Why Is ‘Below Deck’ So Damn Popular?

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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.

Is Glenn Shephard, the ‘Below Deck Sailing Yacht’ Captain, the Nicest Guy on Reality TV?

“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.

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