Reality AF: Below Deck Sailing Yacht’s Kissing Bandit + What to Watch This Week
Photo Courtesy of Bravo
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our new column, Reality AF. Every Monday, Terry Terrones will check in and talk about the state of reality TV, plus provide a Top 5 list of what’s coming up this week that you should not miss.
“I’m trying to teach the women to be a team, but of course Gary and his small dick ruin everything,” said chief stew Daisy on last week’s episode of Below Deck Sailing Yacht.
Another week, another opportunity for Parsifal III’s first mate, Gary “The Kissing Bandit” King, to wreak havoc as he makes his way through Daisy’s interior team like a plundering pirate, consequences be damned.
Gary, a surprisingly likable scoundrel from South Africa who looks like Tarzan and flirts as shamelessly as Austin Powers, is just one of many reasons Below Deck Sailing Yacht is appointment television. But while Gary’s antics are quickly becoming the stuff of legend/infamy (He’s smooched 4 different women this season alone, including Daisy), it’s the Below Deck franchise itself that is truly becoming legendary.
Below Deck is so popular it currently has four iterations (Below Deck, Below Deck Mediterranean, Below Deck Down Under and Below Deck Sailing Yacht,) and is about to add a fifth this fall, Below Deck Adventure, which will be set in Norway.
The reason for the show’s success is twofold. Step one: Get a bunch of good looking, mostly single crew members together and have them work in isolation. Because the series is set on a boat, they have nowhere to go, so they have to interact with each other. This leads to quickly forming bonds and, of course, plenty of scandalous behavior. It’s a standard reality TV setup.
Step two: Place the cast on a working boat serving demanding charter guests. This is what sets the Below Deck franchise apart. You can’t turn on your TV without seeing a reality show filled with attractive people, but most of the time they’re not actually doing anything but drinking, gossiping about each other, and hooking up. This quickly gets boring.
Nothing boring happens on Below Deck because the crew really have jobs and the guests change from charter to charter. To be sure, every season the cast is a good looking bunch, but they have to have skills. While an absolute cad, Gary is an expert at commanding a 54-meter sailing yacht, not an easy task. And Daisy is an expert at providing five-star service, as she’s done for years. Of course, there’s always a newbie or two every season, but they have to work and earn their place or get fired. A unique and hardworking group of captains, who’ve become celebrities in their own right, make sure high standards are met. A real life upstairs/downstairs dynamic is incredibly rare on a reality show.
The combination of traditional reality TV tropes with real life work (tips included) has led to some of the most memorable moments on television since the series first premiered in 2013. Here are just a few examples:
— Deckhand Rocky strips down to her underwear and jumps off the boat in protest after Captain Lee fires her closest friend. We later learn Rocky, who’d be fired, was having a torrid tryst with Eddie, the bosun and her boss.
— Bosun Ashton almost drowns as a rope tangles around his leg and throws him overboard.
— Chief stew Hannah hooks up with a charter guest (allegedly).
— A malfunction causes Captain Glenn to crash the Parsifal III into the dock.