Why Is ‘Below Deck’ So Damn Popular?

with Kevin Fallon

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture.

This week:

An ode to everyone’s favorite reality series.

An ode to TV’s kookiest talk-show host.

An ode to a Céline Dion Titanic musical.

An ode to Only Murders in the Building.

An ode to Martha Stewart, forever and always.

All I Want to Do Is Watch Below Deck

It turns out that there actually is something that unites our nation: The mystification over the appeal of a yacht deckhand named Gary King.

There really is nothing like Below Deck on TV, which is to say a franchise that, anecdotally, seems to be watched and enjoyed by every single person I know. The Bravo series—and its spinoffs Mediterranean, Sailing Yacht, and Down Under—transcends demographics and the siloing that we can usually expect from the reality TV genre. My straight friends love it. My gay friends love it. I know of at least three dogs whose tails wag more exuberantly when it is on.

I often wonder how many marriages the series has saved.

Why quarrel with a loved one when you could be watching Chef Marcos dazzle with another five-course meal instead? Who can focus on our differences when there is so much to agree on, for example that Daisy and Gary probably should bone each other already? In fact, considering how strong of a case the world is making for it lately, why go outside at all? There are 20 seasons of this magical show across its four different series streaming on Peacock. Catch me in September when I finish rewatching all of Below Deck.

It’s hard not to feel rudderless at a moment when the people in power are failing us, which is why I turn to my fearless leaders, the three points on my North Star: Captains Glenn, Sandy, and Lee. Heck, things are so desperate I’ve even been watching Below Deck: Down Under, despite it offering little value other than how hot its captain, Jason, is. He can be on the North Star, too.

The ratings for the just-wrapped third season of Below Deck: Sailing Yacht were the best yet for the series, ranking among the most-watched shows on Bravo. In this harrowing stretch of the calendar—the week before Mediterranean’s season premiere on Monday during which there is no new Below Deck episode to watch—there’s a palpable excitement for Sandy and her crew to return. I am deeply, passionately obsessed with this franchise, which is unsurprising for a Bravoholic like myself.

But the fact that so many other people, especially those who sneer at my nightly diet of watching legitimately every single Real Housewives series, are as devoted both baffles and delights me. What is it about this show, the rare piece of reality television we all seem to agree on?

There’s an escapism aspect to the show, sure. The basic premise of each episode across all of the series is that a group of rich and demanding guests board a boat for a lavish vacation in the most glamorous corners of the world, and we watch as the crew on board cater to their every whim, slowly driven to the brink of madness. After each charter ends, the guests leave and the crew gets so mind-boggling drunk that your own liver starts panging with empathy.

“Watching rich people behaving badly” is a tried-and-true reality-TV gimmick, and the reason Real Housewives has so many fans. Similarly, “watching attractive people get unfathomably bombed and make poor decisions” is also a tenet of the genre. (Once again: Real Housewives.) But why do those things suddenly appeal to a viewership that wouldn’t know their Kyle Richards from their Teresa Giudice if they were at a restaurant with the latter and she flipped a table?

Is it wish fulfillment? How we’d all love to be in a position to afford a vacation like the one these guests go on in these beautiful far-flung destinations. The food, the drinks, the sights, the sun: What a treat to indulge in the lavishness of it all. And, surely, we would be more gracious and generous than the heinous guests we see on the show. (Or maybe not! Maybe that’s part of the fantasy: Feeling privileged and entitled enough to act like a total monster and have it be OK. You’re the one paying the truckload of money to be there, including the mountain-sized cash tip that is for some reason handed over like an illicit drug deal at the conclusion of each trip.)

Or is the wish fulfillment in the staff themselves? Like schmucks, we got boring desk jobs that require us to go to offices for work. (Gross!) Maybe we even got married, or had kids, or—dear god—inherited responsibilities. (Horrible!) But Below Deck shows us the path taken by these twentysomethings and thirtysomethings who travel the world and for whom the office is floating on the crystal blue Mediterranean. It all seems so romantic and fun.

I can’t say that everyone who watches Real Housewives sees someone having to weather a dinner with Ramona Singer and thinks, “I wish I was them.” But with Below Deck’s crew, they just might.

Which is interesting because nearly everything that happens on Below Deck is deeply, irredeemably embarrassing. (Again, why do I love this show?)

The crew is constantly proving their incompetence. Their behavior toward each other is sloppy and messy on a good day, and utterly toxic on a bad one. (The show’s history with race relations amongst its cast is hideous, and the misogyny on past seasons of Mediterranean became headline news.) And the guests are almost uniformly abhorrent. There’s nearly no one to root for, which makes the premise of the series its greatest selling point: You’re inherently rooting for the charter to go well. If the boat doesn’t sink, in other words, you can finish an episode thinking, “Success!”

Below Deck is also one of those examples in TV where there is so much chaos in a single episode that it ends up on the other side and is actually calming. There is cacophonous, cringe-inducing drunken debauchery. There are crew members cruelly fighting. There are crew members sleeping together. There are guests being demons to the staff. There are dinners barely being pulled off, water sports gone awry, and parties that go off, albeit with every hitch that could have happened. There are, sometimes, legitimate boat crashes.

And yet, when I watch Below Deck, I feel serene. It soothes me. It is a blue-sky distraction, in spite of its content being the exact opposite.

I’ve gotten to see the premiere of the new season of Mediterranean. Two crew members hook up immediately. The bosun and one of her deck crew loathe each other. One guest starts cursing out a staff member. Captain Sandy, always formidable and steady, falters.

It is an hour of mayhem. I haven’t known such peace in years.

