Hello, and welcome to Short & Snappy, a new newsletter by me, Rebecca Fishbein. I’m a writer with bylines for Jezebel, Splinter (RIP), Gothamist, The Cut, Lifehacker, etc. and I’m also the author of Good Things Happen to People You Hate, a funny book of essays that came out last year (and you can buy now!)
This first installment was supposed to be a blog about Emily in Paris, an infantilizing piece of garbage on Netflix that I couldn’t stop thinking or talking about and therefore wanted explore whether it was actually, as my friend Ethan described it, “a mind virus sent to consume people.” And yet, after a week or so of contemplating just why I was filled with such ever-present amour/déteste for poor Emily, I woke up the other day and realized I didn’t care about the show at all. Mind virus vanquished. Vive le France!
Instead, I’m here to spread the Good News about my favorite show to watch in this unending hell period that combines a deadly pandemic with an historic economic downturn with an election that may or may not end soon in a potentially good or bad or REALLY bad way, who can say. That show is not The Wire, which everyone apparently watched back in April, or The Sopranos, which I swear everyone is watching right now.
That show, my friends, is Below Deck.
Below Deck, for the uninitiated, is a reality show on Bravo about the lives of “yachties,” i.e. people who worked on chartered yachts in the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Technically, Below Deck runs in the same TV universe as the Real Housewives franchise, or at least you can find it on the Real Housewives subreddit. But unlike the Real Housewives, Below Deck isn’t about glitz and glamour, despite the yacht setting. Instead, Below Deck is a show about young hot people working a shitty service job catering to shitty rich people, all the while partying as hard as possible with each other to forget they share closet-sized living quarters. Below Deck rocks.
Each season focuses on a specific yacht and its crew, some of whom, like my beloved chief stew Kate Chastain and my even more beloved Baltimorean bosun Eddie Lucas, come back for repeat seasons. The crew consists of real yacht workers making yacht wages, i.e. not that much, and is split between the deck and interior, with deckhands handling the boat cleaning, boat ropes, and anchor thingies (I don’t know anything about boats), and the stewards, or “stews,” handling meal service, event planning, and general housekeeping. There’s also a chef, who can make things spicy in a good way or a bad way, and Captain Lee Rosbach, who keeps his rowdy crew in check with a mostly zero-tolerance bad behavior policy and a slew of salty sailor jargon.
Every week, a new group of guests come onboard and the crew work their butts off to earn their tip (about $10K-$20K per charter, split amongst everyone). It’s not exactly a Nightmares of the Rich and Famous situation, since the guests are often surprisingly chill for people spending $100,000 on a one-week trip.
Like most service jobs, sometimes bad customers show up, make their lives hell for five minutes by forcing them to throw foam parties and learn about penny stocks, then disappear fast enough for the staff to forget about them. But it’s the inter-crew hell that causes the real problems. Crew members hook up in secret (unwise!!!). They fall in love, then realize how much love sucks when you split a bunkbed. They make best friends with each another, even though the only thing they have in common is work. They get drunk at island bars on their nights off and tell each other secrets, then regret it in the morning. And they fight constantly, about real things and stupid things and even more stupid things, because that’s what happens when you’re cooped up with a bunch of people on a boat for five weeks.
It’s this very drama that makes Below Deck so compelling to me during this period of forced isolation and too-frequent couch-sitting. Reality TV thrives on drama, but it often feels forced and fabricated, because the people on these shows aren’t real and don’t do anything interesting. For instance, I once watched an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians that spent 40 minutes focusing on a single phone call Caitlin Jenner did or did not pick up that either made Kris Jenner happy or sad, who can say.
And the prestige TV we all love to watch is full of drama, but it’s amplified for the sake of story and entertainment, which makes the world these shows create unrecognizable to me.
But somehow Below Deck feels more like a world I remember—not one on a yacht, of course, but one mired in the small every day grievances, heartbreaks, and moments of joy that come with working and living and moving among other people. I’m not living in that world right now and I miss it. Watching it play out in real time—albeit in the Caribbean on a luxury yacht full of hot people, but still—reminds me it’s still there.
There are multiple seasons of Below Deck and its spinoff show, Below Deck: Mediterranean, and though I have only watched four of them (in very quick succession), I feel fully qualified to declare this is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. At the very least, it’s one of the best shows I’ve seen in the last seven months, and that’s all the time that has ever existed. Please watch it and report back.
Catching up on the news
A lot of news happened this week! Most of it was about gross old men pulling or nearly pulling their junk out for various reasons, to which I say, extremely hard pass!
More news:
AOC and Ilhan Omar played Among Us on Twitch and it was absolutely delightful.
The New York Times dug more into Donald Trump’s taxes and unearthed some shady business dealings with China, simply shocking.
If you need more incentive to be outraged, the U.S. government can’t locate the parents of 545 children separated at the border.
The World Series is…happening? I think? Yes, confirmed.
Quibi, the worst business idea since the chewing Cabbage Patch doll that ate children’s hair, is no more.
Chris Pratt came in fourth place on a list of Hot Chrises and now the celebrities are staging a revolt.
Hunter Biden is still hot, sorry.
Even a U.S. Army fort gets horny on main in these trying times.
The moon is getting cell service.
FiveThirtyEight made this presidential forecast map you can play around with if you’d like to give yourself an anxiety attack.
Here are some good blogs, features, & books I am reading
“Let’s Take a Moment to Think of Rudy Giuliani Getting Caught With His Hands in His Pants in the New Borat Movie” — Discourse Blog
“How America Invented the White Woman Who Just Loves Fall” — Jezebel
“Social Justice Catchphrases Have Taken Over Dating Apps” — GQ
“Here’s How to Avoid Accidentally Showing Your Genitals to Your Colleagues on Zoom” — Gizmodo
“A Tale of Two Kinds of Media Workers” — Medium
“‘He Doesn’t Think About Who Washes His Clothes’ One of Trump’s former housekeepers is terrified for domestic workers in the White House.” — The Cut
Book: Wow, No Thank You, by Samantha Irby
And now for some good tweets (rare!!!!)
And last but not least, a moment of zen:
See you next week! And don’t forget to make a plan to vote :)
Great article! Clear and right on point below deck is by far best show to be watching especially during pandemic I just started and in hooked! I'm sad to hear that like your favorite Chief Stew Kate wont be returning next season but Eddie remains. And to my delight my merdaughter Elizabeth Frankini will be 2nd Stew! Will be watching Nov 2nd for sure lots others will be too.