So first off, they played the scene in the beginning during the “previously on Below Deck…” intro thing, in Natasha and Dave’s cabin where she said “do you want to screw?” If you listen to it, and look at Dave’s expression, that is CLEARLY what she said.
But, if you watched WWHL Monday night, Andy asked her about that, because he was trying to point out that she DID act into him, with this, and other factors. (breaking up with her boyfriend for him, wanting to share a cabin with him…)
She has been on this campaign to downplay their relationship, to make him seem clingy and crazy. Although I do think he was a little clingy, but it was hard to tell because she started blowing him off after the first few episodes. If I remember correctly, he kept asking her to not keep their relationship a secret, I mean their non-relationship. Yes, and there is that. She told him “after a week we’ll let everyone know.” Well if there was no relationship, why would she say that? I doubt he’s making that up. That’s a weird thing to make up.
I get it, she only met him a month prior, (he’s saying two months) but 30 days is actually a lot of time to lead someone on, and let them believe you are really into them. So she brushed off the “want to screw” comment and lied that she actually said “what a crew.” Here is a pic of that interaction. Look at Dave’s face. Does it look like she said “what a crew!” This chick lies. And why would she whisper that? The girl played him, and is playin with the viewers. My point is, if she lied about that, she is lying about a lot more too, in regards to the whole debacle. Okay, I’m getting ahead of myself. I did want to point this out since it’s part of the intro. I hope they keep playing it.
Also, real quick, before I dive in, this is my FIRST recap since this season started. I fell behind last month with my arm/hand pinched nerve issue/arthritis issue, and haven’t been able to get a BDM recap done. But I have been watching! And I do have opinions! Don’t you worry about that!
We left last week with Raygan getting summoned to the bridge by Sandy. Sandy starts off with listing her mistakes. My question is, why would she have hired such an inexperienced bosun? I’ll answer that. Because she’s a girl.
Sandy is all about women in the leader positions on the boats, as am I. I think it’s great. What girl wouldn’t? But hiring should be based on qualifications. And not so much for “oh look, a female captain, and a female bosun, girls rule and boys drool!”
Hiring a chick not qualified, that makes a fool out of herself, just defeats the purpose of hiring a girl in a predominantly- dude profession. Makes it look like girls really can’t do ‘boys’ work.’ I have my suspicions about Raygan getting hired. And hear me out. She sort of resembles Malia.
Petite, blonde, cute. And we all know she had a crush on Malia. I am sure a photo of her was included with her CV. I’m not sure the Captain makes the final decisions for the crew/cast, but if they do, it makes sense.
But putting someone unqualified in this position could cause serious issues. Such as someone getting really hurt or dying. I know! That sounds dramatic, but she could instruct someone to do something in the water, that is incorrect instruction, and their ass get get plowed over by a 1000 ton yacht. So someone could have gotten killed, because Sandy wanted some eye candy. I don’t even think this girl had much actual deckhand position.
The poor girl didn’t know she was getting fired when she promises to do better with they toys. Sandy’s like “yeah well the final straw was when you called 3 meters when there was like ½ a meter, so… sayonara suckaaa !!” No, kidding, she was nice about it, and was careful not to make her look like a complete failure at life, like she did with Hannah.
Raygan seems to be understanding about the dismissal. She’s taking it well. I guess they mak
Right from the get go, we see Natasha giving Dave the cold shoulder. In her yap, she accuses him of ‘suffocating her’ which I get, from experience, is annoying. She just should have been honest right away. He should also be picking up on how she grits her teeth and runs away from her every time he’s around. I feel like the suffocating behavior really started when she started ignoring him though and wanted to keep their ‘thing’ a secret.
I know we don’t see everything that goes on, so who knows. They both seem a little odd. Sandy summons Storm to the bridge, and proceeds to hire another inexperienced bosun. He’s labeled as “Provisional Bosun.”
Bosunning can’t be easy, because we HAVE seen many bosuns get let go over the years. You have to absolutely ONE HUNDRED, be confident in your deck skills. They can’t fuck up because it looks really bad that they’re BOSUN and made a mistake. How dare they!
We see them getting in trouble and bitched at a lot, told they suck, and also get dismissed on a semi-regular basis, so there is a lot to it, and a lot to know. And they also have to know how to manage three other people, three personalities, three attitudes.
There’s always one that claims they were supposedly a ‘captain’ on another boat, (sometimes their own, does that really count?) and they get all pissy when given instruction or corrected, and think they know better. And there’s always a really green one that doesn’t know shit, and thinks they know fucking everything.
