annewithaneee

Good call. I usually zone out during the anchor/docking drama parts of any given episode, so I can't really remember who fucked what up in seasons past -- Bryan was a much worse level of human garbage than Chandler has shown so far (it does seem like there's some sexism going along with all his many other character flaws, but he hasn't attempted to force himself on anybody yet). So for me, I'd probably rather have Chandler as the bosun of my yacht, even if it meant that it ended up sinking because he's straight up incompetent? I couldn't get through one charter with ass-chin without making him shark bait. For me, hostile work environment ranks higher.

Nico during his lead deckhand/bosun season was pretty terrible too. Nico had two solid excuses for his incompetence: his completely unqualified deck crew and his brother's recent death. I think Bryan (awful douche from first Med season) still takes the cake because he was shitty at his job and had some pretty appalling sexual advances (on Tiffany, right), that seemed to really skirt the line of being legally actionable. Plus he made first season Bobby feel more comfortable in his own disgusting mysoginistic skin. Chandler's just really bad at his job, he hasn't assaulted anybody yet, plus his face isn't quite as punchable (Bryan had that awful, awful ass-chin). Also, I kinda like having somebody around for Lee to call a dipshit, so he serves a purpose? Kinda???

Assuming that this was a call that Kate actually made, and not something Captain Lee had already told Caroline and Kate about and it didn't make the edit, I'd say the key difference is Kate has Lee's complete support and trust. Even if Hannah and Sandy's relationship had been typical - which it wasn't, Sandy came into the season with a major axe to grind and Hannah was well aware of it - that wouldn't have been Hannah's call to make, chief stews and bosuns seem to be managers, but ones without hiring or firing power. I think this is the first time we've ever seen Kate relay a message like that to a stew, and maybe that's because Lee had already made that decision and she was just repeating it, or he's fine with her taking that liberty since he has full confidence in her. I think Caroline and Kate just have a fundamental difference in personalities. I think she isn't reading Kate as being caring or sympathetic because she's not smiling, or hugging her, or talking to her overly sweetly. Kate's basically the opposite of a maternal figure. But I don't think we've ever actually seen her being so fair and compassionate to a stew before, and she seems to kinda see what we all see - that Caroline's in a fragile way mentally/emotionally in general - and she's clearly trying, but it isn't what Caroline wants. She seems to want a lot of attention and affection, which you're not often going to find from a boss, let alone Kate. She's a naturally cold, abrasive person (aka one of my people), but she's not being an asshole. We've seen that, we know what it looks like. I'm guessing it's just wanting to be on the show for longer, but it's pretty crazy she wants to stay. If I had an infected foot, and the doctor didn't know what it was, I'd be back to the US in a hurry. I've seen way too many disgusting articles about flesh-eating viruses and all kinds of fucked up parasites; if I'm traveling abroad and get an infection that can't be diagnosed, byeeeee.

In Kate vs. Rhylee, I'm on Team Kate. In Chandler vs. Rhylee, I'm rooting for some Jaws-ass shark to come leaping in and just take care of things. A little annoyed that the editors again misrepresented drunken cabin chat into "Who would you fire?" "...Caroline" on the previouslys. I get having a misleading teaser, that's how you get people to watch, but re-running that same mangled clip as a record of what actually happened is kinda shitty. I feel bad for Caroline because she really needed someone in her life to be a real friend and say "girl, no, that's not a good idea for you" when she got cast this season - because it's very apparent she doesn't have the temperament, or isn't in the right headspace, to be doing this show right now and is probably doing herself some actual emotional harm on top of plain-old embarrassing herself on TV - but not because Kate and Josiah are being two-faced bitches to her...because they're not. It's a really odd way to continue selling Caroline's storyline, because we saw what that conversation actually was -- either Franken-edit the scene itself to sell your point fully, or recap it accurately.

