Welcome back to Below Deck Mediterranean where we’ve got hangry guests, a chef on the last leg of his three hour tour and a steward dealing with some personal shite in a super unfortunate way. What’s popping off first? I’m glad you asked! Let’s find out after the break in my Below Deck Mediterranean season 6 episode 7 Can’t Fight This Feeling recap!
We’re at dinner with our current charter, Primary Athena Lucene is already mad but not at straggling guests late to dinner, rather at chef Mathew Shea for not serving 3/4 of their party. That’s…not how dinner works. Everyone arrives, then everyone is fed together, hopefully!
Primary Athena lays down the law 17 minutes past dinner start (two guests still missing); they’ll have dinner now, please! Chief steward Katie Flood and her team bring up the first course just as the rest of the party files in. Now Primary Athena has a problem with the seating, guess who wants to be at the head of the table?
NO, GUESS??!!
I’m choosing to believe this eye roll was about that exact thing.
Complaining that supper is late then making them move you as they are serving food…okay! They wolf down the first course (hmm who was worried about Calamari that everyone ended up loving?) then wait. Then wait some more. Then ask for salads in addition to their mains.
Captain Sandy Yawn finds her guests with no food and hopeful expressions; she advises Mat to start pumping out a tonne of food.
I’ll tell you what I think: these are people like me. They’re used to eating between 5 and 6 like seniors and you better have a lot of food handy it you expect to push that back two and a half hours.
Guests Jackeson ‘Jackpot’ Verdul and his brother Jiveson ‘Jiv’ Verdul have reached the mute stage of hunger.
Below deck, deckhand Mzi ‘Zee’ Dempers chats with his boss, bosun Malia White about how he’s doing. He’s got the best attitude, if a little shy on experience.
Third steward Courtney Veale works hard in the guest cabins making beds and spraying every inch with Febreze. I don’t use artificial scents at all so I’m trying to imagine how cloying that must be in the close quarters of a guest cabin. My house usually smells like bacon?
Primary Athena’s requests don’t stop during dinner, either, although they slow down while she’s eating. She asks second steward Lexi Wilson to wipe down her end of the table during service…sure. She knows that slows everything else down, right?
The rain comes as dinner wraps up, Zee radios Malia for permission to cover cushions with guests afoot, she grants it and heads to meet him to help. Deckhand Lloyd Spencer (whom I called Pornstache forever because of his facial wombat but I quite like him now) is supposed to be on anchor watch but leaves his post on the Bridge to go help.
Captain Sandy finds nobody watching the boat as the wind rises. She is not happy.
Neither are our guests, Primary Athena asks for Mat’s presence as he finishes up with dessert.
Somehow Primary Athena’s criticism of Mat’s meal flow is actually praise? I dunno, man. He’s relieved, I’m confused, whatever.
Courtney is still pissed about having to change cabins last minute AND being back on laundry when it was LEXI causing all the dramz and SHE should have to be in laundry and cabins and it’s not FAIR. Honestly, Court, you’re the only one who didn’t know how impossible Lexi was being two nights ago because you passed out a quarter of the way through!
Lexi may have done her best to piss off every single crew member that night, but she’s doing a GREAT job with the guests. They love her! She’s working her butt off, looking extremely tired but she’s hanging in there and let’s just say it’s a good place for her right now. The crew needs some space. The guests finally go to bed around 2 am, but they were so lovely and chill you can’t even be mad about that.
It’s 3:30 before Lexi finishes cleanup and heads to bed herself.
Deckhand David Pascoe has a bit of a crush on Malia, but she’s his boss so he’s been treading carefully. He did ask her once, but she’s hoping her lack of answer was enough to let him down easily.
(Spoiler alert: it was NOT)
It’s Mat’s last day and now we getta meet hunky chef Luka woooooooo!! It’s funny how non-sentimental everyone is about Mat leaving, you know how kids are, they get attached quickly and make a big deal out of literally anything. These guys are fully See Ya, so that’s fun: it’s exactly how I feel about Mat’s creepy arse.
The guests roll to the table at 9:30 am, it’s a free for all and Katie is just trying to get the food to the table as fast as possible. Zero standing on ceremony! In fact, Primary Athena is the last to come down, she’s over in the galley explaining to chef Mat how she wants her two cakes tonight.
One should say ‘Happy Birthday FX Capital’ which is (I hope) the name of one of Jackeson or Jiveson’s companies and another cake with ‘Project Millionaire” onnit.
If you want specific cakes with logos, I absolutely think that request should go to a bakery. Instead, we’ve got Mat asking third stew Courtney (she’d like to be called Coco so I will try to remember) to help him create an icing logo because she has good penmanship. I mean.
Because this here is a diner! As Primary Athena heads to the table for breakfast, the earlier guests go jet skiing. It’s not a cohesive group at all, which makes sense as they are friendly clients, not clients who are friends.
Oh goodness.
Oh goodness.
Mat has baked a cake in an 11 x 14 pan, slapped a bunch of white (probably storebought) icing on it and it directing Coco who is using tiny pre-made tubes of coloured frosting for decoration.
*Sitting down with my head between my knees taking deep breaths*
I get that not every chef is a baker, they’re very different disciplines and decorating a cake takes creativity and practice. I cannot forgive the tiny tubes of storebought frosting. It takes less time to whip up a buttercream you can divide and colour than it does to pull those bits of garbage out of their cardboard packaging.