And they have to know how to be a leader, and give instruction, without acting like a fucking tyrant. I’m trying to recall the successful bosuns. Eddie’s okay but sort of failed last time at the managing personality issues thing. Ahem Rayna. She came to him with a problem, and he sort of disregarded her and told her to get over it. And then it exploded to where it didn’t really ever need to go. I’m sorry to say, you really do need to handle the girls differently.
Malia was doing a good job until, in an attempt to redeem herself for tattling on Hannah the previous season, did NOT go to Sandy when one of the deckhands had a bad injury. Although it was hilarious seeing Sandy chew her dumb ass out.
Dave is understandably really confused and upset. Natasha keeps LITERALLY running, and I do mean running from him every time he approaches. This isn’t the norm, of course in regular dating life, when you’re a month into seeing someone, and start having second thoughts. She is in a confined area with him, sharing a bedroom with him, and has to work closely with him. In a normal dating world, seeing how she treats him, she would have just done the ‘ghosting’ thing and offered no explanation. She’s trying to ghost this poor dude, when they have to be around each other all day, every day. Talk to him. It’s ridiculous.
He starts texting her kind of annoying messages begging her to talk to him. She brushes him off and says she’s too busy.
So night out and ‘Tash’ has been in full “get the fuck away from me” mode, without saying “get the fuck away from me.” Dave is of course sensing this, but seems to be in denial that their little boatmance, continued, is over. If he was smarter, he would just ignore her back. Then, since she seems into playing silly games, she would probably be more interested.
On the other side of the coin, we see the so cute budding boatmance between Storm and Natayla. Coincidentally, they BOTH seem to be into each other, the same amount, and neither are playing any hard- to- get or mind games. I still foresee this, also not ending well. Never a good thing when two people “dive right in” within days of meeting each other on Below Deck. No pun intended.
I’m trying to decide if I like her dress. It sort of looks like a swim suit coverup. She says “I can tell something is going to happen between me and Storm, I just don’t know when.” Translation – she going to fuck him at some point. She doesn’t seem like she’s going to be shy about. She’s not on the Trashley level from Sailing Yacht, no other human on the planet is, but it seems pretty ‘inevitable’ that she tries to say twelve times, before she gets it right. She seems kind of dumb.
Natasha is careful to NOT sit anywhere near Dave at dinner. He gets a dirty look from Ice Princess from across the table, for making a joke.
Really curious who this new female deckhand is. If it’s not Malia then who? When Sandy was texting her, I thought she said “looking forward to working with you again…” trying to think of who another female deckhand was besides Malia. But if that were the case, would she have bothered to make Storm the ‘Provisional Bosun’
Dave tries to talk to Natasha from across the table and communicate that he’s stressed from her sudden iciness.
She rolls her eyes and says “No!!” to discussing it. Yes she is right. It’s more fun to have him following her around like a lost puppy and begging her for a conversation. She smirks as he goes on with his whining.
It sort of makes you wonder if Storm’s apprehension about getting the Bosun promotion shows that he may not be ready for the position. On WWHL last night, Jason was on, and disclosed that he did not get along with him, so maybe there were issues. Twitter viewers were pointing out that Jason is sort of arrogant, and doesn’t like to be told what to do, so perhaps it was him?
Okay so since Dave seems to have no self-respect whatsoever, he follows Natasha to the restroom. There’s a line outside the door, so he starts begging her to talk to him. OF all things to say, he says “Don’t hate me.”
Dude she doesn’t hate you, she’s just playin with ya and toying with your emotions. So he does seem to know what is going on, because he says “you literally can’t be around me anymore.” So he IS getting the picture. So why doesn’t he just back the hell off ?! I do want to feel for him, but at same time, man up, and have self-respect. She tells him “they’re not in a relationship.”
But they kind of were. Maybe they didn’t have the ‘exclusive’ talk yet, but she did break up with her current boyfriend over him, was being intimate with him, wanted to share a cabin with him… no it’s not like they were engaged but they WERE in a relationship. She needs to stop saying that. It’s an insult to him. When you do all of that with a dude you know is really into you, and turn around say “it was really nothing” that’s just being shitty and toying with someone.
She uses the excuse of not answering texts because she was too busy. There is back and forth for a few more minutes, with no resolution, where he should be just giving up, and realizing that she’s just does not give a shit. She did like him, now she’s doesn’t. It happens. He refers to her to Storm as “the best thing that’s ever happened to him…”
Dude if that game playing wench is “the best thing that’s ever happened to you” then you must have had a pretty miserable life.
