S07.E12: Yacht-Pocalypse Now

[Chalby]

On 1/3/2020 at 1:03 PM, mcjen said:

I'll be honest:  I like Kate, in general.  I think she's good at her job, in terms of keeping the clients happy and juggling the multiple demands on her time/attention, plus her snarky observations in the talking heads are the things I'm most likely to get a chuckle out of.  This doesn't make me blind to her mean girl tendencies or the fact that she could extend herself further in trying to "train up" stews who aren't up to snuff.  But I think she's gone out of her way to get along with Kevin, and it's gotten her back a big fat zero in good will from him.

Great post! I like Kate's witty retorts and I love that she works just as hard (if not harder) than the others. Kevin seems to dislike women in general. I've yet to see any interactions where he truly seems to enjoy their company or conversation. He's just a non-entity in my notable reality-show character lineup.

[Chalby]

On 12/27/2019 at 7:09 AM, Yours Truly said:

 I'm a bad ass, and I didn't carve out a "safe space" for myself by being the cool kid sister that pretended not to see the misogyny and I wasn't the smiley flirty one that played to the ego therefore drawing their sweeter sides, but would also bring that much more unwanted advances. I put quotes around safe space cause even in those roles, is it really "safe" to have to even play a role?  

I applaud your strength. I have been in a position of being the only female on a crew and felt the negativity and disapproval before anyone had even seen my work. I knew there were four people watching my every move and if I made even the slightest of mistakes, I heard about it (and received a write-up). Meanwhile, far worse was happening all around me. I soon discovered that I was not as strong as I viewed myself; discovering this long after leaving my six month temp employ. I still perseverate on how hated I felt even though I had done nothing wrong and I went out of my way to be accommodating and pleasant to coworkers. I swear I had PTSD for 2 years afterwards. Anyhow, Kate, Rhylee, and yourself should all be applauded. Things have got to change.

[Chalby]

On 12/25/2019 at 7:10 AM, Jel said:

Ashton should be fired, unceremoniously dumped off the boat at the next stop. If he isn't, that tells me all I need to know about Bravo.

I also am surprised that no one questions why a bosun (first timer) would request a crew member be fired with only 6 days left in the season? That would be so detrimental to Rhylee future career in yachting, and everyone knows this. How can someone who works as hard as she does be fired for having opinions and questions? Ashton needs to take a step back. He appeared far more rational when he was simply a crewmate (one who tried to bang Rhylee).

Edited January 10, 2020 by Chalby

[Chalby]

On 12/26/2019 at 12:44 AM, HunterHunted said:

He doesn't like Rhylee either. He has never made a secret of that. We saw a drunk Ashton go into Rhylee's cabin univited, climb into her bed, kiss her, ask for sex, and get kicked out of her cabin in season 6. Ross also did this during season 6. There was no huge outcry about having either fired or arrested because we're enormous hypocrites. We made value judgments about the victim and how she objected to the offending behavior. Unfortunately this meant that the viewers thought while what Ross and Ashton did wasn't ok, the two got a pass, a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, and undeserved decent reputations.

But Rhylee has never complained of unwanted affection from Ashton or Ross. She said that SHE will be the one to make a booty call, not some guy. Kate's interaction was different because she made it clear she wanted nothing to do with Ashton last year and this year. He knew not to invade her space. Rhylee and Ashton appeared close last year so I was surprised to see him despise her so much. I am willing to admit I am hypocritical if I see something glaringly obvious, but Rhylee and Kate's experiences were different. Regardless, I appreciate your comment because it makes me reevaluate my responses to these interactions. Thank you!

Edited January 11, 2020 by Chalby
forgot to say thanks and add Rhylee name

[Chalby]

On 12/23/2019 at 8:22 PM, Lizzing said:

It seemed like there was something edited out of the exchange about mothers in the cab.  

I have to agree with you. In fact I would like to see some raw footage with regards to Rhylee as well because I just don't see what she's doing to make all of them say they want her gone. Something must have happened that we weren't privy to. I felt the same way about Ashton's reaction to Kate's comment in the cab. I realized the network is notorious for editing to get responses rather than the truth, but this season seems inordinately vague.

[biakbiak]

1 hour ago, Chalby said:

I have to agree with you. In fact I would like to see some raw footage with regards to Rhylee as well because I just don't see what she's doing to make all of them say they want her gone. Something must have happened that we weren't privy to. I felt the same way about Ashton's reaction to Kate's comment in the cab. I realized the network is notorious for editing to get responses rather than the truth, but this season seems inordinately vague.

