Below Deck Med’s magnificent mess—and malevolent outcome

Bravo’s Below Deck Mediterranean season 11 is over, and I break down what made this season great—and horrifying. Nathan vs. Joe, Aesha’s growth, and Chef Joy’s joy, and how much the production has to do with all of it.

Transcript

Get on your life preservers because the wind is picking up, and we’re boarding Below Deck Med’s yacht for this week’s episode of Made from Humans: How Reality Becomes TV.
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I’m your host, Andy Dehnart, the creator of Reality Blurred and a writer who believes in the power of true stories.
Today I’m analyzing all the ups and downs of Below Deck Mediterranean Season 3, from semen on sheets to a fugitive from justice, and thinking about all the ways in which the show does and does not contribute to that kind of on-screen drama and off-screen.
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Welcome, and thank you for joining me for this week’s excursion into reality TV, which is coming to us in the segment I call Review Review, where I look at a season of a show and analyze it in depth. It’s named after Picture Picture from Mister Rogers, hence the repetition and the kind of meta-ness where we look at a review of reviews and of a season as a whole. Not sure if that holds up, but hey, there’s the homage, and I love Mister Rogers.
So, we’re talking about Below Deck Mediterranean Season 11. I have loved Below Deck for years and have written about it because it, I think, gets to something fundamental about reality TV that I love and enjoy, which is watching real people in a slightly artificial circumstance dealing with live and jobs and their lives and their relationships.
It really does kind of touch back to the real world for me, where producers put together seven strangers in a loft in a city, and in season one, especially, but in the — and in those first early seasons, they had jobs and lives outside of the loft. This wasn’t their only job being on reality TV. And that’s the show I fell in love with, and that’s how I fell in love with reality TV. And Below Deck does that to some degree.
We follow the crew of a yacht, which is chartered by, generally, I guess, rich people — and rich guests are people with something to promote and they’re spending their money on it. And we get to see how the guests’ demands affect the crew, and how the crew’s work gets done or not done, and what happens to their relationships during all of this.
It’s reality TV, of course, so this is a six-week charter season with a new group of guests coming on board every two or three days. That is very atypical in actual yacht chartering — not that I have ever chartered a yacht; I’ve just read about this. But typically a crew will be with one set of guests for weeks, if not months. So this is obviously like a high-intense or a high-pressure intense version of actual jobs. So they have to get used to new guests, you have to get all the things that they want to do and need, and then respond to those needs before they leave the boat and then, you know, leave a tip behind.
The thing about Below Deck is that because the crew changes every season — although there’s people who come back, and the captains change, and the locations change — you get very different seasons, and that’s ultimately a good thing, I think. It means we’re not just being produced into having the same one note over and over again. But the last few years have been some pretty wild swings for the franchise, where we’ve had one season that was basically like Love Island, where it was just all about the relationships and who was dating who — love triangles — and it was barely any of the actual charter guests or the work, which sometimes would be montaged away in seconds. So, like, a two-day charter: we’re like watching it and it’s gone, and what happened there?
Below Deck Mediterranean Season 11 has been the perfect kind of Below Deck season for me, which is interpersonal relationships that are tied to the jobs that people are doing; guests who are not complete monsters and assholes and don’t dehumanize the crew, but are demanding in their own ways that are difficult to adapt to, so we need to see the creativity and the effort that goes into trying to serve them and their expectations; and then, you know, all the related fallout from all of this in terms of the way people do their jobs and how they’re leaders or not — all of the kinds of things that I look for in a workplace drama that is real life.
I want to say a big disclaimer here: that while I’m talking about this show and season as being wildly entertaining and fun and ideal, there is a giant asterisk associated with it, and that is its bosun, Nathan Gallagher, who is presently wanted in both Ireland and in Australia. In Australia, he was convicted of domestic violence against Gael, who is the person who — or is a person who was on previous seasons of Below Deck on the deck crew, and with whom Nathan had a baby. And Gael came and stayed in an Airbnb basically for this season with this newborn who is literally weeks old. So she’s on the season. So is Nathan, and there’s a big chunk of — or a big chunk of the season is about their relationship and him being a new father and all this other stuff.