She ends up leaving the club, which really was a good choice, and I can even see why she didn’t let him know she was leaving. But she can’t even respond to a text when he realizes she’s gone. I think blocking him would have been better than reading and ignoring 20 messages. He didn’t need to psycho text her either. Believe me, I’ve been a victim of the psycho texting, and it’s well, psycho. My ex BF should not even be allowed to have a cell phone. He keeps texting her, she keeps not answering. She takes her stuff to a guest cabin.
Natalya tells Storm he needs a shower as they’re canoodling in the van. What every guy wants to hear as they start putting the moves on. That’s what the hot tub is for anyway. Is there a hot tub?
Back at the boat, he’s still calling and texting. She’s still ignoring. My. God. He’s a lot. It’s like 2:30 – go to bed !! Now he says “Fuck you” and calls her a slut (that’s always a guy’s go to when they’re pissed right ? I guess just because most girls and women take offense to that) She makes the biggest deal ever over that. It’s so sad he’s taking this bait. Now she can say “look at these messages, look at what he called me, just because I didn’t pay attention to him.” He’s drunk and pissed.
Kyle finds her in the guest cabin, and she presents it just as “Dave and I hooked up on the last boat, and now I’m getting these messages from him…” and she shows him her phone. So right there, she’s not being honest. It was more that they just hooked up. I don’t condone his name calling, but there’s so much she could have done differently before it got to this point.
Kyle tells Storm and Natalya that “she is having anxiety.” She’s having anxiety ?? Dude, have you seen Dave? He’s about to have a mental breakdown, Natasha has been pretty much taking pleasure in it, and now all of a sudden it’s serious to her, because he said “Fuck you & slut!” Kyle is being ridiculously dramatic. She’s not having ‘anxiety.’ She’s having a god time.
Kyle wants Storm to talk to him. Dave unloads on him and gives him the Cliffs Notes version of what’s going on, as he paces around anxiously. But let’s face it, dudes are so bad at this. He doesn’t say anything helpful to make him feel better, or calm him down. Storm just tries to get him to go to bed. He needs to go to sleep. He needs Bethenney from RHONY. “GO TO SLEEP !!” (Scary Island circa 2010)
Meanwhile Tash and Kyle are in the guest cabin having a fucking slumber party.
While I agree Dave is being kind of a big whiny ass baby, he IS a chef, friendly reminder. They’re not known for being you know, super in control and restrained. Bad bad bad idea to start a boatmance with the chef.
Do we need reminded about Adam and that other dude Malia was banging? (Tom?) She was dumb enough to do it twice. Natasha could have handled this A LOT differently before it got to the point of no return.
Now the word is officially out, and making it’s way to all the cabins. Storm is blabbing to Natalya and Mzi “they’ve been sleeping together for two months …”
Dave gets up in the morning and starts looking at his phone to refresh his memory on what went on. Or maybe he doesn’t remember at all, due to the beverages. He feels like shit and is beating himself up. Natasha is whining about her toiletries being in her cabin. She knows this is all going to reflect badly on Dave, and she can just be like “we hooked up on the last boat, and now he’s all in love with me !!” When she knows there was more to it.
Natalya says about Storm – “is this just a boatmance or blossoming into something more?”
Girl – just stop. Something MORE than a boatmance? How many of these have you seen NOT turn into a screaming match by the end of the season? Once in a while they leave together, for a particular destination. And if they do, they fizzle two seconds later, when they realize they were just bored, and don’t really like this person at al l.
Natasha walks into her cabin, right into the bathroom, with Dave laying on the bed, and just blatantly ignores him. She doesn’t even look at him. Why not speak to him now? It’s more fun for her to keep this going. Of course she has everyone on her side, since she’s making their thing look like just a small fling. And Dave wasn’t really helping his case acting like a lovesick teenager, instead of just accepting she doesn’t like him anymore.
Dave says he’s going to write menus, and we think maybe he’s got it somewhat together, however he starts staring at his phone, chewing his nails and sobbing. He goes to his cabin and starts to hyperventilate. Do you know what may have avoided all of this? (or at least some of this, or the severity of it – A CONVERSATION!!)
Kyle hears him and asks if he’s okay? I’m not sure if he asks for Sandy, the part-time resident therapist or not, but Kyle asks her if she can come speak with him, because he’s “having an emotional issue.”
Can you see this shit going down with Captain Lee? I can hear it now if Lee was asked to deal with this fucking crap. It would be a whole diatribe of expletives. “Tell that pussy to man the hell up, and bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep… plane ticket home!!!