I might be a perma-Kate-apologist, but I'm not seeing any overt cruelty here. Earlier in the episode she was reassuring and complimentary to Caroline about feeling left out, and she was kind to her after her panic attack an episode or two ago. And the cabin chat...it really wasn't that bad, at all, and Kate was real damn drunk. If she'd had one more, the editors would have been captioning her slurring nonsense. So far, Josiah has been the bigger mean girl, and I still think it's pretty benign -- I'm not going to begrudge Kate meeting her soulmate who is also good at his job. Also, I just can't believe we saw her plastered and smiling like a loon -- that has to be a first. That said, I have a lot of empathy for Caroline. I wince almost constantly watching her, because that is so who I would be on this show. Constant panic attacks, weird family baggage, keening for acceptance and attention, always saying the weirdest things or having jokes fall completely flat. I just think she's reading too much into things...which again, is totally what I'd do too. Baby alien witch chef Adrian continues to be my favorite chef in BD history.

Yeah, when Jay told his story of being raped as a child, I immediately thought of Chris Brown. Tyler Perry may have a similar story, if I remember that Oprah episode correctly. I'm not sure exactly how this plays with race - I feel like it might, but that's all I can really say - but it's a very solid example of how toxic masculinity really hurts men and boys. Having an older woman prey on you as a child doesn't prove what a man you are, it means you were exposed to some really nasty trauma that needs to be confronted and worked through. I realize Jay didn't provide any specifics about who "took his virginity", and if it was an 8 year old girl it still ain't right (for both of them), but my hunch is it was an older person, and seeing someone grin and brag about their childhood sexual assault just makes me really, really sad.

I feel like any time there's been a reality TV person from Alaska, they have to mention that fact like five times per episode, like they think that bit of trivia can substitute for a personality. I've always liked Kate - even on seasons where that didn't seem to be the popular consensus (so, maybe all of them?) - because she seems like my kind of people. Watching her face absolutely light up with glee when she realized some shit was going down with Rhylee and Chandler, then head off to the stairs (or maybe it was that mezzanine bit leading up to their cabin?) with Josiah to shamelessly snoop...beautiful. Those two are clearly going to become two peas in a mean, dismissive pod, and I'm here for it. It's only one charter in, and I think Adrian is hands-down my favorite chef we've seen, on here or Med. He's an adorable zen alien who will hopefully stop making eight billion foams (it's not mid-00s Top Chef, c'mon) now that Steve is gone.

One look at Jamie at the last night out and -- damn, was she the secret winner of this season. She's absolutely gorgeous, didn't get involved in any showmance bullshit, didn't have to resort to any raps or general class clownishness. Kinda reminded me of the old school Real World seasons where there would be one or two housemates who were usually in the background of scenes not doing much, were pleasantly forgettable, and then popped up again in the pop culture consciousness doing something decent and legitimate -- your Karamo Browns, Jamie Chungs, etc. No way is Jamie getting cast for another season, but she escaped with maximum dignity, so good on her. This episode was another that felt unpleasant, tedious, upsetting - if that cabin scene wasn't some next-level Franken-editing by a production member who hates Hannah, Jesus Christ was that awful and crossed a bunch of super-uncomfortable lines - but I do have to give them this: I fucking love it when drunk people's slurring gets subtitled. It's my favorite shady editor tactic. That made me cackle.

Ugh, I can't wait for Below Deck OG to be back. There's the love triangle where all three sides are awful, the Conrad/Hannah thing where they're both trying to act as much like middle schoolers as possible (it seems like many commenters may disagree with me, but Conrad only wins in 'who can be more mature than the other' because Hannah sets such a low bar -- awkwardly exiting the wheelhouse without confronting the trip issue head-on and immediately running down to complain to Adam wasn't exactly the height of acting like a grown-up), Captain Sandy got a glimmer of reality tv sunshine and is now obnoxious to watch...the show would be more entertaining if we just watched Colin and Jamie napping or whatever the hell they're doing when the edit focuses on everybody else. Or the 2-3 unseen engineers silently doing their job. For me this isn't just a bad season -- I don't know that Below Deck Med has really had a good one. This is my least favorite, but none have clicked yet.

