After 15 episodes, Hannah and Conrad’s love has finally shipwrecked. Hannah seems more upset by it than Conrad, who actually did the breaking up once he realized they fight every day. If Hannah is Ariel on the beach after the storm, only with a fresh pack of cigarettes instead of new legs, Conrad is Prince Eric without the castle, money, or chef (because if Adam belongs to anyone, it’s Hannah). Hannah may be flopping around on the shore with a broken shell bra, but she’ll find her way back to the sea eventually, where she’ll be able to swim along on her merry way to her next Ultra Music Festival, while Young Conrad will forever be stuck wearing ASOS for men with a bus ticket in his pocket.
I still just can the fuck not with João and anyone who thinks remotely well of him, much less anyone who feels attracted to him. Even though he flirts with Kasey every second that he’s not burrowing his way up Sandy’s ass or inflating a slide for a drunk, sunburnt person, Brooke still wants him.
After Hannah and Conrad break up and say they’re going back to the boat with Adam, the rest of the crew decides to go clubbing. “I don’t want this dress to be wasted,” announces Kasey, who, for some reason, is wearing a gown. The person most excited by this proclamation is João, leaving Brooke sinking further into her slouch and her drink, with a look on her face like someone just died.
While Hannah smells Adam or Conrad’s farts in a van, João and the rest of them go to an outdoor bar. João, who’s wearing two gold rings, says, “The more insecure [Brooke] gets the more distant I will get, because I just want to be me.” Which means he knows exactly what he’s doing and doesn’t care that it makes her feel bad. Then, things get really uncomfortable, even for this show: They all spank the air, and Jamie tells João he looks like he’s “beating a woman.”
“Do I look like the kind of guy who beats a woman?” he says. And then someone says, “In bed,” and João says, “If she asks for it.” Which is the kind of dialogue Bravo might have spared us in the #MeToo era but hey, they didn’t spare us João!
Brooke can’t take João’s flirting anymore so she sulks off to the bathroom, and everyone agrees that because João likes Kasey, Kasey shouldn’t go comfort her. Jamie clearly doesn’t want to deal with this nonsense, but goes anyway, and Brooke tells her she and João are “at that stage where we’re working each other out,” which is British for, “I’m still telling myself he’s not a monster because living in denial is less painful than figuring out why I want men like this.”
When they get back to the boat, Kasey and João enjoy prosecco and a can of Coke next to each other while Brooke eats off a plate. João lies down next to Kasey’s lap while Brooke washes her dish. Brooke is wasted and thinks he’s lying on Kasey’s lap, so she runs to her room upset. Kasey is all, “He’s not even on me, she shouldn’t be upset,” even though she knows exactly what she’s doing and Brooke should, for so many João-related reasons, be upset.
The next day, Kasey and Hannah clean a hideous metal shower together when Hannah says she’s not going to Prague and Kasey pretends to care. Brooke can’t remember why she was mad at João the night before, which means she also can’t remember Colin being the only one on the boat — the boat where her boyfriend also lives — who actually wanted to comfort her and tell her she’s hot last night.
Brooke and João encounter each other later in the crew mess and Brooke blames their trouble on the alcohol. Sure, that’s part of it, but when your boyfriend is a walking cow patty, that just might be the root of the problems.
The next guests are Clint and Trish. He’s a lawyer and she’s his younger girlfriend who loves dresses with a big boob ruffle and a loud print. She’s also hated by his two grown daughters. Hannah brings them salami while Brooke classes up the lunch table with a neon green centerpiece. Trish says she wants to “get organized,” which prompts one of the daughters to mumble under her breath that Trish needs to “calm down.” It’s like Hannah and João eating together minus the broken wine glasses and everyone ending up in a van.
Hannah has a “sad cigarette” and says she can’t believe her trip to Prague is canceled but Brooke and João are actually going to Florence together. What gets me about the Prague drama is that Hannah seemed to dislike Conrad more than he seemed to dislike her this whole time. She was upset about cigarette-gate, she was upset every time he acted nicely to other crew members, she was upset that he’s poor. Shouldn’t it have been her canceling the trip? Why is she upset that he canceled? Because she has to spend $200 to change her plane ticket? Isn’t that a small fraction of her daily non-boat blouse budget? The price of a single pair of her printed leggings? It doesn’t add up, which proves Hannah liked Conrad more than she was willing to admit all along.
While Hannah grouses over her travel plans, Conrad has to set up the guests’ recreational activities, so he throws all the “toys” over the railing of the boat and into the water because this is the last charter, so, who cares? Besides, if the boat gets dinged, everyone can just blame it on Trish who can’t steer a Jet Ski in an open ocean.
After everyone dresses for dinner and they all convene in the cocktail area, Trish runs back to their room, now messy like a sorority house on a Sunday morning. She proves that no matter how fancy a hotel room is, the second you get it messy with your own stuff, they all look like any old Hilton Garden Inn.
The daughters ask where the hell Trish went and — in Clint’s best moment of the episode — he’s like, “Where do you think?” As if the reason that followed is obvious: “You two were too tan, and she was too white.” Hannah begins to freak out about the timing of dinner and asks if she’s gone to tan. Back to Clint, who I’m liking more and more: “It’s a possibility. Who knows?”
The dinner is Italian-themed, which means Brooke has set the table with red-and-white checked linens and cans of dried Barilla pasta. The local musicians Hannah hired to entertain them are the sort of band that would sing “Happy Birthday” to you at a mediocre Upper East Side Italian restaurant against your will. During dinner, the daughters tell Brooke they’re thinking about getting tattoos to honor their late mother, and Trish, who I’m also liking more and more, says, “I have a tramp stamp!”
While João is sleeping, the producers force Colin to go to Brooke in her room and tell her that since the first week on the boat, he’s “had a thing” for her. “I like you as a person so, so much,” Brooke says. “Just not in the romantic sense.” My heart would break for Colin if I didn’t think he deserved better.
In the wheelhouse, Hannah tells Conrad changing her travel plans will cost her $200. In her confessional, she says she’s mad he didn’t even offer to pay for this, which I find rich given that she was multiple episodes’ angry over him asking for 50 euros for cigarettes.
If you thought you had seen João at his worst, think again. Because the next morning, he reveals that the depths of his flaws have hardly fully been explored. He fixes a cushion while Kasey tells him everyone assumes he and Brooke will break up after Florence. Kasey admits she still holds out hope he’ll ditch Brooke and go to her. João tells her that he probably won’t stay with Brooke because he doesn’t want to be held back by anyone. Kasey brings up the night he and Brooke made out, and says she thinks that if she hadn’t gotten up from the table, he would have made out with her instead. João tells her she’s “absolutely right,” which means he’s only in this fake relationship with Brooke because she was sitting next to him when he was feeling particularly horny. Captain Sandy may think Adam’s vinegar reduction looks like a skid mark, but the true skid mark on this boat and among men at large is João, and all we can hope is that by the next and final episode of the season, she and Brooke and Kasey finally see him for the fecal matter he is.