Drew Barrymore Crying About a Window Is the Energy We All Need

I wish for all of us to feel, even if just for one fleeting moment, the way that Drew Barrymore does when she discovers a hidden window in her home.

What would it be like to have such capacity for joy and to have it so constantly bubbling so close to the surface ready to be expressed, to be experienced? Imagine what it would be like to live through everything that’s going on now if, like a spike in emotional seismic activity, even ephemeral elation managed to crack through. Hell, imagine doing home renovation and finding anything happy about it at all.

But that is the glory of Drew Barrymore. Everyone has their own spiritual journey. Me? In dark or confusing times in life, I ask myself WDBCAT: Would Drew Barrymore Cry About This?

The video in question was posted this week on the actress and talk show host’s TikTok.

Barrymore has been chronicling the renovation of her New York City apartment, which she seems to be very hands-on involved in. She gets the news that there could be a window behind some drywall. So she and the crew knock down the drywall and reveal the window. It appears to be one of the greatest moments of her life.

“It’s so hopeful,” she says. “It’s weird for something to be so covered up and dark. You can pry it open and create light.” Prior to this overwhelmed reaction, she talks about how excited she is to break down the drywall and access the window. To psych herself up, she barks and howls like a feral dog. The moment she’s able to push the window out and let the light in, she lets out a guttural, carnal cackle, as if she had, after a lifetime of exploring, just discovered the Lost City of Gold. She begins to weep.

It’s so ludicrous, and yet so lovely. On the one hand, who among us in New York City wouldn’t be moved to tears at the thought of more light in their shoebox apartments. On the other, that ain’t exactly a cramped space Barrymore is working with. Which is to say, this is all just so Drew Barrymore-y. If you’ve watched her talk show, you know that these jarring explosions of emotion over the seemingly mundane—not to mention the extreme, earnest, and utterly pure optimism—are who she is.

It can be silly. But, hey, look around. What a miracle to witness anything or anyone who just seems to be…nice. I don’t think it reflects an ignorance or delusion about the reality of the world, either. That’s what makes the video transcend cringe-inducing embarrassment and “what is wrong with this woman?” judgment to instead become something inspiring and, gauging by the reactions I’ve seen on the internet this week, celebrated.

Joel Meares said it best on Twitter: “Whenever people get on Drew about being too… much… I’m kinda like, yeah go through what she went through and come out the other end with a sliver of the joy and brightness she possesses and then get back to me.”

There Is a Céline Dion-themed Titanic Musical

There is a musical playing in New York City right now called Titanique, which imagines if Céline Dion had been aboard the Titanic with Jack and Rose, telling her version of events while she and the characters belt her music catalog. It is currently running at a performance space in the basement of a Gristedes grocery store. It is the greatest piece of theater I have ever seen.

Does it seem, as Dion would say, “cuckoo-crazy” that the singer would be old enough to have been around when the ship took its doomed voyage? Or that she would be, at this point, not…dead? Logic is immediately surrendered in Titanique. She sings, “I’m Alive,” you shrug your shoulders and go along with it, and next thing you know you’re watching an Iceberg styled as Tina Turner singing “River Deep - Mountain High” (which Dion famously covered at her Vegas residency).

No scene is not outrageous. At one point Jack, played by Constantine Rousouli, must lip sync for his life, RuPaul’s Drag Race-style, against John Riddle’s Cal, Rose’s (Alex Ellis) evil fiancé. Ariana Grande’s brother, Frankie, plays two characters. It’s all so dumb, and yet brilliant. And all so Céline! Let no one undersell the pleasures of drinking margaritas—the bar encourages you to buy two at a time—while actors goof around and sing Céline Dion songs. Rousouli belting “To Love You More” as Jack Dawson mere inches from my face might be the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced.

Céline Dion, played by Marla Mindelle—at the performance I saw, understudy Courtney Barnett was on—has a phrase that has become an indelible part of her wacky mythology: “Shall we go for it?!” And, girl, Titanique does that.

The Reality-TV Fix We All Need

There’s been a lot of attention deservedly paid to the stacked guest-star list on the delightful new season of Only Murders in the Building. Shirley MacLaine! Cara Delevingne! Amy Schumer! How random! How fun! They’re all great.

But I hope after the episode that was released this week, “The Last Day of Bunny Folger,” fans of the show gush just as much about Jayne Houdyshell’s performance as the curmudgeonly, doomed building board president. The character actress, Tony-winner, and should-have-been-Oscar-nominated-this-year-for-The-Humans is pitch-perfect in an episode that gives her cantankerous—but, it turns out, misunderstood—scene-stealer the spotlight.

Just look at that photo! #HoudyshellHive, rise!

Martha Stewart’s New Dating Strategy

This week, Martha Stewart asserted in an interview with Chelsea Handler that she’s not a home-wrecker and doesn’t want to be the other woman in an affair. Instead, she joked, she wants her friends to die so she could date their husbands already. “Not painfully,” she clarified. “Just die.”

I absolutely support this energy, especially the humor with which it is intended. Do we know how lucky we are to have Martha Stewart?

Black Bird: Taron Egerton looking very, very hot, and acting very, very well. (Fri. on Apple TV+)

Conjuring Kesha: Kesha goes ghost hunting, an obvious delight. (Fri. on Paramount+)

Tuca & Bertie: One of the best animated series out there. (Sun. on Adult Swim)

Thor: Love & Thunder: I have a soft spot for a man with a hammer. (Fri. in theaters)

Resident Evil: A series that could not be less for me. But maybe it’s for you! (Thurs. on Netflix)

Flowers in the Attic: The Origin: The decades-long franchisization of this property truly baffles me! (Sat. on Lifetime)

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