Personally, no job in the service industry is a dream job. Travel photographer or writer, I could be down with that, but cleaning toilets for tips? Nah, not even with Naples in the background. It's a good gig, but not an aspirational one imo. I'm more into "be your own boss" dreams where there's no plastic-haired charlatans asking me to refill their drinks. Speaking of, anyone who says "happiness is a choice" can take a long walk off a short pier. That guy almost made me pull an eye-rolling muscle.

I'm guessing it's the long hours with not enough sleep punctuated by nights off drinking, plus having a Jaoa around period - he makes me cranky after watching about 40 minutes of him once a week - but I really don't get the materialistic digs and reaction. For one thing, I think the nature of the job and the folks we've seen taking them (make money quickly to fund traveling the rest of the year), I'm guessing none of this approach the job like a not-for-profit where they go home and flop on their Craigslist couch with a bottle of two buck chuck. It has to be that they're irritable and also duty-bound to make entertaining television, right? If someone simply called me materialistic, I would shrug it off -- I live in a capitalist society, I like cute things, I get sad when things I enjoy get lost or broken, sure enough I like things, as well as people and places and my cats -- and it seems several levels lower than more targeted insults, like golddigger or vapid or a rich douchebag. As retrograde and offensive as it would be, it would be way more interesting if Jaoa and Conrad would just outright accuse her of being a golddigger or a label whore. As it is, these fights just seem deeply idiotic and not worth watching.

I think this is the first time I’ve witnessed a white lady on reality tv saying “go back to Africa” and it wasn’t appallingly racist. So there’s that, but the rest of the episode was tedious and unpleasant...I feel like that could be this season’s logline.

Part of this may be the editing. Just after Brooke and Kasey are discussing that Hannah has never set a table this charter season we pan to Hannah in her bed trying to nap. I also think that they are correct in that Hannah gets more breaks (to smoke) than the girls do. This "my chief stew doesn't do enough work" storyline has appeared on every single season in both Mothership and Med. Kate's caught the exact same shit basically every season, as did Adrienne. I basically shrug it off at this point as boring, expected, and most likely a product of the edit. The tablescape/setting did strike me as a bit odd as yes Kate's always done that herself -- but from podcasts she's guested on she's also said that she really enjoys it. It does strike me as one of the easier and more fun and creative bits of the job...maybe it's normally a stewardess thing and Kate just likes it so she does it herself? Or maybe it's a chief stew thing and Brooke showed aptitude and an interest in it so Hannah let her have it? It's gotten to the point where I basically dislike all of the crew and don't trust their assessments of each other's work. It's just whatever. Also a lot of Joao and the stews' complaints of their managers seem to boil down to "please stop managing me"...yeah, okay.

This episode was tedious and exhausting. To me, I read the situation between Sandy and Hannah as: they both dislike each other personally since at least after last season aired (maybe when it was filming, too), they didn't want to have to work together this year, they're probably in an unspoken competition for who is the Captain Lee of this series (as far as the constant presence and arguable "star" of the show), and I get the vibe that Hannah may actually be the only crew member Sandy can't fire. I won't be surprised if this is explained away as "only three charters left, it would cause too much chaos/disruption to fire her now", but I think part of Sandy's "I want to fire her!!!" monologue was raging at the fact that production probably wouldn't allow it, and I think that also speaks to Hannah's eye-rolling transparent dislike for her. Maybe I'm just making that up because it's an interesting "what if" scenario and that's not actually even close to what's really going on, but I get the vibe that those two are jostling for their reality jobs, and not their boat jobs. I also think there's a certain part of Sandy that has some internalized misogyny. For all she's into supposed female empowerment in the yachting industry and beyond, that feels a lot more like branding to me than accurate to her actual behavior. There's the very personal venom towards Hannah, and also how quick she is to apologize/forgive and get her boots polished by the male crew. And if that's the case, I don't actually blame her for it, but I hope she looks back on some of this and re-evaluates. Also as kind of an aside, it makes me cringe to see how blatantly Jaoa is working her -- if only she knew at the time how pathologically disrespectful and scary he is towards women. Doubt there's much genuine admiration on his end.

