Plus: a royal romcom, Montgomery memes, and a docuseries about a massive grift

View this email online by Linda Holmes Welcome! It was the week when Jaws came to Broadway, sort of. It was the week when the strikes wore on. And it was the week when reading Shakespeare was restricted. Let's get to it. Reality show producers step in to keep someone safe ... this time On Monday night's double episode of Bravo's Below Deck Down Under, viewers saw show producers intervening to prevent a sexual assault by one crew member (a man) on another. After the offender was fired, another crew member (a woman) who had been repeatedly refusing to hear "no" from the guy she was interested in, and who had been touching him repeatedly after he asked her not to, was shown the door as well. (If you’d like a rundown of the details, you can read a longer version of this essay on NPR.org.) It was a jarring look for a franchise that has frequently reveled in what's sometimes been abusive behavior by very drunk people for a total of 24 seasons -- 10 of original Below Deck, seven of Below Deck Mediterranean, four of Below Deck Sailing Yacht, one of Below Deck Adventure, and two of Below Deck Down Under. To set the scene, in the world of these shows, you have the interior crew -- usually, but not always, women -- who serve guests meals and drinks, clean cabins, do laundry, and run the entertainment. The exterior crew (led by the bosun) -- usually, but not always, men -- clean the boat, handle docking and run the tender (the little auxiliary boat), manage all the jet skis and giant inflatables and other things that are set out for rich people to use, and set up and break down everything on the outside for guests. There's also a chef. As for the guests, they're rich enough to charter the yacht, but not so rich that they have a yacht of their own.  The Northern Sun on Bravo's Below Deck Down Under.  Mark Rogers/Bravo The rhythm of the show is that after a charter trip ends, the crew cleans up, and they have a night out in whatever cool location the yacht happens to be docked. Typically, they go to a restaurant for dinner and then some kind of a club to drink and dance, and then they stumble back onto the yacht, sometimes they fool around, sometimes they get in the hot tub, and then they pass out for the night. Hookups are frequent. There's some useful material in this episode that burbles up from all the absurdity. Obviously, it's about consent, and about how you cannot climb into the bed of a person who hasn't invited you particularly if they're passed out or sleeping, particularly if you're naked. And furthermore, you can't keep handling anybody of any gender when they've asked you not to. These are, you might say, the headlines. But the whole incident raises another uncomfortable issue. Alcohol plays a critical role in many reality-show franchises. Your housewives, your people who stop being polite and start getting real, and most definitely your bachelors and bachelorettes, all have historically done a tremendous amount of drinking. But Below Deck has always had, to me, a particularly fraught relationship with being not merely drunk, but blackout drunk. Uncomfortable levels of physical aggression and confrontation have sometimes followed these nights out, as have mornings in which apologies are of limited value coming from apologizers who clearly have no memory of what they did. In an interview with The Baltimore Banner, Eddie Lucas, who's appeared on several seasons of Below Deck as a deckhand and bosun, said this about the nights out: And then also, when we get off charter, and they’re [the producers are] like, “Oh, you know, go out, have dinner, have a good time.” You’re like, “I’d rather just get some sleep” and they’re like, “No, you’re gonna drink. You’re gonna drink and you’re gonna stay up until four in the morning, and you’re going to like it!” As Tzarina said, the alcohol is obviously not an excuse for the behavior, but encouraging this kind of drinking has risks. And watching the producers swoop in here only reminds you how often they do not swoop in. They watch people get in fights, punch things, scream at each other, drink until they're sick, drink until they have to be carried home, drink until they have no idea what they're doing -- in a way, seeing producers become visible in one instance makes them hover like ghosts at the edges in all the past situations they've allowed to unfold (encouraged to unfold?) without any obvious intervention. Whether any other case like this has come up, I don't know. But many, many of these nights have looked like they could erupt dangerously at any time, and I can't remember ever hearing a producer say, "You've had enough, stop drinking, go to bed." Either they haven't done it, or they haven't wanted to show that they did it. And then this week, Deadline reported that attorneys who say they represent a number of cast and crew from NBC Universal's reality shows (that seems to mostly mean Bravo) sent a letter to the company demanding that possible evidence be retained in anticipation of future litigation over what the letter calls "grotesque and depraved mistreatment of the reality