The conviction, the domestic assault, all of that happened months after this season filmed, but we know about it now. So, of course, it’s — we’re watching the season knowing that. So I don’t want to trivialize the events that are coming and the horror that Gael experienced by talking about the show as being entertaining. And I do have some criticism related to Bravo’s handling of it. But ultimately, the TV show is also a separate artifact that is edited and produced based on what happened in Croatia during this time. So we’ll get into all of that, but I just wanted to be clear. By the way, I won’t mention any additional details at all. You can find those in the show notes and online if you want to look at them. You can also find in the show notes some phone numbers to call or text if you or someone you know is in a situation involving intimate partner violence, or anything concerning that you would like to talk to someone about, or talk to someone to get someone else’s help.
Something that I’ve actually been surprised — Bravo has never actually acknowledged by putting up even a title card on the screen. Again, what happened came after all these events, but people who are watching Below Deck know about it now while we’re watching, so I’m just a little unnerved and disturbed that they didn’t see the need to address that, knowing what we know and knowing the scenes they put on TV with Nathan and Gael acting like a happy couple. Which, of course, I’m not going to attempt to analyze their relationship at all because I realize I’m seeing a very small part of it — six weeks’ worth edited down into literal minutes over 18 episodes. So we have little glimpses, and probably could make some assumptions based on those. That’s not what I’m interested in.
What I’m interested in, thinking about this season, is how the production assembles all kinds of pieces, people, to basically make entertainment. Now again, this is a real job. The people on the boats have been real stews or deckhands or boatswains in the real world. They’ve worked on actual boats in some cases. In other cases, and especially as the franchise has gotten older, they’re just kind of casting it like a reality TV show, and sending people to get their certifications that they need, and then putting them on a boat with no experience. And usually that becomes a storyline — like a third stew has no experience and has to be in the laundry room and figure that out; someone on deck is brand new to this and just is stumbling through their job. And so we know that they’ve been cast for this reason.
The show interestingly kind of hides the production behind the reality of chartered yachts. In early seasons, you’ll hear the captains talk about the boat’s owner: it’s like, the owner is giving you a day off; the owner has asked me to do X, Y, or Z. And of course, it’s very clear that the owner is production, is the production company behind Below Deck, who has basically chartered this yacht themselves. They have paid to rent this boat for the time that production takes place. They have hired an actual crew that we see on TV.
And then there’s some crew members who are off camera who are there to help run the boat — you know, like if the captain is sleeping, there has to be someone who knows what they’re doing, or if the captain’s off the boat, for example. So they have a first officer, an engineer, and other people. In earlier seasons, they were actually introduced to us, and they’ve also stopped doing that, maybe just because they assume we know at this point. But again, the production is always there, kind of with a heavy hand in the background. And this is true of all reality TV, where there’s like a setup of a context, and then you kind of let people go in that context.
The biggest setup in Below Deck is the casting. They obviously find a captain to kind of lead all this crew and then cast people in individual roles. And often, what we’re seeing is people kind of coming back season after season and growing and moving up in roles. Aesha, who is the Chief Stew in Below Deck Med Season 11, first was on Below Deck 10 years ago as a green stew, basically just somebody who was new to this, and, you know, she was utterly charming and great TV from immediately, and she’s worked her way into leadership, becoming, I think, one of the best characters on Bravo just because she’s so cheerful and funny and authentic, and, you know, the shots of her eating noodles in bed are just so delightful. And that’s because that’s who Aesha is. And the show captures that wonderfully.
Producers are assembling this group, and of course, they’re assembling it for drama and for conflict in many ways. Now, that’s manifested itself in Season 11 in what is basically a dysfunctional deck crew. So they promoted Nathan to boatswain even though he has no leadership capabilities whatsoever and is completely inept at some of the most basic leadership tasks you could imagine, like scheduling a crew or just talking to people and asking them to do things. And that’s actually very interesting to watch because it’s an example of leadership that is not working, and you can see how it affects people, and you can see what he’s doing wrong. And likewise, with Aesha, you can see what she’s doing right and how she’s motivating people.
A great storyline on this season was Aesha promoting one of her stews to second stew — not Gen, who insisted she had more experience and should be that. But basically, Gen’s attitude was terrible. And Aesha said that, like, you have to be a nice person, and you have to have that capability and to be able to, like, smile to the world, and you’re not doing that. And that’s what’s so great: we get to see how she is actually talking to her — you know, her… I wouldn’t say underlings, that’s the wrong word. Us? Staff? Crew? Team members — there we go. Talking to her team members. Whereas Nathan talking to his team members is always just like watching someone in middle school on the playground. Like, there was a moment earlier in the season where they were doing something — the deck crew in the back of the boat — and two of the deckhands, Cooper and Joe, were laughing or smiling at each other or something, and Nathan just, like, gets, like, super angry, and, like, “Don’t even — what are you doing?” Just the most — sort of felt like it was like some kind of threat to his leadership, or I don’t know. It was just bizarre. But you see that over and over again. Like, he just doesn’t know how to manage those situations.