I think Jolie is the youngest and most inappropriate Housewife kid to be used as an accomplice and provider of sage wisdom to her mom, eeeeek. Between Shannon's constant weight fixation and marriage/divorce oversharing, and 80% of all that Kelly says and does, it's a tight race for most damaging OC parenting. Michael and David should exercise the right to exclude them from filming -- probably the only semi-decent thing Simon ever did.

I thought this was a pretty lackluster reunion, and maybe that's for the best. I think it had been hyped up to have more craaaaazy Ashley fireworks than we actually saw. While I'm glad she's ramped up to 50/50 custody, I can imagine that the 50% of the time the children are out of her custody it's nerve-wracking. At least from what I can imagine, a cornered Thomas and an on-the-verge-of-completely-breaking Ashley is a dangerous situation that's also not legally actionable. It has to be hell to wonder what those kids are exposed to all those days and nights that they're away.

I'm not sure I've ever cried at the Housewives, but there was something so genuinely sad about Luann breaking down and saying "that's what she really thinks of me" that kicked me right in the feels. Dorinda was absolutely brutal. Tinsley continues to be The Worst in a way that I find very funny. Of course she had to take the very very clearly wrong side in Dorinda vs Luann. And of course she had to pipe up "I have a mugshot too!!!!" -- that woman stopped maturing or changing her hair at like sixteen, and I love hating her for it. Bethenny is a neurotic beast of a woman, but I understand and to some (pretty small) degree identify with her monstrousness. I get how she has to walk away, and the panic attacks, and the "I've been redlining myself emotionally for several weeks/months/years/decades and now I'm just going to be a MESS now" phenomenon. I'm not on Carole's level at all. She's a geriatric Cool Girl to me, and has been since she rode on Adam's handlebars and got high at a ping pong bar. She wants to be above everything, and surely seems like she would prefer hanging out with men and proving how game she is. Her statement on quitting just cemented that for me. She's not here for your frenemies and bitchiness, she's a serious person who is above the thing she's been doing for several years. Bye bitch.

Sandy ordering Hannah (via Conrad) to report to the bridge and then when she did, shouting at her to leave, reminded me of old-school episodes of COPS. Cop: "What's your name?" Suspect: "It's..." Cop: "SHUT UP!!!" I think this season would be very interesting to hear candid, fourth wall breaking commentary on. I really do get the vibe that Sandy had an axe to grind with Hannah this season from the jump, and also that she (Sandy) wants to be the featured character on the show. I wonder if Sandy can fire Hannah and if that's why she's raging aloud so much about "I want to fire her!!!", or if that's her being performative in general. I don't recall that we've ever seen a first stew fired (not bosun either if I remember right, but I generally can't remember the deckhands from one year to the next), and it seems a toss-up if Sandy or Hannah is the main fixture of this show. Also yeah, I echo everyone else with how funny and convenient it is that when Hannah's not on dinner service and the guests are late, it's down to how great of a chef he is in planning ahead for a large delay rather than interior needing to manage the clients. Also, literally sitting on his ass and not bothering to throw even a cheese plate or some fruit at the waiting guests is not a good look.

