Kiss, Marry or Kill: 28
The reality show I'm currently hate-watching, MORE BED CONTENT, my new standing desk (eleventeen stars), what's REALLY happening with Stanley tumblers?
This is my weekly series for subscribers only, where I’ll share things that caught my eye this week in a fun and flirty way (kiss), a sustainable way (marry), or a not-so-good way (kill). And yes, this trendy game is technically “f***, marry, or kill” but we run a family-friendly-ish show around here.
Kiss (things I like right now)
Below Deck Mediterranean
I’m branching out from books in this one, but only because the last three books I read were just meh. (I’ll share them at the bottom anyway—one was good but not 5-star worthy, and the one I’m reading right now has serious 5-star potential, so stay tuned next week.)
On Sunday, I had just over an hour left in my flight home from NYC—not long enough for a movie. So I browsed TV shows, and for some reason, selected this franchise of Below Deck (the reality TV show about the crew on luxury yachts). I don’t like boating. I don’t like reality TV in general—there’s too much drama. But I got sucked into this show SO HARD that I’m already through Season 7 and two episodes of Season 8. A few notes:
Rich people are awful. Of course the first thing I did was Google, “Luxury yacht in the Med how much.” Average pricing was around $7,000 per day, and most people are doing multi-day cruises, so they have money. And almost all of them behave like toddlers screaming for a binkie. The entitlement, the rudeness, the wholly unreasonable expectations… I don’t know how the crew doesn’t lose their shit multiple times a day. (I know how, actually—the average tip at the end of a 3-day charter is TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, divided evenly.) I have spent a lot of time on Reddit boards discussing which guests were objectively the worst, but I think they basically all are. (The man who wore a 6-figure gold chain TO GO TUBING, lost it IN THE OCEAN, then insisted the crew dive to find it. The man who sent his food back because there was cinnamon in it (there wasn’t) and he put “no cinnamon” on his preference sheet (he hadn’t), and then still complained about how the new Wagyu beef still smelled like cinnamon (it didn’t). The woman who insisted she didn’t like seafood, so she was served meat, then got very upset because she didn’t get seafood. The other woman who, when served a truly gourmet meal featuring chicken, said out loud, “CHICKEN IS FOR POOR PEOPLE.” I am hate-watching every guest at this point.
Guests are drunk ALL THE TIME. Yes, there are water sports (the yacht holds a surprising amount of toys, from a giant inflatable slide to jet skis to rafts), but if you’re not in the water, you’re basically sitting around and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Guests are slurring, falling down, passing out, and the crew is just handling it. (The crew does not drink while working, but stay tuned because the next bullet is just like this one.)
100% of the crew’s drama is born from alcohol, hooking up, or both. Minus Kyle, the crew is my least favorite part. They’re all in their 20s and they can’t figure out why there is so much drama on the boat? When they’re all crammed together 24/7? And they go out and get blind drunk between every charter? Then provoke each other into massive arguments and/or sleep with one another (or both)? And repeat this pattern throughout the whole season? Natasha (the Chief Stew) was the worst. She was pathologically afraid of being single for even one second, and the ping-ponging between her awful boyfriend and her equally awful on-board romance with Dave the chef (who was also toxic) made me wish they all took their tip money straight to a therapist.
Boats are INTERESTING. Much like I wish Selling Sunet actually featured more houses, I wish Below Deck featured more of the boat. I love it when they explain docking, anchoring, weather conditions, and the inner workings of the yacht. I suffer through the crew drama just to see how the bosun (had to Google that) and the deck crew work from the aft (had to Google that) and stern (knew that one) to guide the captain through a VERY narrow channel between two dolphins (had to Google that) into the dock. In summary, MORE BOAT.
Anyway, I’ll cruise through Season 8 (so far, even more drama from the crew—hire a team of women in their 40s who have their shit together and aren’t drinking right now and you won’t have this problem, Captain Sandy) and continue to manifest squeezing my way onto a megayacht without having to spend $50Gs. (It would be a very boring show. I’d love whatever the chef made, I’d spend the whole day in the water, I’d be in bed every night by 9 PM, and most of the B-roll would be of me reading on the sundeck.)
P.S. If you want to know the books that didn’t make the cut, Going Zero—this was actually good! Interesting premise, good twists, I’d give it a 4. All the Little Raindrops (it was not great, but I had to finish it—I’d give it a 2 but it has over 8,000 5-star reviews on Amazon???), and The Last Housewife, which was awful. It had such potential! There’s a BDSM slant to the whole thing that had me like YES give me some dominating, but it never got above lukewarm and the characters were all dumb and I hated it, -1 stars.)