There’s also a great moment this season when he has to leave the boat for medical reasons, and Joe steps in as temporary boatswain and basically does all the things extremely well. Now, what’s interesting about Joe is he’s a character I can’t stand from earlier seasons, especially the last season of Below Deck Med, when he — basically… he’s basically a fuckboy. That’s the thing.
Although I don’t want to undersell some of his gross behavior, but we’ve seen him in the past befriend someone, or, like, you know, get into a relationship, and then basically be like, you know, I don’t want anything serious, and then, of course, the second it becomes serious, he runs away and causes damage to women’s psyche.
And I’m failing to, uh, summarize this adequately because I’m talking about entire seasons’ worth of storylines from Joe’s earlier time. So to stick with Season 11: Nathan and Joe come on board not being friends and not being as friendly as they were when they first met three seasons ago, and they were like BFFs almost instantly. Joe is constantly trying to undermine Nathan and his authority and become bosun himself. Nathan is constantly acting in an immature way that shows he should be undermined and replaced as bosun, and he’s often fearing that Joe is trying to undermine him — because he is. And it’s a hilarious dynamic, if probably not so hilarious for the people who actually had to work with them.
Speaking of that, one of the storylines that I thought was basically going to be kind of the highlight of this season or the peak of it: early on, one of the new deckhands, Luke, had a physical encounter with one of the stews, Gen, who I mentioned before.
He basically climbed down into the lower bunk, which is Bosun Nathan’s bunk, and there he ejaculated onto Nathan’s sheets while they were fooling around — while he and Gen were fooling around — and then didn’t wash the sheets at all, and didn’t tell Nathan, and then Nathan came back and slept in them. Now, maybe we might say he deserved that because of what we found out later — although he deserves much worse, honestly. But I did a long story where I actually reported on whether or not this was dangerous. Like, can you, quote unquote, “catch” something if there was something in seamen? So I will link that in the show notes, in the episode description in your podcast app. Check that out. You can see what an expert told me about all kinds of things, and it gets into real detail, and it was fascinating.
And it’s also fascinating just to watch Luke not take responsibility for the simplest thing. Just like, “I’m gonna just grab that sheet and, uh, throw it in the laundry room. Like, three seconds. That’s all it takes.” Or, if you forgot to do that and Nathan comes back: “Bro, don’t sleep on those sheets. Let me get you some new ones. I apologize.” Like, simplest thing. And he didn’t do that. So he eventually ended up leaving the boat, although he didn’t leave the season, because he decided to try to have a relationship with the chef — the seasoned chef Joy, who is probably somebody I could focus an entire episode on by herself. Is just an absolute delight and joy, and has been a refreshing addition to the franchise because the chefs are usually so toxic, or they cave under the pressure almost immediately. And she’s approached it with this kind of good humor and gallows humor, as I wrote in my recap of the finale. So she’s really funny, charming, handles things well for the most part, appears to make food that people really like — although they didn’t really focus on her food as much this season as they have past chefs, which is unfortunate. But she was great, gave Luke a reason to stick around.
So, as you can see, like, we have all these interesting dynamics and storylines, but they’re interlinked based on jobs. So we have Nathan and one of his team members who’s, like, defiled his sheets and he doesn’t know about it, and we have his other team member who’s trying to undermine him — for good reason — and so there’s all this conflict.
And the conflict between Nathan and Joe started out apparently last season of Below Deck Med, when Gael was not on the season but came back to work one night or maybe two nights, which is utterly ridiculous if you think about it in practical terms. What happened was the producers brought her back to fill a slot for a day, and all of this is, like, you know, we see Captain Sandy, like, “I have a special thing. Could you come and help me out?” Like, sure — that’s exactly what’s happening. But they brought Gael back because Nathan had been pining for her after kind of fucking up their romance on board the previous season. And I didn’t root for them as a couple. I didn’t think we needed to get them together as a couple. But the producers brought Gael back. And then after the season ended, Nathan and Gael traveled together for a few weeks — I think three weeks — and Gael got pregnant. And now she has a small child.