Should you use such things, there is no judgement intended! You’re probably not a yacht chef with over a decade of experience giving guests five star meals.
I mean.
It’s super windy outside again so Captain Sandy plans to bring the Lady Michelle back to dock so maybe they can order the cakes!
Unfortunately, Mat’s feeling so sheepish about his drunken flounce/quit that he’s not pushing back when he actually should be. This would be a good time to insist on ordering out, but he’s lost all his moxie and mojo in that one stupid night of drinking.
Oh it gets WORSE.
As they pull into dock, Malia gives David a chance to train with Captain Sandy and say what you will about Malia (WHICH WE WILL), she’s a good leader.
Katie and Lexi bond while setting the table for dinner, Katie met Leonardo DiCaprio on the first yacht she ever worked on and Lexi is a fan.
The deck crew is docking at night for the second time, it’s so smooth! Great job, guys!
Primary Athena is not impressed with the cakes. How could she possibly be impressed with those cakes? Here’s the ganache one!
I should disclose: I used to be a baker and sous chef, this is hurting my heart.
I guess they taste good, though? And that’s what matters. The guests that are not Primary Athena think they’re delicious.
The guests enjoy everything and go to bed early, which Lexi enjoys.
A rainy morning greets our guests on their last day or charter and Mat’s last day on the boat and I’m starting to wonder if I’m being too mean to him.
Everyone gets one or two bad night freebies, right? Who am I to judge? I spent a decade making poor life choices and I would like to thank the sweet baby Jeebus for not having any of that caught on video.
Mat serves his last meal aship the Lady Michelle and we pack up the guests and wooooo bring on Chef Luka!!
Are the guests dressed…the same? Alonzo Guillaume and the brothers anyway. I love that. I love matchy matchy.
Primary Athena Lucene makes a point of making a personal goodbye to every (camera-friendly) crew member, even Courtney, whose name she forgot. She hands over a hefty envelope and we pretend we care about the boat cleaning for an hour or so until Captain Sandy can divvy it all up.
Captain Sandy calls Mat up to the Bridge first, what? IS SHE KEEPING HIM?? She let the guest positive comments get in her head COME ON.
*Breathing with my head between my knees*
She’s keeping Mat.
FINE
Does Chef Luka have somewhere we can watch him cook????? Did you see his beautiful big brown eyes??
Wow, I almost said something so.creepy right there, you’re so lucky you missed that.
Chef Luka and I need a moment.
Captain Sandy radios the crew to tell them the news about Mat and invite them to the salon for the Tip Meeting and all I can think is: why didn’t she do that with Hindrigo ‘Kiko’ Lorran last year?? I know he went from strength to strength after leaving and it was a good thing for him but COME ON.
It’s not a great tip, but we knew that. Primary Athena said she was ecstatic with everything but we knew better. It’s 15k, which is $1,244 USD each. It was only two nights, right? She probably just wanted to reinforce with her clients how awesome it was while clearly not thinking so privately.
Lexi is particularly not impressed, if you don’t pat her on the back with money, she’s not interested.
Coco is very sad after the guest departure; not only did the guests forget her name, they praised Lexi to the sky in front of everyone. Coco is feeling Very Cinderella, breaking down in tears while stripping down yet another cabin.
I’m sad that Lexi is going out with the group for drinks and dinner. At least Mat felt bad about the shite he did and it was much less.
Dinner starts out nice and chill, though, Zee and Malia discuss racism in yachting and culture in general. Mat pays for everyone’s meals, awww. He says he’s not above buying forgiveness, but really he’s probably just riding the high of being not-fired/re-hired.
*Lighting a small candle in a high window for Kiko.
In the taxi on the way back to dock Mat says he spent 150k on sex last year. How much do yacht chefs make????
Courtney’s drunk and twerking already, where’s Lexi? I just want to know where she is at all times. She is there, on the boat and being encouraged to take shots. It’s their way of saying they don’t hold the other night against her but it’s kind of stupid to bully this one into doing shots.
Courtney has a drunk alter-ego like many of our previous crew members, she calls hers Chloe. Zee’s met Chloe!
Zee and Courtney spend all their drunk time together, it’s so cute. She likes him back, I think? Maybe? I think she says he has to not like her then she will be interested and THAT’S not going to happen. He’s all in on Coco.
Mat goes to bed early while the rest of the crew dances and parties; David should probably stop rubbing his arse all over Malia if he expects her to make the first move.
He makes another move while Lloyd watches in horror.
Malia lets David down gently, she just had a very public relationship go spectacularly south so what can he say? Lloyd told us a little bit about his previous job that he hated, but didn’t go into detail. Now that he’s a few shots in, he breaks down in tears because his previous captain called him a *****. I don’t know what it was but since he says “I’m 90% straight” at one point, I have to assume it’s a homophobic slur. That also explains why he brought up sexual orientation at dinner as a reason boat owners will discriminate against workers.
Katie, David and Malia are all over a crying Lloyd, he’s awesome! Malia says she went to college, she swung both ways and still does!
We all remember Malia making out with former chief steward Hannah Ferrier on Malia’s first season of Below Deck Mediterranean, right?
This is about four years before Malia was instrumental in getting Hannah fired.
Lloyd really is a sweetie and I will never understand why anyone cares what any other consenting does with their bathing suit parts and other consenting adults. Bisexuality exists and thank goodness this generation is actually talking about it. Cheers, you lovely man who still looks nothing like Nicholas Cage.
Until next time, you lot! Cheers!