God, I am so sick of the narrative of "Annie was a prostitute". It's so retrograde and offensive. Personally, I'm imagining that yes she was in sex work on some level or another. I've never been to Thailand, much less as a sex tourist, so I'm almost entirely basing this off of watching way too many random-ass documentaries on YouTube (so, you know, my sourcing on this is suspect as hell), but I'm imagining she probably worked in one of the many Thai bars where she was paid next to nothing to get Western men to buy beers by dancing and flirting (and perhaps yes singing karaoke while she's there) at the very least, and performing sex acts later at the man's hotel or some sort of rented room at most, with the lion's share of all proceeds going to bar owners and staff. And yes, some of these men she probably was scoping out as being a likely green card and source of much-needed money to send back to her family. But even if she were hustling on a corner or working out of an outright brothel, why is this a reason to judge and dislike Annie? If she was a sex worker in Thailand, it was almost surely out of economic necessity, and as bleak as it is, David was probably her best ticket out. I take it as nearly a given that Annie was a bar girl of some sort, but that it's David who is nasty as all hell for it. This deflated balloon of a man spends years over there, severing contact with his family including his minor son, takes advantage of the fucked-up cultural norms that have led to thousands of women like Annie having to work in incredibly dangerous conditions to make literally a few bucks, and the show continues to drive the conversation about Annie's actions and past? It's David who deserves all the shaming and then some, not her.

I’m probably being much too practical/innocent, but I thought maybe she had her breasts done because she was unhappy with them after breastfeeding two kids. Granted, I would think you’d wait to do a surgery like that until you’re sure you don’t want any more children. I’m probably being a fool- she got bigger boobs because she finally had enough money socked away from the show to get them done. I kinda think the same thing, that having and feeding two kids can wreak havoc on your boobs, and I think a young mom who's also doing reality tv is super-likely to buy a new pair. And I think her silhouette looks good, in that she didn't go too big for her figure, and they probably need to settle a bit more. Unlike a Victoria Beckham I think Kathryn has enough body fat for them to look more natural and less bolted-on in the months to come.

I'm glad Cameran apologized and also made no qualms about Ashley's awfulness. That said, I have a couple issues... Again, why is the cast very ready to reiterate Ashley being Satan's baby and completely hold back on Thomas? Supposedly the gag order was lifted for the reunion, and most of the cast members are rumored to be completely unwilling to film with him ever again (assuming he doesn't get fired, which Bravo had better do). While I think it's great that Cameran blatantly called Ashley horrible, she and all the non-Kathryn folks should have said that Trav is a nasty, nasty little gremlin of a man. Shep was probably grossest -- you like most things about Thomas? First of all, "accused rapist" may be only one of his labels, but it should take up a lot of real estate regarding one's overall character. And also, how can literally anyone stomach being near that dude and continue to keep up the illusion that there's basically anything likable or redeeming about him? Also, Cameran's speech while heartfelt and sweet had a bit of a gender-swapped "as the father of daughters..." feeling to me. I don't think having a baby would, at this juncture, suddenly make you understand that Thomas is an abusive heap of trash. Having eyeballs does.

I’m not a pharmacist so grain of salt, but a lot of anti-depressants can be safely mixed with alcohol without causing any extra inebriation. Personally I just think this was her normal awkwardness wrapped up in the blanket of some sort of extra helping of medication, not drunkenness.

That’s what I think too. I mean, she didn’t seem high to me but medicated. I double my Xanax - with a prescriber’s blessing of course - whenever I know I’m entering a highly triggering situation, and that’s what she looked and sounded like to me. If so, more power to her.

Let’s see, up until the rape allegation came out. Cameron, Whitney, Shep, JD, Elisabeth, Craig, Naomi, Kathryn, Craig, Naomi and Patricia's (her outfit was awful. Absolutely awful...)? All friends with TRav...... I give Jennifer a pass for tonight. Kathryn was pretty nasty to her. And has yet to apologize. She even doubled down tonight over Jennifer's testimony and played the victim route over it. I mean, yes. I won't argue that any of these people have reacted appropriately to Thomas, ever. Just watching him on TV makes me want to take a shower in holy water. But, anyone that has been Team TRav for years (presumably before and besides being on a TV show with him, which I think motivates some of the cast member's tolerance of him, whereas Jennifer may be an actual off-camera friend of his) probably isn't going to suddenly be put off by Ashley, and that's all I was saying. She's just the cherry on top of the drunken lecherous cake.

I was too for a second, then I remembered Jennifer Snowden is a longtime friend of TRav's. Her judgment's been fundamentally flawed for a longass time. Glad to hear her child's doing well, but she keeps some terrible, terrible company.