So I am curious about the culpability, I guess, of the production in making this relationship happen. Without them bringing Gael back, would Nathan have pursued her? Would she have pursued him? Would they have connected again?
Of course, we can’t actually know that. It eventually created some resentment because Nathan — or, sorry, Joe — and Gael didn’t get along. But, as this season finale for Season 11 explored tonight, that might just be because — this is Aesha and Kayley kind of analyzing this — basically saying that Joe felt abandoned by his friend when his friend got into a relationship and then had a baby, and felt abandoned just like he had been abandoned by his father. That’s Joe.
So, again, like, the complication here is rich. This is a rich text with interesting characters and a lot of layers, especially kind of the soap opera nature over the seasons. But with this question of, like, what kind of meddling is good and what is bad? Like, do we bring people back just to get conflict and drama? And the answer is, of course, yes. And that’s what the producers have done on all the seasons of Below Deck.
There’s constantly — like, they need someone as a replacement, and, oh, the only person available happens to have beef with someone on board, because of course that person has been cast and contracted, and they’re not some last-minute replacement that Norma, the yacht crew finder, is locating for Captain Sandy.
That’s, you know… Norma is actually, by the way, a real person. So when you see Captain Sandy texting Norma, Norma exists. We saw her on the show because she went to Captain Sandy’s wedding. But the fact that, you know, I don’t know if Sandy’s actually texting Norma and Norma’s dealing with producers, but the production has basically cast everyone, and they’re sitting there waiting in the wings to be placed in and called in whenever it is time for their appearance. And again, this whole season takes place over just six weeks, so it’s a really short period of time.
Likewise, when Luke decided to leave the boat — instead of getting fired over what he did to Nathan’s sheets — he just happened to stick around in Croatia until the last night and then show up at the same club because Joe texted him. And then when he left the club after Gen threw some red wine on him, he got into a production van. So, like, this is, again, like, behind the scenes: producers are handling all of the cast and all of these elements.
Just a quick little production aside here: the actual way that the show works is that there’s a team of camera operators, producers on board. They take over the biggest cabin on board, which is generally for VIPs — so the cabins that we see given to the primary charter guests are actually, like, the next level down. But they take that over as a control room.
They have cameras everywhere. They have camera crews wandering around. And then there’s a boat with crew members that follows the yacht, and then swaps out crew members — so, for their breaks, meals, etc., and, of course, has other kinds of production support as they might need it.
And every few days — every few charters, I’m not sure of the exact schedule this season — the cast goes to a hotel for a night or two, and they are basically on lockdown, but they go to do interviews and sit in a room and talk about the previous charters. And after the entire season is over, months later, they also all go to LA or to another location and film pickup interviews. So basically, anytime the producers need something to fill in some holes, or need to hear what cast members said about a certain thing, they go ahead and film those after the fact. So a lot of production mechanisms that we’re not seeing, which is typical of all reality TV shows.
Again, though, it’s interesting in that how this is a real job, and yet one that is still controlled so much by the production. And I just — I think what I’m left with here, looking at the season or thinking about it as a whole — and I’ve only touched on tiny little parts of it, and I’m going long here as it is — is that when you have the right group of people and you have the right context, you get real authentic drama, and then you get real relationships and people who are, you know, actually, like, you know, attracted to each other, or maybe even fall in love with each other, or become really close friends, or become friends and then have falling out.
Like, all of that’s real, despite the fact that producers are putting people together. So they might have brought Gael back for a day, but it was Nathan and Gael who went off on their own for three weeks and decided to — I don’t know, maybe “decided” is the wrong word — but then had a baby. And that was not a producer’s doing. Let’s say that much.
So it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the future. Below Deck actually films about a year in advance, so Below Deck Med Season 12 is currently filming, if not already done, with their season. So we have a mild spoiler alert — but I don’t think of casting as spoilers, really. But Joe is back as bosun, so he finally got the job he wanted.
And it’ll be interesting to see if he actually can be the leader that Nathan wasn’t, and stop being the fuckboy who fucks with women’s emotions just to get his own kind of pleasure — which he seems to have backed off from this season. So we’ll see about that. And it’ll be interesting to see, too, how much more Aesha stays with the show, especially now that she’s gotten married. And we’ve seen other people, like Kate, go off and have other reality TV careers, and/or just be done with the fact that this show requires actual work. It’s six weeks of intense labor, and that intense labor produces some great entertainment sometimes — and Season 11 is a good example of that.