A Twitter viewer pointed out, how when Sandy goes into the bathroom to console him, she makes sure to shove the door wide open for the camera crew. It does look like she does that. However, she is mic’d so it would have picked up the dialogue. I do wonder if she would be this understanding if not for the camera crew.
You do kind of feel for Sandy, seems like she gets stuck dealing with the mental breakdowns a lot.
You can’t really blame it on her leadership. It’s not like it’s her. Or maybe they get all extra because they know she will baby them. Or they just intentionally give her the extra dramatic crew.
Mzi had his meltdown last season. I forget what even sparked that. It was job related. Hannah had an anxiety attack and lied in bed for two days over her boatmance gone sour, and now we have this dude, blubbering like a baby about HIS failed attempt. I think she was the least patient with Hannah, because you know, she hated Hannah. Oh and there was that chef that got all beside himself with anxiety after he ordered WAY too much food, and pretended his knee hurt, and needed to go to the doctor. They were stuck without a chef for dinner that night, and not one person on the crew could so much as boil water.
I’m not even sure Sandy knows right now, what he’s even bawling about. She asks him to take a walk with her.
Mzi fills Jason in on “The Hook-Up.” To be fair, I guess Dave really didn’t tell Storm to keep it on the down-low, however he was confiding in him, so I don’t think he should be blabbing to the whole crew.
So now everyone seems to know. I thought it was pretty obvious at dinner the previous night that they were in a lover’s quarrel. Maybe no one was paying attention.
Dave and Sandy are sitting by the water, and he confesses to the “mean text messages that she didn’t deserve…” Well, she KIND OF deserved them. I shouldn’t say that. Name calling is bad. Natasha is inside talking about washing napkins and has already forgotten all about it. She’s so traumatized over being called a name via text message, that she’s completely unbothered, and going on with her day, while Dave is ready to jump off a cliff.
Sandy goes back to the boat and summons Natasha to the bridge. She’s concerned about her feeling “safe.” which seems like over dramatization over getting called a name on a text. He didn’t threaten her at all. Jesus, she’s THAT offended over his messages, she should have gotten some rage texts from MY ex. . He did the 500 separate messages in a row thing, of insults and bitching, so your phone is blowing the hell up.
Storm is starting his bosunning, but it’s just clean up duty, so it doesn’t really count.
Natasha sits down with Sandy, already looking smug and smirky, because she knows he looks crazy, and an emotional wreck, and she looks all sweet and innocent, and cool as a cucumber. Ya know, she can’t help everyone is obsessed with her! Is it HER fault?? All she did was give him ‘the silent treatment’ which is actually a passive aggressive form of abuse.
Well Natasha mumbles something, I didn’t understand (why don’t they do the sub texts when you really need them?) and Sandy immediately takes her side. She just admitted to not knowing the whole story. She tells Sandy “Dave and I had a thing, and I didn’t want anything else to happen, (which is kind of really really vague, and leaving a lot out) and then goes into “things he said to her.” Sandy asks if she feels safe. She says yes and mumbles more gibberish, and says she feels that they can move on.
Sandy orders one of them to move out of the cabin. Natasha says in her yap that she doesn’t want to tell Sandy about the messages because “Dave is a lovely person, and has a kind heart and is caring…” (or because she knows she fucked with him all that day and night.)
I hope Dave flirts with this new chick, and tells Natasha to suck it.
Sandy brings Dave back up and threatens firing him if “he does this again.”
I just feel like Natashaisn’t really accepting responsibility at all. Dave cracks me up, he’s this tatted up sort of rugged, burly looking dude, and he’s a big crybaby when his girlfriend ignores him.
So now after she has the whole fucking boat in an uproar, and he almost gets fired, she NOW decides to calmly speak to him in a private setting.
He says he feels like he betrayed her, and tells him everyone knows he’s a good person. No, Natasha, everyone thinks he’s a lunatic now, since that’s how you portrayed him, not to mention, Storm ran around telling everyone on the boat.
She said to him everything I’ve been saying. She tells him she should have dealt with it before it got to this point. Ya think?? I guess that’s an apology.
She seems more concerned whether or not he can work with her. He reached out to hug her, and you can tell she really doesn’t want to even touch him.
On WWHL, she also maintains, they “weren’t really serious, and weren’t a thing.”
Even though she broke up with her current boyfriend to be with him, was banging him, and wanting to share a room with him.
Guess that’s “not a thing.”