I don’t. Everyone in the van is super calm when Ashton starts freaking out. Also, many people add details during the after show or on Twitter, Ashton did neither. There was more we didn’t see with apparently Kevin trying to get the van to pull over because he wanted to get him out of the car several times because he was worried about his behavior. 

Edited January 11, 2020 by biakbiak

[Natalie68]

On 1/3/2020 at 2:54 PM, Mojitogirl said:

I find it very interesting that Rhylee seems to get along well with the three other women. She socializes with them, and despite her talk about Brian, hasn’t done anything to disrespect Courtney’s relationship. I find in real life that people who are truly problematic and awful are very equal opportunity and are disliked by both men and women (see the obnoxious guest this week no one likes). The men have mounted a pathetic concerted campaign against Rhylee and Kate using the same language and talking points and covering for each other. 

I am not watching because this season grossed me out but I am catching up here.  Rhylee works hard and does not shy away from speaking her mind.  She works in a field that is predominantly male and it is obvious she needs to stand up for herself because they don't treat her as well as other guys.  You are right that it says a lot about her that she is able to have strong female relationships.  I think these men don't know what to do with women that speak their mind and aren't afraid to get in a tangle like Kate and Rhylee.  They end up being called bitches when all they are doing is their job.  A dude does it and they are a bro.  These men lack respect for women.  From the way Tanners mom spoke with him I am not surprised he is the way he is.  She should be ashamed she raised that.

[Chalby]

35 minutes ago, Natalie68 said:

I am not watching because this season grossed me out but I am catching up here.  Rhylee works hard and does not shy away from speaking her mind.  She works in a field that is predominantly male and it is obvious she needs to stand up for herself because they don't treat her as well as other guys.  You are right that it says a lot about her that she is able to have strong female relationships.  I think these men don't know what to do with women that speak their mind and aren't afraid to get in a tangle like Kate and Rhylee.  They end up being called bitches when all they are doing is their job.  A dude does it and they are a bro.  These men lack respect for women.  From the way Tanners mom spoke with him I am not surprised he is the way he is.  She should be ashamed she raised that.

I love this forum site! I have gone from watching Yahoo news' responses, to YouTube comments, to other 'letter to the editor' sites, only to feel immensely frustrated with idiotic responses that only serve to insult back and forth between a random few. Just this topic's forum alone has offered me a wealth of opinions, suggestions, and feedback that make me ponder and/or respond. I appreciate how engaging everyone's posts are, and I don't understand why other sites only epitomize the definition of trolling. Just the paragraph above would take me hours to find on a typical YouTube video (or would be non-existent). And praise be for never having to read "First".

[Chalby]

On 12/26/2019 at 3:37 PM, dleighg said:

I know I'm old, but when I was a kid my brother was addressed as "Master David My-Last-Name." It was an accepted way of doing things. So I don't think it's really horrid; just very dated.

All my grandparents' correspondence was addressed to Master Douglas ..., etc. We loved it because (for some reason) it made us think they, and we, were wealthy. Sadly, neither group had a penny to our names.

[mcjen]

13 hours ago, Chalby said:

All my grandparents' correspondence was addressed to Master Douglas...

My one and only experience with this was back in the 1960's, when my little brother had eye surgery at the age of five.  Several of his get-well cards were addressed to "Master Jay ...".  Being a kid myself and never having seen this before, when the first one arrived, I told my mother someone had mispelled "Mister".  She explained that it was a polite, old-fashioned title used for a young boy.  I remember being just a teeny bit jealous, because I liked the old-Englishey sound of it.  I don't think I even asked her if there was an equivalent for girls.  I know I never remotely associated it with any kind of master/servant or slave connotation (but I can see where others might.)

Edited January 11, 2020 by mcjen

[Chalby]

13 minutes ago, mcjen said:

I don't think I even asked her if there was an equivalent for girls.  I know I never remotely associated it with any kind of master/servant or slave connotation (but I can see where others might.)

Sadly the female equivalent has always remained Miss (which never died out as Master has). Miss and Master were always used to designate the age of the correspondee (?) (and perhaps eligibility as we become Mrs. and Mr. soon after marriage.)  

[dleighg]

On 1/11/2020 at 9:55 AM, Chalby said:

Sadly the female equivalent has always remained Miss (which never died out as Master has). Miss and Master were always used to designate the age of the correspondee (?) (and perhaps eligibility as we become Mrs. and Mr. soon after marriage.)  

