Joe and Kitsy’s “Stricken Nuggets”

With one charter left, it’s no wonder our crews are emerging as better professionals and people on the other side of the hard-earned lessons. In a way, that’s true. V started out as a stew and is now one of the most powerful members of the deck team. Kathy took the interior design team to the next level. And Josh has been delivering banger after banger every night. Meanwhile, Asha and Nathan have taken on new roles as principal and assistant in a third-grade classroom. Kitsy and Joe can’t stop touching each other, giggling, and talking to their teacher. Max can’t go through a day without throwing a tantrum. The school day becomes even more confusing because Nathan does not yet understand that children imitate behavior. The more frustrated Nathan gets, the more frustrated the kids become.

Even Joe, who has shown himself to be extremely adept at ignoring other people’s emotions, knows that Max’s outbursts are best handled with caution. This week we feature Nathan yelling instructions from the stern to Max on how to hook his jet ski to a crane. The details of what they’re fighting about aren’t as important as the fact that their argument reverberates throughout the boat. Sandy can hear the sound from the bridge. She comes to tell Nathan that next time he should let Joe get the job instead of yelling at him. When Max returns to the ship, angry at Nathan’s apparent insult, the jet ski is still in the water. Unable to deal with Max any longer, Nathan asks Joe to take him down and hangs the jet ski himself from a crane. He makes sure to let V and Joe see what’s going on, but I don’t understand why he doesn’t insist that Max stay at the demo after making a mistake. Nathan has come a long way from the exhausted leadership of his first few charters, but his conflict management remains problematic. He avoided dealing with the rubble after the explosion, hoping the team would intuitively understand how to adapt to his demands without showing up.

After the Jamon debacle, Josh struggles with the feelings of impostor syndrome voiced in his head by an emo little man named Dominic, but he redeems himself with a dinner presented with synchronicity, much to the delight of Asha and Sandy, and much to the delight of the guests. While doing so, Kitsy and Joe rehearse their dance on the bow, in full view of the V. In Nathan’s estimation, “rehearsal” is an excuse to flirt and giggle in front of V. Joe and Kizzi are both good dancers, but as far as entertainment goes, their routines seem like random acts, an afterthought, done in uniform. It must have reminded the guests, all the parents, that their kids are coming up with dance routines for their families to watch.

The main thrust of this week’s episode is that Joe and Kitsi’s bond grows stronger after confessing to the crime. They are clearly excited to be naughty and the fact that everyone looks at them with disappointment gives them a reason to spend more time together. In her confessional, Kitsy jokes that she might marry Joe in 20 years after having a good time, which she feels is her God-given right. In bed, Nathan texts Gail about Joe and Kitsy’s misbehavior, while Max tells Cathy about her fight with Nathan: “I had to swim into an endless ocean of darkness.” I know he can be annoying, but I can’t resist his romantic behavior. Cassie wants to be there for Max as much as Max is there for her, but you can tell she knows he’s difficult.

Kitsy and Joe must have hit their heads or gone through a portal or something during the night. Because in the morning, I’m completely baffled as to why V is so upset. It’s Aesha’s responsibility to tell Kitzi the obvious. That means V is angry that neither Kitsy nor Joe regret what they did. Kitzi is wide-eyed about having to deal with the consequences of her actions. Asha advises him to show a little more remorse, but Kitsy, like Joe, is worried about having fun. They don’t let the repression of their conscience get in the way of anything.

At least Kitzi is excited to get off the boat and take guests to a medieval town called Tossa de Mar, but he’s not exactly thrilled to do it with V. But they are both professional and act like that in front of the guests to keep it that way. But as soon as the two of you are alone, you have no choice but to deal with the awkwardness between you two. Not even gelato can improve their horrible dialogue. Kitsy was willfully blind to the nuances of the situation she had created, and while her defense boiled down to the fact that Joe and V were not exclusive, she was also unmoved by V’s simple explanation that she expected more respect from someone she considered a friend. Perhaps he’s forgotten which reality show he’s on, but Kizzi says it makes sense for him to “explore a connection” to Joe. You’re not on Love Island, girl! (But she will die if she wears this. Can I let her wear it?)

Meanwhile, back on the Bravado, Joe asks Nathan, sounding like he was born that very morning. “What’s wrong with Victoria?” Nathan asked impatiently, telling him to stop flirting with Kitsy and causing tension in the department. “I’m just being myself,” is Joe’s answer, and that says it all. Asha and Nathan discuss the children they are caring for and express some shock that Nathan, more than anyone else, is intervening as Joe’s voice of reason. At this point I was starting to get tired of all this fuss. Kitsy and Joe’s behavior may have been terrible, but at least it was more fascinating to watch them mess up than to see all these points regurgitated in vomit. Ayesha congratulates Kitzi on apologizing to V, but knows that whether she meant it or not, it won’t make any difference if she’s still intent on “having fun” with Joe.

