Below Deck: Did the coronavirus make this season boring?

Below Deck is cruising through the season but we know that it gets cut short due to the pandemic.  Did they stretch out the usable footage because of it?

The crew of Below Deck needs to be a few things: a hard worker, a little bit dramatic, kind of trustworthy, and definitely able to binge drink and wake up early to work.  Eddie Lucas is the bosun this season and though he is definitely competent, he’s almost too good at his job for this!  However, Captain Lee Rosbach must really appreciate the kind of worker Eddie is.

Enter: global pandemic

But it is no secret that viewers seem to think that something is missing from this season.  It was questioned if we missed Kate Chastain and her banter with Captain Lee, but that can’t be the whole reason.  We know, from the previews, that this season of Below Deck was filmed at the start of 2020.  At some point, the coronavirus becomes an issue for both the crew members and the guests.

Do we think that they had to cut filming short and had to make do with a lot of the boring footage they already had?  There seems to be a ton of filler scenes without any real point, more than usual in a show like this.  They also seem to be spreading out the guests over more episodes when a lot of the time they are in and out over one episode.

The lack of footage along with a lack of drama might have set this season up for a bit of a snooze.  We don’t know exactly when this episode was filmed, but it was presumably around January or February based on some clues.  Captain Lee did a great job of keeping his crew together as much as he could, and the rest was out of his control.

It seems that James Hough might be on his way out after his mid-day nap the other day, but the rest of the crew seems competent enough to make it through the season.

This show is all about the drama, and perhaps there just wasn’t a lot of drama to go around this season.  That’s a good thing for Captain Lee and Eddie, but a bad thing for all of the drama llamas that love the drama!

For more information about COVID-19, visit the CDC’s website or the website for your state’s Department of Health.

Below Deck is on Bravo Monday nights at 9 PM ET!