stars and crewmembers." And the first bullet point they allege is plying people with alcohol (while denying them food and sleep) in an effort to intentionally degrade their mental health. Another is "covering up acts of sexual violence." I'm not going to lie: I often fast-forward through the crew nights out at this point, precisely because they always seem vaguely menacing. I watch this show as a workplace show, as hard as that might be to believe. I like it for the parts where the impossible guests want endless espresso martinis and the deck crew is desperate not to have to inflate the water slide again and everybody is juggling impossible tasks. I am bored stiff by long sequences where people do shots and slur into each other's ears and scream at each other in the hot tub. You know what I like? I like the tension of a moment where the chef forgot that one of the guests is gluten-free and now they have to improvise. I like the parts where somebody suddenly wants an umpteen-course dinner and the crew is shorthanded because somebody is seasick. I like it when rich people insist on their beach picnic and then get rained on. And, as with every good reality show, I admit I like it when people I don't like get their comeuppance, usually in the form of getting fired. If one person isn't doing their share of the work and the captain calls them in and says they're bounced, that offers a little shiver of satisfaction, just like when a jerk gets voted off Survivor. Not like this, though. Really, not like this. The thing is, all that stuff, all that kind of lighthearted workplace stuff, comes alongside all the parts that I might fast-forward through, but they still happened. (For the "all this is entirely scripted!" crowd, let me say: I wish.) And on the one hand, it's good to know there's something producers will step in to prevent. On the other hand, it would be good to let people stay in and get some sleep. Click here to read a longer version of this essay on NPR.org. Newsletter continues after sponsor message We Recommend Eric Deggans had a terrific piece this week about brawl memes and folding chairs. Also from our team at NPR, Bilal Qureshi looked at the billion-dollar summer of Taylor Swift, Barbie and Beyoncé. I very much like the HBO docuseries Telemarketers, which premieres on Sunday. Focused on the Civic Development Group, a telemarketing outfit that did a lot of those "I'm calling on behalf of injured police officers" calls, it starts out seeming like it's about one thing -- the grift of pretending to be representing the police -- and ends up being about a bunch of other things. It's also a highly entertaining character portrait of some guys from New Jersey who you just need to watch to fully understand. It will also make you never answer a call again if you don't know who's on the line. Emma Cline's The Guest is a very buzzy book right now, about a woman who gets kicked out of her rich boyfriend's house and has to figure out how to survive for a few days in the Hamptons with no resources except her ability to weasel into people's lives. I liked it a lot, and it gets its work done economically. Listen to the Podcast Sponsor-Free Support your favorite pop culture junkies AND listen without sponsor interruptions with a subscription to Pop Culture Happy Hour+! Learn more and sign up at plus.npr.org/happy. Learn More What We Did This Week Taylor Zakhar Perez and Nicholas Galitzine in Red, White & Royal Blue.  Jonathan Prime/Prime Video In honor of the second season of the super-charming Netflix series Heartstopper, we offered an encore of our episode about its first season, in which Glen and I spoke to Cate Young and Mark Blankenship. Aisha spoke to Tre'vell Anderson and Shar Jossell about Kokomo City, a documentary about black trans sex workers. Aisha also talked to Walter Chaw and Kat Chow about the film Shortcomings, based on Adrian Tomine's graphic novel and directed by Randall Park. Finally, Glen chatted with Cyrena Touros, Jeffrey Masters and Joelle Monique about the Amazon movie adaptation of the beloved Casey McQuiston novel Red, White & Royal Blue. (A side note from me: I really liked the movie, although it's definitely not the book. If it had been an eight-part series, you might get every character and plot arc, but by necessity, a lot is excised for the movie. I still think the movie is super-charming.) What's Making Us Happy Every week on the show, we talk about some other things out in the world that have been giving us joy lately. Here they are: Cyrena Touros: Burn It Down by Maureen Ryan Joelle Monique: Film crowdfunding site Seed&Spark Jeffrey Masters: The Brandy Clark song "All Over Again," from her album Brandy Clark Glen Weldon: The musical episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Stream your local NPR station. Visit NPR.org to find your local station stream. Subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+. Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free episodes. What do you think of today's email? We'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback: pchh@npr.org Enjoying this newsletter? 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