After the excursion, Max causes more havoc by firing a gun at a tender car while towing guests in a tube. V, who is behind him, suggests they slow down. Sandy radios Nathan from the bridge to tell Max to slow down. Everyone asks him to slow down, but he’s a man on a mission. Back on the platform, Joe gently tells Max that it’s dangerous to go that fast, but Max blames the rough water for his guest’s whiplash-inducing ride. Still, Joe thanks Max for his understanding, which is more than Nathan can do now that he no longer has to interact with Max. Later, when Joe tells Nathan that he saw Max’s side of the jet ski crane debacle, Sandy agrees that it’s difficult to understand instructions yelled from above while being hit by waves on one side and jet skis on the other—Nathan rejects the idea that there are two sides, saying Max is making excuses for him. In conclusion, Nathan shouldn’t have yelled and Max should have listened harder. Either way, Joe’s persistence for his wayward co-worker baffles Nathan.

Josh’s charter second course dinners are a hit. The first course, agnolotti and scampi bisque, looked very delicious. The theme for the evening was Ibiza and I had to rewind it four times to understand the words. As guests praise Josh’s food as being better than any Michelin restaurant they visited during their trip to Europe, Dominic is expelled, the plates are cleared away, and Joe, wearing a metal top, appears as the night’s DJ. While V looks on in disbelief, Kitsy spurns the act by pretending to be an enthusiastic fan. Nathan gently tells Joe that he’s right there if he wants to talk, pulls Joe aside, and tells him to keep it in his “pants” when they go out the next night. The more people tell them to pipe up, the more furious Kitsy and Joe become.

Joe in particular seems to feel like everyone is feeling bad about him, even though he hasn’t really done anything wrong (he stops just before saying he hasn’t done anything wrong). The next morning, as the boat heads to port, he tells V that nothing can take up their time, and that their deaths were simply the result of a collision of two expectations for the future. They were clearly more than just a casual relationship with her, but that was no condition to him. Dear reader, I want to scream. It was he who remembered his expiration date and told her that he wanted to introduce her to his mother, that she had changed him, that he had never felt like that before. V is basically speechless by this guy’s cojones. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he continued as he approached the docks.

Guests leave happy with their experience and leave with tips of $27,000, or $2,454 per person. Sandy praises Josh’s work in front of everyone, which is understandable after embarrassing him last time. Cassie finishes getting ready and tells Kizzy that she’s nervous because Max wants to have a “What Are We Talk” that night, but that conversation had already been postponed from the day before. Max is excited at the prospect of having an exclusive. He tells Asha at the beginning of Charter that he wants Cathy to be his girlfriend, despite her difficulties in getting over love and her yachting career. Ayesha encourages him, as she and Scott did, that if two people really want to be together, things will work out, and Nathan wants to prove to Gael (who said she would think about it), who he called earlier to invite to his sister’s wedding, that he can do it.

Cassie doesn’t like to show emotions by nature, so she definitely doesn’t want to give a talk in front of everyone at dinner like Max is ready to do. Kitsy and Joe are making out across the table while she asks him to wait until she gets back to the boat, and V appears to be giggling on the verge of steam coming out of his ears. When she gets up for a cigarette break, Nathan follows her out. Kidzie was a little confused and told Ayesha that V had been “nice” to her all day. But then, unable to avoid making a bad situation even worse, she and Joe decide to reenact the Spanish dance in the middle of the restaurant. The reason, as Aesha pointed out, was just to touch each other. Kizzy’s breasts fall out of her shirt multiple times. V had the whole night to himself and fell asleep as soon as we got back to the boat.

Ayesha orders McDonald’s on the phone and she and Kitsi wait in bed until the food arrives. Unfortunately, it ends up in the hands of two drunk men, Nathan and Joe, who start eating it indiscriminately. They handled the food very roughly and started throwing chicken nuggets onto the sundeck. Max finally corners the little angel and gets him to talk. All Cassie could say was that she wanted to take things slowly and that she didn’t want Max to ask her to be his girlfriend when she realized that the nuggets that were pouring down were her own. She pops out to demand an explanation from Nathan and Joe. Max is characteristically furious. “I’m all for you and all you’re interested in is chicken nuggets?” he says in a confessional. He’s not wrong to be disrespecting her by walking away from that conversation as if it doesn’t matter, but this is Max, so he’ll probably never let this go. “It’s over,” he declares as he returns to the cabin as Kathy scolds Nathan and Joe. Let’s see about that!