DonutLover As someone who is not able to enjoy a vacation this summer, I have turned to "Below Deck" as well as "Below Deck Mediterranean" as the opportunity to witness blue, inviting oceans and all sets of fun water toys as well as foreign lands that I have never seen. Something about watching the sea every day soothes my hot soul and helps me plan for summers ahead in which I will be the participant in the cool, delicious ocean play.The show portrays how difficult it is for responsible, intelligent bosses to handle drunk, immature and spoiled crew beneath them. In the first season we have a determined but somewhat gentle chief stew named Adreienne trying her hardest to motivate the spoiled, presumptuous Sam (a young lady) who refuses to show the slightest hint of responsibility or self awareness. Sam smirks and challenges every single instruction or order given to her by her boss and spends the entire season acting as cruel and unfair as she can, siding up with her drunk 2nd drunk stew, Kat, against Adrienne. If you are watching the show hoping to find any self awareness or moment of mea culpa coming from either party, forget all about that. Only Kat admits the truth about herself after the show is over. We never get any apology from Sam, but hopefully someday she will privately apologize to her tormented supervisor.In the third season, a bi-polar or hard case ADD personality who self identifies as a dolphin throws the color and frustration into the charter season. Her mood swings jump higher than a dolphin zig zagging through the waves and at one point she actually jumps ship and swims away from the boat as fast and strong as an escaped Orca from Marine World. Clearly she is not equipped to live with and work alongside humans, but her insane antics and personality hold attention to the show. I feel bad for her exploitation however, as surely the producers have no compunction placing a head case such as hers alongside reasonable people for all the world to see.The highlights are the captain, ever so reasonable, handsome and experienced, and Ben with his deep voice, dry wit and skilled hands in the kitchen. I'm watching season 2 right now and enjoying every minute of it!I suggest you check out these shows and see if they appeal to you! Certainly a cut above the bickering of the Housewives franchise and in this case the beautiful blue seas of the Caribbean and Mediterranean are showcased, along with fun and upbeat music.

bjarias The show has to sell 'personality-conflict'.. and it has to have 'reality-style' drama. As such you really know all your watching is a huge dose of soap-opera style goings on. Where the production deserves credit, is that they do pick a very reasonable selection of 'unrecognized-performers' to play the parts of the Valor crew. It has to be a most interesting show to produce and film, and on the whole they pull it off to the point that after three seasons, it still has allure. Don't actually know why that is, but the atmosphere & locations have a lot to do with it. The guests are truly secondary performers, as they switch-out after one or the most two shows. Maybe it would be interesting to see what would happen with a longer-term charter, encompassing several episodes. Anyway, it's all make believe, with an ever changing cast of characters. Life doesn't permit that to happen... reality-fantasy, but it's pretty much what our world has morphed into. It can't and won't last, but for another season or two.. it's maybe just like what we've got going in the 'real world.'

BobbyG I won't explain the plot or setting of this series. Just read the previous reviews. It doesn't seem like it would be possible to make this interesting, but somehow the people involved in the production have made it "must watch" TV. You could call it a guilty pleasure, but the show is very engaging; mainly the interaction between crew and customers (personality conflicts on display regularly). Below Deck demonstrates how challenging it is to run a private cruise ship and how difficult it is to obtain employees with the proper work ethic and temperament to get the job done. The production values of Below Deck are impressive with the editing being top-notch. Some of it might be contrived because it's hard to believe this concept could be this absorbing, but I recommend it highly for those with time to kill.

Dunham16 The premise is not at first enticing. A luxury yacht is for rent to wealthy charter primary bookers staffed by a so called professional crew for fiction totally untrained in any the social graces normally expected of such formal service and likely to be written by the fiction writers to clash with each other as males and females for days at a time must sleep and eat in each other's presence in very tight crew quarters. The yacht t ravels to different ports each season with a slightly differerent crew each time writing in perfectly delightful fictitious wealthy charter primaries and perfectly delightful new yachties for often interesting stories of why their ports of call have been for centuries premiere world tourist attractions. What makes this show enticing under these not always promising circumstances starts with the marvelous casting each and every on an absolute gem. ==Just take your pick because all are superbly written and superbly cast. Next is the delightful minute to minute interaction of the crew which is like any reality show what happens when not well meshed people work together under not well planned out management- certainly every episode delightful to watch for this fluff.