Okay, on to Recommendations, where I share things that are bringing joy and entertainment into my life.
First up: The Great British Baking Show, Series 17 as they call it in the UK, Collection 14 as Netflix calls it — I call it the 2026 fall season. That is making me happy every Friday because I get to settle into the tent with Alison — especially; she’s so great. She has just changed the show for the better. And Noel, the other host.
But Nigella Lawson as judge has made this an even more interesting season. Besides the way she just dives into actually eating — which has gotten some criticism from viewers, but it’s, like, she’s enjoying her food, which is awesome and should be celebrated — she’s also, much more interestingly, providing a lot of pushback against Paul and not letting him be the main character.
And Paul Hollywood needs that, because the Hollywood handshake should not be the pinnacle of the show, and the other judge should have a role, too. So I love Nigella. I love this group of contestants and bakers, who are just some really quirky and fun people.
I love the way the show has representation of all kinds of people and doesn’t call attention to it in the way that Survivor does, for example. I’m going to be writing more about that in the next few weeks. But overall, fantastic season so far, and we’re only two episodes in. So definitely check it out.
Oh, and episode two’s theme was biscuits, which generally means what I think of as those awful hard cookies that British people call biscuits, and that’s usually what they have to bake. But this season, for the first challenge, they baked American cookies, which was so fun to see. Because they’re actual cookies that I might actually want to eat versus just pass by, because the sugar is not worth those hard, crunchy things. If you disagree with me, please let me know in the comments, because I’d love to know a defense of those brittle, sandy pieces of crap.
Okay, and on to my next recommendation as I pick a fight there, and that is for the Star Trek series Strange New Worlds, which has just finished up its fourth season, and it’s going to have one shortened fifth season to come, which is already filmed, and then it’s done.
Star Trek’s Strange New Worlds has been, overall, a really delightful entry in the franchise, and they just do something interesting stylistically, narratively, every single episode. Kind of like the original series and Next Generation did occasionally, but since there’s only, you know, 10 episodes a season, they’re doing it for most episodes —
…which I understand the criticism of, but I’m here to recommend it because a lot of those have been really fun.
And I’m particularly going to recommend Episode 5, which is titled “Level 5 Transporter Accident,” and involves the entire crew becoming puppets. Now, I think, again, one could kind of analyze this and, like, the fact that they’re puppets and know they’re puppets, but don’t know, you know, no one’s actually controlling them — is kind of interesting, in the way that, like,
Muppets didn’t call themselves puppets. They are just there and they interact with humans as if they’re just in the world. They don’t say, like, “I’m a puppet and you’re a human.” So that’s one little quibble I have with it. But the puppets themselves are so delightful, and the way they reproduced every crew member’s, like, quirks and physical features — just amazing. And I’ll also link to some behind-the-scenes photos and videos from the director of the episode, Jordan Canning, which just show you how much work went into it and just how completely fun it must have been to film it — never mind to watch it. So highly recommend Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and especially that Episode 5, which was about midway through this season.
And finally, for today, it’s Life Advice from TV, where we are going to hear from the most joyful part of Below Deck this season: Chef Joy. But before we get some joy from Joy, here are a few more things that I’m grateful for.
And that includes you, for being here and listening to this episode. Thanks for doing that. If you haven’t subscribed, please do that in your podcast app right now, because then you’ll hear future episodes without having to do any actual work, which we all love. And if you want to tap a recommendation or a star rating while you’re in there, that’s delightful too. Thank you for that. But I just appreciate you listening, regardless.
I’m also grateful for Kevin MacLeod for writing and providing the theme song you heard at the top of the show, which is called “Cheery Monday.”
And I’m grateful for copyright law, because this episode is by me, Andy Dehnart, and it’s copyright 2026 by Reality Blurred LLC, which is also me. You can find me at realityblurred.com and andydehnart.com.
And you can find Chef Joy’s life advice right here, which is specifically about a moment with Gen and, thus, women and dating, but I think can be expanded in so many ways — just about the humanity that she brings to this moment and how we could do that with other people.
[begin clip with dance club background music]
“Even if I don’t like you, I don’t wanna see you crying for a man. No woman on earth deserves that.”