enemies-to-lovers arc.
Meanwhile, in Mads/Gary/Alex news, Mads makes a toast dedicated to her friends, family, and “me and you,” directed at Alex, as Gary watches. “I didn’t realize I was a jealous person until tonight,” he tells Ileisha. Hmm, sure, let’s not forget you just told Daisy you were jealous of her and Alex.
Side note: Now that Colin is single, is Ileisha taking his place as the person who most enjoys watching everyone else’s drama unfold?
While the girls are in the bathroom, Mads wonders why she’s always left with the guys, which prompts Gary to tell her in Italian, “I see you. You play with people. I don’t want to play.” And she tells him he does the same. Ding ding ding! They start walking together and Gary tells her, “Don’t kiss me one night and flirt with someone else.” Why does he think he has any say over what Mads does, especially when he does the exact same?
Everyone packs into sprinter vans, and Lucy asks Mads what happened, and she says that Gary’s “pissing me off.” More importantly, we get a new installment of “Fuck, Marry, Kill: Crew Members Edition.” Mads says she’d fuck Alex, marry Colin, and kill Chase, which is the correct answer. Daisy says she’d fuck Alex, marry Gary, and kill Colin “’cause I’m super fucking mad at him.”
Back on the boat, Daisy joins Gary and Colin at the bar, and Colin walks away, so Daisy tells him to “fuck yourself.” Chase, who tells us he’s here to “vibe” and not argue or whatever, decides that the crew should play Twister, so everyone has fun with it for a while before falling back into familiar habits.
Gary, who is tremendously down bad, pulls Mads for a chat and tells her he isn’t “here to play games” before getting cut off by Alex, after which he says, “There we go. Precisely. Point proven.” I like seeing Gary not feel like the top guy for once, but it doesn’t matter because Mads hooks up with him again anyway, which I wish I could unsee. She tells us, though, “As much as I wish Alex were to make a move, he hasn’t. And, um, I’m a little horny!”
The next morning, Daisy wakes up with a “raging headache,” and Mads reveals to Daisy that she and Gary hooked up in a regretful tone, which Daisy says is “not a bad thing.” Since it’s the day between charters, everyone’s cleaning the boat, meaning not much happens. Later in the laundry room, Daisy asks Gary to spill on his thing with Mads and asks if he slept with her, and when he says no, she says she knows there’s more to the story and asks why he kept it a secret from her. In a confessional, he says it’s because she “tries her hardest to cock-block me.” “She doesn’t want me, and she doesn’t want anyone else to have me,” he adds. It’s hilarious that he’s acting this way just because she and Alex kissed.
At the preference-sheet meeting, we learn our next charter will host returning guests Jim Blumenthal, a.k.a. the guy with the alter ego “Big Jim” who made the crew put on a talent show last season. This time around, they’ve yet again requested that the crew take part in a talent show, which likely means more stress for Daisy. I don’t understand the need to make yacht crews put on this type of “entertainment.”
After the meeting concludes, Colin and Daisy finally talk. He tells her that she’s “obviously upset at me, and I’ve ended up in your firing line.” She says, “You shut me down, and I know that comment was about me.” Colin maintains that it wasn’t about her, and I call bullshit. They eventually make up, and Colin tells Daisy he didn’t intend to “make [her] feel worse, but [he] did” and apologizes. Daisy tells us she wants them to “always be good with each other.” Same!
Once Jim & Co. arrive, Captain Glenn announces they’ll skip the tour since they’re familiar with the Parsifal and jump straight to the sailing. In the meantime, Ileisha makes sliders for them, and I can’t help but wonder: Has she ever served a full lunch yet?
As they’re about to sail, Colin notices smoke emerging from the engine. So much for having a breezy charter! When Colin goes to the engine room, he says that there’s “obviously something fucked up going on in the engine.” After a while, he sees oil dripping from the turbo, eventually determining that the “shaft inside the turbo has completely snapped.” Therefore, they can’t run the engine and are stuck anchored until they find a new one. As if we were relieving the first episode of the season, we get a montage of Captain Glenn desperately texting several parts suppliers, who say it’s unavailable, but he ultimately manages to find one on the tenth attempt.
For dinner, Ileisha plays it safe by serving traditional Sardinian food family-style to avoid Captain Glenn’s negative feedback again. She serves octopus, oregano lemon baked chicken, and local fregola with clams and shrimp, which the guests think is to die for. Captain Glenn, meanwhile, is thrilled that Daisy and Ileisha have “taken onboard everything [he’s] pointed out” and has noticed a “big improvement.” Really? Because this is what they’ve been doing all season.
As the guests head to bed, Alex wakes up for the night shift, where he complains about how the work on superyachts is “counterproductive.” He’s lucky he isn’t doing worse tasks than cleaning! The next morning, Chase is pissed because Alex didn’t clean the boat properly, so he has to take it into his own hands. “This is definitely not the first time I’m picking up the slack for Alex,” he says. True, we’ve seen it occur throughout the season. Chase talks to Gary about it, but Gary has already noticed that the boat “looks like shit” and says he’ll talk with Alex.
The guests requested a morning yoga session, which Chase and Lucy are tasked with leading. Chase takes it way too seriously, starting off with breathing exercises and speeches, while Lucy thinks the guests want to stretch and not have a “master class in yoga.” As Chase does all the poses, Lucy just laughs and tells us that he’s “cringing me out.” Same. Why couldn’t they have hired a yoga instructor for this?
The episode concludes with a dramatic moment of Captain Glenn doing an engine test run and telling us that it’s normal for smoke to appear but that the part only works if the smoke eventually stops. The new turbo unsurprisingly works, and Captain Glenn immediately takes the guests sailing to make up for the previous day. The Parsifal and its crew live to see another day!