However I think that back in the old days (when I was young), "master" stopped being used somewhere around the teen years, when a boy transitioned to "mister," while "miss" was of course used until "Mrs" (or, thankfully, Ms. which became more accepted in the 1970s). 

[beerophilia]

I've been reading these forums as I watch the show, and  I didn't plan to ever respond because... well, at this point I'm three years behind. But I've read a lot of posts with questions and conjecture about many different aspects of these episodes, and I thought I'd finally chime in because I have about 8 years of experience working on small cruise ships, working my final season as bosun. We carried anywhere from 75-100 guests, so it's a larger scale than these yachts, but there are still a lot of similarities. My only yacht experience was a delivery with no passengers. I was considering going to work on yachts at the time, but I decided against it partly due to the behavior I saw from the crew every time we went into port.

First, crew interactions / relationships / hook-ups. Unfortunately, most of them were almost exactly the way they're portrayed in this show. I avoided them for the most part, because they were usually messy and caused a lot of drama. Near the end of my deck career, I did begin a relationship with a stew, and to my surprise it lasted the entire season and several months after with no drama. But in my experience, that was a rare occurrence.

Second, Captain Lee. He doesn't want to "babysit." That's fine, but his way of not babysitting seems extremely hands off, and the result is clear. But what we don't see here is whether the chief mate plays any kind of a role, and he should probably be the liaison between the captain and the bosun. I've seen some speculation here that Captain Lee isn't the "real" captain; my guess is that he's been chosen as the face of the boat, while the chief mate/relief captain actually does a lot of the captain's work. I think typically they would alternate watches in some way, probably adding up to 12 hours per day. Each working something like 8 hours on, 4 hours off, 4 hours on, 8 hours off. Although since they spend so much time at anchor and docked, I'd expect to see the chief mate on deck once in a while.

The chief mate should have stepped in when there were problems with the deck staff, and should have coached any bosun who needed it (which seems to have been all of them) on leadership. And every single one of them so far has needed it. The chief mate should definitely have stepped in during the problems with Andrew, Nico, EJ (who in my imperfect opinion was one of the best bosuns to appear so far), Kelley, Chandler, Ashton, and Rhylee.

Speaking of Rhylee, she deserved better. And better would have been mature coaching, instead of constant unproductive criticism. On the other hand, we didn't see what happened off-screen. It's possible that the chief mate did some coaching that we didn't see. Having said that, the captain of an Alaskan fishing boat should know how to tie a bowline. A bowline is in the top 5 (if not top 3) knots used on a ship. And while she said during that scene on the foredeck that she did it, I would say after pausing the video that it looked inconclusive to me. There are a couple ways to mess up the bowline such that it still looks like a bowline upon casual examination or from a weird angle. From the edit we saw, it still looked like Ashton should've handled it differently. A "show me, I didn't see it" would've been good, and obviously he should've had Tanner demonstrate and practice, as well. But here's the thing: previously, when Tanner was trying to get Rhylee to tie off the swimming pool line and she just wasn't doing it, she could have tied it off on a cleat on the swim platform.

Kate is good at the material functions of her job. She can put together meal services, parties, and picnics like a pro. She's a good advocate for the guests. But she is so full of snark and passive-aggressive comments for crew members, it's ridiculous. She shows almost no respect for her stews, unless they're better at service than the other stew. She "runs out of patience" with Simone's service skills before she's even completed one charter on service. Sorry you didn't get to hand-pick your stews, Kate, but how do you expect them to get any better if you don't try. And again, we don't know what happened off-camera, but this has been a theme since she first came on board. To be honest, I think Adrienne would've been a better chief stew in the long term, even though in her one season she wasn't as organized as Kate. During my time on cruise ships, I saw two hotel managers (our equivalent of the chief stew position) fired for pretty much the same kind of people management.

As for the awful behavior in this episode, someone should have knocked on Captain Lee's door that night and told him what happened. Considering the potential safety ramifications, I'm a little surprised he didn't share any disappointment with that not being done. I'm sure he would've been pissed, but it's his job. When I worked on ships, every single captain wanted to be awakened for problems of much lesser magnitude.

Ashton should've been fired for this. He clearly has a lot of work to do, and needs therapy. Who knows how many other times this has happened between Ashton and women? It's awful to think about.

When it comes down to it, I think the show highlights a lot of the real truths about working on small ships. Chefs with egos & tempers, dramatic interpersonal relations between crewmembers, and the great places they explore. And ultimately, that's the point of my LONG post. We see a lot of uncomfortable situations and a fair amount of just plain ugliness on this show. I'd say it's worse than I experienced, but thankfully my experiences were never on a reality show.